It’s been one of those weeks when quite a lot has gone pear-shaped. On Monday, I discovered that an application containing some important documents, despite being recorded and signed-for with the Royal Mail, had gone missing. After 34mins wait on the phone to the enquiries department, I got through to someone who said that they had no more information on the screen in front of them than I had on the screen in front of me. That was helpful.

Another frustration was the Riley hub nuts. I didn’t have a spanner to fit, but The Great Collector produced this wonderful tool – a cart hub nut spanner from The Olden Days. Unfortunately, it didn’t work because the gap in the centre of the stalk – not visible in this picture – was too small for the drive shaft to slip through.

So I made my own box spanner out of a couple of pieces of angle-iron and some bits from the scrap bin. It wasn’t quite as easy as it looked, and one end will be suitable for the more generously proportioned nut.

It worked. A bit of luck was when it came to the nuts for the 8 studs. I’m not sure what thread they are but in my stock of aircraft nuts and bolts I had 16 nyloc nuts of the right size. As they’re American AN hardware, I haven’t quite worked out what’s going on.

They worked too. Then came the business of assembling the newly shod shoes onto the back plates. That was fun.

The springs sit on the rear face of the shoes and apart from the irritation of the hooks dropping out of their respective holes at the critical moment, once the sequence was understood, the job was relatively easy.

I then discovered that the brake linings were too thick. Having got the shoes on, I wasn’t about to take them off again to file them down, so I do a bit each time I go into the workshop. The insides of the rear drums aren’t too sharp, so I’ll get Chumley to take a swire off on his grown-up lathe – every little helps.

The handbrake operating rods are installed. Two pipe diameters are used on the RME: 3/16″ pipe extends to the rear brakes and the fronts are a mixture of 3/16″ and 1/4″ – fortunately, the latter still available.

Being a simple fellow and easily confused, I thought it best to make a small diagram before the necessary parts were ordered. I’ve opted for a 4-way junction mid-chassis to accommodate a brake light switch.

And to round off the week, a ‘little job’ for The Great Collector’s Daimler. What was left of the exhaust might have filled a paper bag, so I ordered a Ford Focus back box and chopped the corners off to fit it between the chassis members. Not having pipe bending equipment, to get the exhaust going in the right direction, it was a case of cutting ‘V’s and welding to make the bends. Not pretty, but it’s not going to break.