1930 Essex Challenger

I was interested to read your articles, and I much admire the under-bonnet condition of the Essex used to illustrate the Autovac article!

I have owned a 1930 Challenger touring sedan for about 8 years. I believe it spent most of its life in the Manchester area, including some (many?) years in a carpet warehouse. It only seems to have covered about 70,000 miles, but shows signs of having had no maintenance at all, and of having stood around unused for long periods. The bodywork is basically perfect, with no significant rust anywhere. I have only found it necessary to repair pin-holes in the sill panels and rear valance, where they were sandwiched against other members and retained moisture.

Some time around 15 years ago it appears that the car was 'tarted up' for wedding use, with a superficially-smart paint job, but with no proper preparation, although there was some nice coach lining. I have basically been giving the car a rolling restoration for the whole of my ownership. I overhauled the brakes completely, and they are now quite good, and I have fitted new rear wheel bearings, re-wired, re-chromed and overhauled the engine once

.

I have to confess that the engine overhaul was not entirely successful - the white metalling of the centre main bearing has broken up a little, is became noisy and I could never solve the huge oil leak out of the rear of the engine, not to mention the large number of hair-line cracks in the cylinder head. The hardening on most of the cam lobes and the rollers of the followers appears to be beginning to break up, which probably accounts for some of the mechanical noises. I therefore decided to regard the proper overhaul of the engine as a long-term project, and to make the car usable in the meantime by fitting a replacement engine. I wanted to use a 6, to retain the character as far as possible, and I discovered that the 1960s Triumph 2000 engine is almost exactly the same length as the original. To cut a long story short, I now have the Triumph engine and gearbox installed, and the car has a ral new lease of life - it cruises comfortably at 60 - 65 and I have covered over 1000 miles this summer already. Although the engine and gearbox cost under £200 from a scrapyard, I have not had to do much to it, and have now acquired a spare engine. As the engine was basically fitted to many newer cars (TR6 etc.) new parts are easily available from many specialists. The 4-speed gearbox is a big improvement over the original, and I could possibly have used an overdrive unit, although I was afraid that the overdrive might have fouled the brake cross-shaft. The best thing about the exercise was that I have only had to drill one additional hole in the chassis - everything else went together using existing holes and brackets. The only failing with this transplant was that it really showed up the inadequacies of the rear damping - the car was quite dangerous as any bump encountered in mid-corner was liable to throw the car across the road. Hence I have now fitted a pair of Ford Escort Mk 2 telescopic dampers, which have transformed the road holding, but give a rather jiggly ride.

Obviously this conversion is anathaema to the purists, but the car obviously has a relatively low value which makes huge expenditure (probably £5,000+) on a full engine overhaul unjustifiable, and I can now use the car with no qualms about reliability or having to nurse it.

I attach a recent photo of the car in Wales en-route to the Tom Rolt Rally at Towyn, with my 90-year-od mother, who recalls going camping in an exactly similar model to the New Forest in 1934, the car having been borrowed from her uncle, who she still regards as having been a bit of a 'flash' gent!

Peter Thomson.

The Official Web Site for Hudson-Essex-Terraplane http://clubs.hemmings.com/hudson/index.html

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