Dismantling A 1929 Austin 7 Engine Start To Finish!

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Right here is the engine that I removed the other day from the Austin 7, the blue Austin 7, because it's run out of puff basically. Um, ever since I've owned it, it has blue puffs of smoke and it's been getting harder and harder to start. I've done about 1,000 miles with this engine and we're now at a point that it takes so long to try and get it to go that it's just completely pointless. It's it roughs up and then it just dies down. There's no compression and it's down to rings, valves, and I think there is a bit of a bearing rumble as well. So, it makes sense just to pull it to pieces, have a look at it, and then when we put it back together, do some improvements, better valves, maybe a better crankshaft and rods. In the last video and the recent shorts, you would have seen it got pulled out and a test drive of the Austin 7 with the Aussie 7's engine in it. And it kind of shows that the gearbox in this Austin 7 was probably actually most of the noise that I thought was the bearing rumbles, but we'll have a look. Anyway, this is strange because it actually feels when when I turn it over, it feels it feels actually pretty good, but we're going to take it apart because it's got no compression anyway. So, let's just have a look. Anyway, let's let's just have a look. It doesn't hurt. What do we know?

[00:01:07]Well, this is a 1929 engine. It's got the matching numbers to the V5. So, this might have been the engine that's been with the car the whole time. Um, in fact, actually, I'll tell a lie, it's also been in a heritage certificate. So, yeah, it's got the actual, right? Now, it's got the uh Aussie 7 original head on it. So, it's actually got the taps from the 1926 ones that you kind of can prime the uh prime it with some They do seal properly. We know because that runs really well on the Aussie 7's engine.

[00:01:34]Anyway, ever since owning the blue car, it has become obvious that there's been a lot of time spent on making it look nice, but not much time spent on the mechanics because every bit of the mechanics seems a little bit maybe a little bit worn out and the engine is no exception. But this car has had work on the past. When we've had the head off and been testing it with the homemade cylinder head, we found that the pistons were plus 60, which is um quite big pistons. They're bored out quite big, but the valves are standard and all of the valves don't match. So, it's had some work in the past. Whether that work goes all the way down to the crankshaft, we will find out. First thing we'll do is remove the distributor. Distributor.

[00:02:13]Distributor. It's um a weird changeover distributor. Distributor. Um I can't remember exactly. Yeah, DS4. So, not many of these around. It's actually kind of hard to find the wipers and the uh the uh rotor covers. you could get uh I think it's an early Renault has the same uh distributor cover but the wiper arms a little bit but the rotor arms a little bit hard to find but I found them in on distributor doctor distributor doctor.com so I've got a couple of spare ones of those as you can see it moves with the advance and lever we might upgrade the distributor so we might not need that function because we might add a centrifugal advance and but we'll worry about that later next off with the cylinder head I'm just going to leave the spark plugs in it because they don't need to be removed.

[00:02:59]We know it's got no compression or hardly any anyway.

[00:03:16]There we go. That's the bottom of it. I used some copper sealant uh to stick the um that looks like um I used a asbestos one. So I'll get rid of that actually.

[00:03:28]Toodly. See you later alligator. I don't know how easy it is to make out but it says right there plus 60. Um so these are you know they've been bored out in the past maybe multiple times because plus 60 is uh quite on the big side uh compared to other ones. But the balls um on initial look don't actually look that bad. And provided the sizes work out, they might only need honing to be honest. But we'll have to work out and see. So, what are we going to do? Let's pull off the carburetor and the carburetor manifold. So, this is also the Zenf carburetor from the Aussie 7.

[00:04:05]It's an earlier one because it's made of brass, bronze, bronze. And um yeah, the one that came with this was made from like monkey metal, that zinc alloy. and it actually a couple of bits like crumbled away when um when I was fixing it at one point. So, I put this on it, got both of them, but this one's definitely superior. They're definitely cut costs in between 1926 and 1929.

[00:04:27]Right. I don't think I've I don't think I've managed to get this off before. So, let's let's try and get this manifold off. Actually, it feels like maybe I have because all of the nuts are loose.

[00:04:37]The moment of truth.

[00:04:48]Next, I guess I'll remove some bits and bobs from the front. First, I'm going to loosen off the fan belt. The fan belt. A bit of a The next thing I'm going to remove is the generator. That's also got a shaft that goes through and drives the drive shaft. There's like a bunch of things in here. We'll have a look. So, there's two things. Looks to be two bolts from the back.

