A Royal Visit

I was blessed with a visit from Peter Bateman yesterday. Peter is kind of J Type royalty in Australia, he's based in Sydney where he is owned by a shiny blue J Type known as "Mr Cholmondley". Peter is somewhat obsessed by J types, which I think is admirable. Peter was visiting Tasmania under the pretext of a birthday present for his wife, but somehow managed to fit in several visits with Tasmanian J type owners. Peter came by for a couple of hours and gave me the benefit of his many years of J Type experience. Unfortunately we really ran out of time, not helped by my two bored youngsters who spent the whole time interrupting and demanding snacks!

She's not pretty is she? I find  t helps to squint a bit and use my imagination.

I particularly liked Peters suggestion of replacing all of the timber sub-structure with steel. Its something I'll be giving a great deal of thought to. The problem with the J type body is that its really just the  top and two sides of a narrow box. The big opening for the rear doors doesn't have a strong stiffening frame around it so the body can literally flop from side to side, like a collapsing box. Its very common for them to go out of square and fatigue cracks in the corners of the roof are endemic. Adding a steel subframe under the floor would enable closing the 4th side of the box in steel, as well as providing a solid foundation for a proper stiffening structure around the rear door opening and at the front. I'm wondering whether I might be able to use it to add  mounts for front seatbelts. I'm a bit paranoid about seatbelts, following a head-on in a Moke several years ago.

Luckily Peter gave me three weeks warning that he was coming. The J type has been pushed into the corner of the shed and buried in household stuff since I brought it home. The rest of the shed was filthy and filled with junk. So I've spent the last three weeks having a massive clean-up and I rolled the van out so that Peter could have a proper look. This meant that I could take some pictures of the whole vehicle, rather than just bits of it. I also took the opportunity to try to get a panoramic photo of the fleet. These are my wheeled projects, there are any number of other unfinished jobs and unstarted projects still waiting. Since the big clean-up. it has been an absolute pleasure to get out into the clean and spacious workshop, but I do have to admit that the Mini has been the one getting the attention.

1951 Morris J Type, 1977 Leyland Moke Californian, 1961 Morris Mini Traveller, 1969 Triumph Trophy 650, 1955 BSA C11G

J Type on Kids TV

Sarah, my 3 year old daughter, has a new favourite television show. I found her standing in front of the TV mesmerised by an animated emu driving an icecream van. A moment later I was beside her trying to get her to move out of the way. The program is called "The Koala Brothers" and one of the characters, an emu called 'Lolly', drives a slightly stylised J Type icecream van.

Lolly's van could do with some suspension work

The fact that its bright pink is what wins it favours with my 3 year old, when I pointed out that its the same as my van she came up with a number of suggestions about what colour schemes I should be using.

The rest of the cartoon isn't too bad either, there are several classic vehicles that make an appearance including a Piaggio Ape, a Vespa and a vintage caravan.

How the Engine Shroud Shouldn't Look,

 Charlie was after some pictures of a J van engine shroud, so I took some of mine to show what they aren't meant to look like. They aren't meant to have a vacuum brake booster rivetted to the rear face, or an automatic gear shifter welded to the side of them.

They shouldn't have a choke knob on the rearward face either, its meant to be standing up vertically in that hole in the far rear corner (and its called a bi-starter control in Solex lingo). Those aluminium pop-rivets aren't meant to be there either, neither is that cut and bend just in front of the choke knob, or that big gap next to the drivers's seat. In fact the whole rear section should be about 6 inches forward of here.

They aren't meant to be patched together and extended with scraps of aluminium sheet either, but thats how to do it if you want to fit a six cylinder where there's really only room for a four cylinder.

 It looks bad, but I think its mostly complete, so it shouldn't be too hard to piece it back together and weld up all the superfluous rivet holes.

Another Missing Part Located

Original wasn't a bad fit, despite being of unusal Pedigree.

When I first bought the van I quickly realised that the fuel cap that was fitted was unlikely to be the genuine part. The words "Pal Chicken in Marrowbone" printed on the side was the give away.

