What have you done today with your Austin Seven

[Peter Arnold]

I took the tourer for a short run this morning having spent a couple of days last week on oil leaks. I decided to have go at Colin Ayre's fix by cleaning up around the block to crankcase join with the aim of applying a silicon bead to, hopefully, stop the oil leak. In order to clean it all properly I had to remove the timing gear cover, at which point I found that the bolts securing it were not as tight as they should have been and the camshaft locating bolt was also not particularly tight. So cleaned the block to crankcase joint with solvents and applied a small bead of JB Weld Ultimate Grey silicon around the join , made a new gasket for the timing gear cover and assembled with Permatex Form-a-gasket sealant and made sure everything was tight. So when I got back from the run, lo and behold there was no oil flooding down onto the chassis rails. It will be interesting to see how long the fix lasts. O course, I cannot be sure that it was the block joint leaking having found the other bits not properly tight. We will see!