Douglas - For Sale Items

Douglas 1913 Model P motorcycle

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Douglas 1915 3 Spd-Gearbox and Clutch

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Dave

2024-06-11, 20:02:05
Have you tried the new Drafts feature yet? I just lost a long message today and learned my lesson. It is a good idea to save a draft of any long post you are writing. You can then just keep writing and keep saving a draft, knowing you have a backup if there is a glitch. The draft is automatically deleted when you post the message.

Dave

2024-06-08, 18:30:04
For Sale
xman has two very nice 1950's machines available - a green 1950 mk4 and black 1951 mk5 - both in good condition and running well.

Dave

2024-06-07, 02:13:36

Dave

2024-06-03, 08:23:05
For Sale
Duncan has just listed his green and cream 1957 Dragonfly for sale with spares and documents.

Dave

2024-06-02, 08:34:05
Parts avalable
alistair still has parts available - barrels, carburettor, castings - see all listings.


Dave

2024-06-01, 18:33:27

Dave

2024-05-28, 00:09:46
Welcome to the new site!
Recommended viewing for a fast start...
 - Quick Tour of the Front Page
 - Quick Tour of the new Attachments
Learn all about attaching photos in the User Guide. Any problems with anything please Contact us     Faulty links fixed - 01June2024

Recent posts

#61
Thanks Leon
hoejmark
#62
Hi hoejmark,

Getting in to Darwin by road depended on the weather: the summer is "wet" and the winter "dry", and trying to travel in the wet was a recipe for failure.

The first South-to-North crossing of the continent in a motor vehicle was in 1907/08, when Harry Dutton and Murray Aunger drove a Talbot car from Adelaide to Darwin. Well, two Talbots actually, as they had to abandon the first car when the going got too tough. The started again with a new car (the Duttons were wealthy pastoralists) and a better weather plan, picked up the stranded car, and ended up on the beach at Darwin with two cars. The "overland telegraph" and the later railways made things a lot easier for motorists as both bits of infrastructure had maintenance tracks.

Years earlier, in the 1860s, our most famous explorers Burke & Wills crossed the continent from south to north (Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria). They never got a view of the ocean at the northern end of their trip - the mangrove forests were too thick - but the water they encountered was salty and went up and down with the tide. Close enough. They died on the way back.

Exploration is tough!

Leon
#63
Hutch and Leon
Thanks for your informative informations. Reasons for me to focus on Darwin, comes out of my ignorance, that I believed Darwin was nearly impassable from land.
The cause to thinking so is, when going a little more than 100 years back, you met difficulties when trying to drive to the little fishing village Skagen on top of Denmark. The last 40 kms from Frederikshavn was heather grown moorland with some cart ruts. The local people prefered to sail their fishing boats to Frederikshavn rather than drive carts, I have been told.
In 1913 - 1915 there was held a motorized rally going from Copenhagen to Skagen and return for motor cycles and light cars, and surely they experienced great difficulties when passing over the moor. This is a tiny distance, but when scaled up to the size of your Continent, it migth be very problematic - I thaught.
To day Skagen is a very fashionable town for tourists, and ever since year 1965 we again run the annually three days "Skagenløbet" (Rally Skagen) on motorcycles up to year 1934 (incl.), starting in Copenhagen in even years and the opposit direction in odd years. Now on mainly good roads, I can tell.
hoejmark
#64
Hoejmark,

I found this article from the Daily Examiner, Grafton N.S.W from 29th October 1926 on Trove. Jones and Clarke were interviewed by a reporter as they passed through and they state that they didn't visit Darwin. 

Some interesting comments about their journey in the article as well - only 4 punctures!

Cheers

Hutch

#65
Quote from: hoejmark on 24 Sep 2024 at 11:17 Peter whitaker told me, that the first motorcyclist to visit all main capitals was Jeff Munro in 1929 (I belive) inclusive Port Darwin. Why did Grady and Jones not do so?
Could that be because of the railway. Not very long ago I followed on TV an australian railway enthusiast going from Port Darwin to Katherine by train, and on that occation it was told, that this line was opened in 1929. Could it be the reason why Munro did it, but not Grady or Jones?
hoejmark

Hi Hoejmark,

Not sure why Grady and Jones chose not to go to Darwin - maybe they had no reason to (?) (Edit I am assumed neither went to Darwin as I have not found conclusive evidence that they did - still looking tho'), but I did a little searching and found that the railway line extension from Pine Creek to Emungalan was opened in 1917 and was well in use by 1919. Emungalan is near Katherine - on the north western side of the Katherine River.

