Lagonda Rapiers

12 minute(s) of a 484 minute read

Nothing like you enjoy in the US. We live in Melbourne which is in the South East corner of Australia. Being in the Southern Hemisphere this puts us nearer to the South Pole if you disregard Tasmania which is an Island south of us.

Our location (Melbourne) in the world is Latitude:S 37° 48.8551'. Longitude:E 144° 57.7901'.

By comparison New York is Latitude: 40°42′51″ N Longitude: 74°00′21″ Latitude and longitude of Florida is 24° 30' N to 31° N and 79° 48' W to 87° 38' W.

Which in simple terms places us closer to the Equator than New York but not as close as Florida.

This morning the temperature outside was 7degrees Centigrade and to me that feels cold but having said that we virtually never have a heavy frost in the mornings and only very rarely have snow in the nearby hills.  I cannot remember when I last wore an over-coat.  My study has no heating and I am sitting here in just a shirt and pullover and a pair of cord (velvet) trousers. It is a little chilly but not so that I need to wear anything extra. Looking out the window there is a clear blue sky. I hope that this helps.

6-5-2017

Thinking about it, my intoduction to Studebakers was much earlier; I must have been four or five, I Started Primary School at age  four and a half in 1940, during the earliest years of WW2. Our neighbourhood Grocery-shop proprietor drove a 1928 Stude tourer that he was extremely proud of. It was washed and polished every Sunday morning in the rear right of way (back-lane) behind his shop. No Super markets then. Shop-keepers lived in residences behind or above their small shops. Those were the days when Biscuits came in large square tins and were weighed out and placed in brown paper bags at the time of purchase. Broken biscuits were removed and very good little boys were given one or two when their mother was purchasing groceries. Nothing was pre-packed but weighed out at the time of purchase.

That must make me very ancient!

6-18-2017

Looking back through all this stuff, I have not driven he Lagonda since the start of December last year. If it stays in the garage much longer I will not have to worry about replacing anything, it will have taken root. Changing the subject ever so slightly I actually pulled out the lawn mower and cut the grass of our minuscule back lawn. This is now much less time consuming since I found this magic product. My normally recalctrient mower fired up first pull of the starting cord. Unbelievable! Just a short, three of four second squirt into the air intake and it was "All systems go, up, up and away! "

6-19-2017

After some anxious waiting the Royal Mail man has done his stuff and has earned his UK £3.30. Despite the advertised 5 to 7 days delivery time, he has excelled himself taking just 17 days to frantically pedal his bicycle all the way from the Welsh Borders, UK to East Doncaster, Australia.

Perhaps I can now finally finish putting KG 5363 back together again.

6-20-2017

Some progress on the Rapier today, our son Steve called in and was able to assist me in pressing the new seal into its housing. The water-pump is now back together and fitted. Tomorrow I have the delightful job of re-fitting the radiator and the bonnet (hood).  More lying on the cold garage floor. One thing for sure is that I will not be going to sleep.

6-21-2017

I too threw my "creeper" away years ago. I use pieces of carpet and rotate them, simply throwing them in the bin if they get too grotty. The good news is that with the new seal in the water-pump and almost everything back how it should be, the Rapier is running and I have only to pin down one or two small oil leaks before I take it out for a road test but it is sounding great (at last). I will have to re-torque the cylinder head nuts once it has done a few miles. It is incredible how much difference the new exhaust headers seem to make. The old ones were almost 40 years old and had quite a number of repairs and patches over that time. Also I changed the design very slightly to make them easier to fit and take off. I am still using the same muffler and tail pipe. The muffler is in good rust free condition, so I really have no need to change it.  I do not like excessively noisy exhausts.

7-15-2017

For the Tour de France watchers here are some photographs from our 2014 visit to the Pyrenees.

7-30-2017

What a good little car! 

After priming the carbs it started almost instantaneously and once warmed up idled at its usual 800rpm at 40-60 psi oil pressure. I am just being lazy, I need to take it for a good run to get up to it normal operating temperature so I can re-torque the cylinder head nuts. I really do not know why I allow myself to get side tracked by silly little cars, rubbish like the Triumph.

Rubbish that is, in comparison with the Rapier!

8-19-2017

While I have been somewhat diverted by my latest "adventure", an early 1920s Studebaker Light Six, I did drive the Rapier out through the nearby hill country to spectate at the VSCC Rob-Roy Hillclimb. It is going as well as ever but I did discover that it was loosing water from a leak in the radiator "top-tank". I have to attend to this before we go on the VSCC's Western District - Wimmera Wander in mid-September.

