Four Ashes Garage Ltd

Our New Lucas or Smiths style reserve valves are now back in production - November 23

Lucas Petrol Reserve valves were introduced in 1938 or 39, they were fitted to a great many classic cars of the very late 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s & early 70s. Quite a neat little valve, they were built into 2 main styles of bodies, diamond shaped flange with 2 hole fixing & large round shaped flange with 4 hole fixing.

All appear to be 12 volts operation according to the Lucas list, all appear to have basically the same parts within the 2 body styles.

See here for instructions on how to disconnect the carburettor supply pipe from the valve to avoid stripping thread in the body of the valve.

All our new & rebuilt valves are assembled & vacuum tested on our dedicated test bench, we vacuum test during initial assembly, then test solenoid operation & finally before the gauze is fitted, we only test for liquid leaks on rebuilt valves as the new ones are accurately made on CNC milling & turning machines.

We now make new billet alloy anodised ethanol resistant (or as ethanol resistant as can be) valves with both types of bodies, in the large round 4 hole fixing (20 of the bodies made, straight or cranked tubes) type fitted to early Rovers, Jensens, etc aswell as more common diamond shaped flange, 2 hole fixing style (straight or cranked tubes) shown which fit quite a lot of cars, this now covers the entire range of Lucas / Smiths petrol reserve valves that can be manufactured but we can recondition most valves with our new parts,

As long as the round shaped, 4 hole flange types are not badly corroded or damaged we can recondition those aswell altghough most of them we have seen are coming to the end of their life..

We have a copy of the Lucas Catalogue 400E so we can make up most combinations / valves on that list, but need crucial tube measurements to complete our own catalogue.