1930 Austin Seven special. 1/10th scale.

[Austin 7 model]

With a bit of spare time on my hands, and two 3D printers sitting idle, I thought I should be doing something. So I have designed and am slowly building four, 1/10th scale models of my 1930 A7.

 

The real car, front view taken 25 years ago.

 

Rear view.

 

Four body shells and other bits. 50p for scale.

 

Four views of a partially assembled body to see what it looked like.

 

 All four bodies have wood veneer glued on, and one body has been stained, it's the closest match I could do. No varnish yet. I will wait until all 4 are ready. The bodies will have a lighter strip of wood attached to match the real cars mouldings.

 

 

Dash and badge bar.

 

Body with dash. (not fixed in yet)

 

Steering wheel, petrol can and klaxon (hooter, awooogah!)

 

I decided to have working lights. This is a headlight.

 

 

And a sidelight.

 

Radiator shell.

 

A wheel. I made 16 of 'em! The spokes are .6mm mig welding wire.

 

And the CAD drawing of the wheel parts at full size, saved as an STL, loaded into slicer programme and reduced to 10%.

The image below looks as though the spokes aren't going to line up. I had repositioned one of the parts to get them both in.

 

Lee

[keefr22]

That's some project! Can I ask why 4?

 

Looking forward to updates, all looks really good so far!

 

Keith

[Spiny]

Spoking up 16 of those wheels looks a bit of a sanity tester! But the whole thing is looking excellent, even though not finished yet. I get the feeling it will look great when done.

[Black Knight]

Most excellent

I wish I could make one like mine

[Austin 7 model]

Keith, I am making one model for me. and one for each of my three sisters. I do sometimes wonder if maybe it's too big for them to put on display. Each model will have a display case. I don't know yet if I will buy the cases or make them with a brass frame and glass panels.

 

Spiney, each of the 16 wheels has 700mm of wire, straightened, bent at the end and cut to size then glued in. I think I miss doing them.

 

Thanks Black Knight. My mind is a bit boggled at the moment. Make one like your what?

 

Lee

[Black Knight]

1 hour ago, Austin 7 model said:

Thanks Black Knight. My mind is a bit boggled at the moment. Make one like your what?

My Austin 7

[Austin 7 model]

Black Knight,

What have you got? I am wondering how to make an A7 saloon body, The front wings could be difficult.

Lee

[Black Knight]

A 1930 Two-seat Tourer, aka an Ulster

 

[Austin 7 model]

Very nice!

I have the fibreglass moulds to make a replica Ulster body, might be ex Chris Gould, I can't be sure. I've made several bodies from them over the years, the moulds are getting a bit scraggy.

I built a body for a friend. He fitted it to a box steel chassis with a supercharged Reliant engine. He died before it was finished.

 

Lee

[Pete in Lincs]

Ulster! Cracking little car! 

 

Those models look great. Love that dashboard. 

[klubman01]

This looks brilliant.  Way beyond my skill set, but I'm happy to sit and watch.

Trevor

[Noel Smith]

Really interesting project. Nice little car with the wooden boat tail body. Did you clad it with veneer?

You might find JDH Models website interesting to look at.

[Brandy]

Nice!

A good friend of mine has an Ulster with the only original bodywork left. He's had it copied for a couple of replicas/rebuilds as far as I know. (He also has 2 Alvis, lucky bugger!)

Looking forward to seeing this progress.

 

Ian

[bigbadbadge]

What a cracking project great work so far, the wheels look fantastic as foes the rest, working lights too, awesome.

Chris

[Spiny]

22 hours ago, Austin 7 model said:

Spiney, each of the 16 wheels has 700mm of wire, straightened, bent at the end and cut to size then glued in. I think I miss doing them.

 

 

I think this is known as Stockholm Syndrome

[raider of the lost part]

impressive project! only minor critique: i'd look for some warm white LEDs, the would suit the age of the car much better

 

Florian

[Vanroon]

How wonderful! I’m admiring your CAD skills as a retired drafter. 

[Austin 7 model]

Florian

I would like to have found a warm led, and I am trying various resistors to see if I can dim them a bit. If I can't dim them I will put a dab of paint on them.

 

Vanroon

Thanks. I started off with FreeCAD, an amazing cad package, but perhaps not the easiest to get to grips with. I then got myself a "free" copy of Solid works, but realised after a while that free means until they decide otherwise. I now use Designspark mechanical for most of my designs, and every now and then, Solid edge. All these cad programmes have one thing in common. FREE! I would like to buy a cad programme, but only one I would own. There doesn't seem to be many of those about, so DS it is.

[dnl42]

6 hours ago, Austin 7 model said:

I would like to have found a warm led, and I am trying various resistors to see if I can dim them a bit. If I can't dim them I will put a dab of paint on them.

A larger resistor will definitely dim the LED, but it wont change the color. You might try an RGB LED so you can dial in a little yellow.

 

I you're going to work with LEDs more often, you might be interested in a Velleman LED Buddy kit. It allows you to test various voltage-resistance combinations to see what gets you the best light. TBH, it won't help with figuring out an RGB color as it need three inputs to produce a blended color.

[Spiny]

11 hours ago, Austin 7 model said:

Florian

I would like to have found a warm led, and I am trying various resistors to see if I can dim them a bit. If I can't dim them I will put a dab of paint on them.

 

 

Would something like this work in your headlights?

 

https://www.componentshop.co.uk/warm-white-micro-led-0402-smd-pre-wired.html

 

If you end up finding a chip described using colour temperature, 2700K is about the same as one of the old tungsten light bulbs, 3000K is like a halogen downlight. Both of these would be described as warm white in descriptions. I suspect you won't want to go higher than 2700K if possible, and if you find a 2200K chip of the right size (usually described as very warm white) that would probably be even closer to the original lamp colour. Depending on the quality of the chip, it's quite possible that adding paint onto the lens will have unintended effects in terms of colour as LED chips don't produce a broad spectrum of colour like tungsten lamps, instead they produce at certain wavelengths which trick the eye into believing it's seeing the full spectrum (with varying degress of success).

[Austin 7 model]

Unfortunately, the led's were bonded into their respective housings months ago. Before I bought the led's I had considered using fibre optic strands lit from a single led. I can't remember why I didn't!