Restoring a fan pulley

I was rummaging around in my O and S box the other day and came across an old cast iron fan pulley which had been dropped and the flange was broken in a couple of places. I thought it might be possible to silver solder in some metal and turn to size on the lathe.

The first photo shows one of the broken edges having been prepared on the hand shaper (a really useful bit of kit) and one edge already with a piece of metal silver soldered into place and lightly skimmed on the lathe.

The second photo shows the pulley mounted in the lathe and having a facing cut being taken to true up the outside edge. The next operation on the lathe was to clean up the inside of the pulley and this proved to be a bit of a nail biter with everything flying around and the tool coming in and cutting the wall of the pulley. When that was successfully finished I had to blend in the inside edges by hand filing so that the fan belt would not be cut. All that remained to be done was to press in the brass bushes and to aid lubrication I chased out a spiral groove with a mini drill in the inside wall of both of the bushes.

I have always wondered why so much grease is flung out from the fan however careful one is in charging the grease nipple. After stripping everything down I found that the shaft on which the fan unit runs is obviously drilled down its whole length so that the grease nipple is linked with the crossed drill hole from which the grease exits. But this set up also means that grease is able to travel down the shaft and build up in the nose cone of the casting of the fan blades from which it is flung out into the engine bay. I have therefore blocked off the end of the shaft so the grease can only lubricate the bushes of the pulley and not coat everything in the front of the engine.

An interesting little project and one that rescues a piece of Austin history from the scrap heap.

Richard Bishop DA7C