[00:05:12]Actually, no. I'm going to remove the whole fan drive setup.

[00:05:17]It's definitely been built in the past.

[00:05:23]There's a lot of blue sealant everywhere. It's definitely been rebuilt in the past at some point, obviously.

[00:05:29]So, it'll be curious to see what the crankshaft actually is and looks like. I haven't looked at it. I haven't seen it.

[00:05:36]Oh dear. It's very much a chicken and the egg situation because there's a bolt down here that connects that, but then there's a bolt at the back that connects this and they're both in the way of each other. There's obviously a knack to this, but it's the kind of like when you there's obviously a knack to it, but the first time you do it, you got to figure out that knack. So, this is going to mean that the generator is going to come out.

[00:05:59]Oh, that's the bolt off.

[00:06:04]Very fun. Right. So, with that, as long as there's not one on the back. No, that one's a really long one. That's why. Um, we might be able to tap it. NO.

[00:06:21]Tap it free. There we go. There we go.

[00:06:24]Oh. Oh, off we go. Oh, look at all that goo. So, there was no gasket for that.

[00:06:29]So, nice and simple. Nice and simple.

[00:06:31]And then on the other end of this is the cam shaft. So, crankshaft. Then this is on the end of the cam shaft.

[00:06:39]So we should be able to just twist it.

[00:06:41]Oh yeah. Okay. Cool. Next thing I'm going to remove the front. So I'm going to remove this pulley.

[00:06:53]Very nice. Oh, it's got a seal. It's got a felt seal. Oh, very fancy. Next, remove all these bolts that hold the nose cone on.

[00:07:04]That one was already loose.

[00:07:13]Oh, different size.

[00:08:13]the hammer.

[00:08:18]Going to try not Oh. Oh, there we go.

[00:08:21]Oh. Oh. Oh, there's oil. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's What an idiot. Oh no. I'm a ploner. I'm a plonker. I'm a plonker.

[00:08:28]Oh no.

[00:08:30]I'm a plonker.

[00:08:33]I forgot this was um Yeah, obviously.

[00:08:36]Duh. This is where the oil goes.

[00:08:40]Didn't think about that. I haven't uh got the oil out. So I'll just twist it around. Let it dribble itself to dribble town. Whilst we're here, let's roll it forward. See if we could get the rest of it out. Not all of it because not going to get the whole shebang out, but we're going to be able to dribble it out the front.

[00:08:58]Oh, lovely. Yeah. So, I think now now I've got the oil open. I forgot that this is in the oil section, of course.

[00:09:05]It's on the It's the end of the crankshaft. Uh I'm going to lift it up.

[00:09:10]I'm going to try and find the the Oh, there it is. I'm going to get the oil out the back. In the interest of not making loads more mess, I'm just going to shove it into here for now.

[00:09:20]Get it situated right. So when I open this, the flood gates will open.

[00:09:28]Oh, lovely.

[00:09:31]Oh, that's got a very metallic color to it.

[00:09:39]Oh no. Oh no. I've done I've made the same mistake again. I've made the same mistake again.

[00:09:46]There's more oil than I thought. I've done it. I've done it. I do this every time with these engines. I'm like, "Oh, they're tiny. They're not going to have that much oil." I did that same thing last time if you remember in a video.

[00:09:57]We're now in a bit of a fork in the road. We can either go from the bottom and hope that the oil baffles, we'll have a look at those in a little bit, have been modified because we're assuming it's been rebuilt a few times.

[00:10:08]So, we could actually take the conrods and pistons out the top. Or do we remove just the head in general? I think because I don't know exactly what it looks like on the middle, I'm just going to take the top off. So, we're going to take the head off now and see how it looks.

[00:10:57]As you can see, the baffles are indeed in there, but they look like they've been beaten a little bit. Pulled back a tiny little bit, maybe. Um the rods I mean they're they're they're they're fine.

[00:11:11]So the wrongd crank are pretty good actually. Um this isn't a uh fancy crankshaft at all. Um this looks like to be this looks to be a standard crankshaft 1718.

[00:11:26]Ooh.

[00:11:28]But to be honest, those So maybe the bottom end's all right. The crankshaft and drivetrain doesn't actually feel that bad. It's quite surprising that Oh, the jet's full. Oh no. Oh dear. The jet's got goo in it.

[00:11:45]The jet's been blocked this whole time.

