Innehållsförteckning för No 119 February - March 2024 från The Shed

Last summer, we managed to get time away from The Shed magazine workshop and hired a campervan for five days. Being lovers of the hot sun and the warm ocean, we headed to Northland. Not being ardent motor homers (it’s on our bucket list), we sought the security and comfort of camp-grounds even though we were able to freedom camp. Nothing like heaps of hot water to wash the dishes and an ice cream shop close at hand, eh? Our first camp-ground was a revelation: amazing facilities, stunning views, and the total joy for us grandparents at seeing kids playing till almost dark – unsupervised and carefree; sliding down steep hills on cardboard boxes, jumping on the flying fox, and playing searchlight when the daylight faded. This playtime was great…

What’s happening online at the-shed.nz? Every week, we upload new content onto The Shed website to add to the hundreds of articles and videos already on the site for readers to discover, learn from, and enjoy. Some uploads of the past few months include: Project: how to build a potting shed A great summer project https://the-shed.nz/building-a-potting-shed/ Building an electric pedal car A sheddie goes the extra mile on a kitset https://the-shed.nz/small-vehicle-large-challenge/ Tricks of the trade Get furniture repair tips from a pro https://the-shed.nz/tricks-of-the-trade/ From Rust to Rrroarrr video – part 1 Enjoy our AJS motorbike restoration in video form https://the-shed.nz/from-rust-torrroarrr-video-part-1/…

FAST FACTS NUMBER 10 Can’t find The Shed magazine? Maybe subscribing is not for you and you would prefer to buy copies of The Shed from your local magazine retailer. However, occasionally that can prove a tad difficult. Let us know by phone or email the name of the magazine retailer where you would like to buy The Shed, and we’ll get in touch and ask them to stock the magazine for you. Email editor@the-shed.nz or phone 09 200 4847 with the shop’s name and address, and leave it to us to sort it out. SUBSCRIBE TODAY ONE YEAR $89 SAVE 18%! SIX MONTHS $47 SAVE 13% TO SUBSCRIBE VISIT MAGSTORE.NZ OR CALL 0800 727 574 The Shed magazine subscription terms and conditions: • Prizes/Gifts are as stated, not redeemable for…

The easy rider – an Ayrburn tale Roads are meant for cars. Today, at least. But back in 1915, the accepted wisdom was that roads were meant for more traditional forms of locomotion, like horses or well-soled feet. This modern contraption called the ‘automobile’ was seen by many as a dangerous fad or a reckless folly. RM Paterson was not one of those people. Just like the loveable Toad in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (published a few years prior), RM was an automotive enthusiast. To say that he enjoyed the practical and recreational rewards that his Buick tourer afforded him would be an understatement. However, RM found it impossible to bring his beloved Buick home, because Skippers Canyon Road was officially closed to motor vehicles during daylight…

“Doug immediately realised that the bike was a racer from the early 1900s” The house in which Doug Watkinson grew up was across the road from Christchurch’s Avon River. Doug and his brother had a canoe and were on the water most days. Neighbouring kids also had canoes, so the river was the centre of the social scene. At that time, Christchurch – flat, with generally fine weather – was a city of bicycles, like present-day Copenhagen or 1990s Hanoi (on a particularly quiet day), with virtually every kid riding to school on a bike and most blue-collar workers biking to work. The Watkinson brothers would frequently come across a bicycle that had been dumped in the Avon and would usually retrieve it and take it home. Getting these nearterminal…

The end pages of Jonathan Kennett’s book The Bikes We Built show some of the New Zealand bicycle badges recorded by photographer Shane Price; many were from Christchurch bike shops. Doug Watkinson’s Nottingham-made Challenger, which probably dates from the 1930s, sports several water transfer badges. One (on the rear guard) is from A Diack of Palmerston, New Zealand, another (on the chain guard) is from Davis & Prentice Ltd of Invercargill, New Zealand; the comparatively simple “Challenger, Nottingham, England”, is on the bottom tube. These badges are like heraldic crests. The Challenger badge probably indicates the maker. “A Diack” is probably the business that originally sold this bike new. Davis & Prentice Ltd presumably sold it as a second-hand machine. Or maybe one of the bike’s owners simply applied the…

