We receive our first group of Automotive students
On the 5th of October, we were pleased receive our first group of automotive students from Dudley College. It is our hope that this will become a regular thing.
Since autumn half term, the college has moved part of their Automotive department from Wolverhampton Street campus to the Institute of Technology. Chris White (the lecturer for the Level 3 students) invited me to address his class and talk about the Maurice Project, after which six of the group asked to get involved.
This is such a great way for the students to add an extra dimension to their college training, by getting their hands on such a special and historic motorcar. You can just imagine future employers eyebrows raising as that read these students CV’s, and how part of their practical training involved working on a 1963 E-type Jaguar.
First, I introduced them to the car and explained how a restoration is very different from your day to day garage mechanic’s job. Rather than swapping out parts at speed this was about the preservation of as much of the original car as possible by careful restoration. In addition, this being a classic car it is completely free of all the electronic diagnostic equipment covering our cars today, so a more in depth knowledge of how everything works is required to keep it on the road.
One of their coursework modules concerned suspension ball joint repairs. This was good for us as the Jag’s upper wishbones, on both sides needed their ball joints replaced.
Thanks to SNG Barratt of Bridgenorth, we had been supplied with two upper ball joint repair kits.
We worked with the students to strip out the ball joints, springs, and shims etc, and compare them to the brand new ones in order to identify where the ware had occurred. As with so many areas of this hand built car, shims are required to make things fit. The ball joint is no exception and the repair kit comes with four, 0.4mm shim rings to help set the movement resistance of the joint. shims are added or removed until the joint is not to stiff or too slack.
Opposite you can see the students pumping grease into the ball joint once it had been re-assembled. These ball joint repair kits came with an additional grease nipple, fitted into the circular spring retaining plate. This helps inject grease more uniformly into the joint.
It looks like the students will be joining us for a couple of hours on Wednesdays going forwards.
Maurice would have been so thrilled to see how his car was being used for the benefit of these young trainees.
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