Thats a curious looking beast Bry. Looks like a truck but it has car rear windows. Is it one of those World War II cut down cars turned into a truck? Front looks like 37 Ford. Or 38 Standard? Bet it was fun though!
Printable View
mums car bri
We always raced our flathead stockcars in second gear, with a hook on the dash to put the gearlever in to stop the box jumping out of gear.
.[/QUOTE]
A old pair of underpants with a decent waist elastic was a good ticket to boost up the gearbox detents ,one end around the lever the other end hooked onto somewhere convenient on the dash
Engine always sounded great changing into 2nd gear
Holy smoke......we are coming perilously close to breaking the rules here fellas. Steve has laid down the forum rules...no porn!! All this mention of underpants holding things from jumping out!!!! We have obviously struck a nerve here, mention a flat-head V8 and folks eyes go all glassy.I just thought they were cantankerous old devils just like Henry 1 himself. The legend in my day was that because the pistons in a V8 were sort of lying on their side, the cylinder wall only wore on that side, making the cylinder oval, and that is why so many old V8's smoked so much. I think a few, quite a few, tubes of Holts Piston Seal were purchased then to try and 'cure' that problem. Remember that stuff. The claim was that you could squirt a tube-full in each plug hole, replace the plugs, start the engine, and in a couple of minutes....a reconditioned engine! Well not quite. What happened was that the Piston Seal burnt to form carbon which gummed up the gaps between the cylinder and piston thereby increasing compression and reducing oil burning...smoking. I tried this on the Singer when I first got it and it SEEMED to work for a while. Then I got really keen and stripped the motor down for a 'proper' recondition and discovered that the Piston Seal had also gummed up the rings, what was left of them, and actually made the condition worse. I eventually re-ringed the 8 hp Singer engine with...CORDS rings...'designed especially for the worn motor'....remember them? The Piston Seal would have been OK for an unscrupulous car sales man....surely there weren't any of those....attempting to sell a 'smoker' to an unsuspecting buyer. Good try Holts, you must have sold thousands of tubes. And the answer to my question, straight from the horses mouth....a B4 COULD get to 90 mph in 2nd gear. There you go Brydon, you weren't having us on after all. I apologise for doubting you.
It was a 38 Steve..had a split rear window and a hand made wooden deck..handling was ..erm ..interesting to say the least
Mum had a Triumph Mayflower 105Angria... and it could outdrag a 100E :)
Am I guessing right here......bry1500 and 105Angria.....are brothers now living in Australia? Have looked up the New Members page but doesn't enlighten me anymore. Like to know who I'm dealing with just in case I tread on someones toes!! You can see who I am by the way. Steve, shouldn't the new members page identify who your members are, or perhaps you do know, should there be any controversy if so, thats OK.
Hi Amco72 not brothers but bros both lived in ChCH around the same time but didnt know each other,became good friends in Melbourne years ago, he has been a major help in the restoration of my Anglia sports sedan, he has a great eye for patina, and handcut decals,also does fab watercolour and pastal pics of historics , maybe one of the better base players in the country, we share a passion for volume colour and speed, a lot of Wigram can do that to a young person
Thanks 105 Angria.......thought I might have been dealing with someone famous....you and he. He must be a talented guy, and probably you to, but I appreciate your reply. I am originally from ChCh as you have probably deduced. Lived on Mt. Pleasant...scene of some destruction now I'm afraid. Always thought I would like to go back and live there but not now I'm afraid. If you lived near Wigram you will know that the base is largely, or soon to be housing...shame. Anyway good to catch up.
Thanks amco72 Didnt live near Wigram but had xmas holidays there up from Dunedin stayed with grangparents in Haytons Rd which was the main way into the track for everything used to watch the weekend unfold flatdeck trucks with haybails ,grandstands all the cars in and out from about 1962 up until the f5000s aussie sportsedan challange saw the first gold leaf Lotus wings allcomers Clark Rindt Hill still have the programs these things infect you for life in the best ways
Gerald, I like for everyone to enter a few details about themselves in the New Members section, as its a bit like going to a big party. You want to get to know everyone and let them get to know you. I encourage it, but its not compulsory. I know there are some people who'd prefer not to post anything about themselves, and thats fine.
