New Commer

[Reggienz]

Hi all

My name is Reggie and I am from NewZealand ,I have just brought this 76 Commer

just Doing a few wee jobs to get it legal and back on the roads here in NZ

I am wanting some help regarding the slow top speed . I am not looking to break land speed records just do a comfortable 60mph , I have looked into an overdrive gearbox but very rare here, it is running 15inch wheels and I intend to run a taller tyre which should help a little , is there any other diff head from other models that would bolt in to give a taller gear ratio ?? I have tried to search but couldn’t find much

Any help much appreciated ,here’s a couple of pics
thanks Reggie

 

[Panky]

Hi Reggie and welcome to the Madhouse
That's a cracking looking van, very nice indeed There are taller diffs around but rare even over here, not sure what the ratio is but they were fitted to some of the later Dodge Spacevans (same van different grille) . I believe that some of the diffs fitted to the Humber Super Snipe go straight into the Commer axle but be careful as some people have found otherwise, maybe different axles were fitted at different stages of production. An OD box doesn't have to originally come off a Commer as they were fitted to many Rootes cars of the period - although the ones fitted to the later Arrows series cars (Hunter etc) need some modification to fit. No matter what you fit though you may find that the engine will struggle to pull at the top end in the higher gear so you may need to do some work to get a bit more power. A popular mod over here is to fit an alloy head Sunbeam Rapier engine, which usually were fitted to an OD box, but again you might struggle to find one in New Zealand but not impossible.
Hope this helps

 

[S0updragon]

Hi and welcome. Great van well found

 

[jimberlake]

Lovely van there. As Panky says. So standard diffs as on your van is likely 5.12, later Spacevans got a 4.77 as they dropped the wheels to 14” from 15” to help handling.
The other one that can fit is from a Humber Hawk at 4.22 but you’d likely need engine mods to pull it - also Hawks have different crown wheels for years so hard to say what year fits, I’ve got one of them but took a long time to find! Some fit Rover P5B axles where you get much more diff choice, I think they’re about 1” wider than stock overall. Popular is an SU or Weber carb mod with the Weber going straight on.
There’s also a Vizard head mod that meant to be good for 12% power increase. Thread on mechanical forum.
Hope that helps and welcome

Jim

 

[Reggienz]

Hi thank you Panky and Jim that is a great help i will see what i can find