[olduser]

Found on the BBC News;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0j97xegz5no

Never owned one but I have hired them.

When I think Transit, I think of working in Southern Ireland.
The owners of the new Glass Fibre factory had underestimated the amount of glass required to run the factory we were running out fast.
Seamus, one of the factory workers (always only just this side of being drunk) offered to get some glass bottles, if he was paid his wages + expenses.
He had a beat up Transit van, painted blue I think with a yard brush.

At the end of the next day, the blue transit was seen approaching the factory, veering all over the road with a big swarm of wasps following, with a well lubricated Seamus in charge.
He had spent the day visiting local pubs collecting empties, and sampling (as he put it), by the time we sorted out the coloured glass, we could only use clear glass, his day had produced one very drunk Seamus, a cloud of wasps, and enough glass for about one hours running.😊

One other memorable load of glass was a 40 foot trailer loaded with Irish Gin, complete with a swarm of revenue men.
All our glass went through a crusher, so the bottles of gin went into the crusher while crushed glass and gin poured out.
I don't remember why the gin had to be dumped but I do remember a few cars leaving at the end of the shift very low down at the back end, including the revenue cars!

[NMNeil]

I made a lot of money replacing those fiber timing gears in their disastrous V4 engines. 😀

[olduser]

Interesting, I have never heard of a fibre gear problem in that Ford engine, where was it and do you know what the gear was made of?

[Rolebama]

I bought a MK2 secondhand in 1985. Every year it went for it's MOT, it failed on rust. It was only 8yrs old when I had finally had enough and scrapped it. It had had wings, quarter panel repair panels, door steps, and a few holes in the floor welded. What finally finished it for me was when the side door surround started letting water in because it had virtually perforated to the point when I thought the door was likely to fall off. It had a 2L Pinto engine, and with the occasional spray-bar, ran brilliantly.

[NMNeil]

Originally Posted by olduser

Interesting, I have never heard of a fibre gear problem in that Ford engine, where was it and do you know what the gear was made of?

It was a plastic material of some sort, they also used it in the Essex V6 engines, with the same disastrous results.
Watch at the 9 minute mark where he say's the teeth are made of nylon.

[olduser]

Originally Posted by NMNeil

It was a plastic material of some sort, they also used it in the Essex V6 engines, with the same disastrous results.
Watch at the 9 minute mark where he say's the teeth are made of nylon.

Thanks NMNiel, the one in the picture (cam shaft gear) looks to me like a plastic disk with steel teeth on the rim which wouldn't make sense if the intention was to make the gears run quite.
In the video the cam shaft gear is labelled as Nylon but it looks to be a metal disk with plastic teeth.
All the Nylon I have used in engineering would not work for that gear, as Nylon approach it's temperature limit it gets softer and more flexible then it slowly hardens and becomes brittle.

Tufnol - an electrical insulating board laminated with resin and cotton fibres usually brown in colour, would be a likely choice. It could be machined into gears or bushes and collars etc. and ran well with steel but not as strong as steel.

Did the third gear, to the left of the crankshaft gear drive the oil pump?

[NMNeil]

Originally Posted by olduser

All the Nylon I have used in engineering would not work for that gear, as Nylon approach it's temperature limit it gets softer and more flexible then it slowly hardens and becomes brittle.

Which is exactly what happened.😎
To be honest I can't remember what drove the oil pump but the other gear would be a likely candidate.

[Rolebama]

When I left the Army and started work in a motorcycle workshop, I completely rebuilt my 1939 Ariel Square Four 600cc. As work on it progressed, I found myself being considered the man-to-go-to for all Square Four work. They had fibre gears connecting the front and rear crankshafts. Only metal in those gears was the centres where they located on the crankshafts. I must have worked on hundreds over the years, and never came across a damaged one. In fact I never even saw a particularly worn one, even on some very high mileage or abused bike. However, I will say that these were helical, not straight cut gears, so maybe that had something to do with it.

[olduser]

That's interesting but odd Rolebama, I have used mostly Tufnol gears in industrial drives to reduce noise, and found if properly designed for the load I never saw any wear on the tufnol but the steel gear running with them (in oil) would polish up. I wonder why the bike had helical gears tufnol should have killed the gear noise with straight cut gears, and unless the gears were double helix, they have introduced a side thrust? But then I never designed motor bike engines.

[Santa]

I used to work for a company that made, among other things, potato peelers. These were basically a motor with a pinion, driving a gear on a shaft that spun a disc that was coated with carborundum. This was at the bottom of a cylinder that was also coated.

Water flowed through, and the spinning base plate tumbled the potatoes and rubbed off the skins,

There was a risk that a stone in the potatoes would jam the revolving disk, so the pinion was made of fibre so that it was the weak link -cheap and easy to replace.

[NMNeil]

@Santa The very fist job I ever had as a nipper was loading the spuds into such a machine at my local chippie 😁

[olduser]

I think the machines are referred to as Rumblers.

One snag is the washings tend to block drains and ferment, when I lived in Norfolk there was a fish and chip shop about half a mile upwind. When they had drain trouble the stink would reach the area where I liked, in summer the stink hung about for days.

[riyowright]

@olduser yes i too seen that