Building a Special Body

[Ian Williams]

In answer to questions raised by Jamie about lengthening steering column's this is my solution; Take a Ruby and a Big seven column, once you dismantle them you will see the worm on both is identical but the big seven is 4 1/2" longer. You will also notice that the outer tube of both the column's is soft soldered into the steering box, heat the boxes swap over the tubes and rebuild the Ruby one with the Big seven inner fitted, job done! Well almost, I lowered mine considerably so the keyway in the drop arm needs to be recut to prevent the quadrant from coming out of mesh with the worm, a simple job for someone with a broach.


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A further refinement was to make an advance retard lever, I used the Big Seven horn tube, found a bit of 5/16" tube which fitted nicely up the centre of this soft soldered an Austin gas lever onto the tube, I turned an advance quadrant to fit on top of the Big seven horn tube. I then tidied everything up by taking a Ruby/Big seven bakelite steering wheel centre, turning it to a slightly nicer shape, fitting an Austin motif in the centre and bolting that to the quadrant, the result is rather pleasing and quite authentic in appearance.


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Another job done recently was to make the boot liid, once the panel was shaped to fit the curve of the tail it was trimmed to size making allowance for the wired edge. I then started creating a flange all the way around the edge, this was done in stages annealing the edge as it work hardened. Once it was up to 90 degrees I could clamp the wire in place and close the flange over the wire working in short sections and moving the clamps as I went, sorry about the pictures it is hard to hold a camera, hammer, dolly and work piece all at the same time!

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