The "Holdon"

It's Winter 1947 and I have just moved into a new home in the outer suburbs of Adelaide. My wartime marriage has produced two children and I have been working for the past year with Les Diener in his motorcycle repair shop. But, due to the unfortunate death of his recent business partner, fellow motorcyclist Frank Tuck, in a motor vehicle accident, the business has now been closed, and I have started a new career as a quarrying machinery maintenance design and development person – no fancy names in those days. I was earning more money than I had ever dreamed of previously.

I had bought the motorcycle shop's lash up 16H Norton powered Ariel combination, known then as a float, and a lovely as new Dusting Sports DeLuxe sidecar (stored throughout WW2) was at this time attached to my 1930/34, (4 speed gearbox) KSS/KTT, being used as everyday transport as well as various forms of racing at the weekend.

It was obvious now, that as a family man, the Velocette would have to go, and it was sold complete with racing spares for 140 pounds, quite a tidy sum in those days (my new home had only cost 960 pounds to build!), and the sidecar was fitted to the Norton in place of the home made float. It was Winter and my wife was now forced to be a pillion passenger while the two children occupied the sidecar. A couple of rainy journeys later, saw me sitting in front of the fire one wet Sunday, constructing a three wheeled idea out of glue and aeromodelling balsa sheet.

The next week saw me scrounging an Amilcar chassis from a neighbour's paddock, and further search revealed the remains of a Ford T model, the chassis, front axle and wheels, steering gear and petrol tank still laying about in the high grass. The Amilcar chassis yielded enough straight sections and a crossmember for me to consider using it for the proposed chassis and so I adjourned to a timber floored spare room that I had constructed at the rear of the new house, and proceeded to sit on the floor and mark out the rough outline of my seated family in chalk. It soon became obvious that a 6x4 foot sheet of plywood was needed, cut to provide a 4 foot square floor, the 2x4 foot off cut, to provide a back rest for the seat.

There was never a grand design! I had no home welding gear, but I did have a hacksaw and a 'gut buster' hand drill – no electric handy man's electric drills in those days – I never even had a proper workshop then! But night after night the A-frame chassis grew on the floor around a marked out plan of the Norton engine and gearbox, the Ariel rear wheel and the Ford T front wheel hubs. The steering gear was planned in my head and this involved mounting the Ford steering wheel epicyclic gearbox on the front of the plywood front foot-board, with the steering arm connected directly to it, and a steering wheel tube extension. All this meant some time spent in Les Diener's small workshop machining tapers on modified shafts etc. The Morgan type front suspension was decided on and odd bits of steel were cut out and ground to shape in spare moments at work and soon, one Sunday, I was fabricating the entire front end axle and suspension anchorages at my workplace. This formed the framework to support the two 300mm long kingpins with the Ford stub axle assemblies sliding up and down with coil springs taking the load, and various synthetic rubber boots forming the grease seals on the kingpins, and a solid rubber ring on the pins at the bottom to act as snubbers when the suspension rebounded.

From then on it was long hours spent drilling holes and bolting the chassis parts together enough to hold everything firm for the final arc welding. At this point it had been decided that the HRD had the most desirable rear suspension system, but the principle was modified to swing in alignment with the gearbox mainshaft and the entire upper triangulated framework was adapted from parts of a Royal Enfield rear frame, but the main lower arms were fabricated from steel sheet with auto spring shackle and bronze bushing sets to provide the pivots into clevises fabricated to the rear of the now impressive looking chassis.

The suspension unit was just two pieces of tubing sliding inside each other, and pins and bushings at the ends, with a suitable coil spring in compression. At this point a strong anchorage had to be arranged above the engine position to take the thrust of the rear suspension and this was fabricated from light 25mm OD steel tubing, the front tubes at the angle to mount the seat back ply later. A petrol tank had to be mounted and the old tin plated Ford T tank had proved to be sound apart from holes rusted in the bottom at one end. It was far too large in any case, so one press-formed end was removed, the tank shortened to about 400mm and the end replaced, and a support bracket for it included in the framework on the upper left hand side of the motor.

A bracket was also provided for the oil tank, as well as a plate to mount a suspension damper. There was also a tray fabricated into the lower left hand side of the chassis below the petrol tank, to take a small auto type battery – this was subsequently topped up with a battery charger at times as the later addition of an auto radio mounted in the rear of the left hand front fender proved too much for the old electrics.

The Ford T front wheel hubs had been machined back as far as possible with the wooden spoke flanges completely removed and were now of an OD where some 16 gauge steel tubing was a neat fit over the machined outer diameter. I was mates with a local manufacturer of steel wheelbarrows, washing machines and concrete mixers, as well as the steel wheels needed for these products. His scrap heap yielded slightly imperfect rim pressings and these were welded to the tubes around the hubs, the tubes being tack brazed to the cast hubs, and so I had my front wheels which were shod with heavy duty 4 ply rated wheelbarrow tires.

