30-01-2018, 09:21 PM
(This post was last modified: 30-01-2018, 09:46 PM by Greig Smith.)
Having had so much fun with our other single seater special at the Simola Hillclimb in Knysna, South Africa, we decided to build another weapon for attacking the hill....
Rest assured that no living Sevens were harmed in the process, 95% of the stuff came out of boxes Dad collected in the '60's. Recently we were able to purchase a job lot of bits from someone who had plans to build an Ulsteroid and amongst them was a new Phoenix crank, re-metalled rods, Honda 57.7mm pistons and a set of close ratio gears for a 4 speed box. As we already have a '33 Type "65" as well as a '26 Chummy & '28 Top Hat Type R plus sundry other marques we have the open 2 seater thing covered already, so the Phoenix crank gave us the 'unburstable' bottom end to take the little supercharger Dad bought more than 40 years ago. A Rootes type triple lobe MAG blower made by Motosaccoche in Switzerland circa 1952, originally for a VW 1100 or 1200 flat 4.
With a SWB chassis that's been hanging on the wall for 40 years, we set to work - first straighten and weld up the cracks in the chassis, then look at the internet for inspiration. Both of us were really taken with the shape of the Kaye Petre replica, so the basic idea was formed and we decided to go with an offset driveline. One of the spare diffs was modified and the half shafts modded to suit. The basic offset of the engine was decided on and I welded up new mounts. We decided to drive the little MAG Blower off the nose of the crank using a Yamaha 650 shaft drive with universal - the jury is still out on this idea...
A suitable front axle was turned upside down and new spring mounts welded on, the leaf spring was reset to suit. I fabricated a suitable steel mounting bracket for the blower and the front shock absorbers. This plate is sandwiched between the spring and the chassis for stability and there is a brace back from the top of the blower to the chassis. New radius arms were fabricated along with all their fixing points and trimmed sections of angle iron with a suitable tapered hole were welded to the chassis to take the tie rod ends at the end of the new radius arms.
Basic chassis and driveline sorted, we turned out attention to the body frame. various spare rims yielded suitable jigs for body hoops, from 21" Model A Ford , 19", 17", 16" A7 wheels, 15" Alfa Giulietta & 13" Opel formed the basis for the slighly tapering tubular steel frame. Superleggera Coachwork in the making.
From here is was a case of bending duplicate pipes to suit the left and right sides of the frame as closely as possible. With this done I approached someone about wheeling out a body. This was a little disappointing as for the (rather high) agreed price, I was supposed to get a body completed ready for paint, instead I got a body half roughed out with no side panels that still needed a lot of work and he now wanted a lot more money Long story short, we agreed to disagree and went our separate ways. Needless to say my aluminium working skills are rapidly improving...it's just welding the darn stuff....
So this is where we are with the body thus far, I'll post some detailed mechanical pictures later. 80% completed and 80% still to go....
Cheers
Greig
Port Elizabeth
Sunny South Africa
Hmmm I notice that my careful re-orienting of all the pictures in my files came to nothing and it certainly didn't load them in the sequence I intended.... sorry about that, they were supposed to be in a chronological build sequence.
More of the body in progress....
Aye
Greig
A few more, we have developed our own Bowdenex conversion off the one that was fitted to our Type "65". Basically copying the fittings but using modern cable inners and outers and it's made a huge difference to our other Green special. You can see the front axle details a bit here, similar to our green car which was converted into a single seater circa 1949. There is at least a bit of Alfa here as the extensions off the axle to hold the spring shackles are two litre Alfa conrod little ends, the Green Job uses parts of a second front axle, but we didn't want to cut up another axle.
We've raided Dad's 60+ year old stash of bits for all the brake fittings and things like the hand brake lever etc. The steering box, steering wheel and the brake pedal actually come from the Green Job, when dad rebuilt it there was a box of bits he couldn't find and so he raided his stash. Several years later that box emerged when he moved closer to me, so the new Job has a physical connection with the Green Job. Also many years ago an Uncle had a single seater out here called the Consul Special, that ended up getting crunched and was scrapped, but Dad saved the throttle pedal, so that's going in there as well.
