MASCOT July-August 1995

4AB ROADSTER REPAIRS

M. Heritege

It is April and whilst I have been sitting in some fabulous sunshine here in Spain I have read the Jan/Feb Newsletter. It is good to hear news of Singer cars and owners and this letter will in the main have been prompted by articles appearing in the Jan/Feb Newsletter.

The Roadster grille. Full marks to Dave True and his reconstructed grille /surround. This assembly is a daunting task and mine consumed hours of time. It is worth the effort to get it right since it is a key feature of the car and the one to first catch the eye. Here are my memories and thoughts to add to those of Dave. As stated, the sheet metal surround is thin but what one should also bear in mind is the very low specification steel that was normal in these post-war years. My first task was to have the chrome removed from the surround. I tried to do this myself with abrasives but this failed and so I had it etched down to bare metal. The etched shell in its bare metal state clearly showed the impure base material as a thick network of black stress lines. The platers managed to polish it to the point where it was holed in one spot near the emblem. I reinforced my now wafer thin shell with a fibreglass lining, taking particular care to ensure there was no unsealed edges where rust could penetrate. The heads of shallow mushroom headed rivets on the sides of the surround and which retain the grille central crosspiece were almost polished away. My solution was to drill them out and replace them with setscrews. The heads of these setscrews were machined to a dome and chromed to replicate the original rivets.

The slats were too far gone to repair. I took some brass sheet along to a chap who made specialist parts for the photographic trade and he cut and formed some new slats for me. This is not a difficult tack and is well within the capabilities of a local school or college if it has a folding machine. I know that I still have the drawings I made at the time and will include these before posting this article when we arrive home (see below).