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What
I went looking for to restore was a proper car (British) as opposed to a
Black Iron (American) car. A Rolls-Royce was too big and too dear. So
after a month of looking, I saw a Bayliss Thomas advertised and my
curiosity was aroused. A quick trip to Northbridge to look at a
basket case of bits had me hooked. Up till then I had never seen or heard of a Bayliss-Thomas.
The
remains were a complete touring body, mudguards, hood, irons and bows,
seat springs, unusable radiator, bonnet, doors and an incorrect
windscreen. But it was usable
after modification. All these
parts came from a 1926 car. A separate 1926 chassis, motor, gearbox, diff,
front end and steering box made up the main mechanicals. These
components were unearthed from the Hawkesbury River Flood Plains at
Richmond, NSW, after years of internment. They
are hard to kill, these Bayliss Thomas cars.
There
was about about 80% of a total car. The items missing were all the hard
bits to get and bearing in mind I had never seen one together, it was
going to be a challenge, firstly to find out what the missing parts looked
like and because they are so rare, to locate and buy or make them.
The
missing parts were:-
head
lamps,
side
lamps,
tail
lamp,
rear
vision mirror,
steering
wheel,
wiper
motor,
petrol
tank,
five
road wheels and nuts,
a
repairable radiator,
throttle
pedal and linkages,
two
door handles,
bonnet
clips,
clock,
speedometer,
combined
switch panel and ammeter,
oil
gauge,
fuel
gauge,
dash
lamp,
tail
shaft,
steering
tie rod,
carburettor,
hub
nuts,
horn,
and
sundry small bits.
This is
a rather daunting want list, now that I write it down and look at it.
On the
plus side, Laurie, the bloke I bought it from, had gathered a lot of
printed information and he had taken a lot of photos of his Bayliss Thomas
before he stripped it down.
A spare
motor was included, which proved to be vital to the restoration.
Fortunately
Laurie was generous in allowing me to borrow parts so I could copy them
exactly for my car.
In the
information and photos I had, was the phone numbers etc, for the owners of
two other Bayliss Thomas cars. The cars were in Melbourne and Grafton,
which I finally saw after two years of working on my car. The body of the Grafton car is only three numbers different
from mine and it is otherwise identical. The
car is very original so I learnt a lot from it, and Les, the owner, was
very helpful as you would expect from a gent who owns such a prestigious
compact marvel of British engineering!
Wow, even I don't think it's that good! In
fact the Bayliss Thomas was a typical example of the assembled light cars
so common in Britain in the 1920s.
The
components for my car, which is a 1926 12-27 HP 4-5 seater touring light
car are as follows:-
Engine
is a "Henry Meadows", 4EC 4 cyl with bore 69mm X 100mm stroke
displacing 1496cc. It has dip fed big ends, two main bearings, reservoirs
pump fed, OHV cross flow head, Zenith carbie and a hide faced cone clutch.
The
gearbox is also "Henry Meadows" and has three forward and
reverse with centre gate change and fabric joints on the tail shaft.
The rear
axle is a "Moss" three quarter floating with Timken taper
bearings and a spiral bevel diff.
Brakes
are 10" drums with two sets of internal expanding brake shoes, one
set for the hand brake, the other for the foot brake.
The
front end is "Rubery", 10" brakes are fitted to a beam axle
with incline pivots giving centre-point steering.
The
springing is by semi-elliptic front and rear. It
has bushes at the front, but the rear has no shackles and instead the two
top leaves slide through a slot in a bronze trunnion which is greased. This
was used as a selling point and works fine.
The
steering box is made by"Marles" and is a worm and wheel, all
ball mounted and is as good as any modern box with no shocks being
transmitted up the column. This combined with the front axle makes the
steering quite good to use. The
wheels are "Dunlop" 19" pressed steel artillery type, the
radiator "Sere", a thermo-siphon which is super good.
The
instruments originally fitted in Australia were a mixed bag;
Speedo
is a "Cowey" showing 0-60 mph,
Clock
"Smiths" eight day,
Oil
gauge "Eureka" 0-10 psi,
Petrol
gauge Riser tube type,
A dash
lamp by "Lucas".
The
windscreen wiper is hand operated.
The
electrics are "Lucas" 6 volt with two headlamps, two side lamps,
one tail lamp, horn, a
combination amp meter and switch panel, generator, and starter motor. A
variety of magnetos were fitted, "Lucas, BTH, Fellows" etc.
THE RESTORATION
I
had seen some shoddy restorations in the past, so my aim was to restore it
to as good as my ability and money would allow. My
intention was to do as much as possible myself. I was a motor mechanic by
trade and had worked in the motor industry all my life, doing left to
right hand conversions, air conditioning, sun roofs etc.
