Woe 2

Previously I'd just finished repolishing all the woodwork after the Alvis gave its own interpretation of the Ark on Mount Ararat.

I was just refitting the twenty four pieces of beautifully polished mahogany when I noticed that the cable which winds the window up on the drivers side was frayed.

Now these window winders must be a coachbuilder's optional extra; Jim's Wolseley has them, my Alvis has them and a Gordon England bodied Austin Seven which I was looking at on the Internet the other day also had them. 

These window winders work on the same principle as a roller blind; except that roller blinds aren't really very heavy but a sheet of 4mm glass is ******heavy.

How do I know that? Well I just touched the frayed cable and there was a noise like the Guillotine as the roller spring didn't so much let go but rather did its own interpretation of a space launch in reverse - I was surprised to see that the door was still there as was the running board...and my toes. 

Obviously these "roller blinds" need some fairly significant cabling to raise the windows up; two of the windows appeared to have picture wire, one to have a scaled down version of the Titanic's mooring rope and the fourth to be a bit of waxed cotton!

Perhaps I should explain a little more about the mechanism. 

I have no idea how it works. 

But after a lot of experimentation (eg winding it the wrong way)  I did finally manage (several hours later) to work out what was going  on. 

The cable has to wrap around the roller and also to connect to the window...it's so simple but I don't understand how they did it without special equipment. Although I've put it all back together it really does need a winch to get the correct tension on the spring, but then it might break...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The cable is held in place by a 4 ba screw so the cable has to be THIN.

Picture wire was a disaster - it just kinked. 

Stainless steel wire from Namrick the Nut and Bolt store of Portslade was promising but too inflexible. 

Green plastic garden twine was just perfect but I just couldn't imagine it lasting. 

The yacht chandlers at Brighton marina never got back to me....

But finally I found Tecni-Cable Ltd on the Internet. If you do nothing else, Save this site!

The wire is amazing; quite strong, very thin and you could tie knots in it...so I did. 

I ordered several metres of 0.75 mm which has a Maximum Breaking Load of 40kgs

Several hours later I'd just about managed to wind up the roller and with the occasional murmur of "Let them eat cake" I finally managed to get the window to go down, fairly slowly and to go up, without too much difficulty.

And that should have been that and I should have been at the Riley BBQ but...time for another Woe 3...