Southern Electric Group 4Cor unit 3142 Preservation Report 8

4 COR Preservation Report Spring 2001

In Preservation Report 7 I talked mostly about the progress we are making on the electrical equipment on the power car 11187. However there has also been a fair amount of progress on the body work. As you may remember all the major body panels are now back in place, and there remains just a few odd jobs to do before we start the next major phase which will be recovering the roof.

One subject which we have not spoken of much before is that of the doors. One of the passenger doors (that immediately behind the guards compartment on the blind side) had been removed some time ago in order to carry out the rather substantial body work repairs that I have been describing of late. This door was in a rather bad state, the window was stuck in the down position, the upper panel (a small sheet above the window) was rusted beyond repair and the main lower panel had rust holes at the top corners. Removal of the panels revealed that like all the other structural woodwork, the door frame was still in sound condition. This was all cleaned and repainted in grey primer. The lower panel, proved extremely difficult to remove in fact because the door handle has to be removed firSt The square shaft from this handle is pressed into the lock as a (very) tight fit. After a great deal of levering and tapping eventually the easiest answer was found to be to cut the shaft by slipping a hacksaw blade under the lock. Once the lock was removed it was then possible to knock the stump of the shaft out, this was later welded back together. Once removed the lower panel then had patches welded onto the top corners in much the same fashion as the other body panel repairs. The only complication being that the top edge is folded over to help the water to run off. The top panel which is incidentally also folded over at the top was as I said earlier beyond repair. This was replaced by cutting a replacement from an old piece of scrap body panel. (we have plenty of these). The next item requiring attention was the window mechanism, when the panelling was removed the bottom of the door was found to have a layer about 2 to 3 inches deep of dirt and ruSt This was the window mechanism! In fact it was not as bad as I make it sound, Figure 1 shows the basic structure of the window support. The springs and the scissor type levers were still there although the feet which hold the spring casing to the door base had gone. Also gone were the metal runners which guide the window edges, and the U section metal channel which supports the window glass, the rain water inevitably runs straight into this latter part. New feet were made to hold the spring case (just pieces of sheet metal bent to shape). but wooden battens were used to replace the edge runners. The window support strip was also replaced with wood, hardwood being considered likely to survive longer than steel. A slot was cut in the top of this wooden strip and the window was then glued into this slot using liquid nails, the bracket on the top of the scissors could then be screwed to the wooden block . This sounds perhaps a bit like a bodge but the final result although not like the original seems perfectly secure. The window slides up and down freely and stays in whatever position it is put.

The window gripping mechanism is shown in Figure 2. It may be seen that the glass is pinched between two rubber seals, by a piece of wooden strip on the inside. This strip is levered in or out by the familiar lever just below the window which can be pushed into the "free" or "secure" position. This lever operates a cam to pull the strip up or down. Both rubber strips were sound which was lucky as replacing either would be very difficult. However the metal strips holding them were both quite badly rusted and were replaced, again these are cut from sheet metal. The hinges required freeing also but when the unit was re assembled the window was almost impossible to move when in the secure position.

The only job remaining on the door was then re assembly and varnishing the inner panels. All of these being varnished separately before re fitting. The panelling is neatly arranged so that one piece fits over the edge of the next, easy to remove and leaving no unsightly gaps.

All this complete the door could then be re hung. Both door pillars had been re fixed to the main bearer so would it now fit.... Well the hinges lined up OK and the door swung nicely, but when it came to closing it, the door was too wide, and what seemed like a substantial amount was taken off by sanding disk, plane etc. several hours of work were required before it shut correctly and we were happy with it. We consoled ourselves that it would have been infinitely worse if the door had been too narrow, you can always take it off, but putting it back......

After finishing this door we realise that there is considerably more work involved with restoring a door than with say a window. We will persevere with finishing those before worrying about any more doors. It is fair to say that we are lucky that the motor coach is a saloon, only four passenger doors for the whole coach. We look forward needless to say to restoring the trailer cars with one door per compartment!

This leads me on to windows. the passenger saloon with seven seating bays has 14 similar windows. I said in the last article that the blind side had all seven replaced these are almost all original plate glass, except one is laminated and one other safety glass. the drivers side has now four replaced and enough pieces of glass obtained to finish the remainder. Four will then be safety glass (this is the preferred type), and the remaining three original. One of the old windows, turned out to have only standard domestic thickness glass fitted, we found this out by accident during an earlier attempt to lift the compressor into position. We were using a fork lift truck right up against the side of the carriage and as it raised the forks it snagged under the window frame with the inevitable result that the glass smashed and also the aluminium frame was bent and the inner wooden frame broken. Luckily the soft aluminium frame was straightened easily enough, and the wooden frame was patched like many others which have been found to be cracked or rotten in places. This window has now been replaced, using safety glass. One other change from our earlier method used on the blind side windows is that were are now using silicon rubber instead of ‘arboseal’ to seal the glass in. Arboseal is a thick rubbery / tar like mastic, our supply of this having run out, it has proved difficult to get hold of the small quantities we require. We are confident that silicon rubber will prove adequate however, the makers claim a 20 year life expectancy and I know many other groups use it to repair leaking windows, also the glass supplier recommended it.

One other problem which came to light during the rewiring was a section of roof support which was found to be rotten above the front vestibule (transverse corridor between the two front doors behind the guards compartment). Repairs to this have now been undertaken, a sketch of the layout is shown in Figure 3. We had known for some time that water was leaking in from somewhere near the periscope. The truss on the vestibule side was rotten over about a three foot length on the drivers side, also the top edge of a couple of the tongue and groove boards were rotten at the top. This job is rather like the first one I took on five years ago above one of the lavatories on the trailer third. The difference then was that it could be reached from either side but now the presence of the roof boards restricted us to working from the inside. The new truss was cut down from one of our stock of replacements. two sections of tongue and groove were also cut and the whole lot bolted through with 5 inch (130 mm) coach bolts. When we get on top of the roof to recover it we can screw through into the new truss.

As part of the electrical work in the driver’s cab the equipment case doors are being repainted. Some of the remainder of the cab interior is also being repainted, a pale dull green is used for this, apparently this was always used to reduce glare. Some of the instruments too have been taken away for cleaning and repainting, we like to have a few odd things to do at home to stop us getting bored.

Above the doors are thin strips of metal, fitted basically to cover the main frame up to the same thickness as those parts covered by body panels. These are necessary to avoid a gap under the cant rail. We are slowly replacing these as they are mostly badly rusted. I had stated very proudly last time that we have now replaced all of the major body panels. Well, pride as they say comes before a fall, sure enough while I was looking above the drivers door at one of these thin strips, I noticed that the wood behind the top of the front corner panel was rotten. There was no option therefore but to take the corner panel off. This panel we had decided earlier would not need to be removed as the wood at the bottom edge was in good condition. The car had been repaired while in service following a minor accident to the drivers corner. Rather sadly then we set about removing this corner panel from our lovely yellow painted front end. The screws seemed rather harder to remove than most of the others on the body. Had the repair been done in a different manner to the original? I am inclined to think that it had, plain steel screws seem to have been used down the side instead of galvanised ones. At any rate remove it we did, with quite a lot of sweating and straining. The hard effort being necessary because the corner panel fits under the front ones and one or two screws had been used to hold the corner panel down firSt Having removed the panel it became clear that the panel was in pretty poor shape, in fact it fell in half as we pulled at it! There was more filler than metal. Luckily we have a spare panel. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise to have found out how bad it was.