Mostly marvellous
It’s the end of CFB’S long restoration road
Everything was going so well. Riley RMA ‘CFB’ was in the workshop part built, all the trim was ready, the carpets were being made at Hamilton to the correct pattern (they still have them), and the Autosparks wiring loom was in the process of being installed.
The engine, freshly machined was awaiting rings, ordered specially for the Hepolite pistons and then, a glitch. The white metal big ends, which we had previously seen as being good enough to ‘go again’, were basically... not.
A visible crack on one of them invited close inspection and suddenly the whole lot were condemned. Under an eyeglass and bright light the cracks were obvious. The edges of the white metal bearings were untidy too, showing that they had been re-metalled previously – to a ‘that’ll do’ standard. Panic? Yes. With three weeks to go to the show Theo Gillam and I were expecting to be torqueing down the head. We needed the job doing, and doing quickly and well. We owed it to Ron Jones, the previous owner (of 46 years) who was coming to the NEC to watch the whole thing!
White metalling, like automatic gearbox rebuilds, is basically witchcraft. To do it properly you need to own a crucible and a wand. However there are still places where it is done and one of those places is Formhalls Vintage and Racing. We called with our short-notice demands, and they said yes. These guys do white metalling for historic racing, so they know how to meet a deadline. Theo and I grabbed our big ends.
Formhalls’ workshop is amazing. Still a family firm, it boasts line borers, rod borers, Colchester lathes, Bridgeport milling machines and some state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment. Most importantly from our point of view it has a custom-built casting shop.
Here we met workshop foreman, Charles Tanner, who has been busy at Formhalls since he was 15. Today, along with managing the majestic machinery and its workflow, he also looks after white metaling having been taught the secrets in his teens. In 2014 he won Young Craftsman of the Year – Theo and I were in awe. If classic cars have a future, we were meeting him.
Forging ahead
The process the Formhalls team set in motion was slick, quick and precise – but looked effortless. By the time the bearings were ready it was obvious that this part science, part art process was being completed by engineering Jedhi. The materials used were top-notch too – brand new ingots of HOYT 11R and 11Z3 White metal and the companies own tinning formula developed in the 1990s by founder Terry Formhalls. It means Formhalls can guarantee bearing performance for over 20 years.
Theo, with me holding spanners, then spent a week on the engine. The most buttock-clenching moment came as Theo drilled another hole in the crank bearing faces to aid oil delivery. It’s a traditional upgrade but I still couldn’t watch. Then we found that, despite pristine camshafts, the cam followers weren’t quite as good as we would want, and then the pushrods came in for close inspection… and suddenly I was spending serious money with the excellent Riley RM Spares Centre. You see, the trouble is, when you start doing something properly, only the best will do. This was going to be a very, very good engine – as new.
Then Theo found out that the rods were not balanced properly.