p6rob

Thanks David, I didn't realise you were so close to the stores. I visit there fairly regularly and have spent many hours trawling through boxes of random bits in the hope of finding a few missing parts. No. It's a 5.0 straight six petrol. This banjo is for the automatic chassis lubrication though, so not engine related. Rob

Maybe that's why I'm struggling to locate one. Using the wrong name... parallel brass hydraulic union perhaps?

I had hoped to get there yesterday but didn't make it in the end. Was the Siddeley KMP 700 or CXT 150, by any chance? Rob

Thanks, I'll follow up the leads. I had a price to get one made but it was going to be a few hundred quid. The annoying thing is, when dad bought the car it was on it. but in the past 23 years it's gone missing and with him no longer being around to ask, it's been like looking for a needle in a haystack. I've found most of the missing bits and know from previous experience that as soon as I spent a few hundred replacing it, it'll turn up within a week. This has already happened a few times. Rob

Hi, Some of you may know I've been rebuilding a 1937 Armstrong Siddeley Siddeley Special car. It's back on the road now but I've not been able to find an inline double banjo union for the central chassis lubrication system. I think the threads are BSP P. I know it's not a boat but a few of you have good engineering contacts. Has anyone any idea where I might find one of these? I've been trawling autojumbles for the last four years with no success. Rob .

@cheshire~rose Can you bring a bottle for me please. Rob

I've just booked the hotel, so, unless something bad happens like last year, I'll be there. Rob

As well as Apollo Duck, one of the best places to start looking at lots of boats is Whilton Marina. Their website has lots of boats to browse, so you've got an idea before you get there, once there you can get the keys to three boats at a time and they'll leave you to look around. That's a good way to get an idea of what's on offer and more importantly what aspects of a boat appeal, eg stern type, layout, round or square windows. Whether you buy from there or not is up to you.

OAT antifreeze is not compatible with yellow metals, so, if there's any brass or copper in the system, you should really stick to Glycol. That being said, before I knew it was bad, I used OAT and hadn't noticed any bad effects after three years, I did however change to glycol. Euro Car Parts, GSF and any motor factors that sell to trade will stock antifreeze in 20 or 25 litre drums. As for removing the old stuff, catch as much as possible, undo the bottom hose and drain into your bilge, then mop it up is one option. You should disable your bilge pump first though. Buy a vacuum pump like a Pela 6000 and hope you can get the probe deep enough. Depending on the age of your boat, the bleed valve might be an imperial size, scrape the surrounding paint off and try heat and a correct sized spanner, probably 5/8af, before resorting to stilsons.

Thanks Jan, I'm in Thailand until the 13th and am hoping to go to the Loughborough banter. Do you want the money paypaled over before then? I think I outbid @BEngo for item 11, I don't particularly want them, so if they want to pay the 20.00 I'll add the extra 5.00 bid to my total. If not, let me know and I'll settle up. Rob

9.00 for the books ?

Having a car in Central Birmingham is becoming a liability. Most of the 'free' parking has become residents only Monday - Saturday. As far as I know Sherborne Wharf doesn't have any parking now, although it was expensive when I moored there, it included parking, so worked out cheaper in the long run. Now when I moor in Brum, I tend to park overnight by the Flapper and leave the car at my mom's at weekends and use the train. If you can commute via public transport, there's Copt Heath Wharf, and Knowle Hall Wharf, both near Knowle, Nearest train station is Dorridge which would get you to Solihull and Birmingham.

25.00 for the horns 25.00 for the meccano 7.00 for the narrowboat building books Rob

Thanks, Alan. The Siddeley Special was a model made between about 1934 and 1938. I think they were supposed to show off the companies advanced engineering, or On the car there's no mention of Armstrong, all the badges being Siddeley Special, or S6, so maybe it was because JD Siddeley was retiring, he would have been about 65 when the model launched. Most of the bodywork is aluminium as is the engine block, head and con rods. It's got hydraulic valves, which I think was quite advanced for the time. It was basically the biggest, most expensive model in the line-up at the time costing about as much as a 4 bed house in London. The other models were all known by their RAC HP rating, eg 12HP, 14HP, 16HP and 17HP. The Siddeley Special 5.0 litre engine, was RAC rated at 30HP, which is roughly 110BHP. About 253 were made but being made of aluminium, quite a few got donated and scrapped for the war effort. Worldwide there's about 22 extant about half of those are roadworthy. My dad bought this one in 1997 and although he didn't make much progress with it before he died in 2015, he was always dreaming of the day he could drive it. I promised him I'd get it back on the road and have spent the last four years restoring it. At about 1:43 in this video you can see what it looked like six months into the restoration. Maurice Smith, RIP, helped with panel beating the wings and it's been a feature of the club's stand at Stoneleigh and NEC restoration shows for the last few years.

I have almost the perfect thing to match your boat, a 1937 Armstrong Siddeley, Siddeley Special. Just returned to the road after being laid up since 1966ish. A heater and power steering would be a welcome upgrade though.