Engine Punk

Vintage Thing No.23.2 - Austin Allegro

2012-01-31T14:17:00.000-08:00

My Allegro 1.3 Super in its element - summer time in the Cornish lanes

Just over a year ago I chap called Steven (sorry, I don't know your second name) got in

touch about my thoughts on the Austin Allegro. It seems I'm not the only one who thinks a fast one would be a Good Idea and a bit of a joke.

His remarks were so encouraging I thought I'd share them.

"Read your blog on the Allegro Equipe and felt compelled to write.

"Like you, I've been looking for the Allegro SuperVroom TV ad. A crummy ad for a crummy car, what with its wobbly Hydragas suspension, floppy body-shell, square steering wheel, lumpen looks, and gutless, under-square engines.

"Except that, like you, I can't help feeling that there was a decent car in the Aggro struggling to get out.

"The first inkling I had of this was when Rover finally developed the car’s Hydragas suspension system as it always should have been developed – for the K-series engined Rover Metro in 1990. That was considered to be the world’s best handling and riding small car back in the day, and the system was further refined for the “backwards Metro”, the MGF in 1995. Now, I owned an F for eight years and it was a revelation. I drive an Elise now, which is quick but skittish in comparison to the F which had supernatural levels of grip and composure (although it has to be said Rover ruined it by the fitment of electric power steering – I removed the fuse.)

"I met Dr Moulton as one of a party of Internet geeks a few years ago and it seems that the Allegro was conceived originally with a front subframe but that the item was dropped during development on grounds of cost.

"Now, the omission of the front subframe probably did nothing to help the Allegro’s structural rigidity – popularly supposed to be about the same as an empty box of Corn Flakes.

"Even so, the Allegro does not appear to have been any worse than its competitors with its torsional rigidity being about 6000lb ft per degree of deflection which was usefully higher than the Mk1 Ford Fiesta (about 4700 lb ft), the Renault 5 (3500 lb ft) and the VW Golf (5200 lb ft.) Of course, they were all hatchbacks so you could expect that, I suppose, but even so the Allegro’s floppy body-shell seems to be just another myth. Compared with the notably stiff ADO16 and ADO14 it must have been disappointing but those cars were exceptional.

"You have to wonder how much stiffer the Aggro would have been with a front subframe, given that the Mini derives much of its front end rigidity from the fitment of such an item. And the omission of a front subframe, according to Dr Moulton, precluded the employment of anti-dive front suspension geometry, one development which made the K-engined Metro so good. Dr M said a subframe-less anti-dive Allegro would have generated horrendous road noise.

"Later Hydragas developments included an active anti-roll system, and fluid filled engine mountings connected to the suspension.

"If you wanted to create a tidy-handling, smooth-riding Allegro, I suspect that it’s not beyond the wit of man. And Dr Moulton is around to give advice.

"But how to make the 1750cc E-series unit go hard?

"Owned a Mini a while back and toyed with the idea of an E-series installation, but the consensus of opinion in Mini circles is that the engine is a boat anchor, a right old dog that’s not very tuneable.

"I suspect this is a load of cobblers.

"Downton Engineering managed to coax 105bhp out of it:

http://mk1-performance-conversions.co.uk/images/DowntonMaxi1750.jpg

"But Downton’s Daniel Richmond (who had a hand in designing the engine) was never one for tuning for outright power, anyway, so I’m guessing it shouldn’t be too eke out a few more ponies, as this post from an internet forum suggests:

' “Downton did pretty much the entire development work for the later twin carb/tubular manifold 1750cc engines, many of their modified bits were sold as Special Tuning parts around late '73 onwards and eventually ended up being copied for production vehicles. Autocar tested a 1975 1750cc Allegro HL and found a 10 second dead 0-60 time, impressive with just 95bhp on tap and more so given it being a four door only model (the Equipe was the only twin carb 1750 Allegro sold in 2 door form).

“The 1750 works rally Allegro (made famous by Vangaurds model), has a 160bhp+ E series, bored out using Fiat pistons to around 2 litres. Oil consumption is catastrophic, so is fuel consumption as it uses a fat Weber DCOE carb.

“Oh yes, all on a standard gearbox too.

“Going slightly less extreme, there is a nice Equipe in the club which has around 130bhp on tap, obtained from a good porting and three angle valve grind of the cylinder head, fast road cam, a 'tweaking' of the carbs and a bloody good rolling road test.”'

Which leaves the notchy gearshift:

'“You should be able to get it shift nicely if you got some poly bushes cobbled together and a decent fitter to properly align the rods.”'

"Which leaves the car’s styling. Best of luck with that.

"But don’t shed a tear for the loss of the Allegro coupe. Not if the picture in David Knowles’ book, “MG: The Untold Story” is anything to go by. Imagine an Aggro with twin circular head-lights, quarter bumpers, a big square grille extending into the area between the quarter bumpers and a humpbacked C-pillar. It really is a monstrosity.

"Intriguingly, Knowles relates that BL toyed with the idea of a 2.2 litre six-cylinder E6 engined Allegro..."

My Allegro is now under cover for the winter. The roller painted Rustoleum paint is lasting well. The car still rusts but more quietly. At least the sound doesn't keep me awake at night

To which I replied:-

"I have the remains of a four door 1750 Aggro with a crumpled roof and am still wondering what to do with it. To scrap it as many of my mates suggest seems a waste to me, although it is very rusty. I've acquired a number of spare parts along the way an although I have a number of other more pressing projects I would like to do concentrate on the good qualities of Allegro-ness and make a special out of what I've got. I still think Andy Saunders was on to something when he created the All-ego. I had a similar idea years ago, maybe even before had his, but mine was to weld up the doors and create more of a speeder than a convertible. I am not sure I would keep the Hydragas suspension. I know front units are very scarce and the rear end of this bodyshell is extremely rotten. If I do proceed with this idea I think I'll probably adopt and Mini-style beam axle. I remember hearing about a front coil spring conversion on a Brazilian Allegro years ago. My 1750 is dry stored and the engine still turns over so it'll await its turn.

"I was very interested in Alec Moulton's story about the lack of a front subframe. It seems this could have been the biggest design mistake (apart from the syling). A Pininfarina styled ADO16 successor was what should've happened and in a parallel universe probably has. I also own a Citroen GSA and the two cars make a fascinating comparison. With the active anti-roll and anti-dive developments of Hydragas, the alternative Allegro would have done all that the GS and later GSA would have done apart from raising itself on its suspension. And the Allegro would have had a much bigger engine with the E-series motor, while the GSA always felt underpowered in hilly terrian.

"105 bhp (or 130 as sounds possible) in a stripped out Aggi sounds fun to me provided the gearbox can take it. I think 160bhp is pushing it too far. I always thought the 1750 unit was so undersquare because the cylinder entres were so close together. According to Jeff Daniels in British Leyland : the truth about the cars Harry Webster could only stretch the capacity of the 1485cc E series by increasing the stroke so I frankly doubt if overboring for a Fiat piston was really possible.

"Which brings me neatly back to your closing comment - the intriguing plan to kit an Allegro out with a 6 pot motor. Would this fit the standard shell? I reckon it could be made to fit by altering the inner wings but that would have added to the production cost.

"Occasionally I look at the 2.7 litre KV6 engine and wonder what sort of a sleeper a two door Allegro would make when fitted with one of these."

And that's as far as either of us have got with these subversive ideas of fast Allegros.

Hot Car magazine - January 1973

2012-01-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

The cover of my original copy fell to bits so long ago I'd forgotten what it looked like

Today I received in the post a copy of the first ever car magazine I bought. I was nine and a half years old and it made a significant impression on me. I bought it with my Christmas money and got the February edition, too, but by then I'd ran out of cash as my pocket money back then was five new pence.

I proceeded to read both these issues of Hot Car until they literally fell apart.
So getting my scuffed fingers on a replacement issue of my first ever car mag has been a real trip down memory lane.

Pictures like these kept me drawing for years

It was the article about the grass track banger racing that really caught my imagination. Here were every day saloons, just like my parents' car, being used in competition. I was hooked and the following summer my father took me to see the 1973 World Banger Championships at the Cornish Stadium at St Austell. I was 10 and it was my birthday treat. The noise and spectacle of 101 old cars crashing into each other was just incredible. It was so loud I had a tummy ache - that's how loud it was. The winner was a Mk1 Ford Zephyr if I recall correctly. My favourite was an old London Taxi.that made it into the last dozen cars running.

I've been drawing racing cars ever since it seems. My interest was pretty strong before but something about those familiar old cars racing in front of me meant I could never be quite the same again.

And the January 1973 edition of Hot Car was where my enthusiasm really took off.

Hot Car covered the whole gamut of special building from hot rods to competition to kit cars to this vintage Mercedes replica based on a London taxi. It's well done though, dontcha think?

It was apparent that its wasn't just me that had this fascination with motor cars. In fact. it seemed everyone was up to something with cars.

In those days, Hot Car magazine was a mish-mash of competition, DIY and mild customising articles. Kit cars often got their first exposure in its newsprinty pages and sometimes the pictures were in colour! Amazing!

Three Custom Cars, viewers, but not as we know them

Later in the seventies, Hot Car embraced the hot rod and customising movement wholeheartedly but in 1973 it was about ordinary blokes learning about their cars and "improving" them - sometimes in questionable taste. Young guys had a car and a bit of spare cash. There was a grass roots car culture and it was very egalitarian. Construction and Use Regulations weren't so tight and there was literally a fun car explosion.

Some of these cars actually look quite good. That Beetle hasn't dated much and the Spridgets (top left and bottom right) appeal hugely me to me. Wakelin's wagon and the Minor next to it I'm not so sure about - at least rust was cut out and avoided. The red thing at bottom left was made of wood. Just goes to show what fun 6 guys had with their cars and their ingenuity

We've lost something since those heady days of such promise. We've gained in expertise, professionalism, performance and - let's face it - style but the restrictions are far worse. Insurance premia (that's the correct plural for premium, I'll have you know) are almost punitive for youngsters these days and many are turning their back on car culture. They are happier with computers - cheaper, more socially acceptable and less oily. The roads are more crowded, too, and fuel feels more expensive even though eminent professors assure us that it was actually more expensive in the pre Arab-Israeli war days in real terms - whatever that means.

I probably won't read this issue to pieces but I can feel it working its magic on me again, even after all these years.

I still can't have too much of these kinds of pictures. Saloons like these were HARD and took loads of punishment, not like today's modern rubbish. Without all their glass they went surprisingly well. But if anyone wants to banger race them nowadays, I want to save them. Non contact competition formulae are okay though.

Stock car and banger racing was big in the west country about this time but I lived in about the only village in Cornwall without a resident racer.

Hot Car magazine was how I got my exposure to motorsport.

It was also the first ever magazine that I bought with a semi-naked woman in it.....

Vintage Thing No.98 - Allard dragster

2012-01-19T12:39:00.000-08:00

There's something mighty fine about early drag racer paint jobs

While I prefer Vintage Things that go around corners, there's always something impressive about sheer acceleration.

I've recently been in touch with Martin Gleadow who noticed an Allard theme on this blog and and 2012 marks the 60th anniversary of Sydney Allard winning the Monte Carlo Rally in a car he designed and built himself, a feat that is unlikely to be repeated. Martin pointed out that a successful campaign has achieved funding for the restoration of Sydney Allard's dragster as a running exhibit.

Coincidentally, I clocked this car at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, last autumn. It's of immense significance because it is the first ever European dragster.

Sydney Allard had always enjoyed motorsport ranging from trials to sprints to hillclimbs to rallies and another form of competition that majored on acceleration inevitably attracted him.

It needs to go, though

He built this dragster in 1961 and had to order the highly modified, blown Chrysler hemi engine from specialists in the states. The frame was made here in Blighty, though, out of small diameter tubing while the wheels and tyres were agina sourced from across the pond.

It was initially demonstrated at Silverstone on Monday, 24th July and made a helluvan impression on the British public with its unsilenced 400bhp engine and smoking tyres. On that occasion it clocked a standing quarter mile at 9.5 seconds with a terminal speed of 150 mph.

After almost setting fire to some hay bales with the flames from its exhausts, Sydney used the dragster in some duels with visiting Americans, namely Dante Duce and Mickey Thompson and the resulting interest saw the formation of the British Drag racing Association, with Sydney as president.

Following this enterprise, Sydney marketed the Allard Dragon (drag-on, geddit?) dragster kits that were designed to use British four cylinder Ford engines packing superchargers.

