Deals on Wheels' Lyndsay Whittle is back with another update on his Dodge RG13 restoration project
To start off on a positive note, several concerns I had regarding maintaining the momentum of my restoration updates have somewhat evaporated, thanks to t he efforts of my parts finder mate Kevin Healey who I mentioned in Part 27 last month.
A bit of background
For the benefit of the new or non-regular reader, Kevin (Kev) has been helping the Garrity Bothers who purchased a container-load of Rootes Group/Chrysler spare parts from William Gill and Sons in Huntly.
Kev has been charged with taking the occasional trip to Garrity’s yard in the Wairarapa region to catalogue the items they purchased a while back, and he reckoned there may well have been a few items I required somewhere in the mix.
The reason for this involvement is because Kev worked in Gill’s parts department at a time when the company was selling quite a few of the older British Commer trucks about the time the Mitsubishi brand was taking the country by storm.
Anyhow, I had a call from Kev recently to tell me he was making a southbound pilgrimage and that he’d make a concerted effort to locate a speedo and tachometer cable, along with anything else I thought I could do to progress the restoration that little bit further.
It wasn’t long before Kev phoned to say he’d been able to find a couple of the cables I needed, along with a specially designed rubber seal that fits under the gear lever boot.
All these items were old stock that were still in the original packaging, so essentially still brand new.
Kev said that he’d come up to Auckland from Huntly to deliver the items, along with a surprise item that he knew I’d been looking for.
So, all I had to do now was wait with bated breath for a week or two for my parts finder to get a day off work from his job as a milk tanker driver.
Unlike this writer, things happen rather quickly in Kev’s world, and it seemed like no time at all before he was pulling up at the workshop accompanied by his good mate Herb Dalton who he’d brought along for the ride.
Quite a character
It turns out that Herb (whose real name is Alan) is quite a character.
Although he’s in his early 80s, Herb still gets asked to drive truck and trailer units from time to time, with one of his regular stints being for a major truck dealership that calls him in to deliver trucks around the country and to carry out handovers to new owners.
It seems like Herb knows everybody who’s anybody in the trucking world, and it turned out he even knows my workshop buddy, Murray Firth’s son Roger quite well. The two of them had a good old chinwag.
Talk about being an inspiration to the rest of us. I reckon the exceptionally personable Herb would have to take the cake on that score. Anyway, as usual, I digress.
While Herb and Murray were ‘putting the world to right’, Kev and I got down to the business of sorting things out with the Dodge and the inventory of goodies he’d brought along with him.
The speedo and tacho cables it would appear (not absolutely certain at this stage) are the same animals, so that were two things I was worried about getting my hands on sorted out in one shot.
As mentioned, both cables were still in their original sealed packages — what a find indeed.
Also in its original packaging was what can be best described as a mounting bracket/seal that fits under the gear lever boot.
The unit currently on the truck is in reasonable condition, but since I now have a new unit to replace it with, I guess it makes sense to do the changeover the next time I’m working under the cab.
Kev’s mystery item, which he’d been teasing me about for the two weeks leading up to his visit, turned out to be an Eaton two-speed switch that he recalled me mentioning many months ago.
These switches are getting to be as scarce as hen’s teeth nowadays, so every single unit I can get my hands on is like hitting the jackpot, so a huge thank you to Ian Garrity who gave it to Kev.
Not for the Dodge though
In the intervening time since I originally mentioned two-speed switches to Kev, I had found a replacement unit for the Dodge, so this recent find is going to be fitted to the previous restoration, the D Series Ford.
I hope you don’t mind Kev if your surprise pressie doesn’t wind up on the intended truck, but rest assured, the old D will certainly appreciate it.
I guess all the people who’ve owned D Series Fords in the past will know exactly why my two-speed switch needed to be replaced, and it wasn’t because it’d simply stopped changing ratios.
For the benefit of the uninitiated, while the D Series was several steps ahead of its competitor, the TK Bedford, as far as engine access is concerned, because of its tilting cab, it was important to push down on the gear lever knob and rotate it 180 degrees clockwise before you began tilting the cab to avoid catching it on a sharp edge.
Many operators/mechanics have fallen fowl by neglecting to carry out this step of the operation. Just in case you think this writer is the exception to this rule, may I suggest you think again?
Getting back to work
Having finished fabricating the brackets that hold the rear guards onto the chassis, I decided that it was about time I started fitting them.
So here you have it, even I have to admit that the truck is finally looking like it’s coming together. All I have to do now is figure out what to put on the back to complete the task — perhaps a water tanker or turntable?
I’d appreciate the help of anybody who’d like to put forward any suggestions, so if you can think of something, please drop the Ed a line so he can pass any ideas on to me (thanks in advance for your ideas).
I do have a last-ditch idea, which I’ll run by you next month.
Images by Lyndsay Whittle