In July 2013 Miles Patience purchased a group of engines from an auction house based near Watford. In the group was a ‘made from solid’ ETA 5 look-alike along with 2 x 3 bolt crankcase engines that had a lot of ETA ideas within them (see ‘unknown’ photos that were unknown at the time of taking the photos). There were several commercially made engines such as Elfin, Amco, Foster etc and a bag of miscellaneous parts and gaskets (several being ETA parts). Whilst collecting the group Miles asked if the auctioneer would tell him where the engines came from – he was not allowed to tell him however Miles asked if he knew of the Bedford family that had made model engines in the area. His reply was ‘...as it happens I’m visiting a member of that family in a couple of weeks to look at some similar stuff, I’ll send photos when I can’. So roll on to early October and the photos of the group of engines arrives which Miles ends up buying. In it was several ETA factory drawings, the hand drawn power curve charts you see in the adverts, various factory photos (including the original photo of the 1.5 shown in the May ’68 Peter Chinn write up on ETA’s), books and of course quite a few engines and related spares including experimental engines such a few crankcases & parts for the 3 bolt ‘unknown’ engine mentioned earlier and various cut away test castings.

Have fun browsing Miles's pictures and, as always, information about the engines on display is most welcome.

*Stop Press*
Not content with rescuing what is believed to be Ken's brother Eric Bedford's collection of engine parts, in March 2016 Miles revealed the first new batch of ETA engines built in probably 40 years using ten out of the eleven ETA 1.5 FRV crankcases pictured in this gallery (click on image for more pictures). He gives credit to Gavin Carter for making some of the missing parts and to Peter Valicek for completing the remaining missing parts and carrying out the final assembly.

Truly an impressive achievement by all concerned.