Some info on the car.
Alvis made the TA-14 as their first production car after the factory returned to normal business after the war. This means that is is made from whatever stuff they could lay their hands on from pre-war production and really a little out-of-date in the technology department for 1947 when the first models were sold. Rod actuated drum brakes all round. Cast iron cylinder head push-rod engine, seperate ladder style chassis, Marles worm gear steering box, Armstrong shocks and leaf springs on all four corners. Plywood floor just doesn't seem right!
On the plus side, this makes it easy to work on. They made about 3,000 of them. 2,000 were bodied by Mulliners and Carbody coachbuilders. The remaining 1,000 were sold as a bare chassis. They ran and could be driven. I think they came with front wings, bonnet and radiator grill. Not sure about the dash-board, but instruments seem to be the same for all of them!
Mine was bodied by a company called Benson's in Birmingham. An ash frame with aluminium panels. This has meant that the body (at least the metal part) is not rotten! The steel front wings are bad though and extensive work is required there.
I have a fairly good service history from the second owner in 1959, at 90,000 miles, but nothing before that.
A boot full of bits that were too big to fit in the plastic window-box I used as a de-rusting bath. I took all of this to be blasted. Some of it was plasticoated, the rest just primed and I painted it. I'm pretty dissappointed with the plasticote on the rear axle and regret it now. It wasn't blasted properly and there's rust coming through now in nooks and crannys!
This is some of the brake mechanism all cleaned up and reassembled. The pedal is behind the chassis member, the rod on the left activates the front brakes, and there’s a rod that connects in from the right that works the back ones.
Front axle brake rod arrangement.
Engine and gearbox on the floor. I cleaned the crud off the gearbox, but the engine was very awkward to move around, so I decided to clean that up once it was mounted back in the car.
I haven’t done anything mechanical to either engine or box. Everything I’ve read suggests that the gearboxes are pretty bullet proof (although there is slight play on the output shaft).
The water jacket on the engine was full of a terrible amount of muck. Here’s what it looked like when I took the end plate off.
And here’s a pic of some of the stuff that I shovelled out of it!
To finish cleaning it out, I used heat-shrink to fit a thin plastic pipe to the narrow hoover attachment. I let the block dry out and then sucked out the rest of the gunge having loosened it up with bits of wire and bottle brushes!
My service history says that it had new pistons 20K miles ago, so I’m just going to start it up and see how it is. I can’t really afford to have it all stripped down and machined just now. I’ve cleaned out the sump and oil filter gauze as well as I could. I’ve also done my best to check that oil is travelling around as many internal oilways as possible.
I fitted a new clutch plate. I actually found it at my local motor factors from an old tractor catalogue. What’s even stranger is that they had 2 on the shelves from the 80s! Fifteen quid for it seemed like a bargain when a spring-shackle bolt from Red Triangle cost me 25!
Engine and box re-united and about to be dropped onto lovely new rubber mounts.
And installed!
I then wheeled it all outside so I could clean up the engine without destroying my garage floor any more than it already is!
