Your Austin Seven looks wonderful in the car park, drawing compliments and admiring glances from on-lookers. You climb in after proudly showing off the gleaming paintwork, turn the key, pull the starter and splutter into life. With a cheery wave, you let out the clutch and wheeze to the end of the road, lurch around the corner and nearly fail to stop at the lights. Behind you, as a lingering reminder of your presence, is a cloud of smoke and a puddle of oil: yet another, typical old British car. Well, it does not have to be that way. Oxfordshire Sevens’s ideas for improving your Seven and our easily-fitted parts can transform your car, making it a delight to drive.
Improving the Handling of Your Austin Seven
The Austin 7 is not renowned for good handling. The simple transverse leaf spring works well, but the friction arm damper simply looks the part, paying no more than lip service to effectiveness. The cause of the problem is inherent in the design of the unit itself. With both sets of arms on the standard unit sharing a common pivot point, when the arms on one side move upwards, the arms on the other side try to move in the opposite direction, making body roll even worse. Oxfordshire Sevens’s double front shock absorber overcomes this.
Our double shock absorber uses two pivot points instead of one, allowing each side to operate independently, transforming the handling. It is a straight swap for the standard unit and, once fitted, is hardly noticeable. Made from high quality steel, fitted with a modern friction material and powder coated black, this is possibly one of the most cost-effective methods of improving the handling of your Austin Seven.
Short Front Link
As with any car, wear in the suspension components can make the handling feel worse than it needs to. Another common factor affecting the handling of the Austin Seven is wear in the short front links. These links, which connect the shock absorber to the axle, wear at the pivot points. Fitting one of our new links, machined from HE30 alloy billet, along with a set of our new rubber bushes, at the same time as the new shock absorber can further improve the effectiveness of the Austin Seven’s suspension and improve handling. Not only that, they look good as well.