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As promised a report on my day,
We arrived at a very wet and cold Crossthwaite and Gardener at 10.30 on Sunday morning and collected a very welcome coffee. The office reception area is in itself a fantastic place for a racing enthusiast, with a Manx Norton and Bugatti pedal car as decoration, along with a fine collection of pre-war racing pictures adorning the walls. As you might expect given the work they have done recreating the Auto-Unions that those cars were prominent, but there were also pictures of pre-war Mercedes, and their drivers, including a signed picture of Manfred von Braustich.
A brief 5 minutes was spent catching up with Marshalling friends when John Gardener of Crossthwaite and Gardener arrived to show us round. First off we went to the machine shop where an impressive array of machines, including new technology such as spark eroders and 4-axis cnc machines help recreate things better than they ever were in the old days.
First up was a brand new Aluminium Jaguar XK engine block casting, which was being machined for use in a lightweight E-Type. The first one of these engines they reconstructed was for Neil Corner a couple of years ago, they now have orders for 4 more.
The amazing thing about Crossthwaite and Gardener is the breadth of different things they do, one machine was making a steering box for a Ferrari, the next a transmission shaft for a Mercedes SL 190 road car. Also knocking about were crankshafts for Type 61 "Birdcage" Maseratis, inlet manifolds and cylinder heads for BRM P25s, all sorts of Coventry Climax bits and new front uprights for Nigel Corner's Ferrari Dino.
On the way through to the assembly shop we passed a Lagonda V12 engine which was had been remanufactured for fitting to the mid 50s Lagonda sports racing car (basically a modified Aston Martin DB3S chassis). This engine originally featured twin magnetos, which moved in the opposite direction to each other. The decision had been taken to use Lucas distributors instead, but there was a problem. Lucas have never made a distributor which turns the "wrong" way, so Crossthwaite and Gardener had to fabricate a mirror image Lucas distributor to fit!
Through into the assembly workshop there was a Fiat 650 Abarth bare shell awaiting attention, a Brabham F2 of the mid 60's, a Jaguar D-Type, a Birdcage Maserati and a Lancia DiLambda were all in various states of disassembly. Also there was a bare rectangular frame of tubes, which was the basis of a D-Type Auto-Union. Also in this area were a set of Bugatti Type 59 wheels, which are amazing bits of design. They are spoked, but only radially to take side loads. The normal tangential spokes, which take torque (accelerating and braking) loads, are replaced with an Aluminium disc which fits inside the rim, and is held in by matched teeth on the rim and the central disc. Apparently accelerating or braking is a bit disconcerting as the whole assembly chatters as the teeth move slightly against each other!
Upstairs from the assembly shop is the engine build area, which had a couple of V16 Auto Union engines awaiting rebuild after use. Other assorted engines being worked on included the Ferrari Dino engine out Viscount Cowdery's 50's sports racer (this was the original engine being rebuilt, the car is currently fitted with a new one made by Crossthwaite and Gardener) and a straight 8 engine out of a Bugatti Type 50. This engine had an incredibly complex gear system for driving the camshafts, as well as a monoblock (i.e. there is no separate cylinder head). This arrangement means that to rebuild the engine you need set up the timing with the camshafts and gear to drive them first, then grind in the valves, before you start thinking about the bottom end of the engine. Apparently if you burnt out a valve on the road car (a not uncommon occurrence in the 30's) you started the repair by taking off the back axle!
All in all it was a fantastic and fascinating morning, and I'd like to thank my marshalling colleague who set up the event, and of course John Gardener of Crossthwaite and Gardener for getting out of bed on a Sunday morning to show us round his remarkable workshops.
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