Sydney liked V8s but if one wasn't available a blower was the answer. Obviously, blown V8s were the answer to a question most of us were too afraid to have asked.

By 1964, there were sufficient competitors to hold a Drag Festival at Blackbushe but Sydney was not long for this world and died in 1966 following an illness, ironically just after a fire at the Allard garages in Clapham High Street destroyed the works records and stores of spares.

The Allard Chysler dragster last ran in 1964.

The first ever dragster built here in Yerp

It was subsequently owned by Brian Golder, a great Allard enthusiast, who bequested it to the National Motor Museum on his death in 1992. It's been on show there as a static exhibit ever since and is in remarkably original condition except that the powerplant has long since been removed.

However, the Allard Chrysler Action Group is determined to get it going again. In 2009, they secured funding from insurance specialists Performance Direct to make it run again following a short presentation at the National Motor Museum. And it obviously has to run again with the right sort of engine so the plan is to re-creat the 400 horses 5.4 litre Chyrsler hemi that this device obviously deserves so that scenes like this can be re-created..

The search for Podgy (our Thames Yeoman school bus)

2012-01-14T06:01:00.000-08:00

The other day my sister mentioned our old school bus, a two tone blue coach (coaches being more luxurious than buses) run by Mitchell's of Perranporth. This was while I attended Goonhavern Country Primary school from 1969 to 1974. A torrent of fond memories followed and I took to wondering whatever happened to this old bus.

At first sight this could have been Podgy's twin. I was intrigued to see that this coach has a Cornish registration number although Podgy definitely different (photo: Wikimedia)

We called our bus Podgy and I'd seen similar coaches over the years. Everything pointed to Podgy being a Bedford SB Duple Super Vega, one of the most stylish coaches made during the fifties and early sixties.

I began to search the internet for information and was delighted to find loads of images on Flickr. Some pictures were historical while others showed present day survivors, beautifully restored in preservation. And there are still some mouldering round the pack of a depot deep in the countryside, even now.

If you check out the sites of traveller's buses there are several Bedford SBs and I even found a list of survivors on the net (how much enthusiastic work went into this?) but there was no sign of the snatches of registration number of Podgy's registration number that my sister and I could remember.

I quickly found that I wasn't alone in my appreciation of the Duple Super Vega although the slightly earlier "butterfly" grilled variety were even more highly regarded, possibly because Matchbox made a model of it.

I asked around various friends and neighbours, hoping somebody might have taken a snap of Podgy in its prime but photos were expensive back then and we were only kids and drew a blank there as well.

So I wrote into the West Briton, our local newspaper and a very nice lady named Glenys Kent responded with an e-mail to me, saying that she had nursed the coach company proprietor when he was in a nursing home in Perranporth.

I could recall Bobby Mitchell and his son driving our school buses. If Podgy or one of the other coaches weren't available, we would get a couple of taxis instead. Bear in mind that a Duple Super Vega seats 41 and you get an idea of how cramped conditions were for at least a dozen primary school children who rode in these taxis, which were typically Ford Zephyrs (although I do remember one was the first ever Cortina Mk3 that I ever saw). It wouldn't be allowed now but did it do us any harm?

Glenys is a local historian and had many reminiscences of her own about Bobby Mitchell. When he was quite elderly he still wore a CMT badge from his days with Cornwall Motor Transport but he told her it really stood for Cuddle Me Tight.

Bobby Mitchell was no speed demon and reckoned 30 mph was enough anywhere as Glenys explained.

"He was driving a bus up Canons Town Hill, out of Hayle, and a police carovertook him and indicated for him to stop, which Bobby did. The police officerthen reprimanded him for driving too slowly, and told him he would have toreport to the police station when he got back to depot. Bobby protested andblustered for a while, and then the police officer started to laugh. Apparentlywhen he was a school boy Bobby had tipped him off the bus (fairly near home!!)for misbehaving and made him walk the rest. He recognised Bobby and the bus anddecided to get his own back! Bobby often related the tale."

Best of all, she said Bobby's career had been featured in Buses Illustrated, an Ian Allan magazine. The issue I needed was the one for January 1966.

The search was on!

In fairly short order, I got one off Ebay and found an article entitled Perranporth to Truro, which described not only Bobby Mitchell's activities but also the foundation of the earliest motor bus services in the area complete with a map. But it took the story up to 1929 and at the end of the article it said "To be continued".

No problem, I thought, I'll get the next month's edition. Imagine my chagrin when it turned out to have no mention of Bobby Mitchell at all, not even a sausage.

Meanwhile, I had found pictures of the other school bus. While Goonhavern schoolkids from the west came on a Mitchell's bus based in Perranporth, Tremain's of Zelah brought them in from the east. The Zelah bus was an even more distinctive Bedford OWB, with indicators in the shape of arrows either side of the number plate below the rear window.

The Zelah schoolbus is pictured here and through these pictures I discovered the WHOTT. This stands for the West Country Historic Omnibus & Transport Trust and whilst coming through their website for any mention of Podgy I saw that they had published a series about road motor services in Cornwall, entitled Travelling to Truro, part two of which was devoted to Perranporth and district.

I ordered a copy and explained my interest in Mitchell's services, whereupon Andy Richings at WHOTT said they had a duplicate of the very issue of Buses Illustrated that I needed and they enclosed it at no extra charge as an early Christmas present!

From the March 1966 issue of Buses Illustrated I discovered that I was mistaken as to Podgy's true identity. For sure, it looked like a Duple Super Vega but its chassis was no Bedford SB. No sir, its underpinnings weren't GM but Blue Oval. Podgy was a Thames 570E, which meant that the bodywork was officially a Duple Yeoman.

As soon as a I read this I remembered the Yeoman badging. It's funny how well your memory performs with a jolt sometimes.

I had remembered Podgy's regsitration number in part (848BOR) but only my sister could remember the name of his regular driver, Mr Harvey.

I managed to find a Thames Duple Yeoman on Flickr. Similar bodywork was also carried by Commer Avenger IVs with the famous two-stroke three cylinder TS3 diesel engine, in which case the bodywork was known as a Duple Corinthian.

At first sight this could have been Podgy's twin and it's home time. I was intrigued to see that this coach has a Cornish registration number. (photo: Wikimedia)

Among the surviving examples of the butterfly-grilled Bedford SB Duple Vega is this fine example owned by King Harry Coaches in Cornwall.

It's still not Podgy, though.

The Buses Illustrated article by R C Sambourne for March 1966 gave some history and had what are now historic photos of the coaches and their shed. The one on the left might be Podgy. The one on the right is the earlier butterfly grilled Duple Vega.

Podgy was new to Creamline of Bordon in 1961 so maybe somebody in Hampshire remembers it.

From Travelling to Truro, I discovered that Mitchell's of Perranporth bought it in August 1964 and kept it until December 1976. It's a well-illustrated publication that tells the story of Mitchell's and Tremain's coach services from their inception to their demise. But there's still nothing of all important image that I'd hoped for - a decent smudge of old Podgy.

So this is me flying a kite on Engine Punk again.

Has anyone got a picture of 848BOR?

Better still - does Podgy survive today?

Candid Provocateurs on the Exeter Trial 2012 - Team Robert rides again

2012-01-10T13:03:00.000-08:00

Flying helmets are in this winter

Now the mud has settled it's occurred to me that Team Robert's exploits in the 2012 Exeter Trial gave rise to the best competitive result we've ever had. Subject to confirmation, we only failed two hills and found out later that one section was subsequently disregarded. But there were some highs and lows along the way and I don't mean the ruts on Marilyn - more on that/her later.

My lasting impression is of how well organised the 2012 Exeter Trial was. Bearing in mind that the marshals, and officials are all volunteers, they did a superb job. The queues were short and the holding controls metered out competitors like a well adjusted carb. Although closure of some sections was a shame and meant we didn't do the competitive sections we'd hoped to do, it was entirely the right decision and kept the entry field moving in a trial that tested the ability of the organisers as much as the crews. I take my goggles off to you, ladies and gentlemen - you rose to the occasion brilliantly.

I travelled up by train to spend Friday afternoon doing the final prep with Binky. The Candidi Provocatore Allard J1 hadn't done a lot of work over the winter and we had to fit a new fire extinguisher and tyre compressor. Actually, it compresses the air into the tyre but you knew that already.

Cause for most concern was a tendency to dive into oncoming traffic under braking. Binky dismantled the nearside front hub and found a sticky wheel cylinder. This could have been a show stopper. Mrs Binky had made it quite clear she didn't want her brave boys driving anything unsafe and we would never claim to have sorted something out when we hadn't. I've seen so many other people get caught out like that, (he added smugly).

So we set to and between us cajoled the seized piston to work properly.

Mrs Binky then inflicted food torture upon us and we both had a Lima-Lima-Delta (LLD = Little Lie Down) before setting off for Popham in high octane spirits for our departure, timed at 0030 on Saturday morning.


So who would take a great British V8 sportscar trailling?

The long drive west from the start was a bit damp but not enough to put the hood up. We travelled along the A303 to Sparkford Motor Museum, which is where the various start points from Plusha, Cirencester and Popham converged. We handed in our time sheet and during the subsequent wait had a full English breakfast ( I do this a lot when travelling abroad in England from Cornwall). I caught up with some old friends and met a few new faces while my driver wandered off into the museum itself, which was especially open. Our number was called and there was no sign of Binkers - it turned out he has having another Lima-Lima-Delta in the museum. It's actually a very interesting museum but he was just tired from the road mileage in the middle of the night, which is probably the most wearing aspect of doing a Classic Trial.

I located Binky with the help of the museum staff and we were off again, with more road miles to the first section. I was pleased to have got this far. Two previous attempts at entry ad proved to be not-so-heroic failures. Our stay at Sparkford had coincided with a brief downpour so we missed that.

The first section is traditionally Norman's Hump, which Binky described as his bête noire, having over-revved his Triumph Trophy when it was icy a few years ago. On the other hand he loved Clinton, a swoopy bumpy roller coaster under low branches. The word on the night was that loggers had torn up Norman's Hump too much to be usable so the Clerk of the Course and his team had created another one, which they had christened Marilyn on account of her curves. The prospect of doing Marilyn appealed to everyone. We all thought she'd be, er, easy.

The route card got a bit complicated then. I was reading it with a head torch and a damned fine head torch it was, too. It really made all the difference.

The only problem, was, I was also in charge of the headlamps switch, windscreen wipers and electric fans. the switches for these are all much easier for the navigator to reach so you really do need to be a co-driver. I only made a couple of errors but as we turned around Binky noticed a soft front tyre.

Our running number was only 10 from tail-end-charlie and as we average a low road speed we were by now at the pack of the trial with course closing car right on our tail. I pumped up the flat and at the next check point at Cusgrave Garage we quickly changed both fronts for a matched new pair of spares.

This was not good news because it meant we onlt one reserve boot if we got another puncture or two lighting up the tyres on rough section.

What a let down - we haven't even reached the first section yet and we're already a bit tyred. Those are what are known as "ugly" rims but I like them. Binky reckons the new boots made a vast difference to the grip we got. Moments later we were presented with club dinner tickets

There was also some confusion about incurring a penalty for early arrival at the control point. A lot of our fellow competitors do regularity trails and are hard wired to avoid this. In actual fact, penalties are only incurred at time control checkpoints and this wasn't one of them. However, I didn't hand in our card until we'd swapped all the wheels around when - lo! and behold - everybody else had disappeared, including the checkpoint staff. Fortunately, we could still be signed out by the closing car crew so - bang on schedule according to our number.

The only other car there by then was a Beetle with alternator failure. "Do you have tickets for the club supper?" they asked us. "We won't now be able to attend because we're about to retire but it would be good if someone else could at least go in our place to the noggin-and-natter."

I'm afraid I didn't catch your names, guys, and you'd removed your running numbers but thank you very much for this thoughtful gesture when it was Goodnight Vienna for you.

This light and shade theme marked the rest of the trial.

With the headlights of the course closure car close behind our flat spare tyre, we made haste to Marilyn where I misread the directions and we entered by the exit, annoying the hell out of a Marlin driver wearing a gimp mask. Then as we approached the first section failed cars began to come out by the exit. On of them was a very nice Imp Californian and I had to have a quick check they were okay.

By now it was light and we could see what was happening on Marilyn. Instead of her much-vaunted curves being switch back bends swooping up the hill, she was a series if dramatic ruts, lumps and bomb-holes making up a straight climb. For us in Class 7 there was a restart box but as we pulled up the engine died. Rob quickly re-started it and without running back the car got us to the top almost with a degree of contempt.