Thinking about the Holts Piston Seal in the last post brings to mind another product that has come in for a bit of stick. Bar's Leaks. It has become fashionable to rubbish this stuff but I have fond memories of it, especially the smell. Was always a good idea to have a can in the glove box just in case you were caught short, especially in the old jalopies we used to drive. Anyway the problem with Bar's Leaks was that it was usually, if not always, added to cooling systems when everything was on it's last legs, and with all the sludge and gunk still in there ended up like a kind of thick soup. However....IF THE INSTRUCTIONS WERE FOLLOWED...read drain system and flush....it was OK. Bar's Leaks was made up of a spoonful of little brown pellets and soluble oil. The pellets dissolved in the hot water, then adhered to areas where seepage was occuring, building up to eventually plug the hole. The liquid was soluble oil which was why the stuff turned milky when poured into the radiator. The soluble oil raised the boiling point of the coolant from 212 F to about 235 F so was usefull in that respect. We still use soluble oil in the cooling system of the Amco Mini today, just as Dave and Rod did in 1972....good stuff. Bar's Leaks is still on the market, maybe improved but seems to have lost it's smell. There are lots of other radiator/cooling system/ head gasket sealers for sale today, which just maybe superior, but good old Bar's Leaks got us out of some sticky situations a few times. You could also hunt down the nearest poultry farm or shop and buy a couple of eggs to crack into the radiator. Have not tried this but apparently works. 'Scrambled eggs anyone'.......
A long time ago I shepherded on a large station out on the coast at Waipawa. There was three single shepherds, a married head shepherd and three married odd job men. A great life if you were young and fit. We all drove cars that were early thirties, I had a Model A, my mate a 6 cylinder trucked Chev of the same vintage, a 1938 Hudson Coupe and various others. We used to recycle our oil, very green. When you changed the oil in the car you refilled from the top of a 44 gallon open drum. Then you tipped your old oil into that drum. The theory was that all the gunk would drop to the bottom leaving clean oil on the top. Occasionally the drum would be emptied and cleaned out and the cycle would start again.
Considering that oil from the tractor, bulldozer, Lister Stationery motor, etc, all went into that drum it was a pretty potent brew. While we had some mechanical problems from time to time I can"t remember any bearing problems. Must have been the pine needles, bird droppings, birds and once an opossum that ended up in that drum. Thank goodness for crank handles as there was only about one decent battery between the lot of us. You always parked on top of a hill.
Well there you go, I knew there was an Historic Motorsport connection with Bar's Leaks somewhere. What an endorsement for a product from no less than the great Jack Brabham. I wonder if he got a couple of dollars/pounds for that little gem. Of course the other blurb on the can included the words..'.this is not a permanent repair'.....well mostly it was, until something drastic happened. But just remember that the cooling systems then were not pressurised, so you could get away with a lot more, and there was about 3 times as much water to play with compared to a modern system, so you could go a fair way before there was trouble.
Anyone remember the standing and flying 1/4 mile sprints that the Hamilton Car Club held on the Bruntwood straight.....was on the back road between Hamilton and Cambridge. At that time, 1967, there were only about two farm houses down that stretch of road and most of the land either side was owned by a rough-as-guts farmer....Walter Byrne. I had a farm just a mile further on from the 'straight' in Mills road and used to attend this, what was an annual event. The last time I saw Logan Fow and the Ferrari GTO was there...wish I'd had a camera. Another competitor was Dennis Marwood in the Humber 80. Walter, the rough-as guts' farmer had a Daimler SP250 which he used to literally blow the cobwebs out of. Also a strange early front engined dragster powered by a WW2 Allison aircraft engine.....the type that powered the Mustang...the American fighter/bomber that is. I remember the 'officials' getting all us spectators well back from the road before they would let this thing go. Had a remote starter that plugged into the side. It certainly sounded the part but was disappointing as far as time was concerned, popping and banging it's way down the course. Logan could have given it 100 meters start and still beaten it in the GTO. There was also another very rough, and I mean ROUGH, old HWM sports car..maroon in colour with disc wheels that had been hugely extended. I recall this because not only had they been extended but also had pieces of steel strip spaced round the wheel like spokes to strengthen the widened piece. One of the strips had FALLEN OFF...shonky welding....and the owner was attempting to remove the strip opposite to try and balance the wheel.!!!!!!!!!!! Imagine that flying off when the car was doing a run. Anyway it was just a heap of junk, although probably hugely valuable today. I think Marwood had a better time. But everyone was there having a go with scrutinering in an adjacent paddock. One competitor with a Wolseley 6/99 was having a 'discussion' with the official who had just failed the Wolseley because of a worn tie-rod end. The said competitor was really getting very wound up and giving the tester a tune-up, telling him that the car would be OK because 'he was a mechanic and knew about these things'. Imagine that today.......'on yer bike sonny'.
