Fun With an Old Lady. (A tale of old Humber motorcars.)

 

Fun with an Old Lady.

 

Running Humber Super Snipes as a family car

in the 1950s-60s and 70s.

 

By Neil Cairns.

 

 

 

Introduction;-

These two articles are related by their subject matter, Humber motorcars. They were written over fifteen years ago for a local newsletter of the Chiltern Vintage Vehicle Club.

 

1) Fun with an Old Lady!

 

Many of us are of an age where we can remember in the 1960s riding motorcycles very fast on trunk roads like the A5. In my own case it was between the Sandhouse Inn near Heath and Reach, and Dunstable Chalk Cutting in Bedfordshire. I remember that some ran at well over 100mph. Then no one wore crash helmets, and by not doing so did anyone break any law! Such constricting laws that today save thousands of lives on our roads, simply did not exist. There was no top speed limit on open roads then, and only ‘cissies’ wore helmets. Boy oh boy, have we all learned our lesson since those apparently halcyon days. I for one, have many young friends whose graves I still visit, who died in motorcycle ‘accidents’. Luckily for me, my ancient BSA 250cc C11 could only manage 55mph. Times have changed, and it is not the foolishness of speed that kills the majority of motorcyclists today, but the impatient motorist pulling out of side roads into their path. ‘I did not see him officer,’ is often heard and an epitaph on many grave stones.

 

The village of Wavendon in Buckinghamshire where I then lived had just lost one of its young men in such an accident. There were about eight of us lads in the village, all now in our late teens, and one was now dead, his pillion passenger in hospital. This was all well before that terrible conurbation of characterless buildings now called Milton Keynes. That location was still a pleasant little village just off the A50, ( now the A4012,) towards Newport Pagnell. Milton Keynes village was tiny, with a nice little pub with a cricket pitch behind it. Wavendon was also another tiny agricultural community, unheard of by anyone living more than 20 miles away from it. There were proper thick high hedges, tiny winding empty country lanes, and well tended small fields then; not the continuous traffic noise, air pollution and huge prairies we now have. In the village, the ‘Leathern Bottel’ pub ( correct spelling by the way) was our local, and it was to there we village ‘teenage-youths’ gravitated one evening to drown our sorrows, and perhaps consider our own futures. I was considering buying a ‘safer’ motor car, but a lack of finance was as usual the problem. In 1963 apprentice toolmakers did not get very well paid, ( £2.16s a week, now £2.80p.)

 

In those early-1960’s, there was still a number of itinerant agricultural workers who looked for work by travelling about. So there were often unknown, non-village people in the public bar. At busy times on the local farms, the place could be filled with these extra workers. On this particular Saturday evening, there was a lad of about our own age with whom we began to chat. It transpired he was with his parents who were farm hands, and had recently moved into a tied cottage at Home Farm that belonged to Wavendon House. This old big house once the Manor has since been a girls school, and is today now yet another space-wasting Golf Course. Their tiny brick built, tied cottage was along a dirt track, leading off the Cross End road. This was in those days, a very peaceful, narrow winding lane with high hedges, the haunt of foxes, Ferguson tractors and the odd cyclist. This lad had also come to drown his sorrows, but for a different reason. He could not get the family car to start. Myself being of a technical mind, sat chatting to him over the problem, and eventually agreed to go the following day to have a look at the car. My reason was two-fold, I may be able to fix it for them for a bit of cash, or I may offer to buy it. From what he told me, I assumed it was a pre-war Hillman badged up as a small four cylinder Humber.

 