[00:11:48]Oh dear. Whoopsy daisy. So it's only been running on one jet, it looks like, as well, which is probably not very good.

[00:11:55]Well, the jet's been partially blocked by sealant.

[00:12:02]Not very good.

[00:12:05]There's no backwards and forwards on any of them. They look pretty good. This this front one has got the most backwards and sideways side for us, but no no noticeable knocking.

[00:12:23]Same with this one as well. So that's quite surprising. So the the crankshaft actually doesn't seem that bad except for that blocked jet. That's not great.

[00:12:32]A little bit of damage here and there, but it seems to be all right. There is a ceiling surface. So yeah, one thing for sure, however, is the fact that the block there's a lot of tight things. The valves are tied and the rings are not ceiling. So we'll have a look at that quick. We might be lucky.

[00:13:09]Because those oil baffles look to be standard unmodified, it means we can't actually pull the rods and pistons out the top. Uh so um we need to take the head off to be able to do it. And maybe we'll modify them so we can actually put it back together like with the pistons going in like from the top like that. So we'll remove this so we can get to some bolts that are underneath here. One, two, three bolts.

[00:13:39]Turn it around and do all of the ones on this side as well.

[00:13:51]There's two on the outside like this.

[00:15:34]Nothing.

[00:15:46]Good afternoon. You are looking at the complete engine. I think it's not completely dissembled. Disassembled. Uh that is for a number of reasons and I'll chat about them in a bit because I don't know which way to go. So this is the 1929 engine. As you know, it's got the nose cone in that differs to the other engine which has got a different it hasn't actually got a nose cone. The kind of wind up bit is a a fitting outside of the engine. Uh this means that the fan is actually got its own spot on the uh the fan pulloff has got its own kind of drive which is on the end of a cam shaft instead of on the end of the drive shaft. So I guess this one spins at half the speed of the other one.

[00:16:27]Uh unless there's a different gear ratio, which it doesn't look to be. So, oh yeah. Yeah, the gears a bit small.

[00:16:33]The the pulley is smaller on a Magneto engine than the uh than this later 1929 engine. By later, I mean it's only it's there's a few more differences in ones that come after this. Of course, for most notably the starter, the the flywheel right here. There's a ring gear that goes it's in different places. So, I've heard. So, yeah. Um, I want to show you all the bits and then tell you about what I'm going to plan to do. So, down here we've got all of the external bits and bobs. This is the exhaust manifold.

[00:17:03]I don't think I'm going to be using this again. I think I might actually go for a bigger manifold on this engine because of how much of an improvement it made on the other engine. So, I think that's going to go into the storage box carburetor at the same time. This these ones just give me so much trouble. I think they're just so like able to pick up muck. But that might also be down to the fact that this has not got much sucking power to be able to get it going. So maybe it's had an unfair run because it runs perfectly well on the other engine. It's just this engine is just not having a good time. So um I I'm tempted to go with another SU carburetor on this one. Uh just cuz it's just like there's just a bit more ump to it, but make it set up so I can actually fit it inside the bonnet. So that might go in the Tesco crate. We've got the fan housing. So yeah, the fan's good. The There's no real plate to that. So that's pretty good. So we could just clean that up and plunk it back on. We got the fully put fully pulley. There's a couple of cracks on it, but that's fine. Uh belt. Yeah. Yeah. We got all of the screws and whatnot. We've got the generator and the uh dist distributor distributor. I mean, this is fine as well. Like there's no problems with the ignition system on this car. Um there might be in the future I might update this to have a automatic um advance and but for now I don't really mind.

[00:18:25]This is does the job and it runs really well. The generator works pretty well as well. Um this is it will do for this car. It's pretty good. It does the job that it's supposed to do. Very nice. Oh.

[00:18:37]Oh no. The cylinder head. Well, this has been tried and tested on the other engine. This is actually the one from the other engine because it's got the priming taps in there. The priming taps uh have got a good seal to them. And yeah, I mean, this is a lot better than the head that was on this car because the one that was on this car had quite a bit of corrosion around the um the outlet, the inlet, the outlet of the water. And on the inside, here we go.

[00:19:03]But these plans might change because this engine might get the homemade cylinder head again once it's working because I'm building another head. Uh, I'll talk about that at some point. For the other car now, let's pop over. So, keeping on going. On this car, the nose cone is going to stay the same. It's It's fine.