Clinton nearby was great and lived up to Rob's expectation. On the escape road we came across an MGB GT, which had suffered a broken fuel pipe right at the pump. We tried to give them a tow but couldn't attach their strop to anything substantial. Either everything underneath was protected by bash plates or our tyres gave too much rear overhang. We heard later they made it out of the woods and got recovered.

We found that Waterloo had been abandoned but subsequent hills were straight forward blasts up for us without any restarts and due to fuss free performances we soon found we were no longer tail end Charlie.

Dudley Sterry's highly developed MG mit kompressor und huffenpuffer

At Bulverton Steep, we cleaned the section to find Dudley Sterry refitting a bottom hose clip on his amazing blown MG. He'd still cleaned the section but had lost all his coolant. Fortunately, Binky had packed 5 litres so we were able to return some of the good turns we've received over the years from fellow competitors.

I saw the Imp again and they were pleased to have cleaned Bulverton, too, as did a 2CV with passengers in French costume. Style!

Binky and I looked vaguely steampunkish, with him in his flying helmet and me in my Breton fisherman's hat, which has a peak to keep the rain off my face, and my split screen goggles, which keep the dust out of my eyes. Yes, there was dust, despite the muddy conditions. The Allard inevitably got plastered, like a big dog rolling in something to hide its scent, and we were then treated to the aromatic delights of various types of mud being burnt onto the zorsts, brakes and ourselves. I particularly liked the smell of the mud on Rill Path. It smelt of burning beech wood, which I suppose it was in a deconstituted sort of way.

The Nipper Tucker Special normally nips and tucks round the rocks and trees.

At Exeter Services there was a time control stop and we had another English breakfast in best Cornishman abroad stylee. The cafe was already muddy when we got there, honest. Outside, the car park was full of interesting stuff and I at last caught up with the Tucker Nipper Special, which has a reputation far beyond its size but has, up to now, proved somewhat ellusive.

This Buick powered M-type Allard of William Holt and Nigel Brown was also running in the Trial and looks good muddy as well as clean. Something of an old friend this one.

I refilled our water container and walking back to the car noticed a puddle of the stuff forming under that Imp Californian. The crew were looking for radweld so I said to look out for us if problems persisted and they needed some water.

Tillerton Steep featured a rare restart for us and from the opposite side of the valley we could hear how awkward it was proving. The Imp crew were by now filling their water carriers from the river and wisely decided to give this hill a miss. It initially proved tricky for us for we took some time to get going from the restart box. I could see each cleat on the nearside tyre barely moving round as I bounced for grip but over the roar of the engine someone shouted "Waggle the steering!" and when Binky did so, to our amazement, the Allard shouldered its way out of the holes in the rock and we reached the top. It'll be interesting to see if they give us that one but it looks likely from what the rest of guys told us..

Next up was Fingle, which Binky admitted to being his absolute fave. We swung up it fine style - it seemed to go on and on, one juicy bend and a scrabble for grip after another.

Unfortunately, on the exit track we saw Mike Warnes and his TR7. Mike is world famous on Engine Punk for offering to lend us another trials car when we couldn't get the Candidi Provocatore car ready for last year's Land's End. I subsequently heard that he had crap in the fuel pump and got going again after 3½ hours only to retire when it came to comtemplating Wooston Steep.

Wooston Steep had A boards. If nobody clears the section, whoever is closest wins. We didn't get close and it didn't look many got much further. We were still a bit disappointed though. It was the first time tha Allard had run out of grip but Binky reckoned he could've gunned it earlier if he hadn't been keeping a weather eye on our tyres.

And so we converged on Simms, the favourite for competitor and spectator alike.

Okay - so who else would take a great British V8 sportscar trailling?

I have to say how well organised the controls were. There were very few long queues except at Simms. Queuing is no fun when you could be in a village hall scoffing tea and cake with yer mates and soon Bickington will be getting an even bigger and posher one with the help of our patronage. We caught up with Dave Turner who trails the brown MX5 and he'd heard how we cleaned what and where. The Imp had made it that far and so had a TR7 V8 that sounded gorgeous but I was assured by its crew that it was really running like the proverbial bag of bolts.

This Imp was still in the hunt at Ilsington for Simms so maybe they did find some Radweld.

At our allotted time we entered the approach lane, discussing how well to tackle the hill. We had a restart and where this was could be critical for our success. The nearer we got, the more we could hear the roar of engines, the squeal of tyres and the cheers from the crowd. Between us Binky and I know an awful lot of people but that car is far more famous and has many old friends who all said how pleased they were to see it. I was especially pleased to meet Robin Moore again after so long. We'd marshalled together on the Land's End something like twenty years ago at Treworld.

But then the mood changed.

There was a great "Oh!" from the crowd, followed by an ominous silence from beyond the trees. People were drifting back from watching and we caught snippets about how rough it was. Some said nobody had reached the A boards, for these were in operation here as well at Wooston Steep, while others said that coming back down again after a failure was worse than going up, which we sort of knew anyway and hoped to use as a spur not to have to come down backwards..

At last we heard another car leave the line but still couldn't see anything because we were too far back. You can imagine how the conversation in the lane stopped when the screams and shouts started. They didn't stop for some time, either, and it sounded like very concerned women were shouting "Fire!" although none of us could swear to it.

More and more people now came by, no longer in dribs and drabs. They opened the gate to the field below us and spectators began to go back to the village. Not many of the people that came passed us had seen what had happened because they'd taken that long to reach us but gradually we learned that an Austin 7 had rolled.

Next thing we knew, we were moving towards the section. The pair of Trojans in front of us turned up the Plantation escape road and the marshal waved us forward.

"It's us," said Binky.

"Ready when you are," I replied, as I took hold to bounce.

But the marshal shook his head.

"We're closing Simms," he said. "I'll give you a baulk. Please leave the section to your right as we have to clear the hill for the emergency services."

We learnt at the next control that the Parsons Special had rolled after the Austin 7 had been righted. This time, though, its bouncer had been hurt so the air ambulance was called together with at least six other blue flashing lights that we saw through the gathering gloom on the approach to Tipley. Although, injured and with a broken jaw and awkwardly placed arm, we heard that the survivor was remarkably chipper. It was just going to take some clearing up when he'd eventually been safely removed for treatment.

We fluffed Tipley's restart through not giving it enough beans to get going. by rolling back and having a run up we managed to exit by the top though, unlike many others who had to descend in reverse.

At the top we put more pressure in our tyres for the road section to Slippery Sam. Binky reckoned he could hear a funny noise from the engine.

"Can you hear that?" he asked.

"Nope," I replied, loyally. I knew that he'd want to take the thing apart in the darkness, such is his degree of mechanical sympathy but I honestly couldn't hear anything.

We were climbing the narrow winding road out of Teignmouth with a load of traffic behind us when the misfiring started. Under load, it sounded really sick and it wasn't until we were in top of the headland that we could pull over. The plugs looked okay, we had sparks okay and it would idle smoothly but under load it didn't want to play.

In the end we decided not to take it apart but to skip Slippery Sam and aim for a Finisher's Certificate. That was to prove quite difficult for the roads were busy and that brake cylinder began to stick again. If Binky booted the throttle, the engine cleared and threatened to run away with us and we had to find our hotel in Babbacombe when all we recognised was the Model Village and a doctor's surgery from previous adventures.

With the car sounding dreadful, we got there in the end and signed off, only to find that the last three sections had all been pulled. See what I mean about light and shade/shade and light?

So, eventually, it dawned on us that we'd had our best event ever and might get an award. This was tempered slightly by the knowledge that we hadn't attempted Waterloo or Simms or Slippery Sam. As Gerry Woolcott said at the club dinner it'll be interesting to see how they work out the results.

I really enjoyed the club dinner although Binky nearly had a Lima-Lima-Delta in his soup and was concentrating on his Jam Roly-Poly with his eyes shut. I suddenly didn't feel tired at all and as Top Cat would have said went "Mingle, mingle, mingle, blur, blur, blur".

I got a lift home in that Beemer afterwards and was pleasantly surprised at what capable motors these 16 valve 1.8 litres are. AX GTIs? I love 'em, me - the guy paid £500 for it and after 5,000 miles of competitive rallying e's taken the rollcage out and gone trialling with it. Who says they're fragile?

In the morning, James Smith and Stuart Crouch gave me a lift to Exeter St Davids in their ex-Dave Turner BMW318iS (now that IS an interesting car), leaving Binky with an intrigued AA man to see if they could get the Allard to go. Binky had turned in early the previous night but in my hyperactive post-event state I bumped into Roger and Caroline Ugalde. Caroline had nearly cleared Simms in her Beetle, barely feet away from the section ends boards and was still brimming with pleasure with barely a whiff of "what if".

Uncle Roger said "I had that same problem," when I described the Allard's symptoms to him. "It was a loose needle valve in the float chamber," he told me. I passed on this gold dust to the Binkster on Sunday and I am now pleased to report that it wasn't a holed piston, burnt valve or broken tappet as he'd thought.

It was - drumroll - blocked carburettor jets and Binky drove home under his own power. With our games of rock'n'roll we must've dislodged some dirt in the tank and are now plotting our 2012 Land's End campaign.

Looks like it might involve a carb rebuild and a rev-limiter for Binky's peace of mind but we are already looking forward to the LET hugely after an - in the end - surprisngly good Exeter.

Binky is usually fairly sensible

PS I went over to see Adrian Booth tonight to get his perspective of the trial from the other end of the car entry. The diff on his TR7 grounded out on Marilyn and then he rolled the car onto its side on Waterloo, without much damage fortunately. Waterloo was getting treacherous early on it seems and deteriorated from there on. Age fluffed another fairly straightforward section mid- way through the trial but nearly cleared Simm's though, getting passed the A boards but felt so knackered by then he decided to retire and make for home.The car seems to be working well, though.

Exeter Trial 2012

2012-01-03T02:03:00.000-08:00

The Candidi Provocatore Allard is now home to many new components

After the disappointment of being a non-starter last year for the 2011 Land's End Trial, Team Robert are entered in the 2012 Exeter Trial this weekend. We will be running as number 255 out of an entry list of 265 not including the 68 Class O competitors.

Binky reports that the Allard is all ready for the the trial with new tyres and the latest refinement is a full flow oil filter system.

Meanwhile, having suffered terribly from wind over the last week, I'm hoping the storms have blown themselves out and that the event is not cancelled due to snow, which is what happened in 2010. The forecast is light rain on Friday night and cloudy thereafter so we'll see.

Since I last saw the car - engineless and in the dark - Binkers has been tacking up the road miles, so we are quietly confidently of making the start for the Exeter on Friday and hoping for a coveted Finsher's Certificate.

A mudbath is the collective noun for Marlins and here is a mudbath at the foot of Fingle, led by Harry & Lucy Bounden.

This will be the first competitive event with the new engine and reconditioned gearbox. I've never competed in the Exeter before although I've marshaled on it a couple of times and spectated on it many years.

The restart box on Tipley. I marshalled here once with members of the Buckler Club.

Adrian Booth and Mike Warnes are both running in their British Racing Brown TR7s but they are starting from Plusha services, whereas we begin the trial from Popham airfield just off the A303, east of Andover.

If you see them or us say hallo.

Vintage Thing No.53.2 - Centron

2011-12-31T09:50:00.000-08:00

Following my earlier reminiscences about the GP Centron - the first ever VW based exotic kit car - none other than Colin Clifford got in touch. Regular readers may remember that I recently had an exchange with him on the comments to one of my earlier Centron posts in which he mentioned some old photographs. Well, Colin's come good and sent me some, via his brother Gerald.

This Centron has mismatched wheels - are those Wolfraces on the front and chrome Wellers on the back? Most intriguing of all though is the background, which contains another shell in white gelcoat. Could this have been a convertible version?

The first picture shows the Centron in an industrial unit, which matches my memories of the Statestyle set up in Threemilestone.

Note that I'm not referring to the car as a GP Centron. As originally conceived by GP Concessionaires it did not have conventional doors but by the time this car was built it the folding canopy arrangement had been dismissed as too exotic and too leaky.

Does this car still exost? When I visited the factory in 1983, Colin Clifford was developing wind up windows for the doors and panels to hide the VW silencer. The known survivor earlier featured as VT No.53 has a large one piece rear window between the rear buttresses.

Gerald has confirmed that this is the car that later had murals applied to it so must be the black customised one I remember seeing.