I was making up standard auto foot pedals, gear shift linkages, and other odd necessities as time allowed, the steering linkages made from light tubing with lightweight adjustable auto ball ends that were sourced from new Brit. car spares. I was still involved with the auto spares industry and through this I found a wrecked Austin A40 car that provided front wheel discs (hub caps), a repairable front bumper and spring spoked sports steering wheel, as well as the remains of the grille which dismantled provided chromed strips and a one-off grille, later for the finished car. I am not certain, but I think it also provided the twin piston hydraulic damped rear shock absorber which I removed from the rear wheel chassis arch, this mounted on the rear suspension frame bracket was connected by it's original ball ended rod to the suspension and proved quite effective in use.

At this point a mate turned up with his Ford utility and together we wrestled the entire chassis up on to it's side, out the back room door, on to his vehicle and then to his home workshop which boasted an arc welder. For the next few nights, I was busy there welding up the numerous bolted together points and fitting the front wheels and all the auxiliary parts, until there came an evening when there was nothing left to do!

I took the next day off from work and rode the Norton across to his workshop, and proceeded to remove the engine and gearbox and fit it into the hole in the chassis. Out came the Ariel rear wheel and suddenly I had the makings of a vehicle bouncing up and down on it's suspension springs! The rest of the day was spent hooking up controls and doing a dozen small jobs, until by about 3 in the afternoon, the big moment, and I drove it for the first time around the mate's yard! A few minutes later, I was eating up the first road miles. Driving it was an exhilarating experience, the road flying past only inches from your right elbow. Everything performed as planned, the only shock – having the pounding 16H cylinder close to your left ear!

Up until now little thought had been given to the cooling of the engine, but an 80mm deep, 500 wide sheetmetal passage had been folded up and bolted to the underside of the plywood floorboard and, once the engine was in place, this was extended up behind the seat backboard and around the front of the cylinder – but this was later! The next day it was driven to work – the stares that I received from my fellow motorists had to be seen to be believed! It was only a few days later that attention was given to making it all legal.

The bodywork
The first thing was the seat, and this was little more than a slab of 75mm thick foam rubber encased in imitation leather fabric and located on the floor by a low surround of light timber. The back was similar, but with 50mm foam. In fact leg room and any space had been carefully considered, and anyone over a certain height had a hard time fitting in once the canvas hood was in place!

The body frame was next and this was oxy welded up from 25mm light gauge square tubing. Weight was a real consideration from the start and every effort was made to keep the finished weight down to a reasonable point – in fact this was achieved with the finished car weighing in at around 650 pounds. The frame included the surround for the Armourplate glass windshield that had to be specially made in two pieces. This was clamped down into place in rubber strips by three small bolts, the top surround being folded from light sheet, and forming the anchorage and support for the front of the canvas roof, which was stretched over lightweight tubular bows which could be dismantled and folded small enough to be stowed in the front VW Bug style storage, the bottom of which was only just above the occupant's knees and shinbones. Storage space was a real problem if more than two people were carried!

At this point the cooling was fully considered – the underfloor duct was extended up and over the front axle member and flared out for almost the full width out to the front fender support wall which was narrowed in from the scuttle line to give clearance for the front wheels on full lock. There were cutouts in the floor ply to accommodate this movement and the sides of the body were built up with lightweight steel sheet which was hand folded around the support frame, oxy welding and panel beating forming the curves around the base of the windshield etc.

It was never intended that more than the driver's side door would be provided, the flat seat and floor making it easy to slide across if the roof was in place, at other times it was usual to just hop over the side panels! The major consideration here was to finish up with maximum strength in the bodywork and the driver's door frame was strongly constructed to ensure this. A bit of personal pride demanded that the fenders and door had to be a work of art and so the 50s trend of the front fenders coming back along the sides of the door panels was a must! But there was another reason – the extended fender panels meant extra storage room and so the driver's door had a generous built in door pocket and the passenger's extra fender space was taken up with the car radio and extra large glove box! Quite some time was taken to fabricate the driver's door and getting the rear of the fender to match perfectly at the door joint. The front bonnet was hinged from the passenger's side in a manner that was too simple to believe – in fact there was no hinges at all! The joint was just held together with two short lengths of 40mm steel tubing, split once down it's length, sprung together to give it tension, then opened and slipped over the adjoining panels in the manner of much more complicated hinge systems used in other applications. The driver's side just shut down neatly and there was a simple system of a rod controlled from under the small instrument panel that latched the bonnet in place by two over centre flat hooks.

