Recollections

The Kimber Austin, by Pat Kimber

This article was written by the owner/builder Pat Kimber in the mid sixties and published in the 750 MC Bulletin early in 1967. Although it doesn’t state it, the body was a Speedex 750, an unusual one with a letter box type radiator intake. This is believed to have been a standard Speedex design as another car had a similar shaped intake. The original article didn’t have any photo’s, I’ve added those kindly loaned by Pat.

Pat finally removed the highly tuned engine and gearbox and sold the rolling chassis. UAR 600 is not currently one of the survivors.

When I was 20 years old, that was five years ago (remember this is from the 1960’s!!), I badly wanted a sports car but, of course, was unable to afford anything the car firms had to offer. I therefore made the bold decision to build a car of my own to my own design. It all started when I saw an Austin 7 Ruby advertised for sale locally. Now I know this is no sports car but is small and cheap to buy and spares are readily available. Furthermore, it suited my purpose admirably. I decided to make an Austin 7 Special so I bought the Ruby for £5 – I was done!

Having got my Ruby home I was faced with the problem of finding somewhere to park it. Fortunately near my home there are some council parking bays and I was able to rent one of these for 2s. 6d a week. At the same time I got my name down on the waiting list for a garage. In the cold weather of November 1960 I set to work on the car. It was pushed into the working bay and I started stripping out the engine, gearbox, back axle, front axle, wheels, steering, etc. Having got that far, it had in fact taken me six weeks, I was left with a body and chassis unit, at which point the council decided it did not like the look of it and told me it had to be moved. Bureaucrats!

I decided anyway that I was not going to use that particular Ruby chassis as someone had offered me one that had been boxed. The Austin 7 chassis is like a top hat and is not very strong without the body. The boxed chassis arrived at 2 a.m. one Sunday and I set to work immediately! The first thing you have to do when making a Special is to get the chassis on its wheels. I completely stripped the back axle, overhauled and carefully rebuilt it. I fitted it to the chassis and was very glad to see that this got the back end off the ground at least. A start had been made.

I planned to fit an IFS unit to the front and I managed to get hold of one second-hand. This I fixed in place with two U bolts. I used standard Austin 7 radius arms boxed in the open side of the channel.

Having got the chassis on its four wheels, it was time to decide what type of body was going to be fitted. Fibreglass was considered but rejected as being too heavy and I wanted to race the car once it was completed. As it turned out I was in luck as I was offered an tubular framed aluminium racing body for £25 ( a Speedex 750 body – see the photo’s). This was really too good to be missed. Now I actually had a whole £10 at the time and was able to borrow the other £15 from a friend who was very interested in motor sport and keen to help.

The snag was, the body was in Nottingham and that was a long way away, particularly when the family does not own a car.

Fortunately the above mentioned friend got out his mothers car, a Morris Minor shooting brake. Into this vehicle we loaded the mattress off my bed (see below!), a length of rope, myself and my brother and off to Nottingham we set. The body, when I saw it in Nottingham, did not look too brilliant but still it was a shell and so £25 changed hands. There I was a proud owner of this Austin 7 Special body. The problem now was to get the thing home and this is where the mattress played its important role. The mattress was placed on the roof of the car and the shell was placed on top of this, the whole caboodle being securely strapped on with our length of rope. Needless to say, with that lot up top we made only slow progress back home, but it says a lot for our ropework and knotmanship that we only had to stop once to check and adjust our precarious load.

When we got around to fitting the body to the chassis it went on beautifully without any bother. I was overjoyed and had visions of myself driving round in a completed motor car within a month. How wrong I was. Anyway, for the first time the various bits of metal I had assembled at great cost and labour had started to look like something like a car. That was enough for the moment.

Having got the body on the chassis and the whole thing starting to resemble a motor car, we decided it would be a good idea to provide ways of stopping and steering it.

I decided to tackle the steering department first and obtained two Ruby steering boxes from which I proceeded to make one good one. After many hours of hard labour I finally had a box which was as good as new. When fitting it in the car things went well at first and I thought I was in for an easy time of it. But of course this was too much to ask for. My jubilation ceased when I discovered the column was too short and came too high up for the very low body. Well I had to sit down and think this little snag out but finally, Eureka! The solution was to use half the column out of the box on the car and then make up the distance with the column out of the other steering box. One of the golden rules of special – building is: Never throw anything away! Before I did anything else however, I went along to Lotus to have a look at how they did things and I came away with a small U/J that they use on the Elite steering column. I thought it must work, after all it cost £2 10s.

Having assembled all the various parts I now welded the whole lot up and tried it on the car. I was amazed and not a little proud that it was perfect and I am still using it to this day. I got the track rod from a Ford 10 as the Austin one is not long enough for the IFS unit. I was however, able to use standard Austin 7 steering arms.