Another Gerald, Gerald Dawson, owns a red example, 180 CUC which was built as Statestyle's demonstrator. He's been in touch with the owner of another, Cornish registered FCV144L, and has also heard of a targa top version that exists in Holland.

Now I did a drawing - now long since lost alas - of a targa top version so this is of great interest to me, not that it would have been based on my drawing. It's just that the lines of the Centron, with its buttress rear pillars seem to lend themselves to this treatment.

The white shell in the background of the factory looks more like a full convertible however.

So now we have WOU432J. That makes 4 Centrons with Cornish connections although I have a funny feeling that the Dutch one maybe an earlier version converted to solve the problems of the lift up canopy.

Vintage Thing No.20.1 - the Jetstream SC250

2011-12-30T06:41:00.000-08:00

Just by way of a brief update, it's sad to relate that the Jetstream (VT No.20) did not live up to its promise and is no longer available. I saw this machine as a prototype, looking good in bright red at the Royal Cornwall Show in 2008, but it never reached full-scale production from its base in Redruth.

Part of the problem could have been its looks - Car Magazine hated them.

Did the looks of this car sink it?

And the guy who was claimed to have designed it, vigorously rejected this claim as this comment on the Car magazine website shows.

"I am Brian Rossi, former Ford Motor Company design executive. Regrettably, the information on the Jetstream SC250 has reached me just recently. I was extremely displeased to find that my name is used in association with this car - all over the web. I should have reacted immediately to clear my name and professional reputation. It may be too late now, but I still want to declare that BRIAN ROSSI HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE "DESIGN" OF JETSTREAM SC250. The appearance of this JETSTREAM is so dreadfully unfortunate I feel sorry for those that have put so much effort and resource into it."

I didn't think it was that bad - it appeared functional and its purpose was to go fast not just be a pose-mobile.

Having re-read my original post I note that two versions were proposed a smooth one and a not so smooth one. The design team went with the not so smooth one as they felt design trends pointed in this direction. Indeed, some of us were beginning to wonder if ugly was "in."

Presumably, somewhere in the execution of the prototype the aesthetics were compromised. Although one or two people have expressed a liking for them, they were always in the minority.

But as Car magazine rather pithily put it, "Who is going to buy it when its rivals are so talented?

At £29,495, its rivals were quite brilliant, namely the Caterham R400 and the Ariel Atom.

Finally, not long after I posted about the Jetstream 250, I heard rumours that the company were in financial difficulties. If they had reached me then no doubt they'd reached prospective customers.

I still feel sad, though, because the Jetstream 250 was to have been made in Cornwall. And its failure could taint other manufacturers down this way.

Road racing in Goonhavern

2011-12-29T07:49:00.000-08:00

Goonhavern 2011 and there's nothing on the roads

I mentioned a sprint or time trial on this blog some time ago, held in a decade when a nimby was unknown and folk were more like to say Yes on my back roads

The time trial was held in Goonhavern during the 1920s and here is the "now" view compared with the "then" view below, when people said "Let's see what'll she do mister!" and had their own friendly little time trials on public roads.

Here, I'm standing in the middle of the A3075 road facing out of the village, looking towards Newquay. There's a 30 mph sped limit here now and that black sign on the left facing traffic coming up the hill reminds you if you're going too fast.

Goonhavern 1920s with a stripped down Calthorpe approaching the starting line

Things haven't changed so much since the 20s. The road isn't much wider - it probably was always the width of a drover's road so shepherds could drive sheep across the goon or moor - and the chapel is still there and so is the primary school, which stands behind the gardens to the left of both pictures.

In the shop next to the chapel, I get my haircut by Uncle Jim who is also a comedian. No really - you wouldn't know it to look at me. He really is quite funny.

But there's too much traffic to have a sporting event on your doorstep nowadays, despite what these photos may show.

I remain curious, though, why they held a speed trial in Goonhavern at all. There must have been more challenging roads in Cornwall and it's more of a hill descent than a hill climb.

But there it is and there you are.

I just wish they still did it.

Truck engines for racers

2011-12-27T08:28:00.000-08:00

I know this Austin Hall-Scott has a 10-litre 4 cylinder aero-engine but if it sounds like my mate's tractor that runs a turboed Ford Cargo engine, why not go hillclimbing with a truck engine?

A question popped into my mind a couple of times recently about the powerplants in commercial vehicles and whether they might be suitable for engine punk activities - to wit, constructing a special for hill climbing and/or similar performance work.

The Austin coach engine had a swept volume of 3460cc and put out 67.5 bhp at 2,900rpm

This is not such a daft idea as it may sound at first. Many classic car engines began life in trade. The Humber 4-litre "Blue Riband" engine started out in Commer trucks and so did its rival at "The Austin", a similar 6-cylinder motor originally designed for Austin commercials vehicles, or Birmingham Bedfords as they were known. (The story goes that Leonard Lord approved the copying of a Bedford design to speed up the R & D process and as the country was hurtling towards the Second World War nobody minded too much.)

Ford's flathead V8 powered cars, trucks and Bren gun carriers but nowadays lives in much more suitable places like hotrods and Allard sports cars.

Modern turbocharged diesels make good choices for use in kit cars these days (remember that P100 pick-up powered Westfield years ago?) and the V10 engine in the Dodge Viper began as a truck engine.

If you go to the Vintage Sports Car Club hillclimb at Wiscombe Park you see all manner of aero-engined monsters. One of my neighbours has several souped up tractors and these are not so dissimilar in character from a vintage racer - straight pipes, big engines, lots of noise and smoke. The former is geared for speed while the latter is geared for speed.

Are there engines out there that people have passed over out of lack or pedigree, which are crying out to hurtle up a hill or round a circuit in an appropriately contrived bedstead with wheels?

A quick scan through my recently acquired 1966 copy of The Observer's Book of Commercial Vehicles revealed over 80 different types of petrol engine then used to power a truck or a bus.

They ranged from the Alfa Romeo twin-cam engine that lived in the 2º (odd name for a van) to a 6 litre V8 ZIL for a 4x4 truck.

This Diamond T Model P 4360 cement mixer doesn't look very sporting but that could lull competitors into a false sense of security. (Photo: Olyslager Organisation)

The biggest one was the 400 CID (6.6 litres) 6 cylinder engine that powered Diamond T trucks and most of the really big ones hailed from the states where gas was cheap. Many of these were V8s similar to those used in American cars but cams, carbs and heads would be a lot different.

The Mazda T600 Light Truck had a 577cc air-ccoled twin that may (or may not) have fitted nicely into a Norton Featherbed frame to make a Norda. Or possibly a Mazton. (Jap crap rice burners) (Photo:Wikipedia)

The Cony Guppy. Ring-ding-a-ding! (Photo: Olyslager Organisation)

The smallest one listed was a 199cc air cooled two stroke single that powered the Cony Guppy from Japan. Two strokes are great in lightweight motorbikes and the supercharged Rootes, Foden and GM varieties are very interesting but this device needs a power transplant instead of giving a donation.

What would you choose for your express (pizza) delivery? A hairy screamer 1300cc twink or an 1100cc diesel twin? (Photo : Wikipedia)

Most out of place engine in a commercial vehicle must surely be that Alfa Romeo double overhead camshaft 1290cc 4 cylinder motor for the 2º van. Anything like that ought to go in into a 1300 Junior. A 1158cc two-cylinder diesel engine was an option.

Second only to the misplacing of the Alfa twin can was the Lancia 1099cc V4 in the Jolly van. That's a lovely name for a commercial vehicle - "I'm just off in the Jolly. I may be some time." These narrow angle V4s were really tiny for their cubic capacity because their bores were staggered and they were as short as a twin. From a packaging point of view this engine layout made a lot of sense but surely these engine sought to be Lancia Appia sports cars?

The Tempo Rapid has a 950 Austin petrol engine (Photo: Olyslager Organisation)

Most intriguing engine, though was that for the Tempo, a front wheel drive truck from West Germany. The lightest version had a 452cc two stroke twin engine but the heavier versions had 948cc and 1489cc four engines.

Sound familiar?

Yup. These are BMC engines.

Let's just think about this for a moment - in 1966 BMC was exporting engines for use in a German commercial vehicle.

The A and B series engines were probably the best engines BMC ever came up with but I still find this absolutely incredible. Lindsay Porter's The B Series Engine Source Book makes not mention of engines specified for Tempo. You would think it would be something to be proud of, wouldn't you?

The Tempo Matador Elevator truck used front wheel drive as an ace and a BMC B series motor to power the plot (Photo: Olyslager Organisation)

Of course, the inevitable happened and Hanomag, the people behind Tempo in the late sixties, subsequently adopted diesel engines. And before anybody says anything they were not the diesel versions of the A and B series engines.

I've already got A series and B series engines kicking about here so what petrol commercial vehicle engine would I like for a vintage sort of special?

It seems I've talked myself into wanting one of these, a 5-litre engine from a 1942 Leyland Merryweather turntable fire escape,

Well, to be a VSCC eligible special it would have to be pre-war so may be one of those Austin or Bedford engines. Of course a Ford V8 would fit the bill very nicely but for the pure vintage feel I think the engine out of a 1930s Leyland fire, er, engine would be just nice. Leyland used the heavy oil engine throughout the thrirties but before that they used petrol motors and these remained struggled on for a while in fire engines where speed was a virtue.

This is the donor fire engine, beautifully preserved by the Lincolnshire Vintage Vehicle Society. It's actually based on a TD7 double deck chassis and has a 4 speed crash box and servo brakes. The six cylinder engine produces 33 horsepower (is that all?), enough to push the fire escape ensemble up to 55 mph. Fuel consumption is 6 mpg so no wonder they don't move it out of the shed much but if they've got a spare engine what would that do in an old Bentley chassis?

But if I wasn't worried about VSCC eligibility (and I'm not - really), then one of the post-war Bedford 4.9 litre engines could be good, the sort that lurks under the normal control bonnet of a J4 or the cab of a K series. But as there isn't any substitute for cubes, especially if the engine is cast iron, one of those monstrous Diamond T 400 cubic inch 6 cylinder engines might not go amiss. Or what's wrong with the common or garden Chevy V8?

I know this train of thought does not include the stuff of legend (yet) and is probably one of my more obscure avenues of investigation but I'm not the only one to think along these lines viz, the Dodge Viper, Austin Sheerline etc. etc.

And then there was the Sea Unicorn. As well as being a narwhal, the Sea Unicorn was a marinised AEC six cylinder engine that Harry Weslake - one of the original horsepower whisperers - produced. Based on a diesel bottom end, it had a new head with bigger combustion chambers to run on petrol. I can't remember much about it because I read about it years ago in a library book. This was Lucky all my life, Harry's autobiography, and is only obtainable at great expense, if you can find a copy.

So, you see, my idle thoughts on truck engines for racers have occurred to not just me. People who know what they're doing have actually done it.

Vintage Thing No. 97 - Trojan Senior van

2011-12-21T17:47:00.000-08:00

"Here is a sturdy good-looking van which conforms in every way to modern requirements. It's construction is typical of Trojan simplicity and solidity and just as with all Trojan vehicles, even if driven carelessly, will not sustain injury to the mechanical parts."

Despite their weirdness and lack of performance I remain intrigued by Trojans and some of the commercial vans were actually very well styled.

The two examples shown are both Trojan Senior 12cwt models, 12cwt equating to 610kgs or slightly less than the capacity on my old Citroen van (VT No.44).

This a special bodied baker's van built out of aluminium to the order of Kenyon's. Cakes go on top with bread below.

They had a reputation for hard work and economy but are hard pushed to even keep up with the traffic these days. As these are clearly pre-war vans, they were probably powered by the supercharged two-stroke engine that intrigued me so long a go and sparked my interest in these odd machines. The 12 HP rating is probably the RAC calculated figure - the engine diagram for the blown two stroke (VT No. 4) pointed to a maximum output of 24bhp at 2200 rpm with a very flat torque curve of about 70 lb ft from well below 1000 rpm. Peak revs were 2600 (when all curves were falling!).

From what people tell me, in today's terms these two-strokes engines were not that economical and when the Perkins P3 3 cylinder diesel option became available after the war it was almost a universal fitment

The looks, though, encourage the hotrodders among us (well me) to contemplate souping one up but these later machines are incredibly rare now and it would be a shame to hop one up. Still, wwoooaarrggghhh, though eh?

Now I know why the Trojan mascot looks so glum

There are other vans illustrated on this poster, which in itself must be a very rare thing, varying from grocer's vans to floats for bottled water but I think these are the two best examples. One thing I am not clear about is who constructed the special bodies. They look well designed and may have come form the Trojan factory itself.

