RP Restoration - New Member

[Geoff101]

Hello all,

I've recently joined the forum having acquired my Grandfather's first car, a 1934 RP Saloon. I've previously owned Westfields (the most recent of which I have just sold to fund this) and other sports cars but this is my first foray into classic or pre-war.

I'm not sure quite when he stopped using the Seven (and he's no longer around to ask) but I guess at some time in the late 50s or 60s. Since then, it has sat forlornly under their car port.
It was sent for restoration sometime in the 80s but I believe the garage may have gone bust, but whatever the reason, it wasn't completed and what was done wasn't to a very good standard. It was returned in kit form, and was pushed back under the car port, where it has remained ever since. I remember sitting in it pretending to drive when I was a kid.

It passed to my grandmother when he died and then she passed away 18 months ago. 
Following an extended probate process, it is now available for me to rescue.

Their house was sadly like something off a hoarding programme on the TV, so the first task was to find it, and all the bits.

This is where it lived:

It was buried under, between and on top of an assortment of rubbish:






I managed to find almost all of the major parts in various states of repair (mostly poor!):



Engine was just sat on the frame. It (unsurprisingly) is seized.


Rear of the front bulkhead, it's not survived too badly, but unfortunately, the front was sat under a hole in the roof and has suffered as a result.

Much digging, two abandoned cars dragged off to the breakers, and one twelve yard skip filled, I was able to see it and clear a path to get it out.


After a few weeks, I was able to reach agreement with the estate executor and one of the chaps from the Westfield club kindly agreed to drive over and collect it for me with his trailer. 

This was the day when ACE 198 first emerged back into the world a couple of weeks ago:





Its (now cleared) home for the last decades:

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Back home in Oxfordshire:


Our daughter trying it for size:


So having got it home, what on earth to do with it. In the weeks I had been waiting to get it home, I had been doing some research and was very lucky to find that I'm only a few miles away from Ian at Oxfordshire Sevens. He was very helpful in terms of advice, what to expect, orders of cost etc.
I explored the various options including the more financially sensible ones of just putting a new sports body on etc. In the end though, I decided that as long as the body is salvageable, it would seem a shame not to restore it as it is: an RP saloon.
This is going to be a real challenge as I only have the money I got for the Westfield to finance it, and that's probably not really enough. As such, I will be doing as much of the work as I can myself with Ian's help and support for the bits I can't.



First step, clean what remained of the decades of crap out of it. This is me dangerously close to showing off my beer belly:


Then I have started to strip what remained fitted to the body so that we can get that off, have it blasted and find out how many holes there really are:






I've got a couple more bits to remove before I'm ready to unbolt the body. Will update after that.
In the meantime, I've contacted Tony Betts to see if he has a crank case, gearbox case, nose housing and outer door handles. The ally casings have sadly corroded over time to the point they are no longer useable, the nose housing is broken, and the door handles lost.

I would like to thank Ian at Oxfordshire Sevens and Mark at The Motor Shed (Bicester Heritage) for their help so far, as well as my friend Gary from the Westfield club for spending a day of his time picking it up for me!

Any mick taking about my naive failure to understand what I've taken on is most welcome.