Just as a little aside to that yarn. As I said we lived a bit further along from the 'straight' and use to traverse that piece of road a lot. Walter Byrne, the rough-as-guts farmer who owned most of the land both sides of the road was not overly fussy about the condition of his fences, so although the road might have been traffic free, it was not always STOCK free, and Walters sheep were often out grazing the 'long acre' One evening my wife, Judith, was returning home to the farm after attending some soiree in Hamilton. At that time we owned the Fiat 1500 Crusader, the car Ron Roycroft approved of. Judith fancied herself as a bit of a hot-shot behind the wheel, and the Fiat had a bit of get-up and go. She must have been dreaming of Logan Fow in the Ferrari doing the flying 1/4 as she headed down the straight and gave the car a bit of wellie!! Anyway one of Walters sheep just happened to want to cross the road as the Fiat, just getting into it's stride, bore down on it. The poor sheep never stood a chance and the car hit it full on. Judith being a very compassionate person decided NOT to stop, as the animal was surely dead judging by the impact, and continued on to the farm where she sheepishly regailed me with the details. I immediately questioned her as to the state of the car and her response was, bugger the car, what about me!!!! Well, I had eyes, I could see that she was still standing and walking ,so was OK , wasn't she? I was also a very compassionate person, and decided that I had better go and check on the sheep to make sure it was dead and not suffering, lying on the side of the road with terrible abrasions. I was thinking I could toss the dead animal in the boot and fill the freezer with some free mutton. Well I hunted high and low for that dammed sheep but there was no sign of it. Maybe it was catapaulted into the paddock out of harms way. And the Fiat only suffered minor denting to the front guard. Amazing.
The 'Rough' HWM thing you mentioned was likely the John Donnelly HWM Corvette.
Not sure I agree with you in regards to the tech standards of today or the mechanical knowledge of competitors in general, there are many drivers/competitors today that wouldnt have a clue what end of a hammer to hold onto, & I see far to many examples of bad & dangerous engineering with recent tech stickers that have obviously passed over faults that have been present for some time.
Jac Mac.......in your reply to my bit on the Bruntwood sprints you have got rough in inverted comas 'ROUGH' Are you questioning my description of the car as it was then? I dont know Mr Donnelly or whether he owned it then and maybe now, but I assure you it was ROUGH, rough everywhere...no inverted comas! The fact that something so obvious as welded steel strips on the wheels were detaching themselves maybe points to slack scrutineering or slack preparation. I'm sure that you, if you have scrutineered cars, and it sounds as though you have, have come up against all sorts of bodgy tricks that people have tried to get away with. The fact that you say that faults have been present for some time is a bit of a worry, and sounds a bit strange to me, as it suggests that a number of different scrutineers at different tracks have overlooked a potentially dangerous bit of engineering. And yes there most certainly are drivers today who, unlike the Wolseley 6/99 owner, are not mechanics backsides!
that Bars Leaks Ad reminds me of that Stalwart of of Kiwi Do-it-yourself - Robbie !!