Where to
start? As the car was a
basket-case, very little stripping was required. Killing
rust I think is the largest problem and to this end, a 44 gallon drum
filled with a molasses and water mixture eats rust like kids grazing at a
Golden Arches Establishment.
The
chassis and mudguards were sand-blasted. Sundry
grinders and rust potions were the final solution on other parts.
The
front cross member of the chassis was replaced. Sundry brackets were repaired and re-riveted
where necessary. All visible areas were mirror-finished with "Dulux"
Rapide Black, as were most components under the car.
Most
steel and cast iron pieces went into the 44 "Murk" tank for
de-rusting; brake drums, wheels, axles, springs, engine, head, manifold
etc. Every nut and bolt was cleaned, checked for size and filed. To get the desired finish on every component requires a lot of
manual rubbing with files, emery paper etc. and I regularly lost my
identity because my finger-prints would wear off! About three hours a day, one day a weekend for five years it
took!!!!!!!!!!
Bolts
and nut flats were lined up and split pins were given the Rolls-Royce
twist for neatness sake. The felt oil seals were replaced with modern
seals.
THE FRONT AXLE
The
front end had new king pins, bushes, wheel bearings, seals and the top two
leaves replaced on the springs as these were badly worn. Both
drums were machined and after welding the aluminium brake shoes, new
linings were fitted.
THE REAR AXLE
The
aluminium backing plates were welded as 25mm of the bottom had rotted
away. The brake shoes are
aluminium and needed some splits welded, new linings and drums machined. After cleaning the diff, I found the hemisphere cracked,
bearings shot, crown wheel and pinion stuffed. At
this point it went into the too hard basket. The solution came one year later when my brother Barry found a
rear end under a hay wagon at Mudgee.
"Hallelujah"
No pinion was fitted, but the hemisphere was there and good, This gave me
some valuable spare axles etc. No
Bayliss Thomas crown and pinion gear numbers showed in any of the old
parts books, but after another two years, a new set of gears was found.
They were for a 1928 Durant. The
ratio was right and they fitted with a push. Quick,
bolt it in the housing before it realizes it is a black-iron bit in a
proper car. New bearings and
seals all round. The rear
springs are reworked rear springs from a Morris Minor van; no rejection
here as both are British. All
brake rods and ends renewed and sundry cross shaft bushes redone. The
front and rear ends were fitted to the chassis. With
old tyres and wheels but it looked good to me.
NOW FOR THE GOOD BIT - THE
ENGINE
The
original block was too badly corroded, but the second engine had done
little work and I opted to use it as both blocks had 1926 dates.
To thoroughly clean the block
waterways, it spent two months in the Murk Tank. Inspection showed the
block needed reboring and the shaft grinding. The
mains and big ends were poured and bored, also the camshaft journals
requiring a chrome build up job. The rear main bearing cap had a crack and
was welded. As it is only a
two main bearing crank, I added some strengthening pieces to the rear cap
and had all the moving parts balanced. All
bolts were checked for stretching etc, and replaced as necessary. Inside
the front timing cover it looks like a gearbox as the magneto and
generator are gear driven. Four
brass and steel gears which whiz around give the engine a definite gear
sound at various revs, the maximum being 4,000 r.p.m. Not
bad eh? Boring and honing the
bores was tricky as between the bores at the top a web overhangs each hole
to give a better sealing area for the head gasket. The head was faced with
new (Gemini) valves and springs. The
plunger oil pump was overhauled with another oil line run to the OHV gear
to provide better lubrication. The
pistons are an unusual size and would cost $147 each to be made. Four months later I found piston assemblies out of a
“Villiers” stationary engine and cost only $66 each. Then, as often
occurs, at the next swap meet, on the ground was the same piston
assemblies for $20 each. On well, I bought a spare set. The boring, pouring, machining and balancing was executed by
the ever-helpful and good-guy Graham Kelly of New Process Engineering at
Waterloo. With a VB in hand,
he was at the "Engine Start Up" party and yes it did start first
try! I assembled the whole engine and four years later it still
sounds good.
THE HARD BIT - THE GEAR BOX
Only
the output shaft and the housing looked like it should, every gear tooth
was worn to half a profile and tapered like a spear, I think it would have
jumped from first straight to top. There was more metal in the bottom of
the box than on the teeth. It
was not good.
