Sooo, two years on & where are we? The floor is in, and a suitable tempory seat was installed, care of the legendary Alan Hitchcock, complete with free complementary dalmation hairs....
And then work slowed. For something like 18 months whilst a rather more derilict Harding Model IV discovered in Guildford commanded my attention sooner rather than later so that it could continiue to remain in existance, such was the sorry state of said Guildford Harding.
Then in August 2020, attention turned back to Hammond Harding. As has been recounted, 163 CLD was orginally powered by a Villers Mk 31C unit construction engine. As this engine was utterly four-letter-worded, complete with a squirrel nest inside it, I then half fitted a Villers Mk 26c engine from a 1954 Tippen Coventry invalid carriage scrapped in the '70s. Now, after a ponderance on my limitations on being able to rebuild knackered old engines and the costs of doing same, plus the fact that the seperate Albion gearbox is steadfastly refusing to fit in the remaining space where orginaly 163 CLD had the said unit-construction engine, it was a toss-up between 163 CLD standing idle for yet more years with an old engine of unknown condition, or up & working within days with something else...
Thus, after a tour round varius modern engines I happened upon this 'ere brand new 98cc "Villers" G152... It may "only" be a chinese clone of a Honda G100 engine, but it's still playing the game as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, said engine arrived brand-new-in-the-box ready for the August bank holiday weekend & the weekend was spent working out to bodge it into place using the original unmolested engine mounts. I've said it before & I'll say it again, in the doing up of old crap; "Dexion & Dulux Works Wonders".
Of course life is never easy and it was then discovered that the axle sprocket and 5/8" centrifugal clutch (neatly doing away with the need to mess about with a gearbox that was never up to much even when new)'s sprocket did not match. No real question of changing the clutch sprocket as said clutch can only be sourced to fit 420 chain whereas the axle sprocket seems to use some sort of chain pitch no longer known to man nor beast. So change the rear sprocket I hear everyone yell. Again, not so simple, for Harding built their machines with sprocket welded directly to the axle & then both chassis rails wilded direct to the axle tube, trapping said sprocket for all time.
So, how to get round this? Many hours browsing 420 sprockets brought me to split-sprockests as used in some go-karts, split in the fact that they come in two halves, to be bolted onto a kind of cradle to keep the halves alined. Ah, perfect! So such a sprocket duely wings it way to here as I tap away on these keys. In the springtime, when the weather lets me reaquaint myself with the feeling in my fingers, it's out with the Black & Decker to dril said new sprocket mounting holes in the old fixed sprocket and shift the whole engine over by the said half-inch.
By hook or by crock Hammond Harding will be running by St Leonard's Day, come what may.... (answers on a postcard as to which 1983 BBC sitcom I referance with that somewhat fractured quiote...)
Meanwhile, a proper seat also slowly takes form...
