1919 Twin Six Third Series Owned by Will & Margaret  Kirkby

 

I bought this car which is a 1919 Third Series Twin Six, in 1985 from Bradley Skinner in Oklahoma US after Barry Smith from Tamworth showed me a photo of the car, incidentally Barry was then in the process of restoring a First Series Twin Six that he had imported  a little earlier.  He finished the restoration and I might add did a wonderful job on it, I understand that he subsequently sold the car. Anyway back to the Third Series I purchased the car from Brad and had it shipped to Brisbane.  It was pretty complete only missing the robe rail and tail light which we had to chase down. We started work on the car and Vic Marsh from Alstonville did the body and did a great job but he promptly retired and said he had done enough cars as this was about number thirty.

I had a friend who helped to do the chassis and mechanicals but it took years.  The upholstery was done in Ballina and took six hides for the interior.  We did the engine but did a very poor job and I had my friend Arthur Lewis from Brisbane redo the engine, it now runs like a clock.

 

The car sat around for years with me doing little bits and pieces.  Then towards the end of last year I bit the bullet and sent the car to my friends Dave and Barry Ford at Stanthorpe to finish it.   I knew they did beautiful work because in the interim they had done a full restoration on a Vauxhall 30/98 which took 8 years to complete.

The car is now running very well although we are having a bit of a problem with overheating but I think we are gettingon top of it.  We also have a noisy gearbox but we are waiting to see if the noise will wear in as there are a couple of teeth that are damaged on the idler gear and we would need to remake all of the gears in the box.  We will see how it goes on the rally and go from there.

1919-twin 6