These images are a bit poor quality because they are photos of a Trojan poster mounted behind glass at the Launceston Steam Railway. It's a fascinating place to visit and I whole-heartedly recommend it, if only for this little oasis of Trojan information.

Steampunk Kernow

2011-12-16T09:19:00.000-08:00

That's me on the left, looking vaguely spiritual but feeling more like The Hooded Claw in that hat, as I proselytise (good word) with my Suzuki clutch tool and a wooden raygun that I found - fashioned by the forces of nature itself - by the tracks of the Liskeard and Caradon Railway

The Steampunk movement in Cornwall has been growing steadily during 2011 since a like-minded group of scientists, inventors, artists, explorers, adventurers, dollymopps, ruffians and natural philosophers had a bit-of-a-do fighting a squid in Falmouth last April.

Organised by a variety of inspired and industrious individuals under the collective identity of Steampunk Kernow, notable members of our illustrious circle have subsequently survived a hot-air balloon crash, broken innumerable speed records on the Bodmin & Wenford railway (the cream teas went especially quickly) and cavorted with specially created daleks and oods in a Dr Who-themed Christmas party in The Bird in Hand, an ancient coaching inn on one of the old routes out of Hayle, while rising steampunk combo BB Black Dog provided us with the appropriate harmonious diversions and musical edification.

And that is to say nothing of the smaller unofficial gatherings in coffee houses and taverns that happen from time to time the length of the county. Indeed, only the other week, there was an experiment in generating moving pictures, to music provided by local steam punk band Kaiak (note the spelling).

Invariably, we nonchalantly survived our depradations with quiet courage and the best sort of polite good humour. And sometimes the worst sort, too, but no matter - our gadgets, accoutrements and good names were only slightly tarnished by our adventures.

And it seems that danger is never far way.

As I sat down to the buffet on the Bodmin & Wenford Express, the spare batteries for my digital daguerreotype device shorted out against my car keys. Fortunately, I was able to discretely adjust my trouser pockets before I added smoke to the steampunk proceedings but things did get a little warm for a moment.

Some non-smokers fit smoke generator units to their pipes to create the right atmospheric, er, atmosphere but here a philosopher surgeon and his good lady achieve a similar effect with a top hat and a Great Western tank engine.

But we laugh at such vicissitudes and have stared disaster in the face many times, often defeating far more adverse circumstances with a mixture of high artifice, skill, nerve and no small measure of low animal cunning.

Our less than discrete Steampunk Kernow activities have attracted steampunks from across the Tamar and interest has been expressed in them - literally - globally, through various social media available on the aethernet.

In a way, this should not be in any way surprising. Cornwall has a rich industrial heritage and was the backdrop to many discoveries and innovations. It still is the home to a vibrant creative community who spark wild ideas off eachother. All it took was one person to decide that Steampunk activities needed a boost in Cornwall and that a little organising could bring all the hedonists together. Others have taken up that lead with further inspired activities and there appears to now be a critical mass (probably using artfully-refined molecules of heavy coal) to ensure further frolics and frivolities.

What does surprise me is how many people still have not yet heard of Steampunk.

Just prior to our successful record attempts with rail traction and the knees-up with Dr Who's worst enemies, I was engaged in some experiments in transferring life giving humours from one person to another, to wit, I was giving blood. Nobody at the donation session in Pensilva had ever heard of Steampunk.

But I bet they've seen it without knowing it. Steampunk is everywhere

Those that have heard of Steampunk in Cornwall often have not heard of Steampunk Kernow. That situation will not last for long. There could be a be-goggled adventurer near where you live.

It might even be you.

If you are reading this on Engine Punk then you will probably already know about Steampunk, the magnificently decadent expression of the high tech with a Victorian aesthetic and mind-expanding exploration of alternative history.

There is a certain degree of posing and taking photographs of each other but it's not merely posing - it's adopting a persona to indulge in being magnificent, which may not be quite so easy to achieve every day of your life.

And let's be clear about this, I am not a natural poseur. The posing is optional and just one facet but I do find it pleasant to have a go at "being splendid."

Steampunk began as a sci-fi fantasy genre and, and against all the odds, has spawned its own look and fashion.

Gentlemen can simply get by with a waistcoat, top hat and goggles but many had put a lot of thought into their attire and looked extremely distinguished.

The ladies can be anything from a music hall dancing girl to a be-jodhpurred science jezebel via child labour grease-monkey. Mind you, I particularly like the librarian-about-to-dance-naked-in- the-fountain look.

Meanwhile, absolutely anyone can wear a moustache, young or old, and pipes and laudnum syringes also feature prominently.

It's the activities and ideas that I really like, the things people make, the stories they tell, the looks they create, the avenues of enquiry they follow, the glamourisation of personal protective equipment, the decadence, indulgence and debauchery of pursued passions and doomed - yet inspiring - heroism in the face of overwhelming adversity.

Above all, I particularly like the sense of occasion Steampunk Kernow achieves.

This was most certainly the case at the recent Dr Who-themed Christmas Party.

I think the organiser behind both the railway journey and the party, Lady Seraphina Sprockett Twitcher no less, did an especially fine job.

The musical style is still developing and I was able to talk to the members of BB Black Dog about this at the party at The Bird in Hand in Hayle. They've been going for 5 years, following their own groove, but 2 years ago someone suggested that they were a Steampunk band and since then they've adopted this notable nomenclature as it is, for once, a handy pigeonhole in which to be.

We were lucky to get them, really, for they've recently had a packed itinerary, touring the UK as well as visiting the states and the continent.

Earlier this year, they even supported The UK Subs.

I particularly liked the ambience that Lady Seraphina achieved at The Bird in Hand, the management of which were quite happy to give her free rein in decorating the hostelry. I could have a good chat with my fellow steampunks whilst the varied musical selection played in the background. As Victor Meakin the music maestro for the evening said to me, "A lot of stuff is too much like a dirge, you need more upbeat and less obvious choices to vary the mood." His selection sounded good to me, though.

And among those chatting, as I circulated, were Dale and Axel of BB Blackdog, not to mention Demolitia Tribal who dances for them.

I was interested to hear how they were received by an audience of traditional punks. Trad punks? Mainstream punks? It still sounds wrong. Maybe Hardcore punks.

Anyway, Dale and Axel said it was one of their best ever shows.

When they played, it was good to hear upbeat stuff, too, stuff that can get the crowd on their hindlegs. The first part of the set were covers - Motorhead by Motorhead by BB Blackdog stood out for me - and then later they played their own material. I did not as it were "fully get down" that night, although the head did nod and my feet couldn't stay still. It was a new sound to take in - as regular readers know, I verge towards the garagey end of punk and rock - and I was interested just to observe. My taste still surprises me, though and Chap-hopper Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer appeals to my sense of humour, though, despite my loathing of rap.

I wish now I'd asked BB Blackdog more about the technical side to their musicianship for they have no lead guitar but two basses, a conventional "high" bass and a "low", five-stringed bass. The effect was most intriguing - music you feel at times rather than hear - and I hope they'll be at another small but friendly gig again soon so I can ask them personally about this. The following night this hard touring outfit were in Penzance so this seems likely.

Demolotia Tribal dances to BB Black Dog in The Bird in Hand at Hayle. Billy the Headless Dalek couldn't keep up but did a mean moonwalk.

So there you are - a brief taste of what it's like to be at a Steampunk Kernow do. One minute you're talking to the main act, the next to set designers for Star Wars ( I kid you not) or another band (Kaiak) who were there not only to enjoy themselves but also to invite people along to a promo video shoot.

I am strongly reminded of my art school days at Falmouth School of Art during the early eighties. It's not so much about New Romantics but romantics ancient and modern.. Nostalgia really can be as good as you remember it, especially when - just like back then - it seems anything is possible and indeed often is.

I find that the people at these events are invariably friendly and willing to discuss their exploration of diverse spheres of steampunkery, for instance - writing, fashion, photography, engineering, magneto-galvanics and the (mostly) benevolent re-animation of the deceased - often when it's yourself.

It's about seeking out the alternatives, breaking down the barriers of preconception while wallowing in diversity and anarchy.

As the New Year beckons, there is already talk of future Steampunk Kernow events and it seems a flashmob at Trevithick Day 2012 is a certainty.

All I can say is come and join us.

As one of my friends put it, it's a bit like being a Goth but much more fun.

Vintage Thing No.96 - Morris Minor special

2011-12-15T17:19:00.000-08:00

This Morris Minor looks a little deflated but in a good way

Posting about the Kilo Sports reminded me of this car which I spotted in the tax exempt car park at the 2010 Goodwood Revival. It's not been chopped and channelled but it's been sectioned in the style of the US hotrodders and could have been what the Barris Brothers would've produced had they gotten their grubby mitts on a Moggy Thou during the fifties.

However, as it's a monococque, the sectioning process is much harder. It involves chopping right through the car not once but twice and removing the strip that's left in between these tow cuts. Of course, being a well-rounded little jelly-mould, the cuts are not going to be straight, at least not if the end result is to justify the effort.

Nice picnic basket madam. Perhaps a bit more bulge to the bonnet, though?

What is so clever about this is that the unaltered greenhouse area doesn't look out of place on the lowered shoulders of the sectioned car.

When I saw it, I was in a party and couldn't linger to ask questions as we were on our way in. One thing I did notice about it is that the wheels are not Morris Minor pattern so maybe under the skin it has different running gear. Anyway I like what's been done with it and the way the proportions have been altered.

Somebody obviously knew what they were doing when the altered the proportions of this little baby

This post is me flying a kite again. I've spilled what I know about the Morris minor-based Kilo Sports kit car. Now I hope someone can inform me about this device.

Vintage Thing No.62.1 - Buckingham 4 valve JAP 500

2011-12-13T13:03:00.000-08:00

Here's the Buckingham glassfibre monococque resting on its headstock. What I'd really like to see is an image of the complete bike.

From my stats page for this blog, I can see that one of the most visited posts on this blog is for the Buckingham 4 valve JAP 500, a speedway device featuring a GRP monococque frame and a DIY 4 valve conversion.

It was built by Graham Buckingham who was a technician when I was a student at Coventry Polytechnic in 1985. We fell into conversation as fellow piston heads are wont to do and he brought in some parts to show me.

From above you can see the recesses for the detachable tank and seat. They were held in place by rubber straps or over centre catches.

I've posted all I know about this machine before and following recent erudite feedback on other automotive queries you might expect that I'd heard more about this curious machine.

But no. It's as much a mystery as it ever was. Unless I hear something dreckly (good Cornish word) I might just have to write in to Old Bike Mart, which is the only paper I take. Sounds drastic but it strikes me that the readership there might know something about this Vintage Thing.

Vintage Thing No.95 - Kilo Sports

2011-12-11T11:00:00.000-08:00

The Kilo Sports was a no frills, doorless roadster based on a Morris Minor and produced in Cornwall.

When I was still at school in the late seventies and early eighties, there were still some after shocks from what Peter Filby called The Fun Car Explosion. Kit car manufacturers sprang up everywhere, it seemed, and offered the eager purchaser all manner of extrovert motoring experiences. Many used a common basis like a Beetle or a Triumph based chassis but the Kilo Sports used the organs from a dead Morris Minor.

The Kilo was designed by David Stiff and built by a local Morris Minor specialist known as the The Thousand Workshop. Production began in 1983 and lasted for a year with a brief revival in 1986 and estimates of production top out at about 14 cars.

I had a very good friend and neighbour who about this time ran an ex-GPO Minor van. My first ever car was a Morris Minor, which I've still got (more about that another time) and we visited The Thousand Workshop because it become world famous in Cornwall. This was a time when the media was just starting to latch on to the twilight world of the classic car movement and the Morris Minor was the ideal candidate to focus upon, being a classic design that even non-enthusiasts could appreciate. The Thousand Workshop became quite successful and by the time the Kilo was in production it had moved to Bodmin from Nancegollan where John and I visited it and sparred with the workshop staff in a friendly argument over triple flared brake pipes. (I still say you can only ever get up to a double flare but - as we say in Cornwall - there you are and there it is.)

My mate John had already expressed an interest in Morris Minor based kit cars. Until the Kilo came along, there only was one and that used the LCV van chassis, which made it even more attractive in his eyes. This kit was called the Griffin and was an up-to-the minute sportshatch device based at one time in Poole and at another at Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex. Compared with the Kilo Sports, the sharp styling proved even more at variance with the performance on offer and the manufacturers subsequently offered a version based on a Beetle floorpan. About 20 or so Griffins are thought to have been made but I have never ever seen one.

