Borders Raid

Just back from a glorious weekend based at Lauder in the Borders, about 350 miles of driving. The engine is easing off and will now cruise happily just below 50mph, hopefully the more we use it just now the better it will get. Still no oil leaks which is great and quite comforting.










Some pictures from the weekends events....

All about Monty

Monty is our 1928 Austin Seven AD Tourer (A.K.A "Chummy").

Islay and me in Monty the day it was bought..

We bought the car in the summer of 2005 from a gentleman in Sussex, Tanya drove the car back to our home in Glasgow, whilst I followed in our Cabriolet towing the miniature Nutshell Caravan we have.

The Cabriolet and Nutshell Caravan...

Monty is the only Seven we have which has a name, I don't normally approve of such customs but this particular car came with it's name and seems to have stuck! Monty, we were informed by its previous owners, is so called because of the number plate prefix "MP", this relates to "Monty Python", so there you have it.

We took several years to find a car which suited our needs, we looked at highly restored cars but we didn't think they looked right for us. Eventually our good friend Mac Bonar, said that he might have found a car for us. We were e-mailed some photos and Mac went to look at the car and test drive it for us.

Mac in his casual attire...

His reports were good and we made a date to visit it for ourselves. We both loved the look of Monty and weren't disappointed by the way it drove. Lots of original nickel, the odd chip and plenty of "patina".

This is us about to go over the Pass of The Cattle last Summer, into Applecross...

Over the two years we have owned the car it has been driven lots and we've had to do various jobs on it. On the drive back north the car blew it's head gasket on the Horseshoe Pass in North Wales. The head turned out to be warped and we had it skimmed. During a Scottish Austin Seven Club weekend away last May the crankshaft broke damaging the front main lip in the crankcase, time to rebuild!

In the mean time I put the spare engine from our 1924 Chummy into Monty and we headed off on a trip up the West Coast of Scotland. Whilst away a tiny piece of split pin from one of the big ends got sucked into the oil pump. We managed to get the car back to the campsite in the rear of a Sherpa Van. Having removed the sump we used a large magnet to get the offending item out! All ran well until last December when the oil gauge pipe broke, pumped all of the oil out of the crankcase and then ran a big end!

Driving the 1924 Chummy at the Scone Rally 2005...

I managed to purchase a new crankcase, Phoenix crankshaft and whole host of other parts to rebuild the engine in preparation for our trip to Norway this summer. We have put around 500 miles on the clock since the rebuild and hope to head off on the Borders raid this weekend.

On the Isle of Lewis May 07 at Pemma and Scott's Wedding...

Preparations begin...

Our Poor Chummy ran a big end on Boxing Day and forced us to rebuild the engine a little sooner than we had anticipated... the '29 saloon was co-opted in to tow Chummy to the pub in time for lunch!