My wife Lucie in the Green Job - see the other thread about re-metalling the rods.....sigh
Aye
Greig
Rest assured that no living Sevens were harmed in the process, 95% of the stuff came out of boxes Dad collected in the '60's. Recently we were able to purchase a job lot of bits from someone who had plans to build an Ulsteroid and amongst them was a new Phoenix crank, re-metalled rods, Honda 57.7mm pistons and a set of close ratio gears for a 4 speed box. As we already have a '33 Type "65" as well as a '26 Chummy & '28 Top Hat Type R plus sundry other marques we have the open 2 seater thing covered already, so the Phoenix crank gave us the 'unburstable' bottom end to take the little supercharger Dad bought more than 40 years ago. A Rootes type triple lobe MAG blower made by Motosaccoche in Switzerland circa 1952, originally for a VW 1100 or 1200 flat 4.
With a SWB chassis that's been hanging on the wall for 40 years, we set to work - first straighten and weld up the cracks in the chassis, then look at the internet for inspiration. Both of us were really taken with the shape of the Kaye Petre replica, so the basic idea was formed and we decided to go with an offset driveline. One of the spare diffs was modified and the half shafts modded to suit. The basic offset of the engine was decided on and I welded up new mounts. We decided to drive the little MAG Blower off the nose of the crank using a Yamaha 650 shaft drive with universal - the jury is still out on this idea...
A suitable front axle was turned upside down and new spring mounts welded on, the leaf spring was reset to suit. I fabricated a suitable steel mounting bracket for the blower and the front shock absorbers. This plate is sandwiched between the spring and the chassis for stability and there is a brace back from the top of the blower to the chassis. New radius arms were fabricated along with all their fixing points and trimmed sections of angle iron with a suitable tapered hole were welded to the chassis to take the tie rod ends at the end of the new radius arms.
Basic chassis and driveline sorted, we turned out attention to the body frame. various spare rims yielded suitable jigs for body hoops, from 21" Model A Ford , 19", 17", 16" A7 wheels, 15" Alfa Giulietta & 13" Opel formed the basis for the slighly tapering tubular steel frame. Superleggera Coachwork in the making.
From here is was a case of bending duplicate pipes to suit the left and right sides of the frame as closely as possible. With this done I approached someone about wheeling out a body. This was a little disappointing as for the (rather high) agreed price, I was supposed to get a body completed ready for paint, instead I got a body half roughed out with no side panels that still needed a lot of work and he now wanted a lot more money Long story short, we agreed to disagree and went our separate ways. Needless to say my aluminium working skills are rapidly improving...it's just welding the darn stuff....
So this is where we are with the body thus far, I'll post some detailed mechanical pictures later. 80% completed and 80% still to go....
Cheers
Greig
Port Elizabeth
Sunny South Africa
Hmmm I notice that my careful re-orienting of all the pictures in my files came to nothing and it certainly didn't load them in the sequence I intended.... sorry about that, they were supposed to be in a chronological build sequence.
More of the body in progress....
Aye
Greig
A few more, we have developed our own Bowdenex conversion off the one that was fitted to our Type "65". Basically copying the fittings but using modern cable inners and outers and it's made a huge difference to our other Green special. You can see the front axle details a bit here, similar to our green car which was converted into a single seater circa 1949. There is at least a bit of Alfa here as the extensions off the axle to hold the spring shackles are two litre Alfa conrod little ends, the Green Job uses parts of a second front axle, but we didn't want to cut up another axle.
We've raided Dad's 60+ year old stash of bits for all the brake fittings and things like the hand brake lever etc. The steering box, steering wheel and the brake pedal actually come from the Green Job, when dad rebuilt it there was a box of bits he couldn't find and so he raided his stash. Several years later that box emerged when he moved closer to me, so the new Job has a physical connection with the Green Job. Also many years ago an Uncle had a single seater out here called the Consul Special, that ended up getting crunched and was scrapped, but Dad saved the throttle pedal, so that's going in there as well.
My wife Lucie in the Green Job - see the other thread about re-metalling the rods.....sigh
Aye
Greig