AN engineer who caught public imagination by making trikes out of components from scrapped Minis is back in business after a fire which he thought would wipe him out.

Self-employed David Mitch-ell, who runs Austin Engineering on Leeming Bar industrial estate, could only watch helplessly last March as his small workshop in a unit in Progress Row was gutted by flames.

Seven months on, he has managed to salvage something from the smoke-blackened wreckage, but admitted this week that he was still finding it a struggle to rebuild his one-man business.

Mr Mitchell lost two lathes, a compressor, three trike frames and four engines in the fire, only three weeks after his small tools were stolen in a burglary. The blaze was caused by an electrical fault in a water boiler.

His problems have been compounded because he has revealed that he was uninsured. So far he has rewired a lathe, milling and drilling machines and a hydraulic press out of his own pocket.

When Mr Mitchell, 43, established his business, his idea was to produce a set of plans from which people could build their own trikes but he gradually moved into making a frame, and then a complete machine.

Today there are three options for a trike enthusiast: to buy a set of plans and start from scratch; to buy a basic frame and then search for appropriate parts from Minis and motorcycles or, for those with little or no engineering skill, but money to spare, Mr Mitchell will build a complete trike.

''The fire was devastating and I was out of business for five months," said Mr Mitchell. "I lost everything and I am still struggling because I have not got all the tools I need. I had no insurance because I am a one-man business and you never think this sort of thing is going to happen to you.

"I have got a couple of orders for frames but it is a question of financing the job. Being self-employed, you cannot get everything off the state.

"The equipment looked as if it had been out in the rain for three months because of the amount of water pumped in to fight the fire. The biggest effort was shovelling out all the rubbish and seeing my things destroyed. It took me three weeks.

"The job was starting to go quite nicely at the time of the fire. I had more or less completed an order and I still have a frame to build for a guy, but he has been very understanding."

"If I can struggle over the next month I should be all right," said Mr Mitchell, but added that finance was holding him back. "I can only take one step at a time. I don't know how to give in. It's not in my nature,'' he said.

Sales of plans are helping to keep the business going but he hopes to raise money by restoring and selling a 25-year-old car called a Wilson, an extensive tricycle conversion of a Mini.