What have you done today with your Austin Seven

[Charles P]

Married my new 10 stud crankcase (a previous machining task) with the new, freshly part machined 10 stud block for the first time.
Mighty relieved to find that the 3/8" stud holes in the block fitted onto the new crankcase. There's not much room for error with the bigger 3/8 studs.

Next onto reverse spot face the block mounting holes to get a flat washer surface and continuing to machine the valve and tappet arrangement. No rushing though because there's little-to-no room for mistakes.

Wow. Fantastic engineering Charles.  I guess you won’t be going into production  . But what would the costs be (your time alone would rack up a small fortune). At the end of the day into what is it going?

Cheers

Howard

Thanks Howard

The casting were made by Dave Flake and the patterns are now owned by a friendly member of the A7 Community. However the cost of castings in both ali and cast iron have risen noticeably making low volume runs hugely uneconomic. Add the fact that so few crankcases have ever been machined from the bare castings and you get an indication of the challenge/cost.
And the availability of very good newly cast CNC machined blocks (although not to the factory 10 stud Grasshopper design like this) makes this sort of block machining approach commercially unviable.

If I did count up the hours on this project, the number spent thinking and planning would exceed the number devoted to machining by at least five to one. But I haven't counted the hours, so we don't have to worry. I'm a largely self taught amateur so take much longer to do this stuff than a real machinist would, so any estimates of my time would be pointless.

The end plan is to put it in my car and hillclimb it. Utterly pointless since the advantages it brings, if any, will be vanishingly small. Pigsty have proved that you don't need the factory 10 stud engine to go very fast. 
It's a Mallory and Irvine exercise; "because it's there". And I always fancied a 10 stud blown engine.