Little Gems of Ingenuity and Engineering (Post # 152)

One of  The Alfatross' Tudor windshield washer nozzles.

No sooner had the automobile been invented than everyone noticed it sure could use a transparent shield against the wind and rain: A "windshield"! It took a little longer to notice that the windshield needed a wiper. By 1913 they were largely standard equipment--rudimentary maybe, but functional. And it took even longer for someone to dream up the windshield washer.

Now, with wipers and washers that turn on and off by themselves, we take all that for granted. But in 1955 when The Alfatross was built, these things were relatively simple, technologically, but they still got the job done.

The original Tudor manual pump: no user serviceable
parts inside!

The original Tudor system, consisting of a plastic reservoir bottle and cap in the engine bay, three lengths of clear plastic hose in two different diameters, a miniature manual pump mounted in the dash, and two sprayers on the cowl, was intact, but the pump was DOA and could not be revived. I feel certain the system was original equipment because it could

The one-way valve included with the
reproduction Tudor manual pump:
two flimsy pieces of cheap plastic.

not be installed after the dashboard was in. The solution was to purchase a modern reproduction that also came with a reservoir bottle. When we were reassembling The Alfatross for its first concours event I paid little attention to its Tudor washer system, but now that I am working under the dash and making sure everything works and is roadworthy, I can take time to admire it. 

The original Tudor one-way valve: machined, threaded,
soldered, O-ring sealed, crimped, and still perfectly
serviceable!

The new system did not work. Push the button on the dash until the cows come home, but the windshield remained dry. I checked everything for leaks, took the pump out and tested it--everything worked fine outside the car, just not when reassembled in the car. I started looking at the one-way valve inside the new reservoir bottle that was supposed to prevent fluid from returning back to the bottle and draining the lines. It looked sketchy, just two pieces of imprecisely-made, poorly fitting plastic. Then I looked at the valve in the cap of the original bottle: two finely-machined bronze fittings with an O-ring between. The upper fitting contained a tiny stainless steel ball trapped in the tube serving as the one-way valve--simple, but fail safe!

A stainless steel ball inside the crimped end
of the top half of the valve acted as the
one-way valve. 

I threw the new, useless plastic valve out and replaced it with the old original and the pump worked perfectly--except now I had a leak in the tubing under the dash where it joined the sprayer on the passenger's side. This necessitated removing the sprayer and examining it closely. Like the bronze one-way valve for the reservoir bottle, each sprayer was a jewel of ingenuity and engineering: Three pieces of finely-machined bronze, two bronze washers, and a two-piece bronze hose connector made from two carefully mated tubes of different diameters. The problem was obvious: the hose connector had been broken in the past and poorly re-soldered. It was easily repaired with a touch of JB Weld epoxy and a little sanding.

The spray washers were dirty, but perfectly
functional. They are so hard to get to from
under the dash I started to think the rest
 of the car was built around them.

The clever but simple design of the nozzles
themselves permits accurate aim and
variable output volume.

I threw the new, useless plastic valve out and replaced it with the old original and the pump worked perfectly--except now I had a leak in the tubing under the dash where it joined the sprayer on the passenger's side. This necessitated removing the sprayer and examining it closely. Like the bronze one-way valve for the reservoir bottle, each sprayer was a jewel of ingenuity and engineering: Three pieces of finely-machined bronze, two bronze washers, and a two-piece bronze hose connector made from two carefully mated tubes of different diameters. The problem was obvious: the hose connector had been broken in the past and poorly re-soldered. It was easily repaired with a touch of JB Weld epoxy and a little sanding. 

Maybe new is not always better than old. New is always fancier, but at least old is easier to repair. After all, how many modern "adaptive" wipers and washers with their solid-state microchip controllers will still be operational 65 years from now (in 2085)?