The train didn't actually reach Katherine itself until the opening of the railway bridge over the Katherine River was constructed in 1926.

(See https://www.katherinemuseum.com/our-town/the-gallon-licence-store-2 for more information)

So Grady and Jones could have possibly have travelled by train to Darwin from Emungalan had they wanted to?

Cheers

Hutch
#66
Quote from: hoejmark on 24 Sep 2024 at 11:17 Why did Grady and Jones not do so?
I suspect there was just one north-south road, so visiting Darwin from Katherine would be a case of "up the road and back again", a diversion from the trip "around" the continent. There were no rules back then!

Leon
#67
General Douglas Discussion / New post in Douglas Motorcycle...
Last post by Doug - 24 Sep 2024 at 21:43
Since many members probably only check the General Douglas Discussion and perhaps the For Sale posts, just a flag that I placed the first of a series of new posts in the Douglas Motorcycles Technical Articles board about replicating the brakes for the RA model. This series first appeared in the London Douglas Motor Cycle Club magazine, the New ConRod in 2023. Here, it is revised slightly and with a lot more pictures.

Link to post HERE

-Doug

[grammar fixes.  24Sep24, Doug]
#68
One of several missing components from my RA project were the distinctive brakes that were a signature feature of the model. While Douglas might have won a Senior and Sidecar TT with machines fitted with these brakes, the Works team only used them for two years and then moved on to a drum brake for the 1925 racing season. Numerous pictures of RA machines repurposed for cinder track racing show brake shoes and linkage removed or the entire lack of any brake components. Consequently, surviving brake hardware for the RA is rarer than the machines themselves. I was able to borrow a rear brake shoe and mechanism that looked like it had been removed unused from a machine. Yet another LDMCC club member had portions of the front brake mechanism and a rear brake ring. Work began on reverse engineering the hardware; as well as examining what was available in period photos or remnant with the few other surviving RAs. It became apparent that like the frames, there were early and late variants of brake hardware. As my RA is DF186 and fairly late in the scheme of things – '3rd variant' frame – it would not have the earliest version of the brake hardware like what would be seen on, for example, the Tom Sheard bike (1923 Senior TT winner). Most likely, being an Australian export circa 1925-26, it was sold directly for use on the cinders and never had brakes fitted. Much was missing and the entire bike will be pieced together from leftovers and numerous donors so we will never really know. For road use brakes, even mediocre ones, would need to be fitted.

Inner operating arm, rear brake. The initial design was a shaft and an arm permanently assembled. I think through silver brazing, though I was never able to determine the exact joint interface. Then superseded by an arm forged as a single piece.





Had my RA been fitted with brakes it would have had the later. For small quantities of reproductions, milling from billet is more practical than making forging dies, albeit wasteful of material and more time consuming. Even so, with some careful nesting the use of material can be maximized; though it meant a lot of milling. It is not as if I had to stand there at wait as the CNC machine was perfectly able to run itself unattended. The alternative to cutting out the blanks with a narrow milling kerf would have been sawing, but the method chosen had an advantage of work holding and uniformity. The billet was tack welded to a sub-plate, then milled through all but the last millimeter of thickness. Sawing would have yielded a narrower kerf, but it is not as if it would have gained five rather than the four blanks per slab size that I had to work with. Another alternative would have been waterjet cutting, but that would have entailed sending out, and I have had trouble in the past with residual abrasives embedded in the surface wreaking havoc with the cutters. Additional milling operations took it from a rough to finished shape.



Slab of raw material tack welded to a sacrificial sub-sheet to provide a means to hold the work.



Milled down to the level of the sacrificial sheet. Four operating arms and four islands of waste.



An original operating arm sitting on several blanks.



Twelve operating arm blanks; in case of attrition. The blanks are now surface ground to aid in uniformity of subsequent workholding.



Set vertical in the milling machine vice, with a fixture to support the operating arm (already drilled and reamed.) Preparatory to roughing the arm profile.



Arm profile rough milled.



Laid down on the milling table, preparatory to surface milling the contours of the arm.



One half of the surface contour of the arm finished.



Sequence of operations from rough profile to half surfaced, with original are the front.



Now flipped over and the second side finished, taking care to align both sides. The fixture/stud on the left remained clamped to the table and provided the registration from part to part, and both sides.



Again, sequence of operations.