[00:19:23]It works. And the windy windy is winding perfectly adequately. You can see there's the dog gear. It's quite cool because once you spin it pushes into the engine and then ret and then when it gets to the point past that point it retracts itself and removes itself from the engine to stop you from losing your arms.

[00:19:42]The cam shaft. Okay. Well, this is where we get a bit funky. So, this cam shaft is, you know, it looks um it looks fine. There's um there's no real like I mean there's a little little bit obviously looks used but it's actually it's pretty not bad but um I have over here a high lift cam shaft that I got regground I talked about the recently and this one uh because it's actually got the bottoms ground off. If you look at the bottoms of this they're protruding above the cam shaft. These ones are actually below that point. This is a slightly later cam shaft, I think, but it's going to fit regardless. So, um, yeah, it's going to fit with the bushes. Uh, so this is like a it's called Well, this is by M Mr. Bone. This is by Mr. Bonewell. U, this is ground by Mr. Bonewell. In fact, I'm going to send this one. In fact, I'm also going to send this one over to Mr. Bonewell to ground to the same as this. This is a high lift uh fast rail trials cam. So, it's just got a bit more. It pushes because it offsets the lobe a bit further. It's able to push the uh the valves up more to open them up a bit more. Slightly different profile on the uh cams. As you can see, there's a bit more of a shape to them and a and it's ground to have a tiny bit of a different timing on the cam. So, yeah, that's pretty snazzy. This is when we get over to the iffy bits and bobs. We get over and look at the block now. So, this is quite amazing. When I opened this up uh yesterday, I was like, blooming heck, what's going on in there? So, this is pretty mad. Have a look at this. So this might explain whilst it was getting slightly hotter than the other engine.

[00:21:19]So have a look at that gunk. That's some that's that's ages of sitting about.

[00:21:25]That's disgusting. Look at that. Oh sludgy magudgy. And then have a look at this. So it's literally sat there. It looks like looks like the arteries of um somebody that's eating McDonald's every day. That's just mental. So yeah, that's that needs a bit of a clean. So, I showed the block to fan engine center.

[00:21:45]They said that the balls are pretty shiny. It's obviously been used quite a bit, but there's no actual scoring and stuff. As you can see, they look all right. I haven't measured if they're out of round, but um they seem to think that just a hand hone would do the job, but at the same time, I might I might bore them up to the next piston size for reasons I'll explain in a little mo. The valves, they're tiny bit tiny bit sunken, but they're actually some of them are a bit more sunken than others.

[00:22:13]Um, I think I'm going to put larger valves on these. So, I'm going to get bigger valves ordered for those. That's what the valve guides look like, but I think I might get the whole set of these. You could buy the whole set still from 7ount Austin of valves, valve springs, tapets, and even guides. So, um, in standard size, which these are, and then larger enlarged inlet sizes.

[00:22:34]So, think I'm going to go for the enlarged inlet for these so we can lift them up a bit more. So, up a tiny bit.

[00:22:39]Right now, these are basically at plus 60. So, that's um I can't remember how many millimeters. That's just over just over 56 I want to say.

[00:22:50]We'll get a vague reading here. So, open it up.

[00:22:59]So 57.38 which is in inches 22 2.255ish 2.25 nearly but we can put these up to I think it's um but we could put so this is 57.2 57.25 25 but you can get pistons that are slightly bigger than this plus 74 foul which are 57.75 I think. So these are 57.25 but you can get plus 74 pistons which are 575 and they are still doable still the space. So probably going to do that and hopefully that could be done by keeping the studs in because they're they're not getting they're not coming out. Now we're popping over to the pistons. You saw that interesting rock on the pistons. cuz I had a think about that and technically it it doesn't really affect the ball because you've got that much play that way anyway. A little bit of play that way. A little Oh, it's this one. A little bit of play.

[00:23:59]A little bit of play this way, which is left, right? It's not It's not sideways.

[00:24:05]Oh, no. Maybe it is a bit.

[00:24:08]No, it's only up and down. There's an up and down play to it. There's no left and right. It's just up and down. Well, that's the same as that way on compared to the balls, but it might rub out the it might wear down the uh conrod. So, so different to modern cars, the gudgeon pin, this thing right here, isn't interference fit. So, it's not squeezed into it, even though it is quite interferency.

[00:24:28]And it's not held in by gudgeon pins.

[00:24:30]It's actually held in by a pinch bolt.

[00:24:32]And then the pinch bolt sits in here with a kind of locking tab. And that squeezes onto the gudgeon pin and stops it from rolling out and scraping down the balls. So, the problem is is I think this is possibly come slightly out of round. Maybe um if we pop this in here.

