David Griffiths will be with us at the end of February for his last visit before going back to Australia. He has offered to help us to get the clutch assembly fully rebuilt so that the engine/gearbox will be ready to go back in as one unit. John and Davie have been doing some preparatory work to ensure that everything goes smoothly for the clutch rebuild.
Davie has been up at his farm raking around in the parts bins and has found a number of HD clutch parts which might come in handy. A few years ago Davie bought a number of ex-BRS HD57 eight wheelers from a scrapyard where they had stood for some 40 years. They were mostly beyond any kind of viable restoration, but have yielded some very useful parts with very little wear in them. The HD range replaced the CX range in 1950, but clutch parts appear to have remained substantially unchanged.
 

Flashback to last July when the gearbox was first separated from the engine
and the clutch was exposed for the first time in many years.

When removed it was found that the original clutch pressure plate and
flywheel facing were badly affected by heat stress cracks and could not
be resurfaced.

So new plates were sourced by Davie from his considerable stock of HD57
parts. The CX and HD pressure plate assemblies are found to be identical,
so Davie and John dismantle both to make one good one out of the two,
discarding some of the heavily corroded parts from the HD. The eight
clutch springs are seen standing in their threaded sockets. Within each
spring is another smaller one.

Davie displays the new assembly with its pristine pressure plate (left) from an
HD57 truck mated to the original CX19 backing plate (right). The four
depressions visible on the pressure plate are the pivot studs for the release
fingers, which are more clearly seen on the other side.