Swing low…
Matt’s Seven gets dropped, ready for racing
You need to lower the ride height, or you run the risk of it rolling over.’ Sage advice, gleaned from 750 Motor Club racers on my recent visit to the paddock (PC, February 2024), and words that were ringing in my ears when I received my 2024 competition licence through the post from Motorsport UK. Time to put a that advice into action, then, and with the Seven loaded onto the trailer and fastened behind the Land Rover, I was soon arriving at the door of Oxfordshire Sevens near Bicester. As the Ninety and I chugged into the industrial estate, I was met by Ian Tillman, who’s built the business up from roadside repairs and tinkering in the corner of a workshop to the busy hub for Seven owners it is today, with long waiting lists, container loads of spares and a workshop full of Sevens in varying states of ongoing repair.
The front axle on a Seven is essentially an I-beam, suspended by a transverse leaf spring, which carries the stub axles via kingpins and is held in position by a pair or radius arms. Sports models, from factory, benefitted from a lower ride height than the more pedestrian box saloons and Rubys, by means of a so called ‘bowed axle’ and a shorter, flatter spring that essentially raises the wheels in relation to the body. From his vast stock of spare parts, Ian dug out an axle that had started life as a straight one just as on my car, but which had been forged to sports-specification, plus a flat spring. So, I backed the Tomkins Special into the workshop, where I was met with a thrum of youthful enthusiasm. Leading the work on my car was 19-year-old James Mabley, who just the week prior to my visit had completed his apprenticeship with Heritage Skills Academy at nearby Bicester Heritage. Also on hand was first year HSA apprentice Josh Garnon and Saturday helper, vintage car enthusiast and Startermotor Ambassador Toby Janes, who
works there at weekends and school holidays.
While Josh and Toby set to work cleaning the parts which were to be fitted, James and I jacked up the car, removed the road wheels and set about stripping the axle from the chassis. Brake cables were first (yes, my racing car shares its braking system with a cheap pushbike), followed by the nuts that hold the radius arms to the axle I-beam, damper drop links (the double friction damper and short alloy drop links both being parts from the O7 upgrades catalogue), and finally the spring – which necessitated the removal of the radiator to access its U-bolt retaining nuts. At least the radiator was easy to drain, it having a convenient tap at the bottom that I’d spent several ‘happy’ hours unseizing during lockdown.
Spring to action
As we stripped my old axle with a view to swapping everything onto the new one, keeneyed James spotted a little play in one of the kingpins (the side I hadn’t replaced). No better place to be when in need of a part, at least, so a new set of kingpin bushes were soon fitted, reamed to size and shimmed. Swivels fitted,