General Category > Invalid Carriages & other related conveyances
The Hammond Harding finally gets its turn
Stuart Cyphus:
Over the past many years, many visitors to Jean's Open Day may recall the somewhat grotty old invalid carriage that sometimes used to get pulled out of the back of the barn & parked right next to the shiniest visiting car on the lawn. This was one of Edwin's many follies, a hulk of unknown parentage (if at all!) bought as a rusty pile of dismembered parts in 1986, and remaining ever dismembered and getting ever rustier as the decades passed. Surely only the Gordon was worse within the cannon of the Hammond Collection...
Indeed, for a decade even the make of this mound of parts was unknown until a certain self descended on the Farm in July of 2005 for the second Open Day. That Sunday morning, in the presence of Tony Marshall, he & I were to assemble this pile, albeit loosely (in the extreme!) into the hulk that revealed itself to be a 1961 Harding De Luxe Model B. Nuts. Bolts. Fiddly bits. All were either missing or mangled, but oh well, yet another project for the future. (oh goody! some were heard to whisper)
Slowly the years passed, most Open Days out it would trot, & then return to the depths of the barn for another twelvemonth. Most observers merely sneered at it. "Only an invalid carriage" they said, "not worth doing. What's the point?" as some plotted only to squirrel the Black Box electrical system away one day. And so it went on, until July 2017 when yours truly bought the hulk for a bundle of folding stuff and transported it to darkest Oxfordshire in the back of a Luton van hidden amidst 95 sets of ex council traffic lights. (and therein is another story). At last, the Hammond Harding was to get its turn...
Stuart Cyphus:
Once home, the first objective was to go though the hulk and re-familiarise myself with what part went where and what exactly was missing from it, and also to gauge the precise condition of what was there, for it had been some six years since even I had last seen it. Fortunately the rust hadn't bitten as deep as I had feared it may have, thanks in the main to liberal coatings of a sort of earthen dust all over everything despite there being almost no paint at all left on any metal parts. It was rusty yes, but 30+ years in an earthen floored barn had as good as sealed the rust at an early stage.
As mentioned, virtually every nut & bolt was missing. Items such as the mudguards had been wrenched off way back in antiquity. The headstock top yoke was bent, presumably where someone had wrenched the bearings apart to separate the forks from the frame, and to cap it all, the Villiers Mk 31C engine had the remains of a squirrl's nest within the crankcase. Still, nothing a solid fortnight with a Black & Decker rotary wire attachment, two tins of Satin Black Hammerite, and a 5lb hammer couldn't cure...
Stuart Cyphus:
:)
Stuart Cyphus:
With most of August being taken up with painting of components, September saw attention being turned to the chassis, and in particular the brakes, which had been seized for several decades. Being mechanical rod activated, the entire system was a riot of clevis's, welded levers and cross shafts. All in metal-to-metal contact with each other, and all having not seen hide nor hair of oil in my lifetime. Needless to say, the whole lot was a solid mass of orange metal. Day one, oil everything. Day two, oil everything again. Day three oil everything again, tap lightly with small hammer. Day four, five & six, repeat earlier sentence. Days seven, eight & nine, repeat sentence again and tap slightly harder with slightly bigger hammer & detect slight movement in all parts. Repeat for a further four days until all parts are finally moving freely again. Someone remind me what the phrase; "patience & perseverance" mean again please?
Then, having sorted the brakes, at long last the whole chassis could be made presentable again following yet further hours with the Black & Decker and the black paint...
Stuart Cyphus:
:)
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