invacar LightBulbFun's Invacar & general ramble thread, index on page 1, survivors lists on Pages 24/134 & AdgeCutler's Invacar Mk12 Restoration from Page 186 onwards, still harping on...

[Dick Cheeseburger]

12 minutes ago, juular said:

One in the autumn sunshine looking very minty.

And being unloaded.

LBF currently...

[bangernomics]

Does the roof come off these?

A convertible would be hilarious. Like some sort of banana splits skit.

[calebaaront]

2 hours ago, bangernomics said:

Does the roof come off these?

A convertible would be hilarious. Like some sort of banana splits skit.

I’d daily it 

[timolloyd]

Just arrived at Heathrow. Should I head straight into town to find Rev?

[Christine]

He's not been on here for 6 hrs ,, he must have gone to fetch it  . 

[R Lutz]

It'll be like a fanny magnet on the Kings Road. 

[LightBulbFun]

3 hours ago, timolloyd said:

Just arrived at Heathrow. Should I head straight into town to find Rev?

hah not quite yet, with any luck she will be picked up for the final leg of the journey next weekend   

[R Lutz]

What's wrong with going to collect it??? Give it shake-down. Where there is a will, and all that..

[Dave_Q]

20 minutes ago, R Lutz said:

What's wrong with going to collect it??? Give it shake-down. Where there is a will, and all that..

What and trigger all the concerned citizens again? 

Best not eh.

[Christine]

37 minutes ago, Dave_Q said:

What and trigger all the concerned citizens again? 

Best not eh.

Yup , it's windy tomorrow  , it'll blow over.. 

[Cavcraft]

On 18/10/2024 at 14:57, Dyslexic Viking said:

Can someone explain this to me? 

A bit past it's sell by date, dry, crusty and needs a good stirring with your 'cream wand'. ATCake'sNBE.

[calebaaront]

Is this a known one? @LightBulbFun

[Christine]

It was on here 27th of September.. 

[D.E]

What's this, then? An AC Luxury invalid carriage with the body missing?

AC three wheeler, 1950, motorcycle powered, like James Handyvan / AC Petite,

[calebaaront]

1 hour ago, D.E said:

What's this, then? An AC Luxury invalid carriage with the body missing?

AC three wheeler, 1950, motorcycle powered, like James Handyvan / AC Petite,

@Weird Car would daily it 

[Christine]

Not in a diver helmet though 

[Weird Car]

9 minutes ago, calebaaront said:

@Weird Car would daily it 

Nah not rusty enough for me 

[calebaaront]

10 minutes ago, Weird Car said:

Nah not rusty enough for me 

Thought you were going to say the brakes aren’t bad enough! 

[LightBulbFun]

12 hours ago, D.E said:

What's this, then? An AC Luxury invalid carriage with the body missing?

AC three wheeler, 1950, motorcycle powered, like James Handyvan / AC Petite,

Fucking hell! thats one hell of a find! thats an AC All Weather Invalid Tricycle, AC's first Invalid vehicle, here is an excerpt about them from my service manual that I have for one  its an incrediably rare find, AC produced just 3000 for the Ministry, and up until about 20 years ago it was thought entirely extinct, until one in a complete but poor state was found, that one ended up being bought by Ian Hellings and is now in America, and until just now when this OPD903 showed up, it was thought to be the *sole survivour* so yeah thats why im low key freaking out right now!  its probably the rarest of any AC out there (ones that were not an explicit one off anyhow) certainly rarer then any Thames Ditton Cobra or the such like! It *really* needs saving preserving, and ideally restoring, and its a rather historically significant machine since it was how AC started out building Invalid vehicles

 

[quicksilver]

Recently uploaded to Flickr

And the best thing is, not only is the registration XVW 632F clearly visible, we also have an exact location and date - Fish Street Hill , City of London on Bank Holiday Monday 23rd May 1970.

[LightBulbFun]

7 minutes ago, quicksilver said:

Recently uploaded to Flickr

And the best thing is, not only is the registration XVW 632F clearly visible, we also have an exact location and date - Fish Street Hill , City of London on Bank Holiday Monday 23rd May 1970.

thats a neat find! especially as I had just recently found a picture of its close relative XVW614F   

[LightBulbFun]

5 hours ago, calebaaront said:

Is this a known one? @LightBulbFun

Aye!  good to see it crop back up tho it looks like its sadly taken a biff on the bumper! I first became aware of it from this photo back in around 2020, sadly was unable to get any details on it, so I have always just called it the NHS101 car!

it then showed up in an auction 

On 27/09/2024 at 23:20, LightBulbFun said:

On 27/09/2024 at 23:08, Talbot said:

Is £2700 absurdly expensive for one of these?  I very much hope so.  Especially in that condition.

sadly not these days, thats about the going rate for one in that sort of condition, if others that have sold are to go by (which is one of the primary reasons why I got REV when I did since I could see the ship sailing right before my eyes and I was not going to let it get away from me, I knew it was get a Model 70 then or never so to speak)

that being said this one the the mysterious Orange NHS101 Model 70, supposedly sold at auction today(?) for £680, but the impression im getting from everyone commenting on it, that the Auction was a farce, no one realised it was actually being auctioned and the website was broken/buggy 

hopefully its gone to a good home and not just a flipper or such!

so its nice to see it again! I am worried with how cheaply it sold that someone might do something stupid with it, but hopefully it finds a good home, as you can see in my September 27th picture, it has a chassis plate and all, and I can tell from that, that its a middle to later Invacar Model 70

[D.E]

23 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

Fucking hell! thats one hell of a find! thats an AC All Weather Invalid Tricycle, AC's first Invalid vehicle, here is an excerpt about them from my service manual that I have for one  its an incrediably rare find, AC produced just 3000 for the Ministry, and up until about 20 years ago it was thought entirely extinct, until one in a complete but poor state was found, that one ended up being bought by Ian Hellings and is now in America, and until just now when this OPD903 showed up, it was thought to be the *sole survivour* so yeah thats why im low key freaking out right now!  its probably the rarest of any AC out there (ones that where not an explicit one off anyhow) certainly rarer then any Themes Ditton Cobra or the such like! It *really* needs saving preserving, and ideally restoring, and its a rather historically significant machine since it was how AC started out building Invalid vehicles

Ah, cool! It'll take a lot of time and dedication to save this, won't you basically have to recreate all body panels from scratch?

