Can you date this car?

[alanmack]

Mike,
        Since you appear to know your stuff here, is the front hub just over-large or is it a rather poor early attempt at front brakes?

Alan

[mazi]

Its hard to see all the picture at once but the back wheel appears to have an extra and larger disk just behind the wheel, when compared with the front one. I assume this is the brake drum, my days of grovelling in the rain trying to fix brakes are long over I'm glad to say.    .

I'm no expert on cars that early, 1933 was my earliest, that had front wheel brakes, not that they worked very well being entirely mechanical, my dads little old 1934 morris 8 had hydraulic brakes,
magic they were but it never went fast enough to need them.
mike

 

[mazi]

Mike,
        Since you appear to know your stuff here, is the front hub just over-large or is it a rather poor early attempt at front brakes?

Alan

I've just read this again, if you google images of wire wheels one set of spokes is attached to a small diameter disk at the front and the other set to a larger diameter disk at the back,
a set of chrome plated ones will cost you more than a rolls Royce would have cost then.

[vintman]

Hi,

This is a relatively big and expensive car. It is a 15HP Napier, and the bodystyle is 'side entrance tonneau'. Certainly a lot later than 1905.  It has no front brakes, braking being on rear wheels only. The internal smaller ‘discs’ mentioned are merely hubs, not ‘small brakes’.  The coachbuilt bodywork is interesting as it is of the more traditional type but has marginally evolved with a more modern bulkhead. Earlier cars had no, or half sized, doors and flat fronted bulkheads at the windscreen. From the fact that the front doors are full height and that the front of scuttle has a rounded curve, dates it relatively accurately to cca 1911/12. Thereafter the front and back seats heights would have been lower, would have not protruded out so much,  and the body would have been lower and continuous rather than segmented. All this however, does not date the photo but puts it into, or after, WW1. I hope you don’t mind me using your photo on our car identification Help Pages http://www.svvs.org/help88.shtml .

Kind Regards
Vintman
www.svvs.org

[japeflakes]

Four Wheel Brake System
In 1903 four-wheel brakes were fitted to the Dutch Spiker 60/80 HP model.

The Scottish car company Arrol-Johnston fitted four-wheel brakes to the 15.9 hp model they produced in late 1909/early 1910. In 1911 the company no longer fitted four wheel brakes to their models.

In 1910 Giustino Cattaneo of the Italian Isotta Fraschini Company designed a four wheel brake system. A patent was granted in February of that year.

A year later the system was fitted to the new Isotta Franschini Tipo KM4 production model. 50 of these cars were built between 1911 and 1914.

The car was fitted with internal-expanding front-wheel brakes and the rear wheels were retarded by two water-cooled contracting transmission brakes. Coolant was supplied to the inside of the drums from a pressurized tank.

A pedal operated the rear wheel brakes, with a hand lever actuating via a cable the brakes on the front wheels.

Mechanical brake systems typically consisted of up to 50 joints, 20 bearings and 200 mechanical parts.

At the January 1923 New York Automobile Show only two manufacturers, Duesenburg (hydraulic brakes) and Rickenbacker (mechanical brakes) offered cars with four-wheel brakes.

A year later the number had increased to 26 of the 72 manufacturers present; offering four-wheel brakes as standard fit or as an option.

A report published in 1929 stated: “70% of British, US and Continental cars in Britain in 1924 were rear-braked only. By 1929 that figure had reduced to 1%”.

[japeflakes]

e.g. Straker Squire 1910

[LDW]

Hi,

It is a 15HP Napier, and the bodystyle is 'side entrance tonneau'. Certainly a lot later than 1905... cca 1911/12. All this however, does not date the photo but puts it into, or after, WW1. I hope you don’t mind me using your photo on our car identification Help Pages

That is tremendous - thank you. By all means use the picture.

[LDW]

e.g. Straker Squire 1910

That's it, surely. Thank you!