1973 AC Model 70 Invacar, Visitors & Occasional Distractions

Love it. Just up my odd-ball street. Glad to hear about the reclassification by the DVLA.

Also looking forward to the C5. I used to work 2 miles from home and kept threatening to get one, but never quite made it in the end.

Subscribed!!

Strong intro, bookmarked. And a nicely eclectic fleet, wouldn’t say no to any/all of them, particularly the Activa.

Ah, so you're on here as well! Great work so far!

once saw an old boy take a tight 90 left a bit to keenly and put it right up onto two wheels. to add to the entertainment value his jack russell which was sat on top of the seat back was unceremoniously hurled into the side window. classic!

The number of people who have expressed concerns about their stability still intrigues me, as it seems logically that they'd be no worse than many other three wheeled vehicles. There's no real weight in the body and the engine is mounted really low down just behind the rear axle. The heaviest thing above the chassis by a long shot is the driver. Even they're central in the vehicle rather than off to one side. It should all be in favour of limiting the tendency for them to tip over. Granted though, most things are possible if you try hard enough and it's worth remembering that the drivers of these things back in the day didn't even need to have a driving licence...

The stability will definitely be put to the test once it's on the road here though given that I live pretty much in the middle of Roundabout Central. I know that straight line stability is something they do struggle with though, especially when it's windy. Not much that can really be done about that as it's largely down to there being so little weight over the front wheel. To give some context on *how* light the front end is, it's entirely possible to lift the front wheel off the ground by hand. I'm definitely going to think about relocating the battery up front at some point. Both to limit the amount of non-fuse protected wiring in the car and to help shift a little bit of weight towards the nose.

The only thing really standing between the car and the first very, very, very local road test at the moment is that I'm waiting for the fuel tank to arrive from the fabricators. Knowing that must be pretty imminently inbound (I know the tank has been made, they've just been waiting for the boss for the fuel gauge sender to arrive so it can be welded to the tank) has been encouraging me to get things ticked off the list so I can get it out pretty much as soon as the tank is in place and piped up.

At the end of last week a full set of new tyres were fitted.



I'm still really happy with how in period these look despite being made only a couple of months ago. Ultra modern looking tread patterns just would look odd on this car.

I know that tyre technology has come a long way in recent years, so wouldn't go out of my way to find something from 1996 to fit the Activa - but with its blistering 20bhp on tap, I don't think the Invacar will really be pushing the limits of what even these tyres can do.

In preparation for the arrival of the new fuel tank I have also been working on getting the whole fuel system ready for it. I've had a lot of trouble in the last couple of years with fuel hoses starting to perish virtually the second they have left the store they were bought from. My solution to this has been to grab some marine grade fuel hose.



This A1 Marine grade (ISO 7840) hose is meant to be resistant to just about everything under the sun, and definitely feels like a better quality than anything I've ever had from a certain national motor factors which will remain nameless. Hopefully it won't be falling apart after less than six months.

This afternoon I've been starting to put together a framework to build on to reconstruct the rear valance and bumper. This is completely missing on my car at present, so I need to do something about it. It's a common trouble spot on Invacars for two main reasons. The first is that it's the first thing to get bashed if you reverse into something, and with all fairness to the former keepers, a lot of these cars appear to have been driven by braille. Secondly is that it's only a couple of inches away from the exhaust, so the fibreglass gets thoroughly baked, making it more prone to cracking. The fact that it essentially provides a shield covering the exhaust though means that I really need to get something on there before it goes on the road though. The work this afternoon mostly centred around shoring up the nearside rear corner.

This was the result of an hour or so faffing around this evening.



Looks scruffy...because it is. This whole corner wobbled around comically when the engine was idling before. Aside from the damage you can see, this had largely separated from the wheel tub. This will be getting repaired in glass fibre in due course of course, but this at least helps hold everything together in the meantime and ensure that everything stays lined up once I start throwing resin and glass fibre matting at it.

I also spent an hour crawling around underneath it. Target being to get the handbrake to work. I knew that the cables were both ends were free to move, the mechanism in the drums was free to move and that the handle in the cabin was working correctly. However despite me hanging on it with most of my body weight I couldn't shift it. It turned out that this was due to the rod which connects the cantilever mechanism between the cable attached to the handle in the cabin and the cable which acts on the drums themselves had seized into the bush where it passes through the middle chassis crossmember. Once I figured this out it was a pretty simple matter to apply excessive amounts of violence with a 4lb lump hammer in the right place to get it freed off. Once I had it shifted I went over the area in question with some emery cloth to remove the surface rust and applied plenty of grease so it doesn't stick again. The handbrake now appears to be working, though I suspect it will need to be adjusted...That can be done when I've got the car out of the garage next.

I had hoped to finish getting the fuel lines replaced today, however was foiled by the fact that the fuel line runs along the offside of the chassis, and that is the side which is currently inaccessible because of the way it's parked in the garage...so I will attack that once I've got the car out of the garage - hopefully tomorrow.

Brilliant topic, look forward to seeing more!

Actually some decent progress made today for a change.

Having reversed out of the garage it was far easier to get at the fuel lines.

Ten minutes later all of the old fuel lines were off. Had to cut it into a couple of pieces to remove it as it is essentially impossible to bend.



No idea what this hose is made of...Absolute pain to cut whatever it is!

My guess as to how much hose I needed was correct pretty much to the inch. In case you wondered, you need five metres of hose. Tail is here waiting for the fuel tank up front.



Speaking of the fuel tank, had an email from the company who have been making it for me to say that it's now ready for collection. A shame that you'll never see it once it's on the car.



Fuel lines all finished up in the engine bay now as well.



The other task of the afternoon has been to start building up a framework to support the rear bumper as I come to actually build it up.



Sadly won't be able to pick it up tomorrow as I've got a prior engagement, but will hopefully be able to get over there on Wednesday and can then get it fitted.

Then we might be looking at a (very, very, very, very) local road test and see if it's as downright terrifying to drive as I'm half expecting it to be.

When I was growing up there was an old guy living on my street who drove one of these. I think when you consider disability issues now and then it's night and day, these days you'd lease a standard model car with driving adaptations that wouldn't single you out in a crowd whereas the Invacar / AC put a great big stigmatising 'cripple' stamp on you which would follow you wherever you drove. I thought the 'car' ghastly then but it's a good thing that some have survived as a slice of social & automotive history. It absolutely deserves to be shown, it would be really good if you could get a replica of the original seat made up as they were so deliciously clinical and distinctive. I suppose for the people who had to use these back in the day if the options were one of these or nothing then it wasn't a difficult choice and it catered for big need with all the mobility impaired ex-servicemen from WW2. I'm impressed by the history lesson & data!

It is night and day comparing the situation then and now, but the Invacar as a solution holds its own surprisingly well when you consider that the alternative was essentially complete and total dependence on others for day to day life. These cars, basic though they were offered freedom and independence to a lot of folks who otherwise would have been housebound.

I'm not worrying too much about finding a replacement seat (there's actually one on eBay at the moment funnily enough). There are quite a few of these cars in preservation in near concourse condition which this one is just never going to be unless I pour hundreds if not thousands of pounds into the restoration. As I intend to actually use the car, I'm happy with a comfortable seat.

Having a comfy chair is something I'll definitely be glad of if the plan I've got forming in my head for later this year or next year comes together. There are quite a few Invacars sitting around in museums dotted around the UK. I've got a mind to make a mission out of visiting every one of these cars using this Invacar, seeing if I could raise some money for a local charity down here while doing so. It's an idea that's very much in the conceptual stage at the moment, but it may well see the light of day, depending how terrifying the thing is to drive anyway...