“We started with a very sharp pencil, budgeting to build 36 caravans in the first year” They may be the curse of the travelling motorist, particularly on New Zealand’s many long, winding, and narrow roads, but caravans – especially old caravans – can light a fire of passion in some hearts. Restoring an old caravan has the appeal of being a shorter and less technically demanding task than restoring, say, a vintage motor vehicle, and when The Shed set out to do a piece on caravan restorations, we were spoiled for choice. I started with a call on Peter Newman, retired CEO of TrailLite Group in Pukekohe, to look at an immaculately restored 1956 Trail-Lite caravan. TrailLite is the only major survivor of the introduction by former prime minister Robert…

Before you start your rebuild, you’ve got to start with your chassis; that’s the foundation. If there’s any rust, it has to be repaired or replaced. Next, make sure your running gear is OK. Definitely remove the wheels and check the axles and springs. If the caravan has brakes, they must work, even if a caravan of that weight would not need brakes under modern regulations. Our featured ’56 Trail-Lite has a hydraulic brake. When the towing car applies its brakes, the caravan’s momentum causes a hydraulic system in the tow-bar to compress and activate the caravan’s brakes. If you’re looking at one of those, check and, if necessary, repair the hydraulics. Have a good look for rot; there are plenty of telltale signs. Open the ceiling cupboards where the…

‘ Lest we forget.’ On 25 April every year, veterans and uniformed services parade through the Auckland Domain to the memorial in front of the museum, followed by a procession of beautifully kept military vehicles, mainly World War II vintage. The meticulously maintained vehicles are the work, indeed the raison d’être, of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Military Vehicle Club and the military subgroup of MOTAT’s road transport section. Fisher & Paykel engineering manager Mike Beck is deeply involved in both outfits and is well into his second decade of volunteering at MOTAT. “I had an interest in vintage trucks and it has morphed into various things. I also run the military vehicle club,” he says. We look over a Bren gun carrier. “This was received in the…

The rim of a bicycle wheel has several functions. It has to hold the tyre securely; be strong enough to retain its shape under shock loads; and, usually, provide a surface that the bike’s brakes can rub against. The type of brake used determines the general shape of the rim. The bicycle’s rubber brake blocks, which use friction to convert moving energy into heat, can act either vertically or horizontally. Rod brakes are pulled vertically against the rim, so a flat surface parallel with the ground is needed. The Westwood rim, named after its inventor, is found on bicycles with rod brakes. It was a strong design, so is often found on wheels with the more powerful hub brakes. Calliper (cable) brakes act sideways, squeezing the rim, so a flat…

In the first couple of decades after World War II, European countries that had been involved in the conflict had some common features. One was that there was a huge amount of work to do, and another was that the workers were not well paid. Workers often had to travel significant distances to work in the new factories, but there may have been no public transport and the few cars for sale were expensive. Bicycles were the usual solution. Small motors that made the bicycle much faster and better able to cope with strong winds and hills were a popular accessory. These cycle motors came in two main types: motor wheel and clip-on. The motor wheels replaced the original rear wheel; clip-ons were bolted to the frame and powered a…

I’d like to talk about intuition – or, in layman’s terms, gut feeling. I recently asked myself whether intuition is still relevant for me and whether it is as reliable in our daily lives today as it may have been in the past. I came to the conclusion that, yes, it most definitely is relevant – especially when we need to decide whether what’s in front of us is real or fake. Considering that people in the Western world have become consumers of mass information and gluttons for instant knowledge, how helpful it would be if we had an innate ability to understand the rights and wrongs of something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. So, ideally, having the skills and abilities to decide whether information is credible is…

In the late 1980s, a young drag racer by the name of Neville ‘Nev’ Gadd was blitzing the country’s drag strips in world-beating times. Nev was piloting an altered dragster called ‘Plum Crazy’ and, in a 1990 New Zealand Hot Rod article about the car, he was described variously as an “iron man” with “nerves of steel” and as being “a modern-day Superman”. Three decades on, in his self-built workshop, Nev, in a flannel shirt and wool jumper, looks more like a mild-mannered, rural Clark Kent than a drag racing superhero. Here, he spends most of his days imparting his fabrication and problem-solving skills to the builds and restorations of other people’s rods and customs. While the ’shop is undoubtedly Nev’s happy place, one senses that his need for speed…

Another new year – they do seem to come around more quickly these days. I am looking forward to it because, in spite of everything, I am a perpetual optimist, and I have recently finished building my shed. At least, I will have by the time this magazine is printed. Now comes the fun bit: fitting it out. There are benches to build, cupboards and storage to be made or found. That’s always the most vexing part: the decisions on what to make and where to put it. But at least I am building something in the shed rather than building the shed. In many ways, I regret that I didn’t document this as well as I might have. However, I do have enough to make a story of the…

