1907 AC Sociable

The AC Sociable was first built in about 1907 by Auto Carriers. My intention is to replicate as much as possible the original design of an AC Sociable given my resources and ability. The biggest problem so far has been the fact that in the original design the rear axle is mounted on the ends of the 1/4 elliptic springs. After a few false starts attempting to manufacture bearing housings that might look like the original I ended up using self aligning bearing housings. Then I realised that the springs I'm using allow too much twist and therefore chain wear etc, so I designed a sway bar that fits under the springs and across just under the intermediate shaft.

Early on I realised that the original has an external band brake on the rear wheel. This is hard to manufacture so I'm going with the disc brake. However I can't mount the calliper bracket on the spring, so I am using an intermediate shaft to mount the disc and will mount the calliper bracket on the engine plate. So the rear axle will just have a drive sprocket on one side of the wheel and a drive hub and plate on the other.

The front springs on the original are slipper springs, with the slipper to the front, so I've replicated that with spring keepers under the slippers.

This is an interesting build with lots of challenges.