The building of my Mark 7 convertible - episode 1

By Jim Shanahan.

Some weeks ago Jim offered to send some photos of the construction of his Mk.7 convertible and here they are - over to you Jim.......

Hi John,
here are the pictures of my Seven I mentioned. I thought I'd give a little commentary on each one.

When I started doing some work for Royce in the eighties, I knew I'd have to build myself a car. When I had worked for Bolwells I had struck a deal with Linley Hughes to build a Nagari but I never had the cash to do it. So here was my chance again!
I started thinking, though, that I had built plenty of Nagaris (bodies, at least), why not do something different? I thought of making a Mk.7 but I was aware of problems with the roofline including the flat back window. There was also the issue of having the fuel tank in the passenger compartment. (Though, it's my wish to do a coupe in the not too distant future.) A convertible Mk.7 would fix these problems and it certainly would be different. It could be done by grafting on a Nagari Sports rear deck. Simple, right?! All the moulds were there, so why not?

I wondered what it would look like. Royce said he didn't know of a Mk.7 convertible but he had seen a Mk.5 convertible (the one on your blog a couple of weeks ago, no doubt) and that it looked good. I fooled around with some photos and drawings and then decided to do it.

The photo below shows the new body out of the original mould. The mould was rough but surprisingly good considering the number of bodies that came out of it. I didn't bother making the roof as I was only going to cut it off. The pic shows the rear deck attached and roughed in. The photo below shows the rear after I had taken a mould off it. The holes were then cut in front of the boot lid to make the blisters for the Lotus struts to stick through. The rear edge and style line were picked up some as I thought it would look too droopy at the back without the roof line to visually hold it up. You can see this in the extra distance between the tail-light recess and the deck lip.
There was a fair bit of filling required both on the deck and on the rear quarters to get good looking panels. This was then glassed over then gelcoated (various greens) and blocked back two or three times. Final pointing up done in good ole bog! The boot and deck sides required more work than I had anticipated. The panel and bootlid had to be shortened to fit the body but this left three distinct curves instead of the nice single curve of the original rear edge. Anyway, a little cutting, a little bogging and a lot of sanding (always sanding!) and it was done.

Well that was the hard bit I thought. Now for the easy bit, filling in a few whoops and dips in the front.

The next picture shows the body propped up on drums and the wheels as well. Under it you can see the HR front end with MG steering. I believe the car no longer has this arrangement. You can also see various bits of mouldings tacked onto the body. There are Nagari wheel arches and shortened Nagari headlight recesses.

I had started to fill a few whoops and dips and I was having trouble making one side match the other. After much puzzling, I finally took a tape measure to it and was I surprised. "Hey Royce, this car's not symmetrical", I yelled across the workshop in amazement. "Yeah........didn't you know that?" "Err.....no", was my quiet reply. I'll never forget it. Welcome to the wonderful world of Mk.7s! Nearly all the work I had done up till that stage had been with Nagaris and they were symmetrical. It never occurred to me that the 7s weren't. It's amazing how good they look given the lack of symmetry. I guess it's because we are so used to looking at peoples faces which are certainly not symmetrical.

I then thought what a dumb idea it was to do a Mk.7 instead of a Nagari. But I'm glad I did as it was very satisfying once I bit the bullet and took the diamond saw to it. I guess it's the nature of Mk.7s for each one to be an individual car. You can't leave them the way they are straight from the moulds as seen in the pic above anyway. I think this is why I find them so interesting. I positioned the headlights a little higher, maybe an inch, to comply with the then lighting laws. The passengers headlight was moved forward and outwards a little to match the driver's side. This all helped to make shaping the guards with a flowing line easier.

To disguise somewhat what I had done, I moved the radiator opening up as well together with the lower pan and also spread the opening a little to match the wider spread lights. This also gave me the chance to make the opening a bit more symmetrical, too. The picture shows the top of the nose filled in. The bonnet line seemed to flow better now onto the nose which was a bonus. The guards are yet to be filled and shaped.

There were lots of other things I would have liked to have fixed up or straightened but I knew I had to draw the line somewhere if I wanted to get it on the road in a reasonable time. The project gave me added respect for what Graeme Bolwell and Ross McConnell had done in making the Nagari pattern.
This photo shows the front having been shaped using a resin and microballoon/talc mixture as a bog and then glassed over to consolidate it all. I think the doors came out of moulds that Don Elliott made off his doors after he fixed the shape up. But I'm not certain of that. Speaking of Don, he was often at me to take more pictures of it during the build but I wasn't that interested. I wish I had taken his advice more. I'm glad I have the few photos I do have now.

The front was surfaced by first hitting it with an angle grinder to take the high spots off and then coated with bog. This was sanded back by hand and then gelcoated with a mixture called "plug white". This process of bog and gelcoat is then repeated once or twice. I put green tinter in the plug white so as to be able to see where I'd sanded and to be able to pick out the low spots easily. I have a photo of the whole body covered in this green gelcoat but I don't have it scanned.

Back to the picture: you can see the Hemi motor being lowered into position. It was a Valiant 265. I had thought of putting a Buick V6 in it but in the end opted for the straight six. I reasoned that the chassis was set up for a straight six and the Hemi was available during the model run, as well. It was only one inch longer than the Red motor. Royce cut and welded a small recess in the HR crossmember, welded up some engine mounts, which is what's happening in the picture, and it fitted in beautifully.

Prior to the motor going in, Royce also welded in a space frame of sorts into the chassis to stiffen the whole thing up. The chassis came from a car that two brothers had down Morwell way and used to hillclimb it. I can't remember their names unfortunately. This car was bought by a chap whose name I also can't remember for the moment (I think I'm having a Senior Moment here!). Anyway this chap wanted to fit a 350 Chev in his car and had a space frame made up. So I bought the original chassis. Except it was hardly original any more as it had a Lotus independent rear end in it mated to a Holden diff centre. If you look at the photo you can see the rear wheels cocked in on an angle as they are unweighted.

The chap I bought the chassis from saw my convertible and wanted one, too. I made him a panel but I don't know if the car ever hit the road. I had started to use flat glass side windows but ended up using the rear door windows out of an old Toyota Corona. I forget who discovered this idea but I was happy to borrow it and they worked out a treat. Royce advised me to use Volkswagen window regulators as they utilised a cable drive and so the handle could be mounted anywhere and at any angle. I also used the Volkswagen exterior door handles. They worked well too.

The Seven body was full of odd little surprises. When I came to fit the Nagari Sports windscreen top I found it an inch or so wider that the seven pillars. I ended up spreading the pillars to fit it in.

To be continued.......