It was early the next morning when I arrived at the cottage front door. I had walked the mile there as I was carrying a toolbox unsuitable for a motorcycle. My little 1946 BSA C11 was no ton-up machine, nor could it carry heavy tool boxes. The cottage was a typical agricultural workers house. The ‘front’ door had a simple barn door type latch and it had not been painted for years, the bottom quarter devoid of any paint at all where it had often been kicked open. It led direct into the kitchen area that had a dry earth floor. I still remember all this, as it shocked me a little even then to think such dwellings still existed. There was electricity, as a bare bulb hung on a wire suspended from the ceiling. The sitting-room did have a flag stone floor on which a huge unwashed, shaggy dog of unknown breed lay. My new friend and the huge dog took me out to a lean-too shed behind the bland brick cottage. It was then I made the decision I would help him fix the car and not offer to buy it, as I now saw it was certainly no little Hillman wearing a Humber badge. There, sitting with its bonnet removed, was a huge pre-war khaki Humber ‘Snipe’ of about 1939-40 vintage. A massive side-valve six-cylinder engine sat under the bonnet, its capacity of 4086cc producing 100bhp and fuel consumption was well beyond my meagre pocket! He told me the car was one of about 1500 made just at the beginning of WW2, many going to the armed forces as staff cars. By the dull colour of this large saloon, it too had spent some time in uniform. There was no rust visible on the cars panels but plenty of minor dents. The interior was leather, well worn, but tidy. It had huge bench seats front and rear, a column change three speed gearbox and a massive steering wheel. The technical gene in me absorbed the car, as I was comparing it to my fathers recently sold sv 1952 Humber Super Snipe Mk3, ( replaced with a second-hand 1957 ohc Singer Gazelle estate car.)

 

To the younger readers, an explanation is required here. After WW2 few new cars were available to the general public as the UK was exporting like mad to pay off its war-debts. Even fewer people had the cash to buy a new car anyway. So a huge number of old cars were still in daily use on our roads. The really big luxury cars could be had very, very cheaply. Cars such as this big Humber did between 9 to 16 miles per gallon, so few people wanted them; so again they were even cheaper than most to buy. My father had paid £10 for his immaculate Mk3, with its glass screen division between the front and rear seats; a real blessing with six children and one on the way. ( He could afford to run the car, as he was a civil servant and worked for the Ministry of Works and got mileage allowance.)

 

I could see that the chassis and running gear of the Snipe was very similar to that of my father recent but later Mk3. Major differences were the water-pump being driven off a jack shaft at the front, the pump sat on the side of the cylinder block. Its drive continued through it to a canvas coupling, that drove a huge dynamo mounted behind it. I could see it had coil ignition, but the distributor and other items on the cylinder head had been removed. I also saw that about four nuts still anchored the cast-aluminium cylinder-head to the block. These nuts were at its centre portion the rest had been removed. The car had been miss-firing badly so the lad had begun to strip the car’s engine, as he had (correctly) suspected burnt out valves. He did not have the correct tools, and had given up about two weeks earlier. This worried me, as I suspected that that long, thin, alloy casting would ’bend’ if it was only clamped down at its centre.

 

The huge Snipe had been purchased by the family in the mid-1950’s, by the lad’s father. It had come from a ex-WD auction for just a few pounds. One item that had put potential buyers off, was the huge sand tyres it still carried on the tiny wheels. His father had brought the car, as it was similar to those Humber Super Snipes used by the Metropolitan Police, and because of the huge amount of room in its cabin for their itinerant lifestyle. I was shown the paintwork, and how thick it was. Underneath the dull military paint was the original gloss cellulose, so no doubt this basically civilian car had been commandeered by the army at the beginning of WW2. It had not had much use though, as the mileage and general condition proved.

 

I set about removing the cylinder head completely. This we checked with a steel rule to find it had indeed bowed, by about ten thou’. I showed the lad how to remove the exhaust valves and grind them in. From a huge military ammunition box in the boot, he produced used, but good condition/second-hand valves. From these and those from the engine, we selected the best six exhaust valves. This same engine was in use in fire engines, Commer lorries, ambulances, and the like so it was not hard to find spares. The lad had obtained parts as he found them available, just in case. A little like you and I today, with our garages and sheds full of bits that ‘we might need one day.’ With the valves nicely seated in the block, ( side-valve engine remember,) the car was covered up to await the cylinder-head which required attention.

 

Monday I took the bowed cylinder head to work, and on a milling machine during my dinner-hour, skimmed it flat again; unseen by the foreman who had gone off shopping. I had to take 12 thou off, thus ending up with a cylinder head with the original 6.5 to 1 compression ratios on the end cylinders, and perhaps nearer 7 to 1 on the centre ones. This ‘head was carried to and from work hidden down my jacket on my little BSA C11, its four foot length stuck well up past the top of my head and must have looked very odd. I also ‘borrowed’ a decent set of BSF nuts from the stores, to refit the head. The lad had not been kind when removing the originals, a rather typical agricultural approach with a chisel had ruined some of them.