For its final flowering the Kilo moved to Tintagel but throughout its life it had the same ladder chassis (i.e. not a Minor LCV frame) and a moulded GRP body.

If you were going to offer a Moggy based kit car, Cornwall was probably the place to do it, for the Morris Minor is beloved throughout the west country, even up to Bath (which, as we all know down here, is really in the Midlands).

The Kilo was well executed and neat rather than glamorous

However, most people preferred to restore Morris Minors as Morris Minors. Another problem with the Kilo Sports was that it really needed something a bit more powerful than the standard 1098cc engine. The obvious thing to do was to fit a 1275cc unit from a Spridget or a Marina but that meant even less of the Minor would contribute towards the build up, which also required a BMC 1100/1300 radiator and Bedford HA van pedals.

That is not to say, though, that the relatively long-stroke 64.6 x 83.7mm 1098cc unit could not be tuned, as outlined by Minor Mania. It just took an awful lot of work to get that sort of performance.

As the finished car weighed only 595kg they were a lot nippier than a Morris Minor but they just weren't as fast as a contemporary Dutton.

3 Kilo survivors are known to exist of which the example pictured is the prototype. It turns up occasionally at shows in Cornwall and demonstrates that the Kilo was a well made kit even if its lines are a bit square.

The Kilo came even closer into my orbit during its production life but still didn't quite manage a direct connection. I had friends at Camborne Technical College and one of their classmates undertook the graphic design of the sales literature as a project while they were still a student. I'd already started my industrial design by then and knew quite a bit about the Kilo from the kit car press. However, it wasn't until production had been over for many years that I finally came across this one in the 90s at the vintage show at Healey's Cider Farm not far from where I grew up.

Vintage Thing No.94 - Hobbsie Special

2011-12-09T14:43:00.001-08:00

At first sight, with those fat wire wheels, this special looked rather good but reversing the tendency of a true Vintage Thing, this device did not get better the more you looked at it.

The environmental disposal of this trials special appeared way back on this blog (End of a special) and I thought it had been featured as a Vintage Thing. Earlier today I stumbled across the Hobbsie (or Hobsy) Special again and realised that it had not been immortalised in this way. So here are some more images of it before the end-of-life directive was carried out on it by metal guru Adrian Booth.

In truth, it wasn't such a Vintage Thing and had very little to recommend it. Somebody had built it for trialling and they seem to have started off with some good components, like a Ford 1600 engine and MGB wire wheels, but along the way something happened and the Hobbsie (or Hobsy) Special never amounted to much. It got parked up and deteriorated for many years until 2007 when space considerations finally confirmed that it really had no future.

The Hobbsie's Kent powerplant deserved better. Carburettors got in the way of the structure and vice versa. That box like structure on the left of this shot is the driver's legroom. Anyone who fitted into this car must surely have been of a very distinctive shape and instantly memorable.

Gestalt is when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Unfortunately, the reverse was true of the Hobbsie/Hobsy and it reverted to those parts, many of which have subsequently started new careers.

However, I'm glad this car got built. It was the realisation of somebody's idea - somebody's dream - even if the execution of the idea was flawed.

It had lights and a registration number

The fact that it had been road registered at some point was a source of shock and awe to both of us. Any documents for this car had disappeared long ago. Its condition, its design and its lack of provenance all counted against it in the end.

As somebody once wrote, "Long live the bloody-mindedness and perversity of the British special builder!"

However, as far as the Hobbsie/Hobsy was concerned, it was better that its constituents were allowed to shine in another form.

Maybe, there were other cars. Lesson might have been learnt. For all its faults, this odd device may have sired more successful progeny. And somewhere out there - like The X Files - lies the story behind this obscure remnant of our motoring heritage.

Vintage Thing no.92.1 - Jaguar XK150 Foxbat shooting brake

2011-12-03T12:45:00.000-08:00

Foxbat - wasn't that the code name for a Russian cold war fighter?

Just a bijou follow-up-ette to my musings on the Jag shooting brake. Mr Valve Bounce left a comment and pointed me to the Bonhams website but there's still some mystery surrounding it..

Nobody knows who made it, although another existed back along (good Cornish expression). This car is thought to be the sole survivor and historians have suggested it was made as a competition tender for long distance motor sport events.

It is properly known as the Foxbat. I'd spotted the badge on the rear door at the time but forgot about this when I uploaded the admiitedly rather dark pictures.

I still say it took a genius to realise the concept of blending a Moggy with a Coventry cat. But how does that make a Foxbat?

On my screen at home they don't look so murky but there's something fitting about this car emerging from the shadows.

Vintage Thing No.93 - Ferrari 250GT SWB Breadvan

2011-11-29T03:04:00.000-08:00

Also at Goodwood this year, but actually competing was the Ferrari breadvan.

And now, motivated by simple devilry following the last post on a Jaguar XK150 shooting brake, here is the Ferrari "Breadvan" modelled by Drogo on a 250GT.

I'd first seen this car at the Le Mans Classic in 2010 but I'd heard about it years before that.

Whoosh!

This car divides opinion but I like it. I think they find the straightlines don't match the curves but that roofline is the blurred streak from the top of the windscreen and I particularly like the effect from the rear. It looks so fast!

Its nose is beautifully styled, too. Apparently, it was nicknamed "Anastasia", which around Modena is a derogatory name for an ugly woman but it looks pretty good to me.

This car is low, lower than the kneecaps of a grasshopper. It was not built for its load carrying abilities. Although the rear window is hinged, just try to get anything in it. Or out of it.

After a long career, No,2819 has been beautifully restored and in 2007 had a nose job by Dutch metal guru Alwin Hietbrink to restore the original appearance at the front. There are some great pictures of its reconstruction on Coachbuild.

Piero Drogo was a racing driver who subsequently went into business as a coachbuilder servicing the racing industry around Modena in Italy. This car is the first of a small series that he built on Ferrari running gear and with this design he sought to combat the poor aerodynamics of the more rounded cars we all know and love. The Kamm tail was just being appreciated as a means of combating tail end lift and the Breadvan was an extreme test of Dr Kamm's research.

Chassis No.2819 was the first and most distinctive, the most outrageous and van-like. Based on a 1961 SWB 250 Competition it originally had a Scaglietti alloy body. In 1962, it raced and retired at Le Mans with its new body as part of the Scuderia Republica de Venezia run by Count Volpi. The later Drogo cars exist in different forms, the temptation to make a seminal GTO shape being to hard to resist it seems.

There was more to just sticking a box on the back of the car. Assisted by engineers Giorgio Neri and Luciano Bonachini and advised by none other than Giotto Bizzarini, the engine was mounted further back in the chassis than in previous Ferrari 250s.

The frontal area must be far smaller than a 250GTO even if it doesn't quite match that car for looks.

So did the Breadvan approach work? I can't find out. Each subsequent Drogo-bodied Ferrari was less extreme so posterity suggests it did not.

Vintage Thing no.92 - Jaguar XK150 shooting brake

2011-11-24T02:14:00.000-08:00

From the side the lines almost flow nicely

I went to the Goodwood Revival again this year and, despite the corporate hostility to the genuine enthusiast that's built into this event, still enjoyed myself tremendously. The racing was good the cars were amazing and there was a special dirtbike-heroes-of-yesteryear display, complete with classic scramblers and their riders. I particularly liked the way they had a burn up on the grass round the circuit.

But out of everything, this is pne of the machines that intrigued me - difficult when it comes to four wheeled vehicular contrivances I know but bear with me.

Parked by the entrance and exit, was this Jaguar XK150 shooting brake. As I'm sure you've guessed by now the rear end is Morris Minor Traveller.

I was fascinated by it. It's something I would never have thought of doing and makes a lot of sense. Many woodies were produced in Britain during the late forties due to material shortages and Government restrictions on sales of private cars. However, the XK150 came out in '57 so is too late for this. I think this is a more recent conversion that allows for high speed touring with a serious amount of luggage or some large doggie companions.

From here it's hinged in the middle and has too much rear overhang. It still looks like it's doing 100mph standing still, though, probably more than the original coupe, because of that horizontal continuation of the roofline.

The reaction among the public was universally negative.

"What the hell's that!" was the most polite outburst. It was said to be a travesty, an excuse for a good horse-whipping (I kid you not) and an aberration produced by a warped mind, even if said warped mind was good at woodwork.

One chap said it was an advert for disc brakes and when pressed further went on to say that it demonstrated the merits of the Jag's disc brakes at the expense of the Moggy's drum brakes and nobody could be blamed for the subsequent rear ending of the Jag except Issigonis himself.

The general feeling seemed to be that the constructor had ruined two of Britain's greatest classic cars.

And then they noticed the French registration plates, which sent them into xenophobic apoplexy and the dubious membership of UKIP (if they weren't members already).

The Drogo bread van Ferrari was also present that day and a lot of people didn't like that, either. But I do. It can't touch a 250 GTO in terms of beauty of line but it's purposeful and has an impact all its own.

And this Jag shooting brake is a classically styled 1950's version of the Reliant Scimitar GTE.

This is probably the least flattering angle so it's interesting from a styling point of view. There's a change in angle of the side windows, an abrupt end to the vertical surface that begins in the side door and the swoop of the rear wing doesn't match the boxiness of the Traveller's timber work. The line of the roof gutter over the cockpit to the load area is also inconsistent and it looks very tail heavy - but what estate car doesn't?

From some angles the join is too obvious. But it would not be beyond the wit of man to smooth these things out. It would be a lot more work and many more non-standard parts would need to be used. I also suspect the reaction would be the same.

As it is, I like it. I'm glad someone had the balls and wherewithal to build it.

But happened to the left over bits? Is there a Morris Minor Fixed Head Coupe somewhere sur le continent?

Vintage Thing No.91 - VW trials special

2011-11-14T15:34:00.000-08:00

Among VW buggies this machine manages to look quite distinctive without being consciously styled. In the 2008 Exeter it was crewed by Ben Johnson and Barry White ("Ah feel like makin' lurve") from Shaftesbury.

Could this be the ultimate VW based trials special? I've heard it cost upwards of £30,000 but in the entry lists I've seen so far it's described simply as a VW Special. I'd like to know who built the thing. It's certainly very effective.

I stumbled across these images while looking at pictures associated with my earlier posts on the Exeter Trial.

Y'see, I'm entered again, which makes 3 times so far but for the other two I was unfortunately a non-starter. You've probably read all about those adventure on Engine Punk already. Anyway, I'm quietly confident that with Rob Robinson-Collins we'll do better than before. With a record like mine, the only way is up. And we're going to be in Candidi Provocatore Allard, too. (VT No. 45)

If nothing else, just look at those wheels. Are they machined from solid?

Meanwhile, here's probably the modestly named VW special on the 2008 Exeter Trial when I spectated at Fingle Bridge. Somebody out there knows more. If so, please drop me a line.

Vintage Thing No.54.1 - The Car With No Name

2011-10-31T15:10:00.000-07:00

So there you have it - The Car With No Name built by Anon

I find this highly amusing. Through the power of the internet a chap has got in touch about a mysterious VW based special that I saw years ago at the National Kit Car Show at Stoneleigh. I featured this as VT No. 54, described it simply as a VW Special and asked if anyone could identify it and tell me what it was called.

Bob Bateman got in touch to say it was his car and it was called the CWNN.

What does CWNN stand for?

It stands for Car With No Name.

The origin of this car still remains a mystery. Its builder must have called it something and if it still exists it ought to have something other than Volkswagen on its logbook or V5 because it definitely isn't a Beetle anymore. And the authorities are a bit fussy about that nowadays, unlike the glory times when this car was built. As if anyone could mistake it for a Beetle....

I nearly bought this issue

Bob has filled in some of the gaps. He wrote about it in the July 1992 edition of Jalopy magazine, which was the four-wheeled equivalent of the good old Used Bike Guide. He sent me some scans of this august periodical (they published it in other months as well it was so good) and the flaky pictures are based on those that accompanied his article. Personally I think the poor quality just adds to the enigma that surrounds this remarkable machine.

It was built by someone in Boston in Lincolnshire on a 1966 VW chassis and Bob bought it from somebody else in that area after an intriguing smudge of it appeared in the Auto Trader. He described it as roller painted in Ferrari red with blue showing through in places. Inside most of the fittings were Beetle and all the windows were Beetle sourced, except for the rear window, which was flat. Originally, the CWNN had gullwing doors but these had been converted into more conventional doors that fitted where they touched and fouled the sill when they opened, although the side windows slid down automatically whenever the door was slammed shut. Such sophistication.