The fenders were the most time consuming item. The steel was just ordinary thin black steel sheet and at this point in my life I had no idea that I was going to be running a one man panel repair shop in a few years, so I had no dollies or special hammers. All the work was done using old hammers that I ground to a required rounded shape – the dollies being just odd pieces of scrap steel that I found about the place and laboriously ground to shape on the heavy pedestal grinder that we had at work! There was no bog in those days and I never even thought of lead filling! So I served an apprenticeship in panel forming on those fenders, that lead directly to the panel beating business on Kangaroo Island in 1953, where no such facility existed at that time! (When my wife and I first arrived on Kangaroo Island, a local businessman checking out our car, offered to help me set up a panel repair business by guaranteeing me credit at the local bank to buy an air compressor and other necessary tools.) Probably hard to believe – but the fenders were held to the body work with dozens of small bolts and nuts that I stole from my long stored Meccano set! The panels separated by beaded body work stripping!

The front panels were just small simple curved fill in pieces from the fenders to the air cooling intake funnel above the home made Austin bumper valance where the single headlamp was mounted on the right hand side. The open air intake hole was covered by the chrome plated strips salvaged from the Austin grille and other Austin trim strips were cut and modified and added to the front fenders as trim.
The Austin wheel trims fitted the heavyweight steel wheelbarrow wheel pressings exactly! These were held in place by spring wire in the rim edges that engaged in holes in the rims of the Austin caps and were only detachable by a concentrated effort involving pushing the spring wires back through the small holes.

There was only trim on the insides of the door panel and the passenger's side panel, bringing the thickness of the panels to a little over 25mm. Originally panels were folded to extend right back over the rear wheel, access to the engine being (hopefully) by lifting the entire rear body up on a hinge. But considerations of convenience, the possibility of these flat expanses rattling and drumming and the obvious matter of far too much surplus weight, saw me grab the tin shears and bob the whole lot down to a simple peak over the engine to cover the ugly Ford petrol tank and the suspension bits and bobs – and so it remained.

There were no instruments apart from the ammeter and light switch, not even a speedometer – not a legal requirement at that time. Not even front wheel brakes but with the weight borne on the rear 100mm plus wide rear tire and the fact that the Ariel rear brake was quite effective, the braking though not brilliant, never seemed cause for alarm in traffic. There was a problem at all times, of the drivers about you in traffic driving too close and gawking but somehow I survived!

The finishing touch was a small cast brass nameplate, 'HOLDON' – a bit of a play on words towards the Holden cars that were coming off the new Australian production line!
I drove about for almost three years with the steel panels rubbed over with an oily rag to prevent rust. My married life was in continual turmoil – the new home had done nothing to pacify or change my wife's attitude to her unusual need to have other men in her life (who were treated as just one more slave) and so there followed a period where I pretty much just worked (at two full jobs for a while)! It was at this point when the old 16H Norton was in a state of near collapse, that I sourced a brand new BSA A7 twin engine gearbox unit, the result of a disastrous fire which saw the bike written off as a non-repairable wreck. I swapped the Norton gearbox for this – these gearboxes being in great demand for speedway outfits.

The magneto and carburettor of the A7 appeared useless, but with a new HT slip ring fitted and a cleanup, a healthy spark returned. I soon found a suitable carburettor and with a rough test rig the motor ran like silk! So it was once again into the open hole in the chassis, a few modifications to my rubber mountings and I was mobile again! It didn't take me long to realise that the A7 could be started by hand, so with a cable along under the floorboards, an old hand lever pivoted off the plywood and a clevis fitting on to a bracket welded to the underside of the kick start pedal – and 'Bob's yer uncle'.

I had decided at this point that I was going to leave my wife and unfortunately the two children who I loved, and take off on a sabbatical around Australia, leaving my wife to take up with a good mate who had been besotted by her for a couple of years but had done the right thing. I just had a serious chat with him and said, 'If you want her, she is all yours!'. They eventually married and are to this day, and he has always been a model husband to her as far as I know.

My wife's parting gift to me was to introduce me to my present wife who had only just moved into the district and had no problems starting the A7 by hand and has certainly never had any problems keeping us both happy! I sold the new house and gave most of the proceeds to my mate to set him up and look after the two children.

New love, Barbara (pictured with Keith outside her old cottage at Warradale in South Australia), chose a nice dark green iridescent colour and a professional body shop painted the three-wheeler and the rest is history! We took off on our honeymoon a few months later but it wasn't long before we had a family under way.

The three-wheeler was sold for 300 pounds to finance a real car with brakes on all four wheels – this fact was the reason for the three-wheeler's final demise as I found out many years later. The registration requirements were upgraded and the lack of front wheel brakes alone caused the three-wheeler to be failed at the end of it's current registration and be relieved of it's front wheels for use in wheelbarrows. The A7 went into a BSA restoration project and the rest of my dream machine was tossed into the local salt water rubbish tip. All this unfortunately before such things were highly valued as restoration projects. By the time I eventually traced it, it had been gone for several years!