I wasn't really sure what the cap is meant to look like. On Charlie's Victoria J. Van Blog he shows a really nicely shaped polished brass fuel cap, but his J is a bit older than mine and has a number of other differences. Anyway I measured the thread on the filler pipe at 2" and 16TPI, which is actually a reasonably common fuel cap thread.

Not long after a cap was listed on Ebay in the UK, described as being for an unknown Morris Commercial, and measuring 2" with a 16TPI thread. I really only stumbled on it because the seller only listed it for sale to the UK not on ebay Australia. Luckily he didn't take much persuasion to agree to post it to Australia. I took a gamble and 'won' the auction. A week or so later it turned up.

Chrome is a bit pitted and needs re-doing

You can see the brass showing through inside

Anyway I hadn't made a mistake measuring the thread and it fitted quite well, although the finger grips bump against the panel that covers it on the inside when I try to screw it on. It will only need a small adjustment to make it fit. Mike from the MCJTV yahoo group tells me he's seen similar caps on other J types, so I reckon thats one more missing part found!  I'd be interested to know whether it really is a J Type cap though, or off another model, does anyone know?

Rough condition matches the rest of the vehicle.

Another Old Photo

Morris J Type waits at the corner of Macquarie and Elizabeth Streets, Hobart.

I've been flicking through photos in the State Library of Tasmania archive and spotted this nice old picture of a busy intersection in Hobart. It includes a nice view of a  J type van on the job.

There's no date on the picture but from the vehicles and the fashions it must be mid-'50s. Note that all of the women are dressed alike in calf length skirts, and the men all wear jackets and long pants. It must have been summer time too. Some of the younger men are hatless, how rakish! Next to the van is a Trolley bus, a bus powered from overhead wires like a tram. Its the later style that ran from 1950 until 1958.

Lyke-nu Dry Cleaners J type

Zooming in you can see that it is a Lyke-nu dry cleaning van. I seem to remember that name from my childhood (in the 1970s) but they are long gone now. The van seems to be a uniformly light colour with a painted, rather than chrome, bumper. I can't read the badge, but suspect that its a J, not a JB.

No Brakes - literally.

Swiss cheese wheel

When I collected the J van from its previous owner he pointed out that the two extra wheels supplied had extra holes drilled. The wheels didn't seem to match the set that were on the car, but he mentioned that he'd had to "gas axe" some extra studs off to get the unmodified wheels on. I didn't think about it too much at the time, but then I was underneath the van not finding any parts for the handbrake and I noticed that the slave cylinder was missing from the drivers side wheel. I remembered what the PO had said and decided I'd better have a look.

RHS brake drum

What the ...?

Sure enough, on the passenger side there were the five original studs, plus another five that had been drilled and welded into the drum. On the driver's side it was even worse. The original studs had also been welded in but were now (mostly) gone -  probably bashed out - and there were five big bolts welded in to add extra studs. Whoever had done it has stuffed it up because they were all asymetrical and probably eccentric, and not the same on both sides. It would have made balancing the wheel a bit challenging.

A further problem is that the entire brake mechanism is missing from the drivers side. The backplate is damaged and everything, brake shoes, slave cylinder, springs clips, etc are gone. This thing would have been interesting to try to stop, with a six cylinder engine and no rear brakes.

I have no idea why anyone would need 10 wheel studs. Its possible that a shortage of correct wheel nuts was the problem, there were three different sizes on it. The split pin on the hub nut had been replaced with a big nail.

I might be able to salvage the brake drum from the passeneger side but I don't like that it has been drilled and welded. For the driver's side I'll definitely need to try to track down replacement parts, but I'm hoping to have some exciting news on that subject soon.

Another Excuse for not Getting Anything Done

I've been making a small amount of progress in getting the engine cleaned up ready for measuring and machining. I've now got a parts washer and a bead blaster, which are doing a great job in converting crusty old engine parts into shiny ready to use parts.  I've also taken three months long service leave from work. Despite that things are going to grind to a standstill for a while now. Baby Adele arrived late last week and between her and big sister Sarah there isn't going to be much spare time.

I hope to keep things ticking over, but don't expect a lot of activity!