 

The following Saturday I arrived with the cleaned up ‘head, a set of new spark plugs, points and condenser. I assembled it all without any problems, using the old, undamaged copper-asbestos cylinder head gasket. Today people would look askance at such practice, but where there is no money available, more care is taken to save expensive items. On the same lines we added plain water to the radiator, anti-freeze being an unobtainable luxury. The battery had been removed and stored in the house, and I had borrowed my father’s enormous and noisy battery charger to boost it up. Once re-fitted, the ignition light came on, and the engine spun over as only a huge side valve six-cylinder can. It would not start. I re-checked the ignition timing, and tried again by pouring a little petrol directly into the mouth of the single, tiny, Zenith down-draught carburetter. The engine would now fire, but not run. Eventually the battery was discharged again and unable to turn the engine, so we tried using the massive starting handle. Again it would fire, but not run.

 

You have all been here I bet. You know it will run, but it refuses. What it needed was a tow-start we decided that would blow out all the cobwebs, and leave the battery to just supply the ignition. I had borrowed my father Singer Gazelle estate car on this day, to bring the tools, ‘head, charger, and spares. Like everyone in those days, it also carried a towrope. Now, this Humber Snipe was about 30cwt, and the little Gazelle was about 21cwt. In those days 20cwt was equal to one Ton, or 2240 pounds. We both knew the car would start with a bit of encouragement, so he was to steer the Humber and I pull it with the 1500cc Gazelle. To save my father’s car any damage, I tied the towrope to the rear axle under the car and then to the front chassis leg of the Humber. The rope was a good length and the lad knew all about the lead car putting on its brake lights, and the towed car doing the braking to keep the rope taut.

 

So mid-afternoon I started up the Gazelle, and took the strain on the rope. The dirt track to the cottage and barn was very long, so we tried the first slow tow-start along it. The Humber was firing up as I could see the clouds of smoke in my rear-view mirror, and hear the popping and banging of its exhaust. We arrived at the end of the track and it still had not started, so we then decided to give it a run along the narrow lane towards the village. This was much more successful as I got the Gazelle into second gear, and then I heard a roar behind me as the old Humber burst into life on all six cylinders, and the rope went slack as it powered itself along. The lad touched his brakes to stop both cars, but as there was now some slack it pulled up the Gazelle with a hard jolt. I did not suspect anything wrong until I got out to untie the rope. It was then I saw the Gazelle’s rear off-side wheel was well aft in its wheel arch, almost touching the rear edge. The Humber was now sitting burbling away to itself contentedly, almost like a sewing machine. We had cured one problem, swapping it for another. Had I bent the rear axle towing such a heavy car? Will my Dad kill me? Luck was on our side as all I had done, was to shear off the bolt head that located the leaf-spring into the axles spring-pad. Back in the barn we jacked up the car and removed the Singer’s rear wheel, lifted the axle tube up off the axle once the long ‘U’ bolts had been undone, fitted another bolt to the centre of the spring, a suitable bolt was found in the Humber’s ammo-box, and bolted it all up tight again. The bolt head that located the spring pad was hexagonal now, not a dowel shape, but my Dad would never know.

 

To celebrate the Humber’s successful rebuild that evening, the huge old Humber collected the lads from the village, and its driver took us to the pub in Milton Keynes village for a pint or two. The old car sat proudly under the large tree outside the pub, it had even been washed. No one would have been surprised if Montgomery himself had turned up! A week later the family in the tied cottage moved away on to other work. Alas, I cannot remember their names and have not seen or heard from them since. But I do remember that huge Humber Snipe, an old lady who refused to be beaten wearing massive sand tyres that purred on the tarmac.

 

2) Fun With Our Own Old Lady.

