Kind heart and coronet
Sometimes problems can be solved neatly and easily, and sometimes the solution looks like a sea monster, as George Sampford explains…
In the mid-1960s a sad personal tragedy hit my young family, necessitating the urgent need for my wife Carol and our baby daughter, Dawn, to have some comprehensive means of personal transport, rather than just me on a small capacity solo motorcycle. A sidecar outfit or a threewheeler was the answer as I didn’t have a driving licence for a car, only the motorcycle version. Scouring the motorcycle magazines and papers, plus the Exchange & Mart and the local press, I fortunately found a three-wheeler for sale locally. It was a Coronet, costing £60. The chassis was fitted with a front axle and drum brakes from a Morris 8 car, and that was its saving grace as it stopped superbly. Power (for want of a better word) came from a 328cc Excelsior Talisman twin two-stroke sited in the cavernous rear boot. Cooling (ditto above) came from a crankshaft-mounted small – and asthmatic – fan. Among its gears was a reverse, unusual for a three-wheeler at the time.
The first problem…
It did what we wanted of it, thankfully, but a number of problems came to light over time, which were mostly overcome one by one; firstly, the chain-drive adjusters to the single rear-wheel which kept breaking. I had a local engineering company knock me up two more substantial adjusters by increasing the thickness of the ‘washers’ that fitted over both sides of the single rear wheel’s axle. Welded to them were the threaded studs of some 5/16inch, replacing the 3/16inch original. They never snapped again and the chain retained its correct tension throughout. On one gloriously sunny summer’s day we decided to visit Littlehampton on the south coast, about 80 miles from our home in Catford, South London. The convertible roof was taken down and neatly folded, and the side screens were put into the boot. Dawn was belted in between Carol and me, where she could stand or sit, as it had a wide and comfortable bench seat that simply sat on the car’s floor.
The second problem
Off we went, baubling along quite happily when suddenly the engine stopped after about 19 miles. I recognised this interruption to progress as a seizure. After allowing it to cool, it readily restarted and off we went again, only to have yet another seizure a further 19 miles along the road. Common sense told us to turn back, which we ignored, of course, however, we also considered that the ‘fault’ could be down to the blistering heat of that particular day. Off we went again, then! Along the A29 we had to stop as a farmer was moving his sheep across the very narrow ‘A’ road, so the engine was switched off while we waited patiently. There were thousands of sheep, and it took a good ten minutes before we could move again. A long line of cars and lorries had built up behind us, and similarly so in the oncoming direction. I fired up the engine and depressed the clutch, whereupon the nipple immediately pulled off the clutch cable! I pushed the Coronet into the farmyard as I was completely blocking the road. “That’s the trouble with them there sports cars, you have to really look after them…” remarked the farmer. Clearly he had mistakenly confused the ‘roof down’ as something ‘sporty.’ Being an experienced motorcyclist, I had a solderless nipple among my tool kit which was duly screwed into service, and off we went again. The journey to the seaside took us a total of four and a half hours!
Solving the problem
The journey back was also punctuated by a few more seizures despite being much cooler, and we arrived home in the dark. Clearly, the cooling system needed sorting… Thinking cap firmly fixed, I decided a fan from an air-cooled VW beetle would solve the problem, wouldn’t it? This I bought new. My friendly local engineer made a fan connector of my design which bolted directly onto the crankshaft, replacing the tiny original fan. The VW fan was a massive nine inches in diameter. How then was I to encapsulate the fan’s draught and then onto the engine? A metal biscuit tin of 10-inch diameter seemed a possibility. With appropriate brackets, the lid was pierced for the crankshaft to poke through, and was fitted to the crankcase, secured to the tin’s deep base with self-tappers. That seemed okay then. The next problem was getting the draught from the biscuit tin to the new cowling I’d fashioned from a thin alloy sheet. Young Dawn was consuming Heinz Baby Food in small tins, so both top and bottom lids were removed and then Araldited or soldered to both the cowling and outside edge of the biscuit tin, with appropriately aligned holes. The latter looked like a radial aircraft engine as there were now six tin tubes poking from its circumference! To connect the two units, I hit on the idea of sacrificing twoinch motorcycle inner tubes, clamped in place with Jubilee clips. This developed and evolved over several weekends while the Coronet was being used for commuting, shopping etc, so it had to be returned to originality for daily use until every problem was solved.
Problem not solved
Then came the great day when it was all cobbled together for final testing. With the boot lid open I knelt in the road while Carol fired up the engine… I threw back my head and laughed my socks off! The inner tubes, now filled with air, swayed and sashayed around in the boot like some undersea monster, but the draught was terrific, even blowing my long, luxuriant hair about. It’s also possible/probable that the fan’s inertia added to the engine’s performance as the revs didn’t die immediately when the throttle was closed as expected with a normal twostroke engine. Somewhat impressed, we journeyed into the interland of Kentish countryside for yet another adventure and to test my engineering prowess. Would you believe it – it still seized every 19 bleedin’ miles!
Problem solved!
A short while later I sold the Coronet for a better price than I paid for it, having passed my driving test in a very rusty Hillman Minx. P.S. I never did experience any more seizures, because I deliberately never travelled any further than 18 miles. Problem solved!