Fragments on Forgotten Makes

No. 36: The G.W.K.

This series is intended to fill in gaps by providing hitherto unpublished fragments of information about the lesser known cars, after an opportunity has arisen for me to meet persons intimately associated with the make in question. It is not necessarily intended to constitute a potted-history of the make concerned. In any case, I would not presume to compile a history of that famous friction-driven car, the G.W.K., the initials of which stood for its sponsors Grice, Wood and Keiller, because a very adequate one appears in Chapter 12 of that fascinating book “Lost Causes of Motoring” by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu (Cassell, 1960; reprinted 1966). What follows are a few additional notes on these cars, as recounted to me by Mr. W. A. Wheeler, who is now over 70, lives near Bath, and runs a Ford Anglia, but who was in charge of chassis testing at the Maidenhead factory of G.W.K. Ltd. from September 1919 to June 1920.

Mr. Wheeler was brought up near Brooklands Track and as a youth cycled there to watch the flying and motor racing. When war broke out he joined up as a DR., riding Triumph motorcycles in France. He went to Maidenhead when G.W.K. occupied two ranks of sheds there and were turning out about one car a day. They employed perhaps 15 to 20 men in the erecting shop, under J. Brown, half-a-dozen painters and a couple of upholsterers, sales being the preserve of the one-legged Pope, and Jackson. Bodywork, in the years we are discussing of open two and four-seater types, were made on the premises but before they were fitted each chassis underwent a rough-road test of some 15 miles over the short route and some of them were driven for 30 miles over the long test route, which might take in Alms Hill near Henley-on-Thames. Mr. Wheeler remembers taking a light-alloy-bodied car prepared for the Scottish Six Days Trial to this hill, successfully re-starting on the “Cannons.” To help him in such work he had three men and two boys, and two other testers did the road tests of completed cars.

Some people tend to think there was only one friction-driven car, the G.W.K., but I named some others in the article about the Richardson last November, to which could be added the Ballot-engined Zeiller, the Surrey made from Model-T Ford components, the Lafitte, Françon, Ruby, Major, Max, Octo, Sidney, Putney, Short-Ashby, Winsom, Villard, Tholomé, and many more. But the G.W.K. was the most successful, having built up a good reputation before the 1914/18 war as a rear-engined two-cylinder car. After the Armistice, Arthur Grice was determined to get a four-cylinder version with the engine in front into production as soon as possible. The prototype had been completed by the summer of 1918 and as soon as supplies of components were available the new model was put into production, a conventional car except for the absence of a gearbox, priced at £425 in 1920. The engine is usually quoted as a 66 x 100 mm. (1,368 c.c.) Coventry-Simplex. What is not generally known is that the necessary numbers of these sweet-running little engines with their smooth tick-over were not available, so G.W.K. (1919) Ltd. also used a Perkins engine of the same capacity, although this was a much rougher power unit. I see from records of the cars tested by Mr. Wheeler that 71% had these Perkins engines, compared to 29% with Coventry-Simplex.

A Maudslay lorry was employed by G.W.K. to bring supplies of engines from the manufacturers to Maidenhead and chassis frames from Messrs. Thompson Pressings. Normally a Zenith carburetter with a 70 main jet, 75 pilot jet and a 15 choke, and a fixed ignition M.L. magneto, were used but one car appeared in January, 1920, with an S.U. carburetter and a couple tested that year had Fellowes magnetos. On average, petrol consumption on chassis test varied from 35 to 38 m.p.g., the scuttle tank being filled from the works Bowser, while top speed would be around 38 to 40 m.p.h. or 45 m.p.h. on an exceptionally good car. One Perkins-engined chassis recorded 47 m.p.h.

Testing was a pretty spartan business, as two metal bucket seats were the only equipment added to the bare chassis, which was devoid of screen or mudguards. By far the most frequent cause for complaint was noise, usually from one or both of the internally-toothed drives in the back wheels, which on the G.W.K. replaced a conventional back axle. Other sources of excessive noise, even by the standards of 1919-20, came from the oil pump of the Coventry-Simplex and Perkins engines, the friction discs (which sometimes sang a song of their own composing) and the tappets. But mainly it was the back-wheel gears that offended, although when Mr. Wheeler complained, Capt. Harding, or Mr. Keiller himself, would sometimes pass a car out. Noise from one cause or another assailed 54% of the chassis tested.

Very little trouble seems to have occurred on the test runs, however, perhaps because every engine was run on the bench for a day, on petrol, before being installed in its chassis. One Coventry-Simplex engine recorded 2,600 r.p.m. on the test bed. Apart from isolated instances of grease being flung out of the gear housings, a loose pivot pin, a front axle having to be replaced, a spring set up, or the friction discs having to be changed, these chassis seem to have been remarkably trouble-free, although one engine seems to have run a big-end while on the road, and there was one case of clutch slip. The boys employed to prepare the chassis for road test could cause trouble by wiping grease over the cups instead of filling them, when the driven-disc shaft would overheat, or even seize up. Whereas cork had proved a suitable friction material for the pre-war two-cylinder cars, when the four-cylinder engines were adopted these discs would cauliflower out in a matter of yards, so fibre and later a laminated disc had to be used—the test reports mention grey-fibre discs.

In 1919 the Perkins engine was being tried with a single bronze ring on each piston and in January, 1920, a new type of axle and radius rods were introduced. The following month special grease was tried for the axle gears and the next month a new type of oiler.

It was in June, 1920, that the FC-type G.W.K. was supplied to the G.P.O. as a mail-van and Mr. Wheeler left the firm to service these G.W.K.s for the Post Office, before they found that the Model-T Ford was a better proposition, leaving his brother to carry on with testing at the factory. Incidentally, he is still working, as a spare-parts storekeeper at a local garage. G.W.K. touring cars were equipped with zip-fastened all-weather rig, including Auster rear screens, and were mostly light blue. The long prop. shaft used in the front-engined four-cylinder models proved critical until dynamically-balanced with blobs of solder, and to keep the driving disc cool a corrugated copper disc was placed behind it. Weird and wonderful methods were devised for trimming the driven disc, a gantry eventually being rigged up for the purpose. The works had the use of an old two-cylinder G.W.K. with van body and later a four-cylinder chassis was also fitted out as a van. Keiller raced a single-seater G.W.K. at Brooklands, which was tuned by a small garage near the track. It covered a kilometre at 66.97 m.p.h. in 1921, driven by Owen-Edmunds.

In 1912 Wood had repeatedly broken the cyclecar hour record at Brooklands in the two-cylinder G.W.K., raising it to 56.04 m.p.h. before H. F. S. Morgan took it from the four-wheelers, with 59.64 m.p.h.

Because the firm was well acquainted with Zenith carburetters, H. Kensington-Moir came down in 1921 to try out a French version intended for the 200 Mile Race Talbot-Darracqs, on a G.W.K. engine.

By 1922 G.W.K. Ltd. were in financial trouble. Percy Richardson, of Daimler and Sheffield-Simplex associations, was appointed Managing Director early that year. A small Isotta-Fraschini at the works on a Cardiff registration seems to have belonged to him and he had an Owen Magnetic car brought up from Bognor, for his personal use. Grice left to promote his Unit No. 1, which was so called because in some versions the engine, friction transmission and fixed-drive were mounted on a sub-frame as a single unit. He later returned to G.W.K.—W.B.