Project 4x7

For years' my Dad has loved Austin Sevens and about the time I was born he was given a load of Austin Seven parts by his father and as the toils of getting married and starting a family reigned supreme the car lived in one of the sheds on the site of the family's agricultural business.

When my Granddad died, the business was sold and we moved house, Dad befriended a local farmer who rented out a barn to him and for the last 14 years it's lived in there. Over the years Dad has collected more and more spares with a view to finally building up this car, along with 3 more - one for myself and my three fellow siblings as our inheritance.

Anyway, the farmer recently sold the land to a private property developer, and when my mum noticed the bulldozers on the farm earlier in the week my Dad dashed round and managed to stop them bulldozing his barn down with everything in it.

Well today we cleared out the barn, due to the owner of the new lockup we've got being in Scotland on holiday, we've had to move the stuff - 3 full Transit vans' worth - onto the garden at home temporarily.

Aside from the collection of parts, there's one rolling chassis which we had to tow through the village at night to be stored onto a neighbours field for a week or two until the new bloke gets back.

It took us three hours to reveal the car there was that much stuff being stored on top of it! But here she is anyway just after we took off the final sheeting:



Beast!

Despite it's primitive look, my Dad has actually done a lot of mods to it.

He's made his own lowered sports rear axle. The brakes have been modified to run hydraulic cylinders, and he's also relocated the engine further back on custom mounts to fit the radiator centrally in between the two front wheels.

My Dad has a very specific idea on how he wants to do things and like me, once he's got an idea in his head he wont let it go!

The car itself is a Ruby chassis, but he's on top of it he's building a two-seater racing shell. I'm trying to convince him to run a forced inducted version of the 750cc engine which he told me about - it was designed in the 1920's by Murray Jameson modified to run twin cams and a supercharger and only a few were made. Two are left in existence, and one is on show at Donington Park Museum so we'll be making a few trips to see how it's setup and Dad will probably design and make all the mods himself!

Anyway, that's as much has I know. I'm not sure if this new lockup will afford the room to store the parts and work on the car at the same time, but hopefully we can as my Dad reckons he could mechanically build and set one up in ~ 3 months or so!

There's some more pics to take tomorrow which I'll share with you.