[Douglas Kephart]

Could I get a sketch or digital photo of this oil line; my Brum is missing this as well. Just have the valve. PM for my email.

Thanks,

Doug Kephart

[Douglas Kephart]

Brian,

Not necessarily unrideable if only one gear tooth were missing. When I acquired my Brum and gave it a test ride, all appeared normal in the gearbox department. It shifted and ran in all three-gears without any indication of trouble or noise. Yet on disassembly it was missing a tooth. Can not remember which position it was in after all these years, but just dug out the broken gear from the box of left over bits and note it is (or was ) 22t and no dogs, so one of the lay shaft gears I presume. The missing tooth was not in the gear case on disassembly!

Also know of friend who ran a Model A Ford 3-speed clash box some distance without a tooth or two (though larger diameter gears.) He also drove from Long Island, NY to Philadelphia without the bottom in a trans either, just a rectangular gallon tin oil can cut to serve as an impromptu sump and wire up in place! The same fellow, as well as my father, broke teeth off of the ring gear pinion on the rear axles of their Models As (cheap transport in the fifties.) That WAS definitely noticeable, but by careful modulation of the throttle they were able to nurse the cars home from work so they could be repaired. Father’s had two teeth missing by the time he got home! Amazing what you can get away with.

But I digress. The missing tooth did not cause the kick start to jam in my particular case the two dozen times I had occasion to use it before ripping it assunder for restoration. Though perhaps the very next kick it would have.

-Doug

[Douglas Kephart]

There ought to be sufficient space on a standard CD to have all the editions of the “Book of the Scott” included. Or such editions as fortune allow to be gathered for scanning. That is unless you figure on capturing the fibrous nature of the paper it is printed on! Really though at 0.5Mb per page (and you can probably do much better and still have good images), you can store 1400 pages on a disk. If you were scanning something that was predominantly photos, you might want to allow 1-2Mb per page. And I mean good photos, don’t waste that much file space on scanning half-tone images and line art, it is overkill.

But stop talking about that “Book of the Scott”, I want to hear more about “Made to the Limit Gage”!

-Douglas Kephart

[Douglas Kephart]

Great plans! I have been passively looking for a copy of “Made to the Limit Gage” for years to no avail. So plans to put that and others on CD are most welcome news. I hope it comes to fruition in the not too distant future. I will certainly be queuing up for a copy. They will take up far less space than the hardcopy set of Technicalities I lugged home in my suitcase! At the time it seemed the world market was saturated and the few remaining post-run copies had even fewer takers. Who would have thought they would become collectables!

-Douglas Kephart

[Douglas Kephart]

For my two cents worth I would agree with the essence of what Rodger Moss is saying. Searchable text ought to be a requirement.

You need to be careful about taking a cheap pill on these types of projects, particularly if new to computers and software. There seem to be a million pitfalls for the novice. For example, I have a scanner and the software with it will do Object Character Recognition (commonly abbreviated OCR). But it will only do that at the time of the scan. So if I went and only just had the scans done to save time (money) then later I wanted to add searchable text via OCR I would be up the creek without a paddle. It looks like Adobe Acrobat 6.0 has a tool to look at previously scanned *.jpg files and does the OCR (then you can save result as the Adobe Acrobat Reader file, the now universal *.pdf file type), but beware, only if the file is at certain resolutions. Also I can not seem to get it to work anyway! Beware of basing the decision to spend a significant amount of money on someone saying “Oh, X software will do that” (including what I just said) no matter who the authority. Make sure someone on the project actually sees X software do it; the consequences of “Oh, I thought it would do it” are expensive and avoidable. We have a term in the trade for such software capabilities: vaporware.

Also asking the Rudge and Morgan club about their projects is a great idea. Even if we have a dozen computer software experts in-house, one can always benefit from the hindsight of someone else’s experiences that have done the same type project and reaped the rewards, or lived with the consequences. Certainly waiting a month or two while tracking down the appropriate contact in the other clubs is not a hardship. Even if you do not use the same vendor for scanning-file preparation, they might have some suggestions of things they would have done differently (such as “Never Again!”)

I think all are convinced that the scans need to be from the original source, issues of the Yowl. The B&W pictures in the Yowl tend to be low contrast compared to some of the other one make club’s magazines. The Technicalities were photocopied at a high contrast, and all the low contrast grey tones got grouped together and converted to black. Not what you want to scan if the originals are available.

And finally (I promise) if the CD just has the Technicalities on it, then it should be a self supporting project. If only for the admittedly selfish reason that I have my copy; hey, at least I am honest! But if it had all the back issues of Yowl, then that would save me, and I think other members, the trouble and perhaps impossible task, of collecting a complete back library. And a CD takes up much less space. If it will not fit on a CD or two, then make it a data DVD. Then perhaps a Club subsidized project (and all that added responsibility of spending member’s funds); but not by raising dues, unless you plan to give every member a free copy. If everybody pays, it should be an item that a majority of members will get some use out of. Despite the volume of activity on this forum (commendable) I think it is due to a core group of very active internet savvy members that as yet still represent a minority of the club as a whole (just look at the memberlist posts data.) Commercial firms might charge more for burning the DVDs, but it seems here many new computers comes with a free DVD burner upgrade. My last one did and I did not even want it at the time, glad I have it now though. So if you have an obliging member in the UK and provide them with a pack of burnable DVD disks, you could burn on demand (same goes for CD.) Depends on how fancy you want to get, and the pros and cons of outsourcing. Again, talking to the other clubs can give some perspective on that.

And so as he steps down from his soapbox to the thunderous applause… Perhaps ‘cuase I am done. Just please do not throw e-tomatoes!

Douglas Kephart

[Douglas Kephart]

Quote:

I presume this may have been at the heat- affected zone following my welding efforts.

John,

No, it just broke at the weakest point. Below the studs were firmly gripped by the head. Avove it was reinforced by the nut. So the weakest point was between, and it broke through the core of the thread. Unlikely the orginal studs had any special heat treatment, or enough carbon or alloying elements to effect any. So heating them up and cooling them probably had little effect on strength.
I also noted quite a lot of white powder packed in between the studs and head on my Brum, though no clear evidence of leaking. Some of those were gripped fast.

So you had access to a welder but did not try resistance heating the stud to break the grip (heating the top/nut is not enough), pity. Brutal as it sound I think you would have found it simpler and safer than hacksaw blades and drilling out. Perhaps next time you go to remove the cylinder head! 😀

Douglas Kephart

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