Restoration

I bought ADU 7B in the autumn of 1998 in the north of France where it has spent most of its life after it was sold by the factory to the french importer. The car was hibernating in a barn for almost 20 years. The car was missing some parts and were modified in some points. It was now in left hand drive and seems to have had a GT6 engine at some time, but most of the missing parts came with the car. The structure of the car was very good, no accident damage or rustholes were found. I started with the careful dismantling and photographing of the car.


	ADU 7B as it was found in the barn. Clearly visible are the big petrol filler cap, the perspex quarterlights and inside lying the cut out auxiliary headlamp pots.

		The interior as found. The drivers seat is a special item made by Restall from Birmingham. The b-post still shows the original color powder blue. The space behind the seats is occupied by the huge 18 gallon petrol tank.


				The special works parts

After carefully dismantling the car and photographing all the details I found that the car was in very good condition. No signs of accidents and no serious rust, but some cracks in the metalwork. The aluminium bonnet was heavily modified. A fibreglass bulge was grafted into it and the pots for the additional headlamps were removed, but they came fortunately with the car. After further examination I found several areas on the body which were streghtened and modified to build in special equipment. A surprise was to find that the chassis is of Le Mans specification but modified to fit to the rally spec. body. This supports the theory that bodys and chassis (or just identities) were changed between the works cars when needed. The engine was a standard Spitfire unit, so I have to rebuild a works engine with the works engine parts I got with the car. I found that Jigsaw racing in Desborough has good experience in restoring Spitfires as well as in rebuiding aluminium panels, so I decided to let them restore the body and the chassis back to 1965 specification. See how the work started...


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