An
estimate of $3-4,000 to make a new set of gears was too much to spend on
one item. Put the lid back on
and forget it for now. A VB
sounds good about now
About
two years later, I made a swap for another box. Most of the gears were
through the hardening, but it was usable. A
speedo gear was made, plus a new set of bearings, seals and gaskets. This
gave me a box to put the car on the road. I
wanted a vintage car to use in rallies and I did not know whether the
Bayliss would suit my needs, having no idea of its performance, handling,
breaking, appeal etc. Also
maybe the fairies and elves may fix the box while I am not looking. Older brother Len is a Minister of Religion, so I asked him to
put in a word at the top for me. I'm
sorry to report that neither of these approaches worked in eighteen months
of waiting.
As no
tail shaft came with the car and I couldn't find one, I had a shaft built
with modern universal joints, as these are much more reliable than the
fabric joints which were prone to disintegrating under stress and wreaking
havoc on the brake rods and underbody. The
shaft was fitted with a great degree of skill and finesse as some of its
components were - shock horror – Japanese.
What next? Other parts
used in the Bayliss were from a bed-head, A Ford, a washing machine, bus,
and old stationary engine parts. They're
not easy to find in the finished car I think most would agree.
THE BODY
This
I was not looking forward to, as panel work is not my best skill. The
body had been under cover for most of its life, so consequently it was
pretty good. The near-side needed two inches of metal replaced at the
bottom of the sill area. All
the doors were good. The rear
tub panel was replaced along with the off-side cowl. Both
rear wheel arch body panels were renewed along with some inner covers. Both
bonnet sides were replaced due to damage and rust. The
mudguards require some patches of rust done and beaten from end to end. The original panel work was pretty rough by any standard and
was a nightmare to get it to what it is now.
The
woodwork was rotted in one area only, at the lower tub section. I made a new section and grafted it to the main frame. Over
nearly seventy years, the glue used to make the wooden frame had given up
the ghost, which made the whole body sloppy and loose. This
worked to my advantage as it allowed enough movement to properly align the
doors and sides of the car.
Of
course it would not stay there without some form of fastening. As the joints were in difficult places, the solution I found
was to blow out the joints with air and using a hypodermic needle filled
with “Aquadhere” wood glue, fill up each joint from the inside. This
made the body good enough to last another seventy years.
While
washing the dust off the back floorboards in preparation for painting
them, to my amazement I found a colour chart of the colours used. They had used this board to stand the cans on after stirring
them and this left colour imprints. The
colours were white, green, yellow, blue and red. I chose to use the red on this car as it complimented the
canvas coloured top often used in the 1920s.
The
original trim was pretty ugly and I was relieved to find out the antique
leather could not be replaced now. This
gave me the opportunity to use another leather shade which complimented
the top colour and was close to one of the colours used in the antique
leather; a happy compromise.
With the
body in two-pack primer, it was time to join it and the chassis. I was a
bit apprehensive as they had never been together, but my fears were short
lived as it fitted together with the bolt holes lined up. Phew!! Without a
doubt, the hardest job to get right was aligning the bonnet and sides to
the body and radiator shell. The
mudguards were next with new running boards to hold them in place.
For the
first time I saw what the Bayliss would finally look like. I was not impressed. After
fitting all the doors, they were removed for painting.
Something
which is not apparent now is that a lot of the body beading is made of
wood. With the body ready for
paint, I chickened out and got a friend to spray the main colour on the
body, not wanting to have the granny lace look (runs). Dulux two pack
Rapide was used in Hermitage red a XE
Ford Fairmont colour. The Red was used on the body and wheels with Black
used for the mudguards and luggage rack. The
paint was rubbed down with 2000 grit paper and was not polished till after
trimming was completed.
I spent
a month painstakingly beating and polishing the radiator shell as it is
made of German silver and is tissue paper thin to start with. Hand
polishing was the only safe way to do it. Six months later and a few words
here and there it arrived back with a new honeycomb fitted. Another day of
polishing and the shell is in the car for good. While
the radiator was away, things like the accelerator linkages, magneto
controls, exhaust system and petrol tank were made and fitted in
preparation for the engine start.
A party
was arranged for the momentous engine start with about twenty people
watching (VBs in hand) and my reputation on trial as I had boasted that it
would start first time. Doubting Thomas’s sniffed the exhaust pipe and
one spark plug was scrutinized for evidence of a previous start. With
a puff of smoke and lots of yelling, it did fire and run first try. A
temporary 20lb. oil pressure gauge showed no pressure after a minute and a
few checks showed no oil coming from the pipe. This
put a dampener on the proceedings, looking down the oil filter into the
crankcase, there was plenty of oil being thrown about to lubricate the
internals, so I drove the car out of the garage and back in. This
brightened the mood. The
answer to the problem was the 20!b gauge could not show the low 2lb
maximum oil pressure used in the Bayliss. With
a correct gauge, the engine ran with about 1 1/2lb oil pressure. Not much
but it only fills troughs and feed the timing gears, I have since fitted
another line to the OHV shaft to help its lubrication.
