Car that came into work last week, classic 1930's

[MK999]

Came in for a carb setup;

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-WduTiUbJ55Y/Tm0nl4-bAgI/AAAAAAAAAKI/ySinFuwe8Po/s912/01092011502.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Dcj3ZTRPI4U/Tm0nlm1OfUI/AAAAAAAAAKE/ULfHngOMOCc/s912/01092011503.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DkBKAFxRYik/Tm0nmNZxhOI/AAAAAAAAAKM/h3jwXW3SaNw/s912/01092011504.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-H0xskMdc2Qc/Tm0npZDWuyI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/yP5lNxMUvL0/s912/01092011505.jpg

Car is a 1930's AC 'six' (seems to be a nickname/general name for the series due to the six cylinder engine) 16/90. Of 6 ever built, it was one of 4 only ever intended to have what it is the only 1 (!!) left to have it's original:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-CzwaMKu4HLA/Tm0npFeYu2I/AAAAAAAAAKU/gNODAfb7BWo/s912/01092011506.jpg

... Arnott Supercharger, it's supercharged drawing through an SU carb and compressing the intake charge rather than air and then mixing fuel, to 3 psi, and back in the 1930's made an impressive 90bhp as standard. With a carb setup on modern fuels etc which allowed a bit more timing advance than was available back then, on it's circa 6:1 compression, it made 110BHP.


Had to wait until now to post up as we were unsure of it's undoubtably priceless value, car is now no longer on the premises and now back in its home wherever that may be, quite glad I don't know! lol

[L14MNP]

Seb. :d

[Novasport]

Whats with the bent spanner logo on the top of the radiator? lol

[Stuart]

Pre war cars are the mutts nuts!!!!!!

I love the Bentleys from that era, worth a minimum of £250K lol

[mowgli]

theres a place in the next town that dismantles RR & bentleys.. we concreted in a scissor lift for them. they brought in a 1937 bentley saloon. it was a barn find. the body was hanging off it & it looked shocking. over the space of 2 days, they stripped out any decent fittings, and removed the body, leaving the running gear & chassis. it was amazing. there were 2 main chassis rails, rivetted to a great number of crossmembers, all of them were intact.. the leaf springs actually had leather gaiters to keep the crap out. they got the engine turning over by hand, then did a compression test, serviced it & had it running. it then went off to a bloke in wales to make it into a 2 seater soft top tourer. but considering it was 71 years old, it was in remarkably good condition... they really knew how to build stuff in those days

[MK999]

Bent spanner is a leaping big cat of some sort lol

We thought more Stu... only record I could find was a non supercharged 16/80, so same engine but triple carbs, 500 odd of those made, compared to only 6 of these and it sold for £80k in 96.

Owner was offered 80k for this in the 70's, as a bare shell in need of restoration with no engine :eek:

[wwmnw]

That is stunning, steering wheel is unnecessarily massive but that doesn't spoil it.

[Stuart]

Adjustable dampers too..... well dampers, I mean brake pads facing each other at the pivot of the leaf spring with an adjustable spring clamping them :)

[mowgli]

That is stunning, steering wheel is necessarily massive but that doesn't spoil it.

corrected for truth.. they didn't have power steering, so used a slow geared peg & cam steering box, they really needed the huge wheel..

[mowgli]

Adjustable dampers too..... well dampers, I mean brake pads facing each other at the pivot of the leaf spring with an adjustable spring clamping them :)

the damping was hardly effective though i think the 'adjusters' are just a way to tighten them up as the discs wore out..... these cars would have needed servicing every thousand miles..

[MK999]

It genuinely does, even that huge wheel is hard enough to turn. It's also ****ing scary moving it btw, all aluminium body panels. Owner told us a story about a friend of his that had a similar car and it took him a while to figure out where 3 little dents in arches/fenders came from, until he went to drag himself out from underneath it, it was the 'fingerprints' of the person that tried before him.

[wwmnw]

corrected for truth.. they didn't have power steering, so used a slow geared peg & cam steering box, they really needed the huge wheel..

I assumed they didn't have power steering in them days but I didn't know the rest lol

[mowgli]

the whole feed ing the wheel thru your hands thing from your driving lessons is directly from this era.. never cross your hands over cos if you hit a pothole (and the roads back then were ropey) you would break your arm. the reason is that if you have low geared steering, and the wheel kicked back on you, it suddenly became a high geared wheel, and you'd get hurt. people also had to sit close to the wheel to get the leverage on them..

[MattBrown]

Absolutely stunning.

A non supercharged version was at the pagent of power last year.

One day I hope to own something like this.