MASCOT May 1992

BACK TO THE 4AD

Dave True

Yes, back to the pretty dreadful RKC 394 and its problems. I've been overhauling and sprucing up the floor and improving on the efforts of the man from Laramie. There are four plywood horizontal panels, a wide toe-board and a narrow toe-board, both also plywood. At least the plywood was marine ply. I took all these panels and toe-boards out and tidied them up. To cope with the eccentricities and not-brilliant workmanship of the metal skeleton that the floor panels attach to, corners and edges have to be eased to obtain a flush fit. It irked me how crudely this had been done (all the plywood is new, not original) and I spent quite a while with file and glasspaper improving the fit.

There are two metal straps to support the two forward floor panels and the toe-boards. These straps have, or had, captive fixing nuts welded on. None of these remaining nuts had any thread left, so I hacksawed them off and filed the straps down flush. I thought 'is it worth while to install some kind of replacement captive nut or perhaps those speed screw clip things to take self-tapping screws?' but I decided in the end to fit slotted countersunk bolts with free-running nuts, so the appearance from the top will be similar to original. After all, one doesn't take the floor panels and toe-boards out twice a week (hopefully). A similar decision was reached regarding the fixing of the panels and toe-boards to the metal skeleton. Where the floor panels bear on the ash runners, the fixings here are countersunk woodscrews.

I have painted the floor panels and toe-boards in mid-grey undercoat for the time being and may well leave them like that. I thought they should have some protection, even if they are marine ply, and I don't really want a gloss finish. I have also similarly painted the metal floor skeleton with propshaft tunnel, and the rear floor pans. All the framing and the back of the aluminium cladding inside the scuttle have also been painted in the same way, together with the ash runners and the rear framing and cladding. It really looks quite smart. Eventually all the inside of the car and the boot will have this treatment.

When I first acquired RKC, the boot lid was a terrible fit, sticking up about an inch more on one side at the top than on the other side. It had been fitted with a one piece inner lining of vinyl covered hardboard, which made the whole boot lid rigid. On removing this and juggling a little with the hinges a very much more reasonable fit was obtained. It was our old friend 'flexibility' upon which Singers relied heavily in the construction of their cars - or so I thought. At a later stage I reckoned on making a three piece inner lining to maintain this flexibility. Or could be I might have two lining pieces and a centre tool compartment as I have on my other Roadster. One has to remember the projection of the top of the spare wheel into the boot lid and either make a suitable elliptical hole top centre to accommodate it, or not cover the top centre portion at all (the elliptical hole is correct). I then forgot about the boot lid for a while, considering that problem solved.

Later on I came to do a tightening up of hinges, only to find that the majority of these were turning in the wood and not tightening. There is a limit to the extent that you can keep fitting larger gauge and longer screws. Larger gauge screws obviously have larger heads and clearly you-get to the point where the countersunk head won't countersink into the hinges. You may say 'well, make the countersinkings in the hinges larger'. I don't think this is a very good idea as the hinges are of a cast pattern and therefore somewhat brittle and larger holes will weaken them. The alternative it to find some suitable countersunk slotted-head bolts (set pins, machine screws, whatever you care to call them, with the wrinkles all the way up). These I used very successfully regarding securing the hinge to the boot lid. The framing to the boot lid at the hinge fixing points has become decidedly 'squashy' so I cut some steel plate washers some 4" long and tapering from 1" to 3/4" to suit the taper of the wood framing. These plate washers were three times drilled for the hinge bolts (obviously) and also drilled once at each end to take a woodscrew into the frame to add to the stiffness of the frame which tends to be weak at this point due to the recessing of the hinge. I fitted the three bolts to each hinge, with nuts and spring washers and tightened it all up - great. The fixing of the hinges to the body - I got away with fitting larger screws here as the wood on my car at this point is new, but it would be possible to fit countersunk bolts the same as I used for the boot lid fixings.

Having beautifully tightened everything up, including the bolts actually holding the two parts of the hinges together, one closes the boot lid and stands back to admire ones work. And what does one find - yes, the boot lid no longer fits up at the top edge again. This is not quite as bad as it was before - about 3/8" up on one side at the top now. Clearly the boot lid will push down on its stops and finish up an even fit at the top when locked. The top edge of the boot lid should have recessed into it two screwed metal plates with raised edges which fit over screwed rubber stops fixed to the body. I think I'm going to have to accept this as near enough - is anything 100% perfect on a Singer Roadster? After all, the boot lid is closed and locked nearly all the time and it seems quite likely that the fit will gradually improve. The top joint between the boot lid and the body will be covered by the tonneau cover or hood in any case.

RRC was completely missing the side gutters within the boot and without these the rain (or car wash water) will just run straight in. The other Roadster had these gutters and I used one of these as a pattern try fabricate a pair for RKC. Stating the obvious perhaps but one has to remember that these gutters are right and left hand. They consist of a thin metal plate, the top edge of which is cut curved to suit the line of the body. The bottom edge is straight and bent up to form the actual gutter. These gutters are slightly recessed into and screwed to the body framing. The top curved edge needs sealing with paint or possibly mastic.