To make it stop I acquired what is known in the best 750 circles as a Bowdenex brake kit. This consists of two long front cables and two long rear levers. The two cables fit over the front axle and the outer cables are fixed to the brake back plate like in a motorcycle. I fitted the rear levers, adjusted and tested the brakes. They seemed to function quite well at walking pace at any rate!

Once all that was completed I turned my attention to engine cooling problems. What I wanted was a small cross flow radiator. A new one would have set me back £7 10s. This was far too much. Thanks, however, to the special – builders friend and bible, Exchange and Mart, I located one such rad. For sale at the ridiculous price of £3. Furthermore, the advertisement claimed it was a new radiator. The required sum was duly dispatched and when the goods arrived they were indeed new. The rad. Was just as good as those I had been offered for £7 10s. and it just goes to show what bargains you can pick up if you look around before parting with the necessary. Anyway the rad. did not just fit sweetly into place, but after the usual hard sweat it worked, or at least it would fit but first I had some air-flow technicalities to consider.

All the books I had read on the subject of specials said that the air coming in the front must pass through the rad. The only way I could see to do this was to cut out a former of 1/8^th inch sheet alloy plate. I had to cut a piece of cardboard to fit inside the nose of the car where the rad. was to go. This job alone took two whole afternoons but in the end, and many pieces of cardboard later, I got one which fitted quite well. I now had the job of cutting this out in alloy plate 24in x 18in with a hacksaw and file. Two days, umpteen blisters and one torn muscle later this task was completed too. Now all I had to do was fit the rad. to the alloy plate and cut a hole in the plate for the air to get through. Again much sawing and filing was necessary but this time the hole was only 18in x 8in. Everything fitted in the end.

The next item to be procured was a water pump. I got one from a Ford 100E engine. It was really far too heavy for a racing car but it did work. Whilst still concerned with cooling the engine I fixed up a small tank for storing the coolant. I got this second hand for, I think, 17s 6d. A new one would have cost £2 10s.

Next came the lights and other wiring. I got a new wiring harness for an Austin 7 Ruby and a friend came along and wired it up for me. It worked first time and has given no trouble since. The headlights were made by the same friend and myself from Miller spot lights. I decided to get all new instruments and the car is fully equipped with rev. counter, water temp. and oil temp. gauges, petrol gauge, vacuum gauge, ammeter and an ignition warning light.

I will now explain about the engines – there were two. The first one was an Austin 7 Ruby unit tuned to racing specification, that is to say with alloy head, oversize inlet valves, racing cam and twin S.U.’s, etc. The other engine was a standard Austin 7 unit with absolutely no mods at all and it was this one which we used first on the road – after all I still had to learn to drive yet!

The gearbox was a four speed one taken from an Austin 7. The seats I naturally made myself from soft rubber covered with rexine. My grandmother sewed them together for me on her old sewing machine. They were in fact a great success and the whole lot only cost £2. I made a fitted a woodrim steering wheel for 30s., so Les Leston can whistle for the exorbitant sums he charges for his wheels.

A friend sprayed the car for me – BRG of course – and we did it outside my house in the road.

Anyway the great day arrived and having taxed and insured the Special ( I was able to get new numbers and log book) we set out on our first run to go and get some petrol. Remember I was a learner and so I was accompanied by the same friend who had helped me wire the car. Brave lad!

All went well on this first run down the town and nothing fell off. The next day we decided to go over to Much Hadham to work on a friends racing car. Naturally when the said friend turned up in his mothers car to give me a lift I declined and took the Special instead. Having cleared the town we were on the open road for the first time. I could not resist wait to have a go and 50 came up in no time. The car was better than I had dared hope and I was able to corner it at fantastic speed – I can’t say exactly what speed because it is not my habit to consult the instruments whilst going round corners.

By the time we reached Much Hadham the car was very hot and out of water. This overheating caused a lot of trouble at first and it took weeks to get it sorted out. Finally we discovered that the water pump was leaking when the pressure built up so a new pump was bought and fitted. This cured the trouble for good with this engine.

After driving about with my father for three or four months the day of my driving test came round. I set off quaking with fear – thank goodness at least it was not raining for I have no hood on the car. I had doubts as to whether the examiner would get in a Special but he did and about three – quarters of an hour later I had the magic pink slip in my hand. It was the first time I had taken a test and it was in a car I had designed and built myself. The joy I felt was indescribable.

After this the Special got a lot of use until I went and put a rod through the block which didn’t help matters much.

I then fitted the racing engine and the fun started. We had trouble with the S.U.’s, it boiled for a bit when running in, and I could not drive the car below 30 mph for a long time.

The handling is good. It understeers a little at all speeds. The top speed is about 80 mph and with a close ratio box it does 65 mph in third at 6,200 rpm with acceleration to match. The gearbox is almost home made, a friend cut the gears for me. Since the car has been built I have fitted hydraulic brakes, a smaller water pump also done a bit more with the engine.