PRE-TRIMMING DETAILS
It
was time to take it to the trimmer I had selected, Duncan , the owner of
Davmark, motor trimmers at Brookvale.
As I had worked with Duncan
for some years, I knew of his talents with a needle and that he would let
me help and hinder in the process. The hood material was American”
haarts” which looks a lot like canvass. Then
four hides were matched to the hood material with some allowance being
made for the bleaching of the hood. The
interior style was kept as close to original as possible. A matching
maroon carpet completed the pretty bits.
INSTRUMENT AND PLATING
DETAILS
In
1926 the main bright work, plating was nickel and because of the standard
needed by me, I prepared and polished all parts before sending them to the
electroplaters. The results
were pleasing for me.
Some of
the instruments were very hard to come by. The
speedo is wrong. The correct
Cowey instrument took seven years to find. The switch panel and ammeter are correct, with the face coming
from the “Beulieu”Swap in England. The
oil gauge is a modified Singer 9. The
Smiths clock was easy to find as almost all English cars of the period has
one.
All the
faces were remade because the Bayliss instruments had white faces which
was unusual, as most were of silver and black. The
petrol gauge which is a vertical glass tube in a housing with a capillary
tube feeding petrol to it, is an exact copy of the original. A
horn button is on the dash and a Lucas rotating barrel type lamp is
mounted above the instruments. Below on a separate bracket is the choke
and indicator switch.
THE INTERIOR
The
side curtains were made from scratch, now with large clear sections,
vision is not bad. They all stow behind the back seat when not in use. The woodwork in the hood was pretty good as the header board
at the front and the rear bow was all that needed replacing.
To
finish the trim at the top of the body, strips of 1 1/2" raised and
polished aluminium were used. Getting
the pieces to the right shape was difficult and the aluminium scrap pile
doubled in size before completion. Ribbed
rubber and aluminium strips as per the original for the running boards
completed the trim. The trim
turned out as good as I had hoped and although there were problems, it was
fun working there. A carton
of VB was in order with the final payment.
THE ELECTRICS
The
electrical side was right up my alley. A lot of changes were needed to
make the car usable on modern roads. I
decided to retain the old 6 volt system it had, as the starter was OK. The generator had to be rewound due to burnout and the cut-out
was replaced with a Lucas voltage regulator which I hid under the dash. This
replaced the dash control switch which was for switching the generator in
and out as required. I bet
there were a lot of flat batteries with the old system! In
modern traffic I think it's good to be seen, so indicators were fitted at
the rear using purpose built lights to match the car. No
stop lights were originally fitted, so these were incorporated into the
two Lucas TF201 rear lamps. The
headlamps have one beam only and the park lights were divided in two with
amber panels fitted so as to incorporate the indicators.
I made
the wiring harness and had it bound in cotton along with the battery
cables which added a nice touch to the engine compartment. As
the battery is under the seat and hard to get at a Lucas battery isolating
switch was mounted in an easy-to-get-at spot. A standard fitting from new was the fixed engine bay light
with the switch being a household brass light switch which I retained. The
hand operated wiper was replaced with a Lucas 1930s model, interior light
is by dash light only and the Lucas klaxon horn is operated by a dash
mounted button. The indicator switching is done with an Austin A30 dash
mounted switch which has an integral light. With the extra noise in a vintage car, I often forget to
cancel the indicator after founding a corner, so the answer was to fit a
buzzer to the blinkers. The
B.T.H, magneto used was rewound and is of aircraft quality, being used on
Tiger Moth planes.
THE BEST BIT
With
the car back from the trimmers, it was assembly time. After hand
compounding and polishing, it took only a month to assemble the car, which
seemed like an anti-climax after five years. I finally had something
bright and shiny to love. Nothing
wrong with this bloke.
Because
of its rarity, the Bayliss has a lot of appeal and always attracts
attention.
In 1996
I entered the Bayliss in two Concourse d'elegance and won; best vintage at
the British Day and best vintage at the CVVTMC at Eastern Creek and as
well, at the Bush Council rally at Newcastle, it took out the Best British
and the one most valued in my eyes, the Entrants' Choice, It's nice to be
recognized by 250 of your peers in open competition.
But I
have jumped the gun here.
To
recap, the Bayliss looked great, but it hadn't been on the road yet. Will
everything work?
