Austin Classics

One thing that any new owner of a Pre-War Austin needs to know is that the Nuts & Bolts are Imperial, well you knew that already didn't you. Well I thought I did, I knew that there were Metric and Imperial measurements and therefore there would be Metric and Imperial sized Bolts. When I first set out I proudly went out and bought a new set of Sockets and Spanners (Wrenches) and set to work, only to discover they didn't seem to fit well, in fact metric sizes seemed to fit better.

I thought I would post some details of some useful tools that I have bought while doing jobs on our cars. The first is a little adjustable hand reamer that I just bought this week to assist with fitting a spring to the Colwyn Cabriolet this week.

One of the problems when attempting to fit a spring to an Austin 10 is that the rear shackle is not easily accessible as it is obscured by the bodywork and rear wheel arch. The top pin/bolt in the rear shackle is often rusted in place preventing you from pulling it forward in order to get to it. Fortunately there is some give in the rubber bush, making it spring loaded. I found using a ratcheted luggage strap was the ideal solution to hold the shackle in a position where it is more easily accessible.

This week I decided it was time to change the rear springs on our Austin 10 Colwyn Cabriolet as they were almost useless, starting to bend the opposite way. Having a spare chassis to practice on, I quickly figured out how to do the job and found it wasn't very difficult. So I set to work on the car only to discover (you guessed it) that the job was not as simple as I had hoped. The rear shackle bolt that passes through the silentbloc bush on the back of the spring would not come out no matter how hard I tried.

With so much going on I have had little time to devote to the cars but finally I have ordered some wood to repair the seat with.

I am begining to wonder if it is Classic Cars or Modern Computer technology that takes the most effort to maintain. The system running our web site went pear shaped and so here I am once again, installing software, fiddling with databse permissions and all manor of other exciting computer geek stuff to get the site back on-line.

Sorry about the down time but I hope that we will get things back on track soon and as they used to say in the 1930's all will be tickety-boo.

Looking through an old edition of "The Motor" magazine and came across this little cartoon, A little fun I thought I'd share.

From "The Motor" December 22 1936.

The drivers seat recently gave way on the Litchfield so I decided to remove it this afternoon to see what could be done to fix it.

Seems it is a lost cause as it is riddled with woodworm and will need to be completely replaced. Even the covering on the back of the seat has lots of small holes where the woodworm have escaped from. Looks like a crash course in woodwork & upholstery is in order to build a new chair. Anyone know what the original wood would have been, Ash or Beech maybe ?