Neil if you intend to drive the car locally then rather build a road going 2 seater.... the uses for a single seater are a bit limited
For what it's worth, our build cost around 5500 quid in parts & engineering only, no own labour included and we did it in just under 9 months working a whole Christmas, then weekends & public holidays. OK Dad had the SWB chassis and quite a lot of the bits one needs to rummage in sheds for. We bought a job lot of 7 stuff from a bloke who had Ulster aspirations, including a Phoenix crank, close ratio 4 speed box & 4 wheels with new tyres. I still have the boxed LWB chassis from that lot. The Phoenix crank gave us the unburstable bottom end to run the blower he bought 40+ years ago for what is now the equivalent of 4.40p. I bent up the tubes for the body frame using wheel rims of different diameter, 21" Model A, then 19" Austin; 18 & 16" Austin, a 15" Alfa Giulietta & finally a 13" modern rim. I had the body made & the bloke made a pigs ear of it, so I took it away & via questions & You Tube taught myself the rudiments of working with aluminium - fabulous stuff.
https://www.austinsevenfriends.co.uk/for...er#pid6446
The offset was done by deciding where the torque tube needed to be mounted, dividing that into where the diff was centralized gave us 200mm which was cut out the left & welded into the right tube. A good end side shaft was cut off at 200mm & the end re-made. The good end was then added onto a damaged end shaft thus lengthening it by 200mm. My incredibly talented Engineering friend did the welding & he reported that the metal was of superb quality & welded very easily.
The motor & box were positioned in the chassis to allow the brake & clutch pedals to be operated within the confines of the body lines & the throttle was fitted into a bulge on the side of the aluminium skin. I have to wear skinny race shoes to find all 3 pedals.
It was a fantastic Father & Son project and we had huge fun building it. we took the 750 Bulletins & tried to incorporate as many of the '50's period mods as possible, so the Forest double oil jet conversion & extra hold downs on the block, which was bolted down from under the crank case rather than rely on studs only, etc etc. The only concessions to modern technology are the electric fans and electric water pump - one of the drawbacks to driving the blower off the nose of the crank is the drive occupies space as does the return fuel pipe, hence the radiator needs to be rather small & I now need to circulate the coolant via a pump and utilise a large stainless scuttle tank for extra cooling capacity.
Aye
Greig
