Restoration Project
A3 - The oldest Aston Martin in the world
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Click here for the photographs 
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27/03/2009
Over the last three weeks the complete car has emerged.
The end of a restoration is always dominated by lots of small jobs, most of which are insignificant in themselves, like touching in all the unpainted nuts and bolts, but which must be done and make the difference between a really high quality job and something just thrown together.
There is one final job to do and that is to make the tonneau cover, and it is now booked into the trim shop for next week. Other than this the car is complete and running and will go for an MOT next week.
A3 was never a particularly easy car to drive as the gearlever is very close to the drivers legs and the clutch and foot brake are one the left side of the steering column and the accelerator on the right. The foot brake is also not very efficient and because the hand brake has such a long lever (and very much increased leverage over the footbrake) it is the hand brake that must used to stop the car.(12/12)
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25/02/2009
As with all restorations the last few weeks are always the most thrilling, as the whole car starts to come together. The wheels have been delivered and so has the repaired radiator.
The wheels are cast aluminum copies of the pressed steel ´Sankey´ artillery wheel, a common alternative to the ´Rudge-Whitworth´ spoked wheel, particularly before well base rims were developed. Many less expensive cars had these type of wheels. They were pressed out of sheet steel and were relatively cheap and easy to make. However being made of steel they do not survive well, rust being a constant problem.
The wheels on A3 were cast in aluminum from wooden patterns and then machined up to fit the hubs on the car. Beaded edge tyres are fitted, which need a very high pressure of at least 50psi to hold them on the rims. These tyres had the reputation of rolling off the wheel rim under hard cornering, but this problem was largely solved by the development of ´well-based´ rims in the mid 1920´s.(11/12)
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