But first here is some of the history of it.
The car has had only 2 owners from new and was first registered to a Mrs Mary Elspit Lewis of Norley in Cheshire who kept the car until the mid '60's when it passed to a local smallholder in the village of Bagnall, Staffordshire , where my Dad lived at the time. The owner never registered the change of ownership as he didn't put it on the road. My Dad acquired the car almost by accident as he did some work for the guy at his farm and instead of cash he offered "the old car in the shed". At the time he would have preferred cash and had visions of some rusty old 50's heap especially as he had told my Dad that there were chickens occupying it!! However, on seeing the Austin, which at the time had a lovely patina about it, He thought 'yes, I like it' and the deal was done.
The car hadn't run for a few years and his intentions were to take it home and lightly restore it at some future time. Fate, however, intervened. My Mum was running an old Morris 1000 van to travel from Leek to Macclesfield to her job as a teacher. The van packed up and had to be scrapped; they were saving to get married and had no spare cash so my Dad quickly had a day's work on the old Austin freeing the brakes, greasing the steering, cleaning the fuel system etc. and took her for an M-O-T. To his surprise it passed without any problem at all and now we had a vehicle for my Mum to go to work in! The car raised a few eyebrows at the school where my Mum worked – you don't get many young girls turning up to work in a 1939 car!
The old car soon settled down to the 12 mile journey and gave very little trouble. It blew a head gasket once and my Dad and his friend changed it on the drive one bitterly cold winter's night by torchlight (those were the days!!). The old girl had a tendency to boil on hot days and my Mum would just pull into the layby at Rudyard Lake and top the radiator up. My Dad decided to cure this problem and took the radiator for a new core. When he was shown the old one it was blocked solid; ever likely it boiled occasionally.
Spring of 1974 and my parents got married and the old Austin was there wedding car. (Nothing like using your own car for your wedding. No point in wasting cash on anything fancier) As finances began to improve and the Austin was not in use every day (my mum had now "progressed" to a Land Rover series 2A) it became my Dads regular car. BUT NOT FOR LONG! One evening, when I was on my way in the Austin to a meeting at Chell cricket club in Stoke-on-Trent, accompanied by some friends, as he pulled into the car park one of them tapped me on the shoulder and said "I think you need to investigate the car's bodywork" He was holding the back window glass which had just fallen out!!
The car was taken off the road in 1977 after 38 years almost continuous use which just goes to show Austin's slogan of " You buy a car but you invest in an Austin" to be true!
[size=5]Once the decision was made to commence restoration, the Austin was put in the garage at home and an assessment of the work needed was undertaken. The bodywork seemed a bit daunting so the easy job of overhauling the engine was done first. Once the engine was stripped down it was found to need a rebore and crank regrind. At the time my dad was working for a company engaged in converting the Midlands to natural gas and had lots of free time during the week with a company vehicle to roam around in. The first engine reconditioner he found in Dudley took one look at the block, announced "38 or 39 Twelve mate?" and proceeded to fetch gaskets, pistons, valves, bearings etc. out of the stores still in their original boxes!! He said "Is it cash?, "Yes" my dad replied and a very good price and excellent job ensued.Once the engine was reinstalled the task of the bodywork began. These cars are a composite mixture of pressed steel bodywork with an awful lot of wood framing to fit and hold windows, trim and seating. Luckily my Dad had good patterns in the form of the on-going fittings so copying them was not a problem and the job progressed quite well. After completing a lot of the woodwork inside he began to investigate the sliding sun roof which always seemed to leak a bit and this was when he realised that he had serious problems. The roof is quite a complicated set-up involving a series of pressed channels welded to the inside of the roof on which the roof slides; a bit like an upside-down railway track! All of these had disintegrated to some extent and the sliding part of the roof itself was badly rotten. My dad wasted weeks repairing the runners and roof rails only to find as the roof slid back it caught the inside of the car and would not slide no matter what he tried. At this point disillusionment set in and he abandoned the Austin 12, bought an Austin Seven chassis from a friend and happily spent the next 18 months building an Austin 7 Special. But that's another thread in its self!! The Austin 12 now languished under a sheet on the 'patio'(back yard) , not really getting any worse but definitely not improving. After a few years (how time flies) my mum issued an ultimatum to either move it or do some more work on it so I moved it. My dads enthusiasm for welding had returned a bit, partly because he had 'encouragement' from others working on their stuff at the site, and progress was made on the floor pan, centre door struts and sills. However, progress was slow. Other projects got in the way including a Willys Jeep, a JZR 3-wheeler, and my Standard Fordson tractor. These jobs got in the way and my dad eventually gave up. Fast forward 13 years and I get involved in the restoration. I got my Dad enthusiastic about it again and we dragged it out the shed. As you can see from the pictures it hadn't got any worse but the years hadn't been kind to it. We put into a larger shed with better light and more power supplies and work commenced again.
Edited by porl, 10 April 2013 - 09:31 PM.