Bob, sounds like you & I might be cut from the same piece of cloth..:)
AMCO72, The pic I have of the HWM in the NZ motor Racing photo book 1966, its definitely in need of some care & attention, so I agree with your 'rough' description. Interestingly Lycoming Special features in the same photos & also wheels with similar steel strips!. However the strength of any wheel modded in that fashion was largely in the hands of the guy on the welder.
With reference to 'bodgy tricks', no these cars or more correctly owners/drivers have been unaware of the potential danger they are/were in, they knew that something might be amiss, but had no idea what that might be, In some cases they had taken steps to address the problems, but the root cause had not been found, simply because it was so basic in nature & overlooked.
I widened/made most of the steel wheels on cars I raced, was convinced by the 'techs' @ Teretonga when I built the V8 Cortina that they would prefer I used a 'MANZ' preferred wheel manufacturer in the future, did as I was told & ordered a couple of alloy wheels. What happened, second club meeting & the center of the RF disintergrated, luckily on the slow down lap, VP of MANZ came over for a look afterwards, I left him with a very clear direction on where he could stick their recommended suppliers from there onwards.
I was in the Hamilton car club in the mid 60's and can remember the V12 engined dragster. I seem to remember that the whole run was done at not much more than idle speed, and yes it popped and banged the whole way!! Safety standards were pretty laughable in those days too. I think we only had to stand in the paddock behine the fence!! Also remember going to some of the hillclimbs that HCC put on at Horohora. Red Dawson storming up the hill in his Willys Corvette was fairly spectacular to say the least!
I remember the HWM-Corvette (as it was by then) getting scruffier and scruffier with each year
But in defence of John Donnelly, if you're right about the year, he would no longer have been the owner/driver
Didn't look too bad in 1965 for 12+ year old car.
OK, so who was the owner in 1967/68 when it 'competed' at the Hamilton Car Club sprints, because it has done a BIG downhill slide from that picture. Its condition when I saw it looked as though it had taken part in a Butchers Picnic race at the speedway!!! Originally the car would have had an Alta motor, I think, then maybe a Jaguar engine would have been fitted fairly soon because the Alta was a pretty dismal thing. It certainly had wire wheels, as the photo shows. The wheels in 1967 were solid of some sort, as widening wire wheels leads to all sorts of problems, not least the access to the centre-lock wheel spinners. You have to wonder at it's miserable life in 2 or 3 years. Mind you we were pretty rough back then. There is that well known picture of John Riley, fag hanging out of his mouth, in the Monza Ferrari with silver overspray all over his tyres after some touching up with the spray can! Does anyone know what happened to the HWM, can't recall seeing it at at Classic racing events. I mean this was an iconic car in it's day so I'm sure it 'survived'......it was only JUST surviving in 1967. Probably snapped up by some English entrepreneur and whisked back home. Just maybe the owner of the HWM at that meeting , is out there, reading this, and can enlighten us, because I'm almost certain that it not make any runs that day because of problems other than 'loose' tacked on spokes.
Right, got that out of my hair, now the other iconic car at the sprints that day was the 'other' GTO. It is very common amongst car spotters to exclaim how UGLY the car was, well sometimes I wonder if these people have actually SEEN the car in the flesh and heard it running. You can't compare it with the 'real' GTO as clearly the whole thing is a compromise with the short wheel base. But I put it to you that it is one of the MEANEST looking machines you will ever see. Look at that photo of DT4889 in post 9 of the GTO thread, obviously fresh out of the panel-beaters, perhaps that should be body-shop, and another one with Pat Hoare standing proudly beside it, and if that doesn't break your heart then you have no business reading these pages. By the time Logan had purchased it, it was starting to look a bit scruffy and it didn't improve in his ownership.We had it in a motor show in the Claudlands show building in Hamilton where that first picture in the GTO thread was taken, and you can see the faded looking red paintwork, more orangey than Ferrari red, The whole thing was starting to get loose and floppy back then, maybe the harsh suspension had shaken it to bits because I'm sure it had not done a big mileage. The other thing was that the interior was so tacky! The trim round the dash/doors etc was some weird sort of black padded diamond embosed vinyl!!!! Can you imagine it, well it's worse that that, it all looked so amateurist. Was supposed to have been done by some upholstery guru in ChCh, well I dont know who picked the material but he [would have to be a he] had no taste. The instruments were oddly laid out too from memory. BUT, I dont care.....that car really did it for me, and frankly I dont give a stuff what the car-spotters think or say, that machine should never have been put back to original. Was absolutely unique, and I'll have it in my garage any time thank you!!
