Category Archives: Workshop and Restoration
Progress on the K4 Crew Cab
Today Alison and Hugh and I did some rot removal on the Crew Cab. Seems that a new piece of ash is required for one of the upright frame pieces, together with a few other bits. Some of the old … Continue reading
Winter restoration projects – Michael’s pump trailer
Today Dan, James, Michael and I worked on the pump trailer. The idea is to adapt a red Coventry Climax trailer to carry one of our Beresford Stork pumps. So it has had new tyres, a serious wire-brush all over, … Continue reading
Fitted the Bell, and Drained the Radiators
Been down to the farm tonight, because I thought I ought to check the water situation given a heavy frost is forecast for tonight. Just as well I did, as the Fordson engine was full of plain water, and there … Continue reading
Fitting new parts to the K4
Spent the day today fitting the parallel motion self-levelling bits to the K4 ladder. A few bits needed a little adjustment with a large sledgehammer to make them line up. Then I discovered that the rather useful hose holder got … Continue reading
Crew Cab and other spares for the K4 from Weedon Bec
On Saturday, Rob Michael and I visited Fireworld, the Fire Services National Museum to collect some parts. I had done a deal to provide the museum with some parts that they need for their restored K4 GXN249, and a pile … Continue reading
Maintenance on the Fordson 7V
This vehicle has long suffered from a blowing head gasket. The symptoms were that under sustained load, say up a hill, bubbles would appear in the water, displacing so much that the engine would boil over. Luckily, water did not … Continue reading
Pity we missed the Victory Show. Workshop and Logs instead
Given a K4 that was boiling over on short trips (we used 5 gallons of water getting back from Rauceby last weekend), we decided that we had better do some workshop maintenance on Saturday. The cylinder head was removed, cleaned up, … Continue reading
Austin K2 head-gasket
On our way home from Burton-on-Trent 1940’s event the engine on the K2 started losing power. Fortunately it made it back to the farm but would not re-start once the engine had been stopped.
Easter weekend
Dan, James and Karina came over, and we tested the Turntable Ladder. There were just two problems in all the testing – the engine was under-performing, to the extent that it would sometimes hardly run and also almost boiled on … Continue reading
K4 Turntable Ladder declared Safe
A couple of days ago, Neil Billings, who has maintained fire appliances for the last 41 years of his working life, came to have a look at it, and declared it to be safe. We started by looking at the … Continue reading