 

 

 

Humber motorcars played a large part in my teenage education about the motor car. It should be obvious from the first article that even at 18, I knew quite a bit about them. My father’s cars in my childhood were pre-war cars like a 1929 six cylinder Daimler limousines and an odd 1930s Lanchester fitted with a pre-selector gearbox, which could be picked up for a few pounds in the early 1950’s. As the family grew and post was cars became available on the second-hand market, big Humber’s came into the family fold. These I learnt to de-coke, mend punctures, change wheels, adjust fan belts, change dynamo brushes, etc, all before I was twelve years old. I was quite a capable driver at thirteen, being taken to local abandoned airfields and let lose on the wide runways as young as eleven. Our family lived all over the UK as we followed my father’s civil service job about, him being a Clerk of Works.

 

The first Humber I can remember was a 1952 Mark 3 Super Snipe, registration ‘FO6257’. To me this was a truly immense motor car with about 30cwt of steel and iron in its construction. The engine was the famous Blue Riband 4,139cc overhead-valve, ( ohv, ) conversion of the earlier 1938 100bhp 4086cc side valve unit. The slightly larger ohv engine produced 113 bhp, more than enough to propel the car to nearly 90 mph. The engine was initially made for the Commer range of trucks, so the car once again shared the engine with a lorry. It was a very under-stressed engine, in the lazy American motorcar style, and could last 200,000 miles or more. In fact the car could be had with an Amercian designed automatic gearbox if required. The large gun-metal-grey car my father purchased for just £10, was in an early metallic paint finish. Inside it was leather, and leather cloth, with a glass partition behind the front seats. Two small seats could be folded up from the floor, though this was not a Pullman model. The rather sparse dash that looked a little like an American Juke-Box in its styling, had a half circle speedometer, two heater control knobs, ( a real luxury in those days, ) and the controls and tuner for a car radio. The valves for this very up-to-date technology were in a box under the drivers seat. I should know as I once shoved the massive starting handle under that seat, and broke a valve with the dent I put in its cover. Today buying such a car for £10 might seem cheap, but no one wanted such a gas-guzzler, and the average weekly wage was just £7.

 

This Humber replaced an aging and completely worn out 1929 Daimler saloon that drank as much oil as it did petrol. We were living at Aldermaston in Hampshire at that time, as Dad was busy building the AWRE, Atomic War Research Establishment, on the old WW2 airfield. I would have been about nine years old when it arrived.

 

The car had the usual massive sprung steering wheel, and a three speed, column change gearbox lever on the side of the steering column. To be able to drive this monster, I had to have a cushion to see out of its windscreen and could just reach the pedals. My sister of two years my junior also drove it on a few occasions, but only in a low gear at low speed. I once took it up to an indicated 80mph on an airstrip, before my father told me off. There was no real sensation of speed, as the runways were so wide, and the car appeared to glide along, only the speedometer told the true speed. This effortless power was to cause me serious problems in a later version when I was 14.

 

The Mk3 Super Snipe still used the rather crude transverse front leaf spring, located centrally to give a form of independent front suspension with wishbones. It was not ideal and could be trounced by a really rough, potholed road, which would snatch the steering wheel from my young hands if not careful. It was once again, a pre-war system, as used on the Snipes and bigger Hillmans. The wheels were massive, and the headlights flared into the front wings. The grill was more upright than the 1938-39 models, with smaller side grills much in the fashion of later 1950’s and 60’s Rootes cars. I use to wash and clean the car, and as it had a massive channel section chassis, sweeping the floor was easy as the floor carpets were level with the door bottoms; there were no ‘sills’ as on modern cars to impede the brush. The doors covered the small ‘running boards’ when closed. Punctures were far more common in those days, and the cross-ply tyres were run to the cords as there was no Mot regulations then existing to say otherwise. It was when changing a front wheel I found out just how heavy the wheels were. I had jacked the car up, loosening the wheel nuts before doing so, and was just lifting the wheel from its studs when it fell towards me. Over we both went onto the footpath, with myself trapped under the wheel in the gutter. It amused my father and taught me to use the momentum of such things to move themselves in future and to not try to lift such huge items.

