Steve you asked me to add some photos of my sports sedan ,a couple of chassis photos will add more later
Steve you asked me to add some photos of my sports sedan ,a couple of chassis photos will add more later
Great! About time too. Will really look forward to this Bob. Period racing shots would be great too, if you have any.....
Fantastic! So when did you start building the car Bob? Did you start it from scratch as a space-frame car, or was it something that evolved from a monocoque car to eventually become a space-frame car, such as, for example, Graeme Addis' Charger?
No it was built from scratch from my own design by me and Kevin Weston in 1982 ,I did further devolpment on it over a period of time in the late eighties,remember it hasn't raced since around 1990,what little remains of the Escort body shell came from the old ex Mark Rutherford Shellsport car ,you may remember that I raced it in its original form for a couple of meetings with my 1850 Hart 416b based twin cam engine way back around 81/82
Ahh, I didn't know the Rutherford Escort was used as the basis for the body. Was this the brown MkII Mark raced?
It was a bloody ambitious car, to have been created from scratch as a space-frame car. Even though US space-frame cars first appeared in NZ in late 1975 and the merits for building cars this way was obvious, even by the early '80s the popular method was still for taking a road car and modifying it for racing. Most Sports Sedan and OSCA cars at this time were still being built this way when you built your space-frame car. So it was a really ambitious project.
Yes it was the old brown car ,Cook Motor Racing built for Warren Steele ,then to Mark and finally Mike Moore,as you will see from later photos not much of it is retained,what is, is severly modified,it was L/H drive originally when I first raced it as a Escort ,yes It was a clean sheet of paper idea ,we used McLaren uprights ,everyting else we built ,there were a couple of radical ideas for those days ,they all worked and I don't think the design has really dated .I recently had a respected overseas designer look at it and he could'nt believe it was concieved in 81/82
Thats exactly what I was thinking when looking at the bare space-frame. Amazing piece of craftsmanship. What did it weigh Bob?Originally Posted by bob homewood
What retained was modified and lightened,many hours were spent with a belt sander on the exterior of the panels ,completed weight was 600kgs without driver
Stunning Bob. Amazing it was so light too. Its really a beautiful piece of work.
Why did you buy the Rutherford Escort rather than a stripped out bodyshell when you only needed a portion of body section? Would that have made it a bigger job for you?
Steve it was the screwing round with the rules that have plagued my whole racing career ,round that time firstly I was going to buy the ex Barry Vuyk Stilleto and put my engine and Hewland transaxle in it ,but that run a foul of the rules with what I wanted to do ,then I brought the ex GM dealer Chevette that Cook built ,inteding to put my components in that ,but once again there was dramas with what I wanted to do ,which was to run one hewland in the rear as a diff unit only with irs and modify the front one so you could change the ratios in it as some of the Aussie cars did which was my interpretation of the rules ,but that was a no go ,so then I got fed up with the whole drama and just brought the Escort so I could at least run .The North Island Sports Sedan Association was then formed with what I thought was clear rules ,so I built the Escort using some of the bits that suited our purpose and the rest is history
As a matter of interest Bryan Bate later brought the Stiletto from Barry and got me to put a 13b Mazda engine in it for him ,believe me thare are a lot of untold stories out there
Yep, that sounds about right Bob. How many cars were still-born because of chopping and changing of rules? George Shewiery still has a De Tomaso that was 90% complete in the early 80s when the rules were changed.
This used the Hart 416b head on a Ford block .The crank,rods and pistons were all NZ made in the engine at this time
Bob that's an outstanding race car! Full credit to you - that is one piece of art.
The Alloy panel work shortly before painting,as you can see very little was retained of the old body shell,the doors were fibre glass and I had used them to the Yellow Twin cam Mk 2 before .They were reputed to be off the Leo Leonard Ashley Rally sprint Mk2 Escort,interesting fact ,we had to import the material for the screen back then specially
Waiting for that was one of the hold ups we had when building the car
I hadn't realised the panel work was all alloy, I assumed it was fibreglass. That is amazing to see the fabrication work on the body in bare metal, its really beautiful work, and almost too nice to cover with paint. The curves on the rear quarters are particularly beautiful. There must be hundreds of hours work in the body alone!
Thanks for that Photo Nigel,I actually have very few of that car,it would have been great to have seen that photo back then as it would have confirmed how well we had the wing and underfloor working ,it was all well before data logging etc ,but over the years I used a crude system of measuring what the suspension etc was doing ,simple but effective ,it did at least supply some answers
Last edited by bob homewood; 07-24-2011 at 04:28 AM.
Like the red Bob, you going to have a play at all.
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