With regards to the HWM I have a picture of Beowulf passing the HWM at the Levin 1966 March meeting. According to the Levin book the driver was a G.T.Hallen from Waitoa, the HWM was entered as a HWM Corvette with a 5300cc motor. It looked pretty rough, Beowulf is no object of beauty but alongside the HWM it looks good. Gone are the lovely wire wheels, in their place are widened steel ones. Crude flairs are tacked on and the whole thing looks tatty and rough. It didn't feature in the results so I guess it went about as badly as it looked. Where it is now goodness knows. According to Vercoe Gavin Bain bought it in 1989 and had started restoration with a Cadillac V8 motor.
This particular HWM had a 5.4-litre Cadillac V8 from its inception in 1954, and from its first NZ appearance in 1957. It was raced in NZ initially by the Avery brothers of Hamilton, who used a variety of drivers in the latter years, including Ron Roycroft and Roly Levis. By the time they'd finished with it (1962) it had an 7-litre flat-six Continental aero engine - I can still hear Ron Roycroft accelerating out of the Hairpin at Ardmore and being almost out of earshot before he changed up.
A youthful Peter Haskett acquired the car from the Averys, then sold it to Donnelly, who replaced the Continental engine with a Ford Thunderbird and then the Corvette. Graeme Hallen raced it in the 66 and 67 seasons, then John Monehan put it over a bank in a hillclimb and it was soon part of the Roycroft collection.
It eventually passed from there to Gavin Bain around 1989 and I did hear he was going to re-fit a Cadillac engine, though there was also some talk of a Jaguar unit
First picture shows Donnelly at Pukekohe in 1965, the second the same driver 12 months later. In the interim the Corvette engine had replaced the Thunderbird, steel wheels replaced the wires, and a tatty appearance replaced the more pristine:)
Graham hallen most likely
If you check recent HRC entry lists you will see he is still tearing around
and correct, the "bones" of this car are with Bain
Lee.....I'm being silly here, but I'm sure you already know that it is a Daimler SP250 [Dart] Beyond that I cant help. And Bob, I just love your 'bitten by the Firestone bug' !!!!!! You mentioned in one of the earlier posts that a performance tyre means BIG. Were they made for some specific class...in America perhaps. They cant have done the unsprung weight much good.
Regarding those WIDE wheels on the HWM. You can those steel strips, like spokes, that the scrutineer was objecting to in the HCC sprints. Rough as!!!!