 

In 1959 the Ministry of Transport began the dreaded Ten Year Test of all motorcars. This panicked my father into selling the old Humber, and replacing it with a slightly newer one. The first Humber had been with us for about four years, Aldermaston, Malvern and now Brampton in Cumberland. He heed not have worried, as the test only covered ‘cycle-parts’, like steering, brakes, etc. The ’52 Super Snipe found a new owner, a Doctor in Carlisle who thought it a grand machine. The car that replaced the grey Humber was another Humber Super Snipe, this time a 1956 Mk 4B, in black. This car took Dad to and from the RRE, Rocket Research Establishment at Spadeadam, and his now large family down to Buckinghamshire to see relatives often.

 

This was the model that used the rear saloon half of the Mk4 Hawk, but the front panel work was about a foot longer to take the reliable old 4,139cc ohv Blue Riband engine, now with 122 bhp. The styling was much more modern, though the chassis was similar to the earlier cars. There was a major difference as the double-wishbone ifs using coil springs, also developed from the smaller four-cylinder Hawk was fitted. With decent telescopic dampers this was a much better behaved car to drive. It had all the luxury of leather seats, the same type of valve radio, now with a large speaker in the dash and the valves still under the drivers seat; column change gearbox with the same three speeds, but there was no where near as much room in the cabin as there had been in the Mk 3 where extra seats were folded into the rear floor. There was a partition fitted in this car and we suspected it had been a private, chauffeur driven model. It was certainly in good condition.

 

The large number of offspring of my father still fitted in the back, but we were all growing, by now two of us were teenagers when this car arrived . It had better streamlining than the sit-up-and-beg styling of the Mk3. It probably did about 16 miles to the gallon at its cruising speed. Fuel consumption did not worry my father, he needed the car for his job and got mileage allowances for petrol. The only time I can ever remember him being out of fuel was back in 1956 during the Suez Crisis, and that was only because the local petrol station had run dry, he always had plenty of coupons. In this car we went on our first motorway, the Preston By-Pass built in late 1959 ( now part of the M6) on route south to see our grandparents.

 

The massive construction of this car once saved him serious injury. One winter Dad found himself on black ice on Spadeadam Moor in Cumberland, and skidded between a thick stone wall, and the side of a lorry. This left the car with a pointed front end and the front wheels facing inwards, but as the wings were bolted on and steering arms were easy to change, the garage had it repaired and resprayed within the week. Try that in today’s car-repair climate. The Mk4B served us well as a family, I de-coked it twice, lifting off the huge cast-iron cylinder head by standing in the engine bay, one leg each side of the engine. It took forever to grind in those twelve valves. Then I had my disaster. About a year after the above accident, and at fourteen years of age, driving illegally on the public roads with my father in the passenger seat, I failed to take a sharp right hand bend and ran the nearside wheel into the ditch. The car dragged the wheel along the ditch and I added a bit more power to try to get the wheel out and back on the road. The front wheel got a grip but the wheels were now facing across the road. The car leapt out onto the road shooting across it at an angle and then embedded itself into a ditch the other side. The momentum of the heavy car took it up into the hedge. Hidden in the hedge was a large tree stump. I can still remember the engine and gearbox coming through the bulkhead as I was thrown through the steering wheel. My first accident. Neither of us was hurt, apart from bruises.

 

We found a local farmer to pull us out with his tractor and the car was recovered to the garage. The damage was all underneath, where the car had landed on the stump. Again, it only took a week to be repaired, using a second-hand engine and propeller shaft, and some good metal work on the underside of the dash. The rest of the car was untouched. Where as the first accident my father had on the ice was paid for by the insurance company, Dad had to fork out for this one himself. I was not permitted to drive for some months after that, and we told my mother that Dad had put his lit cigarette into his mouth the wrong way round, burning his lip and losing concentration. We have no photos of this car, so no idea of its registration.

 

As it was I who did the cars servicing, and my interest went over to my own motorcycles, in the freezing winter of 1962-63 the Humber’s engine did not get any anti-freeze added. One night it pushed out a core plug, and we were lucky the damage was no worse. I had by now left school and we were living in Wavendon, Buckinghamshire; I was an indentured apprentice toolmaker. The Super Snipe had been transporting Dad all over the North London area, where he looked after a number of government sites. In all his Humber’s he covered huge mileages.

