What have you done today with your Austin Seven

[Charles P]

Sliced a block in half, as you do.
Useful to get the exact topography. 
This was a late 30's block that split under duress a few years ago, causing mayhem. 
The bores are +60 so it's instructive to see how much metal is available to go further. Not very much in my book.

   

[Ivor Hawkins]

Those waterways are amongst the cleanest I’ve seen!

[Charles P]

Those waterways are amongst the cleanest I’ve seen!

It surprised me too. I was expecting much worse but the cooling system had been flushed through with hot Fernox DS3 descaler a couple of times, which probably helped

Charles

[Austin in the Shed]

Managed to bore one out to 60 mm once and not porous ran great for about 150 miles then started letting in water,when dismantled the wall had split.It was about 1/2mm thick.

[Hugh Barnes]

Interesting, isn't it. I had a three bearing engine in the Cabriolet that I ran for many thousands of miles which was bored to +.080" and never gave any trouble. Pure chance or a different mould giving thicker cylinder walls?

[Tony Press]

Interesting, isn't it. I had a three bearing engine in the Cabriolet that I ran for many thousands of miles which was bored to +.080" and never gave any trouble. Pure chance or a different mould giving thicker cylinder walls?

I would say pure chance - from what I hear for everyone claiming a successful 80 thou overbore there a number of blocks that give a problem. 

But go ahead  and try - you could be lucky

[andrew34ruby]

Left the seven at home today and went to Scarborough, to the Flower of May caravan site and its little motor museum. Around fifty cars, twenty or more motorbikes and old fairground rides, tractors lorries etc

Only two Austin sevens, and both were mk2 Ruby.

   

And an Austin tractor.

   

[Graham Barker]

Regarding the Ruby above with red wheels. Does anyone know whether having red wheels would be factory standard?

[Robert Leigh]

Remembering Rubies when most were still in their factory finish they all had black wheels as far as I can recall. I would be interested to be proved wrong; memory is not so sharp as it used to be!

[Mike Costigan]

Black was the standard factory finish on all models, but there were a few exceptions, as seen on the build records for the Ulster, for example:


  coloured wheels.JPG (Size: 51.42 KB / Downloads: 7)

In the early days it was possible to order a car in a non-standard colour, and I suppose that order might include coloured wheels, but the option had been discontinued by the time of the Ruby, so it's unlikely that any left the factory with coloured wheels.

This comment doesn't apply to coachbuilt cars, where, for example, most Swallows had coloured wheels.