Tatra T2-603
Back on the road with fresh half-shafts and oil coolers
My earlier Staff Car Saga (Practical Classics, January 2020) told the tale of my long day waiting to be recovered after our highly unexpected wheel loss, and March’s issue carried the explanation, but what about the fix? Canvassing assistance from our club’s international community failed to flush out a matching and assembled half-shaft and hub flange combo, but friend and fellow T603 owner, Fari Boozari in Filton, offered just a shaft. As our issue had been the result of unmatched hub and shaft tapers, this and our hub would have to be machined and lapped to fit, but I gratefully accepted this best and, at the time, only route to a solution.
Unfortunately for all concerned, Fari consigned it using a somewhat unreliable parcel company and, not entirely surprisingly, it went off the radar and their tracking system after crazy unfounded messages about the delivery address not being accessible.
Days passed and attempts to locate the shaft got nowhere, so I posted another call on our club’s Facebook page that swiftly prompted an offer from Slovakia from someone who had a barn-find gearbox complete with axles and brakes. We agreed that I might as well have it all, and it was duly dispatched on a pallet… just as Fari’s shaft turned up back at the parcel shop where he’d consigned it three weeks previously. When he offered to take a day off work to drive from Bristol to Daventry with it, I felt it still had to be ‘yes please’ in case the Slovakian consignment failed to appear, but appear it did.
I’d been sent a picture of the 44-tonne artic in which the gearbox and axles would arrive, and arranged with TWE Transport, in Banbury, for transhipment onto my trailer for twenty-five quid, but what actually turned up was a 3.5-tonne van, albeit in the same livery, that could have delivered directly to Tim Bishop’s yard. Oh well, hey ho.
Belt and braces
The better of the two Slovakian shafts soon saw the car back on four wheels, and driveable, but I wasn’t happy trusting the other side and determined to replace that, too. The second Slovakian swing-axle assembly was a lot rougher, but OK once we’d pressed out the corroded wheel studs and replaced them with my originals. And just as well I hadn’t trusted the second shaft
because its taper had clearly been ‘working’ and was well on its way to another failure. A result, then, at a mere €700 for the Slovakian transmission, including shipping, fifty quid to compensate Fari to some extent for his time and fuel, and then
Tim’s invoice, and we were motoring.
Incontinence cured
But there was still the matter of a serious and embarrassing oil leak that had been noted, on our club rally, not least by our hotel, the weekend before our mishap. Well, that’s fixed, too, with a fine pair of bespoke new aluminium oil coolers to replace the always troublesome originals. At around a thousand pounds the pair, I can’t present them for a slot in Bangernomics, or as part of a project role model for practical hobby motoring, but with the old Tatra now insured with agreed value of over five times what I bought it for two decades ago, responsible maintenance has to be proportional to its status. It had already been restored when we bought it, albeit with issues, and we’ve had major steel surgery and paintwork done at considerable expense a couple of years ago. Luckily, though, the car’s value has kept pace with our expenditure while covering 66,000km in seven countries, and that’s while we’ve also been running two daily moderns and another two internationally campaigned Tatras.
Now, there will be those who, having followed some of this, might be saying ‘Well, that’s all very well, but the fella’ doesn’t do most of the tough work himself, like we do’, and I’ll concede willingly. The thing is, though, my take on my hobby is to treat it as ‘transport management’, which has been my professional path for much of my life. If you ran any Vauxhall or Bedford in the late Eighties, I was the contractor operations manager at Dunstable and Toddington whose trucks delivered your parts, wherever you were in the country. They all had to be available and roadworthy, which remains my objective with our old cars.
The T603 in Filton that I mentioned must be the only Diy-maintained example in Britain that hasn’t at some point been VOR for years, and most still are. I’m always part of every project and every decision, and know my cars intimately. It would have been a wasted opportunity not to, so I think I’ll take some satisfaction for keeping my wheels turning.
‘I take enormous satisfaction in keeping my wheels turning’