Hitting the trail for more extensive caravan restos, I revisited Marty Radford and Zoe from The Shed That Ate the House (The Shed, Issue No. 114). Marty and Zoe’s magnificent vehicles and steam projects had somewhat overshadowed their immaculate caravan restoration during my first visit, so I went back for a closer look. Not an easy road It must have seemed like a project cursed from the start. Zoe had her heart set on a small 10-foot caravan. Marty bought a neglected caravan cheaply off Trade Me and set off to Te Awamutu to collect it. He got no further than the southern motorway before a learner driver hit and wrote off his Falcon ute. “I was in the slow lane, towing the big transporter trailer. A learner driver in…

In England, the aristocracy have a regular round of summer events called ‘The Season’. It starts with the Grand National horse race in April, followed by the Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race, the Chelsea Flower Show, the Derby, Ascot, and Wimbledon, and culminates with the Edinburgh Festival in August. In the same way, some things are annual events in the Christchurch sheddie scene. At the beginning of November, there was, in its second year, the Rotary Ōtautahi Passport Christchurch Shed Tour, Behind the Shed Door, with 15 sheds available to be viewed. Then, towards the end of that month, came Syd’s Moped Run, which has been held every year since 1995. Behind the Shed Door Some of the sheds on the Behind the Shed Door self-drive tour were familiar from the previous…

This assumes you have some nickel (e.g., tape from gogo.co.nz). To make about 50ml of electrolyte (scale up or down, but this is a good quantity for brush plating). Stir gradually into 35–40ml of clean water – always wearing full personal protective gear: 5ml of harvested battery acid (reasonably concentrated sulphuric acid – treat with respect) 5ml of hydrochloric acid (spirits of salts from a hardware store, also worthy of your respect) 1g or thereabouts of boric acid (horticultural supplies) Use about 5cm of nickel tape connected as an anode; about the same length for the cathode Avoid short circuits and ensure that no metals – for instance, clips other than nickel – are in the electrolyte. This can be done in, say, a margarine container or similar. Connect to…

“Before these, they were running low-current-density lights that were nowhere near as bright,” says Ross. “When these came out, the Poms accepted the design; when war broke out, they made heaps of them.” The positive point is a 16mm carbon rod with an 8mm soft core (A). It continuously rotates to form and maintain a crater. At the centre of that crater is a ball of luminous gas, which is the light source. The light shines onto a parabolic reflector, so, whatever angle the light hits it at, it comes out as a parallel beam as long as it is in focus. The negative pole (B) is a 16mm carbon rod with a 3mm hard core that doesn’t rotate and burns to a point. That difference keeps the light at…

In Christchurch, the Radiant Transfer Company – which operated out of buildings that, in earlier days, had been the stables of the Gough family’s palatial Fendalton house, Mona Vale – was still in business at the end of the 1960s. It would be remiss of me to fail to record that the Radiant Transfer Company’s building was the home of iconic motorcycle designer John Britten for many years; his daughter has only recently sold it. A friend who used to own a classic cycle shop tells me that at one time he had a suitcase full of unused bicycle transfers. They were from more than 100 different businesses and he thought they were printed by Radiant. He remembers that many of them incorporated mythical creatures and gold ink. Inkjet and…

Nestled in the heart of Wellington, New Zealand, Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe (YOPS) is more than just a pinball arcade and bar – it’s a community hub for pinball enthusiasts and casual players alike. Founded by Hamish Guthrey, a passionate pinball aficionado and former home entertainment systems expert, YOPS seamlessly blends the charm of retro pinball with modern technology, creating a unique and immersive experience. Since opening its doors over three years ago, YOPS has grown into a vibrant gathering place, hosting regular tournaments and events that transform pinball into a competitive and spectator-friendly sport. With approximately 24 machines on site, ranging from classic titles to innovative newcomers such as Labyrinth and Pulp Fiction, the arcade offers something for everyone. Follow the action from home The integration of large screens…

Nev remarks, “A lot of first-time hot rodders want to build a T-bucket because they think it is easy, but they forget that everything you do is out on display. At the end of the day, [they are] harder to build ’cos you can’t hide anything. Build the car you want. Don’t do something because you think it is cheaper; it will probably end up costing the same because it will still take the same amount of time and effort.” Nev advises that buying something from the US without the correct paperwork is a nightmare in the making. “It might be cheap to buy,” he warns, “but if the paperwork is not right, then there is no fixing that. You can’t register it here, ever. “There are a lot of…