[00:24:52]I'm going to pop that there. I'm currently in the process of just quickly crack testing these. Uh it's a bit of a rush. I should have taken off the pistons, but I'm in a rush because I've got to go to do the uh Vienna stuff. So, right last minute, but I want to make the place the orders of the parts that I need to get. So, I need to work out whether these are usable. So apparently the cracks can occur up the webbing. So I'm just looking carefully to see what it looks like, trying to decipher between where there's too much of the red stuff sprayed on it and actual cracks. In fact, right there, I'm going to I'm going to wipe it a bit better and I'm going to spray a bit more uh developer onto it cuz uh in theory, if um if there is a crack, there is there will still be red stuff in there. But it all looks to be I've done a pretty dodgy job of this, but I'm getting an idea that it will show up. some sort of line or crack, but most of it's down to my shoddy job of spraying up to it. Um, obviously we can't check the top of these, but I'm willing to take the risk.

[00:25:49]In fact, I will put some penetrint onto this and then uh let it soak in for a sec.

[00:25:56]This is a right rush job. I'm being I'm being told to rush up, I think, by on my phone. Give it a spray. See if anything goes in. Get a reasonable I'm getting a better idea than not, to be honest, before I leave. But funnily enough, yeah, the bolts weren't tight enough.

[00:26:10]They're solid. So, whoever fitted it didn't tight these bolt didn't tighten the bolts up enough. They're still press fit and they still actually um they still won't come out because the bolts need to go through a groove in the gon pin, but they were loose. So, they were jangling about. Now, they're tight.

[00:26:26]They're not going anywhere. And as you can see, I'm doing a really quick uh crack test just I've really got to go.

[00:26:32]These are looking as good as anybody's business. Obviously, there's a bit too much uh developer. There's a bit too much penetrint here and there, but you'll get an idea. You'll see a straight a definitive line in a crack.

[00:26:42]So, that's pretty good. I'm happy with that. It's It'll do for now. I'm willing to take the risk to place an order for the parts I need whilst I'm away. So, yeah, I've got a few engine plans in the future, not just on this engine. So, I'm going to try and outline my thinking a bit, and then have a look at the comments, see what a couple of things are. I mean, obviously, there's going to be the oh, shove a higher booster engine in it. LS swap. Let's use a bit of the gray matter first before we jump into that that malarkey. Now, one thing to bear in mind, this 1929 engine has some advantages to some of the modifications that I want to do over the 1926 engine.

[00:27:15]The 1926 engine, namely has the fan pulley coming out the front of the crankshaft. As I told you in this video, uh this one has the fan pulley coming out the cam shaft on the top. Um so this means that if we go for something like um a pressurefed system which is when the actual oil gets pushed through the crankshaft instead of sprayed onto the top of the crankshaft like via the spit and hope which is this what this one has got. We would have to do some modifications to this nose cone in order to add some other things that are driven by pulleys i.e. superchargers maybe it'll make it quite a bit harder on the 1926 engine. This 1929 one will be able to modify this and still be able to drive malarkey from the spinning thing on the crank cam shaft. However, I've been wrestling with this because I feel it's a real shame to ruin this engine.

[00:28:05]This engine is from the blue car and it's very nice. It's really nice and it feels like a shame that it's lasted I don't know 96, no 97 years and then a chump like me comes along and completely modifies the engine. It just seems quite a bit of a shame. So, with this engine in particular, even though it's more suited for some of the modifications I want to do in the future, I'm going to keep the engine pretty standard. By pretty standard, I still mean it's going to be bored. It's going to have slightly bigger valves, but it's not going to have bits and bobs sticking off it. Now, with this in mind, in the near future, I do plan on building a bit of a chunkier engine. And luckily, I think I've got a slightly later engine than this that might suit it even better. It's in a bit of a state, and we'll look at that later on. And with that one, I'm going to buy a modern 1 and a half inch crankshaft and some conrods to go with it. So, I'm in two minds. You can actually get stronger crankshafts for these. Stronger modern crankshafts. That pretty much removes the worry of a crankshaft failure if you're driving up a muddy hill going. And I think I might bite the bullet and get one of these for this one before I put it back together. And in the meantime, I'm going to sort the block out because regardless, those balls need sorting and those valves need sorting. And in until next time, I'll see you later. Turn it up.