The Bristol 405 restoration and documentary project is steadily progressing and as a part of this, all of us who are involved with it have been doing a bit of travelling to discover many things Bristol – in both technical and historical senses.
We made the journey to Aerospace Bristol travelling in Chris’ 400 and 405 DHC cars in convoy. This was also an opportunity for adding a piece to a personal family link with Bristol, for the Museum is home to A-7288 – a replica Bristol F2B Fighter aeroplane built by Rolls Royce and GKN apprentices.
It turns out that my Grandfather, although never having owned a Bristol car did take the trouble in 1938 to acquire a 1917 Bristol F2B fighter plane. And for the princely sum of £29 it’s easy to see why that might appeal. The Fighter, originally registered F-4587 had been used as part of a display which he had organised for the 1937 Coronation air show.
Sadly my Grandfather’s Bristol Fighter was destroyed during an air raid at RAF Hendon in 1940 although I imagine that this must have been the least of his worries at that particular moment in history. It is now just approaching 110 years since the manufacture of the first Bristol F2B and the beautifully presented replica at the Aerospace Museum conveys a true sense of its magnificent design as well as bringing a piece of family history to vivid life.
Further travels took us to Princes Wharf in Bristol where we were able to view the original wooden bucks on which the Bristol 405 body panels were built.
With thought to the volume of luggage and camera equipment 
we wanted to bring with us we decided that the transport this time was to be decidedly more “Coventry” than previous excursions and William Lyons’ finest compact saloon, resplendent in Sherwood Green enjoyed a swift and sunny trip to the home city of our Bristol project.
We are most grateful for the unstinting help from Lee and all his colleagues at Bristol where we were able to uncover a fascinating part of the history of out project car.
The Bristol factory wooden bucks were used to produce the front and rear body sections for all the 405 saloon cars as well as producing the front sections for Bristol 404 cars and Bristol 405 Drop Head Coupes. They provided us with a fascinating insight into manufacture of these cars: We had noticed when working on our project that the shape of the tail fins on the rear wings are a little uneven from one side to the other: The rear profile differs from left to right and furthermore both fins are angled slightly to the left hand side of the car instead of sitting exactly vertical. And sure enough this is exactly how the wooden buck is shaped for the rear section of the car.
The rear body of the Bristol 405 Drop Head Coupe (the fascia of which you can see at the top of this post) was built by Abbots of Farnam from a chassis and front body supplied by Bristol Cars. Even more interestingly the discrepancy of line and shape found in the tail fins of the wooden buck also appear on the Drop Head body. Could this indicate that at least some of the rear body section were supplied to Abbots by Bristol cars?
We look forward to retuning to Princes Wharf for more things Bristol in the future but for now it’s back to the workshop for further progress on the project.
The Bristol is very much a “hands on” project for owner, Chris who has been joining me in the workshop to remove all the remaining bright work and fittings before stripping the body to bare aluminium. Work is being filmed by Keith whose camera equipment in the accompanying photo is already beginning to make the 405 look like a film star.
The Bristol was blessed with a paint coverage of quite some thickness having at some point in the distant past been subject to a budget “respray” over the top of the manufacturer’s already generous finish. Most of it was persuaded to leave the car by means of a blowlamp and painstaking scraping whilst delicate areas were attended to with paint stripper.
From the bolt – upright seating position of the Land Rover V8, a quick glance in the interior mirror confirms that the Bristol is travelling stably on the trailer behind. Another glance, this time into the driver’s door mirror reveals the unmistakeable sight of an early E Type Jaguar squatting purposefully on its haunches and preparing for a swift overtaking manoeuvre. Its bonnet raises and within moments the Jaguar pauses and remains alongside the Land Rover and trailer combination.
It is often said that Lofty England himself managed to pose for photo shoots behind the wheel of a Series One E Type and glancing to my right I reflect that this may have been done with no clever editing of period press photos: At considerably over 6 feet in height, film maker Keith Craig is carrying off a remarkably elegant job of manipulating quite bulky camera equipment from the passenger seat.
The current state of partial disassembly gives away that this is an abandoned project, one which was discovered previously in Ireland sans engine or gearbox before it was subsequently returned to England. A prior owner managed to locate a correct Bristol 100B2 engine in the Isle of Man which arrived and turned out to be the original engine for this exact car. How likely is this? Well the small volume of Bristol production predicates that the likelihood is higher than could be expected of most marques however this must surely still be a fairly unlikely story. Mostly.
The project vehicle for this blog post is a BMC Riley 1.5 which proved to be one of the trickiest conversions due to lack of space. Here’s a photo of the carbon clutch bearing removed from the Riley after just 2 years of driving in the city of London…. as you can see, not only has the carbon completely disappeared but even the cast iron carrier has become worn away after contact with the clutch cover plate. Clearly not an acceptable state of affairs!
