Side panel badge of a Triumph speed twin

The other item is a parafin heater

It's only an anti-frost heater, just to stop freezing. EG hang one up in the outside lavatory to stop the cistern freezing (the Mk 2 outside loo with plumbing!)

My neighbour used to use the heater in his Foden wagon in winter. No heaters in those days ( early 50s )

Roy

Yes, it's an under-bonnet heater for a car. We had one at home when I was little. We also had a mains electric heater whose trade name, if I remember correctly, was 'Peter the Heater', though that relied on having a mains supply available in the garage. Those without heaters had to drain down the engine and radiator at night and refill it with hot water from the kettle in the morning.

Dad told me that when the idea of antifreeze spread after the war, it was said that methanol was very effective. So it was, in the ordinary way of things. However, we lived on the hill at Odd Down on one side of Bath, and he worked on the hill at Lansdown on the opposite side. The only way from one to the other was right down into the valley and up the other side.

Our Morris 12, like most pre-war cars, had no thermostat or water pump and relied on thermo-siphon for circulation. It had a radiator muff to prevent the cold air from freezing the water in the radiator while it was still cold. (which gave the surprising effect that the engine boiled because there was no circulation). If you forgot to stop and roll up the opening panels in the muff when the engine got hot, it boiled anyway…

Dad was keen to try antifreeze because it did away with heaters, muff, stopping and all that palaver. On the first morning all was well until Dad was about three quarters of the way up Lansdown and the coolant reached the boiling point of methanol. There was a gurt belch of fumes, and no more antifreeze. After this happened at the same spot for the third morning, Dad gave up and went back to Peter the Heater until ethylene glycol based antifreeze became available some years later.

Our 1950 Morris Oxford (the one which looks like an over-inflated Minor) had a radiator blind fitted inside the radiator grille, with a cord arrangement to pull it up and down from inside the car. Luxury indeed for the driver.

You young 'uns don't know you're born, etc.

George

Norfolk Boy, you had the posh one – I had the 1300 Triumph Toledo, which was a conventional rear wheel drive. I thought I was a hell of a guy because it was the first new car I bought which cost more than £1,000! Drove it from my home in Lincolnshire to Trieste on one hideously hot weekend, and I lost count of the time it boiled. Got talking to an English bloke I met, and he suggested stopping over a gutter and draining out the anti-freeze and refilling with plain water. End of trouble because, apparently (he said), plain water conducts heat better than water/antifreeze mixture.

I recall two years in Africa in the early 1960s, where British cars were sometimes a joke because they were always boiling because of too-small radiators – a problem not found with American cars. I suppose that when Americans bought a car they expected it to work anywhere between Alaska and Mexico. The get-you-home trick with British cars was to strip down to your shorts, open all the windows, and turn the heater on full blast.

I've suspected one key reason for the poor design of some of our former domestic brands was our relatively moderate climate. We rarely see much below zero or much above the mid twenties. Many continental European countries (and North America) see proper cold winters and seriously hot summers. I suspect many of the British engineers responsible had little knowledge or experience of the conditions beyond our shores.

Murray

Dave,

Your recollection seemed familiar … and a few moments 'Googling' found this:

**LINK**

http://www.designchambers.com/wolfhound/wolfhoundRACHP.htm

MichaelG.

You'all were also graced with Mr Lucas. We developed other problems on Our own.