Out of the mists of faded newsprint emerges the CWNN. Anyone recognise this stylish automobile?

Once Bob'd got it, his wife took an instant dislike to it - as wives are wont to do. Bob reckons all his friends travelled in it once, if they rode in it at all.

He said he became a laughing stock.

"In a Beetle, the heater ducts run down the side of the sills, and the same was true of our acquisition, except that the sills on it were open on the inside and the ducts had been bodged up from the leftovers of someone's kitchen plumbing. Heath-Robinson though it looked, I must admit that it did work, although in summer it would have useful to have been able to switch it off. After one night of heavy rain, I went out to start the car for the trip to work when, to my amazement, a water fountain sprayed my feet from the heater outlet as the engine pressurised the ducting! I never did found out how the water got in there and it never happened again but you try telling your boss you've just been soaked by an air-cooled car!"

The love-hate relationship that Bob had with the Car With No Name deteriorated until he felt he had to sell it. It took some time to find someone who felt they had to buy it. I think this must have been when I saw it at Stoneleigh. Anyway, he eventually found someone in Birmingham who took it on.

And this is what the CWNN looked like from the rear. Or should it be "looks" like? (as if it still survives)

I bought the first and second issues of Jalopy (and they turned up again the other day) but I dipped out on the third edition. If I'd've bought it, I would have known what little there is to know about this obscure special instead of pondering about it all these intervening years. Actually, that's not true I never gave any thought to it apart from when I snapped it at Stoneleigh and then when I found the print of it in my search for GP Centron pictures.

However, I prefer to have found out the truth about the CWNN by the power of Engine Punk.

The thing is - and I've said it before - does the CWNN still exist? And does its current owner know that - cue Clint Eastwood driving it into sunset - it's the Car With No Name?

Vintage Thing No.90 - "Jimmy" James 500 vee-twin

2011-09-19T15:24:00.000-07:00

At first I thought this was a very rare Husqvarna vee twin but then I saw the tank badge.

I've just got back from this year's Goodwood Revival and this machine is the one that made most of an impression on me, despite the great and the good and the presence of many other thoroughbred racing machines.

This James vee-twin was propped up outside one of the "member's only" pavilions that blight the Goodwood Revival for the ordinary enthusiast. I stopped and stared and so did another chap in RAF uniform. He had a two-stroke James and an MAC Velocette and this machine had stopped him in his tracks. neither of us was aware that James had ever made such a machine and it occurred to me that maybe it was a "special" using a JAP engine. The only thing was, it looked like a production bike and had that well-used and well-loved patina that you can't fake.

As soon as I got home I did some ferreting around in the Boogie Wundaland archives (this is a joke name I'm a punk rocker really) and found out that this was a gen-ooo-ine "Jimmy" James vee twin (Jimmy, Jimmy, ooh!).

Best of all, these engines were designed in house by the James Cycle Company, which explains the lack of any JAP logos. These little vee twins - they displaced 499c - were successful in speedway and trials, becoming highly regarded by a select few, which included VMCC luminary Titch Allen, but they never really captured the public's imagination and the decision to concentrate on Villiers two-stroke powered lightweights saved the company during the lean years of the thirties.

I find it interesting that the man behind this policy of switching to proprietary Villiers two-stroke engines was F E Baker, designer of the Baker motorcycle, which was bought by James in 1930. He was also a pioneer engine manufacturer with interests in Beardmore and Precision engines. Maybe he had learnt the futility of engine manufacture. Posterity showed, however, that from a business point of view he made the right decision.

Patina!

This overhead valve design has its roots in vintage side valve 500 vee twins. By 1929 they had four speed boxes but for some reason reverted to a three speed in 1930 with the four speed as an option. The whole thing was James designed and built apart from the carb and magneto and therein lies its charm and vulnerability in post depression Britain.

Being too much of an oik to get on the other side of the picket fence, I cunningly used my digital camera to thwart the establishment, outwit the bowler-hatted bouncers and get this shot of the drive side arrangements of this lovely old bike.

The overhead valve vee twins were discontinued in 1932 although the side valve machines soldiered on until 1935. Both types shared a bore and stroke of 64 x 77.7mm, dimensions that were shared with the ohv and sv 250 singles. I admit to not knowing when these vintage machines were introduced but they were in production in 1929 and carried the model designation of B1 in 1930, C1 in '31 and bowed out in 1932 as a D1, which suggested strongly to me that they were made for four years.

Wadding on the lower frame rails might suggest an oil leak but also that it was ridden to Goodwood.

The more I look at the engine its vintage architecture becomes apparent and I agreed with my fellow admirer that this was the bike that I like to take home the most, despite a plethora of very nice Tritons.

But I would like to know the design story behind this and the overhead valve four stroke singles such as who designed them, why were they like this and how were they built. If I'd built my engine it would have Robert all over it but the "Jimmy" James is more discreet - too discreet even.

Vintage Thing No.61.1 - Sunbeam Model 90

2011-09-15T15:29:00.000-07:00

You've seen this side before

Earlier this year I took the opportunity at Wiscombe Park to study the other side of this Sunbeam Model 90, which I spotted at last year's meet propped up against some Portaloos.

But this was not the view I was expecting.

According to my information a Model 90 should have a head like this.

I really like the "architecture" of a single cylinder motorcycle engine

But what was revealed was this.

This Sunbeam looks fast despite the fairly high bars for hauling the bike round the bends but looks like it'll stop thanks to the nice big front brake.

I know I should have spotted that it was a single port head even when looking at it in the rain from the drive side. I can only assume that this bike is powered by the later version of this engine, which would make it a Model 95.

The trouble is, Sunbeam motorcycles of this era are rather obscure. Their best years were the vintage ones and post war everyone remembers them as a strangely mid-Atlantic misconception (although not without their own charms). In between were some post vintage machines that make me wonder if I should try riding something with archaic front suspension (girder forks) and a solid tail before discounting them. I find it hard to believe that a bike that looks this good can have much in the way of vices.

Sunbeams were always described as "gentleman's machines" but this bike has an air of the hooligan about it, albeit a very high quality hooligan. Black and gold really suit old motorcycles and, much as I like Velocettes, the paintwork on this Sunbeam is so superb it looks like its still wet and so deep you could dive into it and enter a parallel universe - not quite Alice through the looking glass, more Robert through the quality enamelling.

Lots of high pressure noses are in evidence on this engine. From new it would have had "armoured" or coil wound pipes

Are there any marque experts out there who can enlighten me as to what this machine really is?

Vintage Thing No.89 - Riley 16/4 Blue Streak

2011-09-12T15:06:00.000-07:00

If it looks right, it is right.

I mentioned this car when I visited Wiscombe Park hillclimb for the VSCC event in May. Having camped overnight, the day dawned wet under foot but brightening overhead. One of our neighbours asked me if would help him start his car while Pete Low packed away his tent so, thinking it was a member of the public in a bit of a fix, I said okay and wandered over.

Imagine my surprise with this little baby, a supercharged Riley Big 4 with three SU carburettors. Its caretaker was the youngest out of three generations of the Spollen family and my job was to hold the seat squab over the bellmouths to act as a choke.

In the end, the engine didn't need me at all. We flooded it once with my operating my cushion but it struck me that this car was very well sorted and preferred to breathe the Wiscombe air without any restriction.

However, I was able to ask many questions about this car. It had been assembled some years ago by the grandfather and was raced by the father. Both senior members were billeted in a nearby hotel - the newest recruit preferring to eschew creature comforts and be on site overnight because of the fantastic atmosphere.

Hitch hikers beware

The car was based on a 1938/9 chassis, which has been extensively lightened and fitted with a 2443cc (80.5 x 120mm) four cylinder engine. Many 16HP, or Blue Streak, Rileys have been converted into specials and some of those have acquired superchargers but instead of driving the blower off the front of the crank, this one has a belt driven shaft that runs back to an enormous compressor that takes up virtually all the nearside footwell. It's still possible to carry an uncomfortable passenger but it helps if they have short legs.

The inlet side of the head showing the pressure relief valves on the inlet manifold in case the engine spits back. I must even more questions about the plumbing on this car next time.

The engine has a special head based on a pre-war design the patterns for which were destroyed in the Coventry Blitz so they made their own version by cutting and shutting production castings.

Guy Spollen squirts it up from the Sawbench Hairpin

During the day this car performed consistently well and, when I saw the Spollen team again at home time, Guy Spollen was quietly chuffed to have won his class.

Here he comes, there he is, there he goes!

There was so much that I liked about this car, not least the sense of it being an heirloom passed on through the sympathetic hands of the builder's descendants. Guy's dad had chosen all the best bits of a Riley and had a specialist design and build the supercharger especially for this installation. It looks great, too. I like the proportions with the fat tyres on the wide wire wheels and the way its sits on the road - jaunty with its rounded tail but hunkered down on sweeping chassis rails. The triple SU carbs might look at first to be in the wrong place and mere bravado but they are necessary to feed the well hidden blower.

Despite the high spec, it seemed remarkably fuss free and very well sorted but maybe that's because three generations of enthusiasts look after it.

Wiscombe Hillclimb May 2011

2011-09-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

Some Dellows await their turn by Wiscombe House. They do as well on tarmac as on the trials sections, just adding to the confusion about trialling and hillclimbing. A little rain on the Saturday post meridian put nobody off and was the exception rather than the rule despite dire weather forecasts. I think the moral here is use your classic machinery in the way its creators intended and the gods will smile.

The plan had been hatched months before the event by Pete Low and me for a trip up to East Devon for the annual VSCC hillclimb in this wonderful part of the world just inland from Branscombe. It was a trip down for Pete, though, because he lives in Essex, an area where there are few hills worthy of climbing quickly in a mechanical contrivance, and we camped at Wiscombe so that we wouldn't miss out on the derring-do.

I prefer two seater sports cars to the GP monopostos but F3 bolides appeal hugely to me. Any bigger, though and it ought to seat two. It's good to share but with only 500cc it pays to be selfish.

On the Saturday the entry list featured motorcycles and the Formula 3 500cc single seaters that are like four wheeled motorbikes anyway.


It doesn't matter what you've got, it's what you do with it

Take off yer indicators, put on some crash bungs and see "what'll she do, mister."

On the Sunday, the Vintage Sports Car Club were out in force and many were there both days, not being able to get enough of this sort of thing at Whizz-combe.


I could be wrong but I have a strong presentiment that the rider of this machine may have been a young woman - it's so difficult to tell with the helmets and leathers. And gender is irrelevant when it comes to blasting up a hill

The weather on the Saturday got progressively wetter as the day wore on and the forecast promised worse things overnight. Over our pub supper in Sidmouth, we mentioned going home early if it tipped down on the Sunday morning but this proposal only got a very brief airing and was purely as a fall back position if the worst came to the very worst. Pete was in his tent and I was in my van and the night passed noisily but quickly under the trees in the top paddock, where many of the younger VSCC members were also staying.

With the weather brightening from the east, Pete demonstrated his Border Bomb, a petrol powered camping stove that you can keep in your pocket and looks like a simple carburettor. That morning proves memorable for me because that was the first time I had black coffee and enjoyed it. Fair trade coffee and Pete's Border Bomb really did the trick. Then we had the full English breakfast bap from the caterers in the paddock.

But not before I'd done my good turn for the day.

A quick check of the plugs proved that we'd flooded it and that the engine didn't actually need me and my cushion

While Pete took down his tent and packed it onto his Armstrong ready for the journey home, one of our neighbours asked me if I could help him start his car. But what a car - a supercharged 2.5 litre Riley! All I had to do was act as choke by holding the seat squab over the three - yes three, count them! - SU carbs that fed the blower.

A sniff of high octane stuff, a do-it-yourself mechanical dawn chorus, that breakfast bap (with egg running down your stubbly chin) and let the racing commence...

Little and Large prepare to wake up the neighbours - on the left the W12 Napier-Bentley and on the right the engaging 4-wheeled Morgan that is the RIP Special.

By midday the grass had dried beautifully and we lazed on the lawn in the sun just up from the start line enthusing about - well - everything really.

One of the crucial issues was V12 aero-engined Delage or V8 aero-engined Amilcar? The answer, of course, was both but the Delage broke down approaching Bunny's Leap after a vigorous start and the rumour around the pits was that it had lunched its back axle. So maybe for circuit racing we'd chose the Delage and for hillclimbs and twisty stuff the Amilcar. Both sounded gorgeous on their open pipes and as Pete pointed out, close your eyes and that's an aeroplane flying overhead. This effect was especially profound with the amazing W12 Napier-Bentley, which is now something of an old-friend and still impresses with its power delivery out of the Sawbench hairpin.

