401 stolen parts

[Anthony]

Admin note: This post has been moved to it's own thread by Kevin

Thank you Hugh and Kevin for your reply and sugestions.

My wife and I are both forum "virgins" and we dont really know how to keep the thread of a "conversation" going but we will learn!

Our 401, inherited from my wifes father, was bought in the mid 70īs, and was a complete, but very sad example.
The car (UML with a wabesto sun roof) had been in a lock up in Batheaston (Bath) for 20 years and in the summer of 2006 we came home (we live and work in Spain) to collect it and finally begin its restoration.

To our horror the lock on the garage had been changed and somebody was using it for spares.
They had stolen nearly everthing of worth except the body although they had taken the rear bumper and floor panels as well. The engine and gearbox had been removed along with door locks, ignition switch, dash panels etc.

The engine number was 85c 2057.

My wife was understandably very unhappy, it was not just the theft but the form in which it was carrried out over a such a long period of time. She contacted the club ( of which we were not at the time members) and they were very kind and Spencer Lane Jones came out to have a look at the reck. (We immediately became members and recomend it to anybody, even if they dont have a car!).

He sugested buying a "doner" car since so much was missing and within days SLJ and a very friendly Andrew Blow had found us a car and at a very afordable price.

We returned to England with a trailor and thoughts of scraping a car to give life back to Sarahs family bristol.

This is where it all goes a little sureal.
The 401 had a name, Henry, and within the very reasonble price agreed with Andrew Blow Spencer had fettled him for the 1000 mile drive back to Spain!
It had even been polished!

We picked up a couple of friends in Brighton for the drive and after a tour of the family in Wales, we headed for "home".
Henry was a total joy and will definitley not be scraped. He is now a fully flegded member of the family along with the other cars (for those interested a 1932 McEvoy special 70, a 1955 ford thunderbird a 1959 convertable seat 600 a series III landrover a peugeot 304 convertable and other odities) and is currently in the paint house after some chassis work and detailing including a fantastic overdrive kit from Derek Hughes.
So Henry is saved but we now have two Brsitols to restore and we are still missing 90% of UML!

We need nearly everything for UML and a list of parts would just be too depressing!
If anyone has parts for a 401 we would be very intersted ( except the engine and gearbox since Derek Hughes has kindly found us a 85c engine).

Sorry about the lengh of the reply, and the spelling!
As I said at the beginning we are new to this but very happy that you are all out there ready to help.

Anthony.