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On one of his
fleeting visits to the UK, Andy Stewart flew north for a
meeting of the Group at Lathalmond on the morning of 6th
April. In the afternoon he joined us to do some work on the
bus. As it happens Andy served his time with a motor dealer
in the south of England, which stood him in good stead for
keeping his own CX19 running on those epic journeys from
Australia to the UK and back in the early 1970s.
Unfortunately there was nothing for Andy to get his teeth
into that afternoon as John and Davie were waiting for parts
coming and there wasn't a lot happening. But of course there
are always plenty of seat frames to attend to! It's not the
most fulfilling job sanding down seat frames, but Andy got
right into it and another half dozen frames are now in the
store awaiting primer. On my way home I dropped him off at
Edinburgh Airport for his connecting flight back to
Adelaide.
On the following Sunday we got started on the brake overhaul
and the drums were removed from the front axle. The linings
were found to be in excellent condition, but we discovered
that the wear plate on one of the nearside brake shoes had
detached itself and was loose inside the drum. This must
have severely compromised the effectiveness of the front
brakes. Attention to this and a couple of bearings was all
that was needed to complete the front brake overhaul.
Thankfully these bearings are still available off the shelf.
Another little job attended to was the manufacture of two
rubber grommets for the bracket which supports the brake
rods. Judging by amount of wear on this bracket, the
original grommets had long deposited themselves somewhere
between Wynyard and Sydney's Northern Beaches several
decades ago and there had been nothing preventing metal to
metal contact ever since. We couldn't locate suitable
grommets in the Lathalmond stores or elsewhere, so we made
our own from two suitable diameters of rubber hose. The
smaller diameter hose was inserted through two larger
diameter pieces with the (repaired) bracket in between.
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