Austin Seven
With the Seven rolling, Matt starts folding aluminium…
With the Austin Seven’s rolling chassis taking shape, it was finally time to order some aluminium and start building the body. Now, I’m the first to admit that this is a hugely challenging task and something I’ve never undertaken before, which is why this month’s progress might seem a little slow. A huge amount of thought (and tea drinking) went into the process before even placing an order for sheet material, let alone getting busy with the folder. As I’ve said before, the body design is really my dad’s department. As an art director in the film industry, he’s used to the process of taking visual inspiration, creating working drawings, translating those into card models and finally seeing the vision come to life – whether that be a WWI tank for Spielberg’s War Horse built to the exact dimensions of an original in The Tank Museum, Bovington, or a medieval castle for some smalltime production about a boy wizard. With COVID-19 restrictions preventing the planned visit with cardboard and a tape measure at this stage, dad posted a 1:1 print of his body sketch, along with a scale rule and the original drawing on A4. We then spent several hours on Zoom for some long-distance technical drawing.
The starting point
The only datum I had was the original bolt-in gearbox cover from the Ruby, which seemed as good a place as any to start. With a spare engine and gearbox bolted into place on the chassis (the final engine for the car is still in pieces, with the block currently away with local Austin Seven engine building master Ian Bancroft to receive a skim, large inlet valves, reprofiled tappet blocks and a set of double valve springs), I lined the cover up with the centre of the gear stick and temporarily screwed it to a couple of pieces of plywood. I knew the box from the wheeling machine was too useful to throw away!
This allowed me to determine the dimensions of the transmission tunnel over which the cover would fit, but also the length of the main floor sections and the angles and dimensions of the bulkhead. The return from the top of the inner bulkhead was determined by the position of the steering column support
bracket, which was moved down the column to sit in the middle of the bulkhead area on the 1:1 scale drawing now affixed to the shed wall.
While waiting for the aluminium to arrive, I set about finishing off the brake cross shaft, having received advice from members of an Austin Seven Facebook group and fitted the rear outer hubs and drums to ensure that the wheels sat in their final positions before the body build started.
Into the fold
It wasn’t long until I was breaking out the Pela Tools sheet metal folder and folding up the transmission tunnel. This spine will need final trimming and a rear section above the differential joining to it, but it sets a centre line from which to work. The floor sides were next and, with the rear wheels removed until excess is trimmed, sat a neatly in place with an upturn at each end.
As I write, I’ve just started work on the front lower bulkhead, transferring the centreline of the transmission cover onto the centre of a sheet of aluminium before marking the area to be cut out to clear the gearbox, with an inch all round to which the cover will eventually mount. With a fold dictated by the top portion of the transmission cover, the vertical plane has been established and it’s just a case of marking the height of the steering wheel support and adding a 90-degree fold for an upper panel to attach to. Then I can start thinking about the scuttle, dash area and eventually the outer body panels. I’ve got a steep learning curve ahead, but I’m rather excited.
‘The only datum I had was the Ruby’s gearbox cover’