8-29-2017

Back in April I was concerned about the inlet manifold and my attempts to add on a balance tube, now some months later I am still not happy and have decided to abandon the balance tube completely. This has left me with a 15mm hole in the underside of each of the two inlet manifolds. I have found it impossible to buy a short length of 15mm Aluminium rod but I could obtain a short offset of aluminium bar. After two or three hours with a cut-off blade in my angle grinder and another hour or so on the entry wheel I have managed to create two plugs that are a sung fit into the offending holes. I have bought a pack of aluminium "brazing" rods although a friend has told me that he had not enjoyed a great deal of success with them. It is  terrible but I seem to have lost confidence in my own ability to do jobs that I would not have given a second thought to five years ago. The other option is to take them to my son Steve and ask him to weld then with his mig welder. I worry that if I have a failure and have to face another major engine rebuild, I simply could not do it, either physically or cost wise.  First I will experiment with the brazing rods on some scrap aluminium. The other option would be to just park the Rapier and not drive it again, something I could not do. I hate to admit it but growing old is no fun!  One other option is to get some steel plate lazer cut to form the flanges and construct a new inlet manifold using steel tube. First thing is to experiment with the "brazing rod". Meanwhile the Rapier is standing there with no carburettors fitted looking like four little baby birds in a nest all with their hungry mouths open wide.

9-22-2017

We have just returned last night from an extremely pleasant, if you disregard the howling gales and torrential rain, four day tour in the Rapier.

 Naturally we had the hood (top) securely stowed away in its envelope at the rear of the luggage space behind the seats. For most of the trip we were driving on narrow (single lane) country roads. Over the four days we covered just over 1,600 miles. We did experience a couple of minor problems, probably mainly due to the condition of much of the road surface.

We had a clevis pin fall out of one of the linkages in the remote control gear change mechanism leaving the car stuck in third gear. The generator stopped charging due to a problem in the Voltage regulator and the silencer and tail pipe came adrift from the engine pipe.. All these were attended to on the roadside using the tools and sundry spare nuts & bolts etc, carried in my "hand-bag. The gearchange  simply required as a tempory fix a 1/4inch bolt about an inch long and nut secured with a drop of Locktite. The Generator charging problem was again a tempory fix, this simply involved shifting one wire from one terminal to another in effect by-passing the voltage regulator while retaining the "cut-out" working normally.

With the exhaust this again required the use of two spanners and the "Knock-on" wheel nut hammer and probably ten to fifteen minutes of my time to replace the "slip joint" between the muffler and the engine pipe and tighten up the clamp.

The first photograph shows the terminal block under the Voltage Regulator/Cut-out. As a tempory measure to restore the charging to the battery the (green) wire is moved from F terminal to join with the (blue) wire at the D terminal. 

The second and third photographs show the Rapiers own "Handbag" bought a great many years ago from a local charity shop, this is a high class ladies leather hand bag, It has a number of divisions and pockets with "zip" closures. Being soft leather it does not rattle and fits snugly into a space behind the drivers seat.

These "bags" can usually be found in your local "Charity shop" for a donation of around five dollars.

The next three photographs are of the space in the rear of the car. This has  a hinged lid. The long grey cloth envelope contains the folded hood (top) useful things such as a screw jack and its handle, hand (tyre) pump, red reflector folding saftey triangle (required by law in most European countries and some Australian states), two yellow "saftey vests"(ditto) a pair of navy blue overalls and of course the copper K-O wheel nut hammer. The hood (top) bows fit snugly into a clip holding them against the outside of the tool compartment lid.

Very observant people will have also noted the Red handled Straw broom (whisk brush), Red fire extringuisher, and the blue and white "Golf umbrella"  bought in the England in 1984. The pleated padded occasional seat is actually the lid of the battery box. Also just in the picture of the "light-weight" lid of the tool compartment is a 12 volt lead light.

All these have travelled with us in the car on all our journeys. I work on the assumption if you have these things the chances of needing to use them is greatly reduced. Most have been in the car ever since it was first "put back onto the road" in 1978/9. While many ignorant people "rubbish" Lucas products, even if they do  fail on the very rare occasion. They very seldom fail to "get you home" if you have bothered to learn just a few of the simple facts surrounding the Lucas systems. All the British cars, trucks and tractors equipped with Lucas electrical equipment share a common colour identification system for their "wiring". Unfortunately many home mechanic & "restorers" fail to recognise or do not go the trouble to learn even some of this, very much to their own inconvenience. After working on English cars for most of my life I have come to the realisation that most Lucas products are so b***dy good that people simply do not bother to give them the maintenance that every item, in or on your car, requires from time to time.  

Just remember, that it should be only AFTER

 the fire, that the coating on all your cars electrical wires are "black"!