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1933 Austin 7 PD Two Seater Tourer Reg no: ALB327
I have made a few enquiries and have turned up a little information about ALB 327, 'Albie' to the previous owner. Purchased by John Friend of Plymouth in around 1968 when he was a founder member of the Devon Vintage Car Club. The story goes that it was found in a very poor state on a farm in the area. Beryl, John’s wife recounted that there were hens eggs behind the seats and mice in the upholstery. Johns Father was W.G. Friend who founded ‘Friends Garage’ in Ivybridge after WW2 and John worked in the garage with his father so had all the facilities at hand to repair the car. The car stayed with John until he died in early 2015, his wife having passed away a few years earlier. His sons, now running the garage, restored the car before selling it but I don’t know the date of sale. The car was very well used by John & Beryl and in todays terminology would have been called an ‘oily rag’. It never looked that smart but mechanically was very sound and went all over the UK and Europe on runs with various other Devon Vintage Car Club members. If I can find any pictures or more detail, I’ll get in touch again. --- Peter Britton who sold the car to me, tells me this about it. It's far from concours but runs well (and stops!). The interior and headlamps are not original, but it does have the original number, which is transferable and therefore valuable. Not that anyone would dream of such sacrilege of course! First I must stress that the car is quite tatty compared with JS 4835 (my(Roly) previous green APD) when looked at close to. I've had to do quite a lot of work on it including replacing most of the braking system, rebuilt rear axle, rewire etc. I haven't touched the engine or gearbox though, which seem to work well. I bought the car from a dealer (Nigel Snow) who had bought it from the widow of the former owner, a retired garage owner from Devon called John Friend. He had got the car back on the road (I hesitate to say restored it!) in the 1970's and recovered the original registration number. Despite being recovered, the number is still transferable, - presumably the rules were different back then. There is some history of John Friend's ownership, such as MoTs and letters from DVLC, but nothing before then. The car has a rather old (1970s?) hood made of leathercloth type material and sidescreens. The wiper motor is electric rather than the original suction type. I don't know what overhauls were carried out. The previous owner did his own work and wrote nothing down. The outside of the engine looks quite tatty, but I noticed when I took the sump off that the big end bolts look brand new, so some work must have been done internally. When I rewired the car I added flashing indicators (for safety reasons). The ignition warning light was broken when I bought the car and rather than buying a new one I decided to be clever and make a triple warning lights cluster for ignition, indicators and main beam which fits in the same place and uses LEDs. That was not entirely successful as the ignition warning light flashes rapidly on and off even when the dynamo is charging. It would be easy to refit a conventional filament bulb light though. I also fitted some relays to avoid overloading the original ignition/light switch.
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