 

This car eventually went, and after being traded in for a 1957 ohc Singer Gazelle, it was to be replaced with a 1963 Series 5 Humber Super Snipe, registration ‘559BYO’. The Gazelle was a real rot-box and fell to bits very soon after purchase. This new (to us) Super Snipe was one of the first UK cars to have twin headlamp sets. It had no chassis being of a monocoque construction, and was again a longer version of the very similar 1957 Hawk. The Super Snipe did not use a Humber engine, but a six cylinder high-camshaft engine of Armstrong Siddeley design with crossed over push-rods permitting a hemispherical combustion chamber, and central spark plugs hidden down tubes in the rocker cover. Though it was a tiny 2,651cc, it was a very modern design and a smaller copy of the Armstrong Siddeley 3,400cc Sapphire unit. In the Series 5 it produced 132 bhp, and made the Super Snipe the first real 100 mph Humber. Physically the engine was much smaller than the massive Blue Riband unit, but much more refined. The plug leads were tidily run to their respective plug through a metal ducting, all very neat. I drove this car a few times, and cleaned it often. By now I was driving it legally, and had to put my own petrol in. The first time I had to top up its fuel tank, with my girlfriend in the car, much to my embarrassment I could not find the fuel filler cap until the cashier yelled out to me it was under the nearside-rear reflector. On the front door step, on each side, was a riveted plaque that said, “ Pinewood Studios,” and we found out later it had once been one of their staff cars. It had once been fitted with an air-conditioning unit, but all that remained was the multiple belt, 6 grooved-pulley in the crankshaft, and the holes where it had bolted to car’s framework. It did still have power steering, which kept leaking. The power steering pump had two belts, the water pump had two belts, and two were the unused air-conditioning.

 

Dad had found this Super Snipe on a farm, on one of his visits to government property. He paid the princely sum of £30 for it. It ran but need a major clean up, the boot for instance had been used by the chickens to nest in. Chicken poo is very corrosive indeed. Tee-cut was used to clean up the paint, and two rear doors from a ‘donor’ Hawk of the same colour in the local scrap-yard rid the car of the worst rust. The Hawk also gave up its better chrome bumpers and overiders. The interior was in excellent condition. It was I who carried out all the work required to get it up and running, and Mot legal. Once in use it was a fine looking example if you ignored the bubbling paint around the front wheel arches.

 

I had left home half way through the ownership of this car by my father to join the RAF, and it was only due to the servicing I gave it on my visits that it lasted as long as it did. Dad was getting old, and could not be bothered with the dirty part of owning a car. He never went near expensive garages, except for Mot checks. One visit I found the car parked in the rear yard unused. Dad told me the big ends had gone. I pulled the oil filter out to find it immersed in a grey sludge, water was mixing with the oil. There was no white metal in amongst its folds, so I changed the filter and filled the engine with new, clean oil. This was probably the first lot it had had in years. With a charged up battery, the engine started, only to clatter like a worn out diesel. I then traced the noise to the water pump bearings, they were shot. I had to go as far as Reading to find a new pump and it cost £11 from an old Rootes dealer. I soon had the car running sweetly again after a fitting a new ‘head gasket. Another fault soon appeared as the car never got greased anymore at regular servicings. The offside front wheel developed a marked lean-out at its top. I found the top-inner bearings of the top wishbone arm completely worn half way through. A good second-hand item from another scrap Hawk in a nearby scrap yard fitted, and cured the fault. Another time a misfire was cured by throwing away the worst set of worn out ignition points I had ever seen. Dad had by now retired and did not get his mileage allowance any more, so he began looking for a replacement.

 

Like all mono-constructed British cars, this one eventually succumbed to rusted out sills, and the outer edges of the flared front wings. It was a two-tone dark and light grey, and looked very stunning when clean. It was sold in 1972 for just £80 to an Irish chap, who was digging the tunnels for the new city of Milton Keynes sewers. It was replaced with a Triumph 2000 as there was no suitable Humber model now on offer. The old Humber could be seen running across the then open fields around the new city of Milton Keynes, ferrying navvies to and from the nearest pub.

 

NC.