Something I noticed while looking close at the advert is that some bits don't seem to quite match with the All Weather. For example, this one seems to have two headlights:

Also, the All Weather seems to have a "boot" accessed by a side door. Assuming the entire bodywork is missing, shouldn't the rear overhang be longer? Rear bumper would be in the wrong place, too.

[plasticvandan]

Looks to be a modified ac all weather used as a workshop/farm tug or similar.

I originally found the other AC on eBay listed in parts,and sent it to Stuart who didn't have internet at the time,then Ian bought it and shipped to the states,not sure wether it got finished but was under restoration.

[Christine]

I thought ,  it'd be funny if Dan pops up and said  he has the original  bodywork for it !  Buy it Dez ! It'll go to America otherwise .....  

[plasticvandan]

I do know of a Tippen locally that's been in an orchard for the last 35+ years,met the owner a few times just waiting to catch him in the right mood

[LightBulbFun]

18 minutes ago, D.E said:

Ah, cool! It'll take a lot of time and dedication to save this, won't you basically have to recreate all body panels from scratch?

Something I noticed while looking close at the advert is that some bits don't seem to quite match with the All Weather. For example, this one seems to have two headlights:

Also, the All Weather seems to have a "boot" accessed by a side door. Assuming the entire bodywork is missing, shouldn't the rear overhang be longer? Rear bumper would be in the wrong place, too.

yeah sadly as @plasticvandan says, its been somewhat messed about with, someones obviously removed most of the bodywork, the nailed the rear panel with the reg plate back on!

its not the first time time I have seen this sort of thing happen, the sole surviving Tippen Delta Mk2 is in a similar state, was stripped of its body work and turned into a work-truck of sorts

 

I did wonder at very first when I saw the exposed front suspension if it was a Buckland Runabout but alas not!

On 16/08/2021 at 18:29, LightBulbFun said:

speaking of 3 wheelers!

 

I was recently contacted by Mr @barrett himself as in the archive of his he came across this rather interesting advert/vehicle and wondered if I knew anything about it

and I did not, however I found it very fascinating as it very much looked like a regular car version of the AC All Weather Invalid tricycle

and immediately made think of this British Pathe video on the AC All weather Tricycle

where they do mention that a regular car version was in development at the time

I had always thought they where referring to the AC petite, but perhaps they where actually talking about the Buckland runabout

and then I did a bit of googling and found this online which is interesting as its like Barrett's but does not have cancelled across it

and then further to this of course I got talking to Stuart and we discussed things a bit, somewhat unsurprisingly, Stuart did already know of the Buckland, but again with few details

but what we do know is quite interesting

 we are pretty sure that the AC All Weather tricycle came first and that the Buckland runabout is development of it, rather then it potentially  being the other way round as all the stuff we can find on the Buckland is from 1951-1952

where as the AC All weather Tricycle was already on the road in 1949 (I did wonder at first because the Buckland looks like a much more crude machine with its lack of front end bodywork, but perhaps that was done as a cost cutting measure?) 

it looks like the Buckland was introduced curiously at the 1952 Invalid tricycle association rally and was talked about in the September 1952 issue of Magic carpet

where they specifically said that the chassis was that used in the AC invalid tricycle, but that a choice of 2 engines, a Villiers 350cc engine with Electric starting or a Coventry Victor 350cc with Manual starting

(which is interesting on 2 fronts as the AC All Weather Tricycle used a 250cc BSA engine, perhaps they wanted a slightly beefier engine for the full on road car version, and its interesting as the Villiers option sounds a lot like what ended up in the AC petite)

stuart then did a bit of digging as he was sure he did a write up on the Buckland for the RUMCar magazine and indeed he did, here are the relevant excerpts from the RUMCar Magazine Autumn and Winter 2010  

(Note NAP303 is a typo its supposed to be NAR303)

all in all its been quite fascinating to find out that AC did try and develop the AC All Weather Tricycle into a full blown car and to find out there was a missing link between the AC All Weather Tricycle and the AC petite

its like a predecessor to the Model 70 based AC Town cars  

it is also interesting to hear that It was Buckland themselves who where proposing it rather then AC

I wonder just how many examples ended up being made and if any survive somewhere!

 

[plasticvandan]

Of course,the only reason it still exists is because it was repurposed 50+ years ago instead of scrapped.

[wuvvum]

2 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

 

 

Was that some sort of drag race for Invacars?  I bet that was a sight to behold!

[LightBulbFun]

5 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Was that some sort of drag race for Invacars?  I bet that was a sight to behold!

pretty much  , its a picture from one of the Invalid Tricycle Associations's rallies where they all got together and just had a good time together, doing events and challenges and the such like  

these British pathe videos are great, just to see so many machines in motion etc many rare and extinct types where even very few pictures exist