It took Roger Doughty a while to work out how to replicate these spokes to fit inside his wheels for the 1909 Belsize vehicle, retrieved from stockyards near Taralga. Photo: John Thistleton.
Roger Doughty dropped what he was doing in his butcher shop in Goulburn’s main street one day when a customer, knowing his passion for old cars, called him outside.
Around the corner was parked a 1956 Cadillac towing a trailer on which sat a Rolls Royce. Roger introduced himself to the Cadillac’s owner and so began a long friendship between two men mad about restoring old cars.
The Cadillac owner and founder of Allen’s Trailers in Sydney, Allen Blyth, travelled through Goulburn towing old cars. He always stopped to say hello to Roger and show him his latest delivery job. Most of the veteran vehicles had been bought at Shannons Auctions in Sydney, who referred the buyers to Allen who delivered them all over the country.
Today Allen is 101. Having lost touch with him many years ago, Roger rekindled their contact about five or six years ago researching his latest restoration project, a 1909 Belsize sedan.
That sort of reunion often is what drives these restorers – the journey of discovery and mates you meet along the way and finally, eventually, after long hours in a workshop a gleaming, century plus relic is reborn to carry the stories forward.
Roger has dragged home five Model T Fords, two Buicks, a Daimler, a Nash and a 1903 Wolseley. He gave one of the Buicks, a 1916 model, to Allen, and has similarly passed on or sold the other wrecks.
Tipped off about an early model Sunbeam, he set off with a friend, Ken Fleming, in about 1968. “We knew it was Kenny’s grandfather’s car, out near Taralga. Ken was not interested in it,” Roger said. But in nearby stockyards, out in the weather was the rusting 1909 Belsize.
“They had been using it as a saw bench,” Roger said. “There was hardly any of it left. All the spokes were missing.”
Ken took it home, began restoring it with new, steam-bent timber fellies inside the wheel rims to which wooden spokes would be attached. But as time and his age caught up on Ken, his restoration slowed.
Six years ago Roger bought the wreck from him, even though he was questioning his own sanity for taking on such a challenging project. He already knows he will finish well beyond his original budget of $25,000 buying parts and materials he needs.
He had new metal rims made at Kingaroy in Queensland three years ago and found the timber he needed to build new spokes from Tasmanian oak stringy bark hardwood left over in his shed after restoring a Crossley with his son Andrew.
He has restored the Belsize’s chassis, made the wheels, had a new crown wheel and pinion made for the back axle, after the old one was trashed beyond repair.
“I have got one gear cut, I have got two more to get cut for the gearbox,” he said.
It took him a while to learn how to set up the wheels and 12 timber spokes for each one, which he has varnished. “I shaped them by hand with a couple of spoke shaves,” he said.
Joining the Veteran Car Club of Australia enabled him to track down another restorer in South Australia who had just finished doing up his old Belsize model. He subsequently sent a copy of the plans for the body to Roger and sold him spare parts, including a radiator in good condition.
“The motor is going to be my biggest job; the body is nothing,” Roger said.
“I am trying to get the back axle and front axle underneath it to get it up on its wheels. Tyres are no problem. I’ve got two motors; one is absolutely seized, the other has bits and pieces everywhere.”
One of the engines came with the car seized up, and Ken Fleming found one near Dubbo, in pieces.
Having spent ages trying to prise pistons out of the engine, he remains confident that one day, using different tactics they’ll come loose.
He has stopped and started work on the Belsize during the pandemic and illness and while doing all manner of woodwork jobs for friends and family.
He wants to finish within another two years, but expects saving up for parts could slow him down. He will need a hood to be made, probably of canvass.
Looking forward to the day of driving the restored Belsize out of his shed, he has no plans to ever sell what will be a remarkable veteran car.
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