An Introduction: Chris Collins and Morris Tilly Project

[jack neville]

Found a photo of when I finished resetting all the strings

[jack neville]

Over the last few weeks I have been getting the car body ready for sandblasting. Among the required mods was removing the under floor toolbox. Simply cut it out, remove the car seat mount and weld in a patch. I used these little devices which are handy for lining up the panels flush with each other before tacking the patch in place and then completing the weld.

[jack neville]

The pieces with the holes were removed from the footwells on bothe sides. I will weld these tilly pieces in after it is sandblasted. I will leave them out for now just so the body is opened up better for blasting.

[jack neville]

The bottom of the windscreen A pillar is finished off. Small metal sections were required for reinforcing the pillar on the outside and inside where it bolts together.

[jack neville]

The Tilly has a stronger handbrake than the car. It has four mounting bolts whereas the car has two. The Tilly also has a reinforcing patch of metal welded around the position of the handbrake to strengthen the floor. this was removed fro the old Tilly and excess metal removed and cleaned up ready to weld over the prop shaft tunnel. Two extra mounting nuts were welded in place.

[jack neville]

Underneath the passenger floor, where I wleded in the large flat patch, this piece of reinforcing needs to be relocated along with the mounting brackets for the seat base. This was removed and the excess old floor metal removed.

[jack neville]

There is still a fair bit of work to go on the body but at this stage it was ready to sandblast. I took it outside and Chris spent some time removing any remaining body deadener from the underneath so the blasting would be effective.

[Mike K]

Originally Posted by jack neville

Found a photo of when I finished resetting all the strings

Hi

How did you reset the springs ?

Mike

[jack neville]

Hammered them cold Mike. I got shown how to do it years ago and have done quite a few different types with success. Just seperate all the leaves and take the two main leaves and draw an outline on the ground in chalk. Hammer at close intervals from one end of the leaf to the other working a tighter curve. Each lower leaf needs about a 6mm gap from the leaf above it with the ends touching the leaf above it. Then when you clamp the centre bolt it will pull them all together and the spring will have a tighter curve. There is a bit if guesswork involved and you don't need to worry too much with the shorter leaves. Helps if you know what the distance from eye to eye should be. I couldn't find that spec in the Tilly manual so I just positioned the spring shackle in what looked like the right position and took that measurement. They may settle a bit but we will have to wait and see. I did my jeep springs like this years ago and they have lasted well. If you do heavier truck springs it pays to enlist the help of a young man to do the hammering. I have a heavy steel block with a couple of pieces of steel welded on the end spaced about 50 mm apart to form a bridge to hammer on.

[Mike K]

You have taken on a mammoth task with those tillies .

Yes hammering . I have heard about it . Apparently its best to warm up the cold leaves by leaving them in the sun . There is a risk of a leaf cracking if theya re cold, like in the Winter .

I think they used to use a anvil , the horn on the end for the spring hammering ?

Can you post a pic of your bit of steel you use ?

Looks like you have a Hercus 260 lathe ..very nice http://www.lathes.co.uk/hercus/index.html

[jack neville]

Yes Mike. Just acquired the lathe recently. It is in very good condition.

The Tillies do require alot of work but Chris has been very lucky to get his hands on plenty of parts sufficient to rebuild two of them. They are however easy to work on and not big heavy components to lug around.

The steel I use for resetting springs is actually a bucket wheel pin, a relic from a floating gold dredge that used to operate on the Avoca River at Amphitheatre back in the 50's-60's I think. The dredge sank in mysterious circumstances and was broken up for scrap. An uncle of mine who was working on it around that time told me they found bungs missing from the pontoons when it was scrapped. My father who was a local plumber in Amphitheatre at the time acquried the pin and used it as an anvil. It is a little over 2' high and 5 1/2" in diameter. The smaller legs were added for stability. I welded the two pieces of flat to the top to make the bridge and hammer the spring leaves between them as I move the leaf across the top. You can see they have distorted from use. Works well.

[jack neville]

Body primed and upside down to repair a couple of rusty sections in the right side chassis rails. You can see where I started to cut out the rust with tin snips. Also shown is the reinforcing piece for under the passenger seat and the seat bracket mounts in position of where they need to be welded in.

[Mike K]

OK and thanks for the pics .


There seems to be little information about on cold spring resetting.

I found this:

http://redcliffesprings.com.au/springs-suspension

The other method in use is to bend with a cheap hydraulic pipe bender . You bend each leaf individually, similar to hammering . Mark out with chalk on the floor, the camber you started with and use this as a guide .

I reset a series 1 land rover rear spring with a cheap pipe bender . On the UK LR forum a guy objected , writing that it would not be a effective fix .

I'm not sure if Jacob spring works in Oakleigh, Melb. is still there

I read somewhere that spring steel has a 'memory' . The hammering process disrupts the molecules and they go back to their original position.