The Jensen Owners' Club

SEA770 (nr 222).

a 541 deluxe on paper- but with 541R chassis and body. the car was fitted with the V8, but left the factory with the austin DS5 engine. first registered in april '58 and was then used by alan jensen for about a year and a half. possibly destined to go to the states, but sold late '59 within the UK. owned for almost 40 years by chris holman, who took the car off the road in the 70s when he began with the restoration.

featured here in richard calver's "all the models" (the picture is from alan jensen's personal archive. does anybody know where that went to or if it still exists? I'd be very interested if there are any more pictures of the car):


the state of the car when we bought it:


andi kreis and derek chapman (a big, big thank you to derek who for various reason won't continue working on the car) have been doing a tremendous job. the chassis is sandblasted and still needs some work. the body is sanded down to the fibreglass, repaired, and has been reinforced on both sides (inside and out):



the cracks in the roof:


original colour was brown with cream roof- the only 541 in brown. we shall retain the original colour scheme (the original interior is not white with dark piping as in the original photo). certainly not my first choice in colour, but I think given the history of this car it would be wrong to do a different colour.

here the original brown with 2 samples we have made up.



the engine (331cui hemi) should be ready in about 4 months time, pictures and details will follow. once the work on the chassis is completed, the body will be mounted and the car sprayed- sometime next year I hope.

a big thank you to francis pullen, richard calver, dave and jane turnage, joerg huesken, stephen carter and many others for the support/help/advice given!

felix

Very pleased to hear that all plans for work on the car are going well and I really look forward to seeing pictures of it with that Hemi V8 sitting in the engine bay!

Regards,

Derek

DerekCV8 wrote:really look forward to seeing pictures of it with that Hemi V8 sitting in the engine bay!

that, but also the first drive!

Don't forget to uprate the front springs.
The Hemi and the gearbox will add some weight compared to the Austin lump.

Joerg

Re the engine and gearbox weight. The Austin engine is circa 375kg and the Austin manual gearbox is also very heavy (but the moss box is lighter) - I think we looked at this before on the forum under the subject of engine stands and the non-hemi V8s are actually lighter than the Austin straight six.

good point! dry weight of the 331 hemi should be somewhere around 320kg. it might be interesting to actually weigh the different engines and gearboxes lying around in andi's garage.

the original brown on the car may just be plain old havana?! a swiss member mentioned that jensen kept the same colours over decades- can anybody confirm this?

it is almost impossible to get a good picture, but they do look very close. depending on in which light the picture is taken, the colour looks vastly different:

Difficult to tell from a picture Felix, but that looks pretty damn close to me?

Glad to see your keeping it like Richard Jensen chose it to be. I think it will be stunning in coffee and cream, very luxurious like a Pullmans orient express carriage. Cant wait to see it in all its hemi glory.

yes but, I would have very much preferred that the jensen brothers had chosen ice blue (for example!)... apple green was the one after mine, that I'd also love.

Take no notice of anoraks like me!

no, no- I agree with you. plans are to do the car as it was- with the possible exception of the cream roof. (... and I'd also prefer a grille rather than the flap)

How about a swivelling grille?

VFK44 wrote:How about a swivelling grille?

genius!

meanwhile in the deep south in the midst of the swamps of florida where they wrestle alligators, chew tobacco, watch fox tv, drink moonshine and bud light in the midst of millions of mosquitos, the hemi is almost ready:
" Moving right along with engine. It is now complete and on the engine stand. We now have about an 1 hour of run time and it sounds great and very responsive. The v covers are not the finished ones, they will be the last thing to put on."