Side by side comparison. Note faux forging flash under the flange of the eye to simulate the residual forging flash not entirely filed away on the original. As the original was hand fettled, the new reproduction are much more uniform in shape.



Preparing to turn the shaft.



Turning the shaft. Yet to do is the step where the square taper will be milled, and the threading the tip.



Done, except for milling the tapered square for the outer half of the operating arm.



I did not have an example of the outboard operating arm, so this had to be estimated from photographs. A plastic model was made using 3D printing technology, which was then posted over to the I.o.M. for a final check against the one on the late Bob Thomas RA outfit. Once the size and shape were validated, manufacture was similar to the inner arm; milling from bar stock in several setups to attack the workpiece from all sides. One deviation was that the small post for the return spring to hook onto was originally gas welded to the main forging. I opted to mill it all from one piece because I did not fancy welding thick and thin sections together and at the time I was in a 'lights-out' machining craze of getting the job started and then going to bed, so did not care if it added several extra hours to the job.



Initial work piece blank.



Faced, and tapered square hole added.



Turned on its side and the cup for the brake rod machined.



Turned again, preparatory for roughing the arm.



Roughing in process.



Roughing complete.



Finish pass complete.



A fixture to do the second side.



Work mounted to fixture preparatory to milling second side of arm. A square, tapered plug is fitted to the square tapered hole in the operating arm  under the bolt head to the right.



Roughing in-process.



Finish pass complete.


Probably the most technically interesting aspect was cutting the internal, taper square that connected it to the inner arm. I am not certain how they originally made this, but suspect it was hot punched, much like the later conical spline used on EW kick starter levers and subsequent models. Whatever the method, the challenge with machining would be getting a sharp internal corner. Electrical discharge machining would have been the ideal method, but I no longer had access to that type of equipment and did not want to pay the going rate to farm it out. So, I bought a Ø1mm endmill that had a 14mm reach.



Finish pass complete.


I bought two actually as insurance, in case the first one broke. As often typical with insurance, it was never needed. This was used to clean out 'the corners' yielding a 0.5mm radius which was sufficient to clear the corner break on the male portion of the taper. This delicate cutter did not do all of the work alone. The bulk of the material was removed with an 8mm pilot hole and larger diameter endmill cutters. The secret to success was a shallow depth of cut (0.15mm) and an aggressive (for the diameter) feed rate of 25mm a minute. This made sure the cutting flutes cut rather than rubbed, and combined with the monotonous, uniform feed rate of a CNC machine allowed one cutter to last the entire run of outer operating arms. I should add the new brake arms were made from heat treatable stainless steel, and stainless steel is prone to developing a hard skin through work hardening if the cutter rubs; either because it is dull or through too slow a feed rate. This hard skin causes the cutter to deflect, which causes it to rub and work harden more rather than cut, and pretty soon it deflects enough that the cutter breaks. While I had learned this approach years ago with micro endmills (Ø0.5mm and under) I had never tried it with one this long and slender.

I subsequently found that such a fine surface milling on faux forgings was not entirely necessary. A courser finish could halve the milling time at the expense of a little time spent at the bench with a mold and die polishing stone to smooth out the milling marks. If you have ever spent tedious hours rubbing parts with little bits of sand paper try polishing stones. They work so much faster that they are worth the extra cost.

To be continued...

-Doug
#69
When reading the newspaper copy in #80, it seem to me that Jones and Clarke did ride all the way to Broome on their Indian.

But did they also go to Port Darwin? In more newspapers I did read that they did so, but according to Peter Whitager they did not. Newspapers were nat always reliable.

I also belive that I read previously - in this thread - in a newspaper quote, that Grady did go to Port Darwin, but again according to Peter Whitager he did not. And his route in the Grady booklet does not claim that either.

Peter whitaker told me, that the first motorcyclist to visit all main capitals was Jeff Munro in 1929 (I belive) inclusive Port Darwin. Why did Grady and Jones not do so?
Could that be because of the railway. Not very long ago I followed on TV an australian railway enthusiast going from Port Darwin to Katherine by train, and on that occation it was told, that this line was opened in 1929. Could it be the reason why Munro did it, but not Grady or Jones?
hoejmark
#70
Douglas Motorcycles and Parts Wanted - Private / 80 or 90 Plus
Last post by Thm1 - 24 Sep 2024 at 08:43
Hi all 
I'm on the lookout for a 80 or 90 plus, in the UK
Ideally in complete condition
Thanks