Club
registration was arranged with the Vintage Vehicle Club of Australia, as I
wanted to use the Bayliss in a vintage car club.
On the
first short test run it went well except for petrol gushing out of the
dash mounted fuel gauge. One
brake locked up and the engine backfired going downhill.
Rear
vision was nonexistent and the seat needed lowering. In first and second gear, the gear box made so much noise that
no conversation was possible and a foot was needed to hold it in second.
Two VBs
needed to soothe my battered ego. The
petrol gauge was lifted, all the rear vision mirrors shifted and the seat
was lowered. That was easy. After
replacing the muffler flange gaskets, checking timing, and replacing jets,
the backfiring was less but not completely cured. The final fix was an air
cleaner.
It took
eighteen months to fix. In
the same period the Bayliss had grown on me and it was decided to have a
full new set of gears made to fit the box. John Needham in Victoria did
the job and per his suggestion, the gear ratios were changed which made
the Bayliss infinitely quieter and a delight to use.
The
brake locking was traced to a slightly bent rear axle which when
corrected, also smoothed out vibrations in the rear end. Originally
the wheel nuts were made of brass, so I faithfully followed suit. But
I guess I was a bit heavy handed as I started to strip them one by one
when tightening them. The solution was to fit helicoils to all twenty
nuts.
On a
tour to the Snowy Mountains area, the new radiator core expired, leaving
me car-less on a long weekend in Bombala.
Thanks
to my NRMA Gold Card, the car was trailered home and a hire car supplied. How
embarrassing? The core suppliers and the assembler of the shell both covered
it under warranty. Phew!
With all
the problems sorted out, the Bayliss is a delight to run. Smooth and quiet
it is not, but vintage motoring is a challenge and fun. The rear seat passengers have an armchair ride with heaps of
head and leg room for three. The
front is for two people only and is not as comfortable. The clutch and brake pedals are in the normal positions with
the accelerator pedal between them. The
cone clutch is fine, so long as I remember to prop the pedal in with a
piece of wood when not using the car.
Going
through the gears, change speeds are approx. 1st to 2nd
10-15mph, 2nd to top 20-25mph, with a maximum speed of about
50mph. It cruises comfortably
at 40-45mph and on hills it hangs on pretty well. The crash box is easy to
change down, even to first, with the new set of ratios, I double-shuffle
up and down the gears and it becomes second nature after a while.
The
steering is good to use, with no road shocks coming up the column and
light once the car is moving. Four-wheel
brakes of the mechanical kind require a lot of leg muscles to stop and
fortunately because the Bayliss is slow there is nearly always a lot of
room in front which helps the retarding process.
Touring
in the open countryside is just the best way to enjoy the fruits of five
years hard labour, along with the compliments when showing the Bayliss,
use the car on a monthly basis. Like everyone who owns a special vehicle,
I like nothing better than to talk about it, but Bayliss owners are not
easy to find. Only a few cars
exist in England where they were manufactured, but surprisingly, more
survived here. About eight
complete cars exist and sundry other collections of bits could make
possibly four more cars. There
are only three cars currently being used on the roads, so maybe we can all
get together one day and create a traffic jam, Ha ha!
THE CHASE
We
are a very diverse lot, we owners and restorers of collectible cars,
bikes, machinery etc. Millions of dollars annually would be spent
purchasing and restoring our beloved bits of metal. Some like restoring
the bits. Some like owning and running them. Some like the fellowship, Some like tracing the history side. Some
like club management etc. But
I like chasing the bits. Call
me a masochist or a nut, but this is why I went looking for a basket case
which was incomplete and rare.
The
Bayliss Thomas car of which I had never heard until I bought it, fitted
the criteria eminently. The
thrill of spending hundreds of dollars to go to some Godforsaken paddock
in the middle of winter at six in the morning to search for That Bit is
hard to explain to ordinary people. Swap
meets held in paddocks all over the east coast of Australia were my happy
hunting grounds for the elusive parts. For
five years I carried sandwich-boards with "WANTED - BAYLISS THOMAS
PARTS" written on the front and back, much to the amusement of the
other swap meet participants. Of
the hundreds of people at the swaps, I was usually the only one who
everyone knew what I was looking for. Hardly
a swap meet went by, that I did not get a lead on parts, actual items or
stories about owning them in the past.
Bargains
are to be had if you are early, so before dawn breaks, torch in hand, the
treasure hunt starts. Advertising
in car publications yielded very little, but some parts came from the
"For Sale and Wanted" sections in car club magazines, I now have
enough spares and knowledge to keep the Bayliss on the road forever.
See
full photo gallery of this vehicle.
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