I can probably recount here my own involvement with Firestone in 1965 ,I was involved with some mates in setting up a saloon car racing team ( Silver Fern Saloon Car Racing Team ) and was looking around for tyres for the 1965 /66 season and I got talking to some one I knew in Firestone about racing tyres ,they told me that they were going to become a lot more involved in NZ motor racing in the forthcoming season and bring in some race tyres .I looked at the tyres they intended bringing in ,they were all too big to fit under the guards of the cars we had ,but in turn they seemed pretty interested in what we were doing so we decided to go with them using their road tyres called the F7 in those days ,The Dunlop C49 was their direct competitor at that time .Well we used those F7's they certainly didn't have a lot of grip .but you could go pretty quick on them as long as you didn't mind a car that slid around .That was Jim Richards first season and he was part of our team as such ,I think those tyres really suited Jims style at that time which probably reflects a lot in those photos of him back then.Firestone came out around about the November Levin meeting with the F100 Cavalino ,yes they felt better ,but I think by then we had sort of set our cars up around the F7 so stayed with them.I never used any of the racing tyres as I said they were too big to go under the guards and also they were too large in diameter so the gearing would have suffered .I did try some tyres I think they called wide ovals or wide awfulls as I called them they were hopeless ,but they also brought out a small diameter nylon cased road tyre from the states which I used they were great
I think a lot of people put those big race tyres on with no thought about size ,diameters,side wall flex or construction and just built big hideous rims to take them
Oh I guess for the younger readers I should have said the the F7 and C49 tyres were cross plies ,the F100 was the first Firestone Radial which was brought out to counteract the Dunlop SP ,another reason we used those F7's and stayed with them was we got them for just about free ,one quid a tyre from memory ,that helped back then
Dale Mathers visit to the speed-show over the weekend reminded me of an anniversary. Exactly 30 years ago.....to the weekend.....the Waikato VCC staged a car,rather than a speed show in the Claudlands Show building in Hamilton. Not quite to the standard of the Auckland event, but not too bad considering the couple of amateurs who ran it. Myself and my mate Barry Parsonson were put in charge of the whole thing and we were fortunate to get the local radio station...1ZH, to come on board for a bit of free advertising. One of the DJ's was a car 'nut' so that helped, and we decided to call this extravaganza the...'ZH Motorcade '81'. Also helping that weekend was the weather which was awful, but just right for Mum, Dad, and the kids to attend an old car show. In fact 'Old Crocks' weren't the only things on display. We didn't have Logan's GTO but equally impressive was a 'top fuel dragster' which had won an Australasian title. This machine, owned by that hard case, X MP from Tauranga, Bob Clarkson, was a big drawcard and Bob was very generous with his time and effort in getting to the show. The range of vehicles on display was very impressive, with veteran, vintage, PV, and sports cars....military vehicles, motorbikes, stock cars, stationary engines, and pretty much anything else that had wheels.....no tractors though. The military stuff was especially impressive...as well as a jeep we had an X German army half-track, and a Sherman tank on a transporter outside. Several of the cars were started up at some stage during the 2 day show, and this always drew a crowd gazing at the mechincal clatter with the bonnet open. Can you SEE mechanical clatter, well yes, when Theo de Leeuw started his beautiful yellow 1912 Model T, you can actually SEE mechanical clatter!! Theo's hand-cranking proceedure drew gasps of wonder from young and old. On the saturday evening we had a motoring orientated quiz with the radio's DJ as the quiz master. Barry had thought up some fiendishly obtuse questions which didn't favour the enthusiast, sometimes a good guess would get you through to the next round. We had a huge response to that, I think the whole hall joined in as there were some good prizes up for grabs. The usual car care products and wine, and for the major prizes, a battery, Lesco fuel cans, jumper leads, spanner sets, and oil. Took a fair bit of leg work to get companies to donate...no Super Cheap then, but they all got a plug on the radio, so everyone was a winner . A team assembling a model T engine and installing it on a chassis, complemented Theo's demonstration of Model T ownership. The whole object of the show was of course to make money, but for specific reason. The club had got itself into O/D at the bank and noises were being made. At a committee meeting an entrance fee of 50 cents was decided on, not without some protest from me as I thought we should charge at least $1.00 !!!!!!!! sounds ridiculous now doesn't it. We also organised our own security with groups of us sleeping overnight 'guarding' all that precious machinery. Amazing how comfortable the back seat of a large vintage Rolls Royce can be. So the only things we paid for were the building hire which wasn't too bad, and some liability insurance. Was a huge success, and much back-slapping ensued, and our goal was reached, and then some.
I see Greg Stokes has posted some pretty sharp looking photos of his favourite cars on the Speedshow thread. If youv'e been reading this thread you will remember my buddy at Lincoln driving a B4......well the yellow one is just as I remember it, only it wasn't QUITE in that condition!! Greg, is that called a Hi Boy, and if so does this refer to the rear suspension being higher than the front or that the body has not been channeled, or only mildly so. Imagine roaring around the streets in that today....no hood, open to the elements. You wouldn't be able to park it up and go to the pictures, because it would be gone when you came out.....but that is what we did. I'm sure it didn't have a key, just a little switch for the ignition. God, we must have been mad...or young...or something!!!!!!