Sink or Swim

Posted on 05/01/2013 by Mark

Happy new year, at last the blackberries and the grass are in retreat so the shed beckons once more, so today I thought it was time to tempt the Sizaire out of the shed where she has been malingering on the pretext that carrying a couple of middle aged blokes across Australia was quite enough for a 100 year old, however that was last year so time to be a beast of burden once more.

If you have been reading my previous posts you would know that I have had no luck getting the Siz to start or run very well and I have been trying all sorts of stuff to remedy this without success. Today that all changed even though it has been said by some “that most fuel problems are really ignition problems” in this case it really was fuel and when you have a carby as simple as the Siz what can go wrong? The float weighed in at 64g, after I drilled a hole in it and emptied the fuel out and soldered it up again it weighed 51g so more submarine than float.

I went out for a run and the Siz is running beautifully although that made another problem more apparent as pulling on the brake lever did not really have the desired effect. Up on the hoist revealed that part of the braking system must have fallen off somewhere between Perth and Sydney due to a dodgy weld also the left hand wheel bearing seal was chewed out so LH brake shoes were coated in 250W oil, I suppose the trip was more about going than stopping.

Andrew and Geoff have put modern seals on their Sizaires so I should probably do the same although the felt seal on the RH side is still doing a stirling job but where to get felt?

Out of the state

Posted on 16/12/2012 by Mark

I’m on holiday however our French Correspondent Jean Fitz de Patrick has started an interesting website here it’s well worth a look, just what you need if you are going to French France.

Read the Directions

Posted on 03/12/2012 by Mark

When I get a new (to me) car I tend obsess a little too much and read everything I can about it and ask questions of the gurus to find common ground between the two. Case in point, tapered pins, Ettore must have loved them for not only are they in the clutch linkage or should I say should have been in the clutch linkage but there is also three of them between the steering wheel and the steering box. This is where my general engineering ignorance comes in, for I thought that the taper was there to stop the pin from wiggling about and everything was reliant on the shear strength of the pin…..mmmmm evidently not, apparently according to my new bible Grand Prix Bugatti Technicalities: “First as with most Bugatti taper pins, the drive is not taken by the taper pin itself but by the friction the taper pin creates by expanding the shaft into the coupling bore”.

So with that in mind I had a look at the steering wheel pin, it was the wrong way around (I’ll take credit for that) also Bob King mentioned that the threaded end can shear or the nut unscrew and then the pin will drop out with interesting consequences so I’ve slotted the big end of the taper and wired it on. While I was at it I did all three so hopefully the front wheels will continue to obey the steering wheel.

Last weekend I went on the Bugatti Club Pur Sang Rally also attending were the Ferrari (Carby Section) Club we had a ball in the old cars …not sure how much fun the Ferrari guys had trying to keep to the Victorian speed limits.