The further mechanical adventures of the Candidi Provocatores

In this picture of the Allard in the queue at Warleggan, you can just make out the end of the axle before  the end of our John Aley Trial

That last cliffhanger left your brave boys with an immobile Allard at the top of Blue Hills.

We couldn't go forward. We could roll backwards but had no drive in any gear.

Gareth White was spectating after losing his Marlin’s rear electrics soon after the start and he noticed the end of the axle going round without driving the offside wheel. The horrible clicking noise was the snap of the key and then it moving against the hub as the axle turned.

Willing hands bounced us around so that we could get towed out by a JCB. 

In these circumstances, I remember the end of Spike Milligan’s TV show, where the cast would shuffle forward, repeatedly saying, “What do we do next? What do we do next?”

Binky lives near Andover. I live near Liskeard, which isn’t quite on the way. If we could get the car recovered to Binky’s place, the driver probably wouldn’t want to go anywhere near Liskeard.

Anyway, it wasn’t raining and we were still in daylight. Typically, we finish in the dark. Actually, it was warm and sunny.

And another thing – we were surrounded by the supportive community of the MCC and its enthusiastic and helpful members.

I’d never met Rick Howell but we are friends on social media, enthusing about bikes, cars and industrial archaeology. He stopped by and said he was camping with an MCC crowd on the other side of Trevellas Coombe and would run me home. Top banana!

The first priority, though, was getting Binky and the Allard back to his place.

As we ascended the section to the Wheal Kitty road behind the digger, Ian Moss came over and shouted that we might get lucky by tightening the hub nut up again.

The next person we saw was the Allard’s previous owner, Roger Ugalde. He was talking to Graham Greenwell who’d sold the car to him! Oh the ignominy…

We uncoupled from the JCB and Jon Laver said a similar thing - wing the hub nut up so that the tapered end of the axle grips hub again and we might be away.

Our initial repair to the hub nut.

It seemed too good to be true so Rob called the AA who were on the scene within minutes. Repairman Andy helped us rewire the nut once Rob had torqued it up with an extra manual ugga dugga for luck. We took it up to 100 lb ft and lo! We had drive.

By now we were really tired. We’d been going at it since lunchtime the previous day, rewiring the car finishing off the work on the (now re-damaged) axle.

However, this gave us an energy boost.

Binky drove the Allard back very steadily. Andy the AA man followed us for a few miles until he was happy we were okay and we made it comfortably back to my place. Binky felt too tired to continue by the time we got to the Glyn Valley so I took the helm. It’s not an easy car to drive when one hops into it from an MX5. The three speed gearbox has synchro on 2^nd and top but it’s still easy to crunch the gears if you shift it too quickly. Fortunately, the powerplant is lovely and torquey. You have to concentrate hard not to grip the steering wheel too tightly and aim the car at the horizon or where you want to be in a few seconds time. I could quite understand why Binky felt worn out.

The following morning, Binky set off carefully but only got as far as the top of my valley. The axle stopped gripping again so we made another repair.

When we removed the hub, we found a key neatly split along its middle. Next to the nut is a complete one that will live again 

We took the wheel and hub off and the key came out in two instalments. Binks was pleased to get the hub off because he was worried it might have friction welded itself to the end of the axle. The tapers were chewed up but the bearings looked okay.

By filing down an old key we managed to get the hub to stop turning on the axle taper, which had also sustained some damage.

The Allard has a three quarter floating rear axle where the halfshaft engages with the hub rather than any bearings. The bearings are in the hub so if the shaft breaks the hub and wheel can come off. We had that happen to us on the 2016 Exeter. However, a demon tweak Binky borrowed from the hot rod boys is a keeper plate that holds the brake drum in place if the shaft breaks.

This shows the keeper plate that prevents the rear brake drum, hub and wheel coming off if the axle breaks

He had some pre-owned keys as spares and while he cleaned the bearings I drove back to my workshop and filled these down by degrees until they fitted the key way in the shaft and hub. Luckily, these weren’t too burred up at all.

We used copious amounts of Loctite on the key, washer and retaining nut and with a fresh split pin he set off for home again after a clean up at my place again.

General Patton sings Greased Lightning

It wasn’t an easy journey as we still hadn’t fixed the indicators and it rained hard all the way. Traffic was heavy so he went home via the A30, not the A303.

We will probably enter the car in Class 5 from now on but, even if we get it in Class 2, the roughness of sections like Warleggan and Tipley mean breakages on elderly components will still be likely and the parts take ages to source or have made.

We really like the sound of the gentler heritage trials events.