Good to see Mrs Jo Jo in action again, Vintage Thing No.19 But where's the matching helmet? Or is this one black on the far side?

I was particularly pleased to finally inspect the RIP Special, a four-wheeled Morgan three-wheeler, if you get my meaning. Many years ago I saw a photo of this car in John Bateman's book Vintage Specials and liked its minimalist spec, road registered status and, last but by no means least, dope and canvas bodywork that ends in a metal spike. Four-wheeled Morgan three-wheelers have often been said to not have the performance that a three-wheeled Morgan three-wheeler may offer but with a youthful crew attending to its every need the RIP's vee-twin engine was often in fork. The support crew were kept busy, though, constantly running after it, either down the hill to bumpstart it or (more slowly) up the hill to bump it again if it hadn't caught and fired by the time they'd reached the starting line.

A slight rain shower late in the afternoon didn't catch out No.207, Alistair Dent in his Formula 3 Hornet. He just hung the tail out beautifully

A split second later and he's lining it up to floor the throttle for the penultimate blast

The weather was far better than we'd been led to believe by the poor forecast - poor in outlook and poor in accuracy - so the sunny conditions on Sunday was a bonus and showed all the competition machinery in its best possible light. Remind me to buy more shares in the manufacturers of Solvol Autosol.

Ye Gods! It's Spider, possibly the greatest of all Shelsley specials, now in the care of the Leigh equipe. And lean into that corner

It is more than likely Pete and I will be there again next year but what we'd really like is to have a go ourselves. A vintage sportscar is probably beyond even our collective means but hillclimbing has to be the way to go, either on 2, 3 or 4 wheels.

Whizz-combe Park - great surroundings, the right crowd and no crowding with the very best of vintage machinery doing what it's supposed to do and being mended if it doesn't.

Vintage Thing No.88.1 - Gregory Special

2011-08-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

It's an AMC gearbox

I knew my mates would oblige with identifying the gearbox on the Gregory 500. Pete Low has come up trumps but is just as perplexed by the Gregory 500 as I am. Not only that, but he's mentioned another weird and wonderful machine by the name of George. Here's his e-mail to me in full.

"I've never seen this bike. The engine looks Jawa to me, from the timing
side, with its exposed oil pump, but I agree that the timing side is
weird.

"A mate of mine took over a thing called "George" (after its maker) it
was a BSA B31 with a Jawa engine grafted in, but I remember it used a
timing side cam drive that made use of the Beeser's alloy push rod
tunnel. Now that's got me wondering. Was it a Jawa bottom end with a BSA
head? or vice versa? Sorry can't remember!

"The gearbox is simple. AMC type, as used by AJS/Matchless/Norton from
mid 50's to the last of the Norton Commandos, and the clutch goes with
it."

Anyone know any more about George and Gregory?

Vintage Thing No.88 - Gregory 500

2011-08-20T07:59:00.001-07:00

Slim and light, this Jawa Rickman looks very inviting for uphill blasts.

Another mysterious machine from the past is this speed hillclimbing motorcycle from the 1980s.

When I say hillclimbing to many people they automatically think of the dirty business of trialling but hillclimbing, in Britain at any rate, means against the clock and and on metalled roads. My friends know what I'm on about but others who not so steeped in engine punk don't quite catch on.

These photos are so old they date back to when I would carefully write on the back what they depicted and a good thing, too, for the Gregory 500 apparently was a 1980 Rickman JAWA. This is not a common motorcycle and Phil Gregory, who was named in the long since lost programme for this event, made it even more special.

It looks like he had some help along the way. There's a sticker on one of the downtubes that says "Don Barton - GRP" and another on the tail is for Kidderminster Engineering Services. Bewley Engineering also get a prominent mention but ithis wouldn't have been for the silencer because there isn't one. There are two names on the swing arm, the one on the offside is Alpha Bearings Ltd, while that on the other side reads Hatton Enterprises.

Hatton Enterprises rings a bell. If I remember correctly, Hatton Enterprises was run by a Bob Hatton and advertised many large bore conversions for Japanese motorcycles in the 1980s.One was a 250 conversion for the Honda CD175, which is the kind of thing that always appealed to me. If it worked that could have been a nice bike - if it worked.

I also have a recollection (and maybe a cutting) from MCN about a rotary valve conversion for a Honda CB125 that put out some outrageous amount of power.Without digging it out, I believe there was mention of carbon fibre. I fantasised about souping up my first bike, which was one of these Hondas, and this seemed the ultimate. However, friends in the industry later said this was ridiculous and that if it were possible Honda would've done it.

Anyway, back to the Gregory 500, which definitely did go and go well. I scribbled in Biro on the back very gently so that the image wasn't affected but it's still legible enough to discern a date - 27/5/84 - and the location was the Bugatti Owner's Club hillclimb at a very wet Prescott. Despite the rain, I recall Phil Gregory as being something of a death or glory rider, with legs suddenly sticking out to balance progress when the tyres suddenly let go, but maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.

So what do YOU reckon that engine is?

Now, I'm no expert on Jawa engines but I thought they were SOHC. The cover on the timing side suggest a home brew conversion but some speedway bikes had this kind of pressed steel cover The engine appears to be dry sumped and a two valve machine judging from the single down pipe. If it is a speedway engine it would have had no gerabox (check - also check Sammy Miller's/Haynes museum pictures)

I like the conical rear hub and the alloy rims for the wire wheels. The gearbox looks familiar and I'm sure someone will tell me what it is - I don't have my Observer's Book of Motorcycle Gearboxes to hand right now - and it's running a dry clutch. The Gregory 500 also has what appears to be both a drum and a disc on the front wheel although I reckon only the disc is operative.Note also the chunky fork brace and the skimpy front mudguard.

What really caught my eye, though, was the all in one seat and tank unit and the seat/tank unit. It still looks swoopy today and the black and gold colour scheme really suits it. There's not much padding in the seat but that's just an incentive to ride quicker.

The Gregory 500 was one of those hillclimbers that was obviously built for speed but also had some style.

Vintage Thing No.87 - SUMB 4x4

2011-08-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

This SUMB turned at Boconnoic this year

After all that effort on the Candidi Provocatore Allard to change its engine I began to wonder how a side valve Ford flathead engine could still be churned out by a factory in Clermont-Ferrand in 1991. Rob's description of a four-wheel drive NATO Simca rang a distant bell and I referred to my copy of The Observer's Military Vehicles Directory by Bart Vanderveen.

Under France: Trucks, ½ to 2 ton, 4x4, I found the Simca-Unic-Marmon-Boucquet MH600BS. It's a bit of an ugly thing but that's okay with boonie bashers. The engines listed for this device is listed grow in stages from the original 3622cc via 3923cc litres to 4184cc. They still only put out 100 bhp, though, so any excitement is tempered somewhat, but still - phwaor, though, eh?.

So who were Simca, Unic, Marmon and Boucquet?

I'd heard of the first three.

Simca was set up in 1934 to produce Fiats in France under licence and subsequently bought truck manufacturer Unic in 1951 and the French Ford factory in Poissy in 1954. Marmon Herrington had been converting Ford cars and light trucks to four wheel drive since before WW2 amd M. Boucquet was president of the French wing of Marmon-Herrington, which later became Marmon-Boucquet.

M. Boucquet was the man behind the SUMB MH600BS, which entered production in 1962 for the French Army, replacing WW2 US-built Dodges. There were contemporary Renault designs as competitors to the SUMB and Simca trucks powered by diesels but somehow the the petrol engined trucks remained in favour.

Flicking through the pages of this august tome, I see that 3923cc versions were also available (bore and stroke of 80.97 x 95.23mm) and that some Marmon-Herringtons even had an air-cooled Panhard flat four of 1996cc (85 x 88mm) that rather tellingly put out 90 bhp i.e. about the same as the flathead of twice the cubic capacity. I doubt that it burbled so nicely, though.

Transmissions were usually four speeds, sometimes with a two speed transfer box.

This Simca Cargo 3 ton French Army truck used another variant of the Ford flathead V8 (Photo: Wikipedia Francais)

But these flat fours weren't in production as long as the old flathead V8, which seems to have been a cheap engine to build after World War 2, as it powered Ford and Simca trucks throughout the fifties and sixties but became more expensive to run as fuel costs increased.

SUMBs were in production until 1971 and their off-road performance was so effective that the French Army kept them going right into this century. In a marvellous example of Gallic stubbornness, it wasn't until 1999 that remaining examples of the darling of Les Soldats got a startling rebuild with a Renault 3.6 litre 4-cylinder turbo diesel and a 5 speed box.

I get the impression Renault must have wanted to do this hop up for years. Replacing the whole vehicle must have been even more to their taste but that was too much change all at once for the French Army.

From looking closely at the photos in Mr Vanderveen's directory it appears that the SUMBs had step down axles, which incorporate gears in the hubs to lower the hub/raise the axle and diff to increase ground clearance, while the Renaults did not. Perhaps it was this feature that ensured such a long life.

Or maybe the French soldiers just preferred the flathead burble.

Diesel-powered SUMBs are now available from military surplus sales and more detailed information on the French variety of Ford flathead V8s can be found on the flathead discussion group.

This Simca-Unic-Marmon-Boucquet MH600BS made it to the US where its unified (non-metric) nuts and bolts were probably much appreciated. (Photo: usmilitaryvehicles.com)

Vintage Thing No.86 - Austin 20 sports

2011-08-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

"Excuse me, gentleman of the MCC, but we're looking for Blue Hills 2. Can you direct us?" "Certainly, my good fellow, just drive straight into the sun and you can't miss it."

Entered in the 2011 Land's End Trial was this marvellous 1927 Austin 20, which I saw climb Blue Hills 2. Austin 20s are typically lumbering great beasts that were available either as saloons weighing as much as 1¾ tons or bare chassis to be clothed down by similarly heavy bespoke bodywork.

This one belonging to Tim and Jack Kemp of Landridnod Wells has the rakish looks of a more exalted sporting machinery. I really like the hot rod or sports car look of this machine and the old style wheels suit it perfectly. Surely this would be eligible for VSCC events?

This is the old variety with a 3620cc 95 x 127mm side valve four instead of the later sixes, a peferct powerplant with grunt aplenty for the west country hills. Herbert Austin was inspired by Hudson designs and incorporated some of their features into the 20, originally intending to adopt a one model policy with this car, just like Henry Ford.

The years slip away on Blue Hills 2. I want one.

I feel inspired to find some decrepit old saloon and make a similarly intrepid old war horse. But could I get on with the steering/brakes/transmission? It must be hugely satisfying to pilot one of these and the crowd loved it.

It didn’t win an award this time but I bet it gave its crew a lot of pleasure.

Vintage Thing No.85 - Suzuki GSP500

2011-08-05T15:59:00.000-07:00

Well though out and subtle in a muddy sort of way

So Suzuki never made an GSP500? Somebody has. I spotted this outfit at the start of the 2011 Land's End Trial at Plusha Services.

I walked passed it only to pause and turn back. At first glance, it's nothing special but then you notice the double overhead cam twin.

It's greater than the sum its parts. The 500 was a sensible ride to work bike. The SP370 was a twinshock traillie from the seventies. A clandestine liaison between the two and this wonderful love child is the result.

I liked this a lot and despite all the fun that we had on that Triumph outfit I wonder what it would be like as a solo machine. Good on the road but perhaps a little heavy in the mud?

Maybe it is best as an outfit - it keeps the perversity of motorcycling asymmetric.

2011 Land's End Trial

2011-08-03T04:43:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in a car park near you, a motorsport happening could be starting. Unfortunately, that spectacular Wasp outfit isn't going to get very far. Shame.

So instead of actually competing in this event I had to settle for being a spectator. It wasn't quite the same but I still enjoyed myself. I went up to to Plusha Services to see the Cornish starters off. and it made a pleasant change to see the machinery without being lampered in mud.

Pete's looking quietly confident here. I see he's fitted a longer swing arm to the outfit he shares with Shani, the redoubtable Cox-Triumph

Among the bikes were Pete and Shani Adams who are campaigning the ex-Team Robert Triumph sidecar outfit (VT No.16 ) that Rob and I used to play with, the one which caused us to become airborne and morph into Ginger and Binky. Pete and Shani were hoping to get further than a mile down the road this year because last year they suddenly struck valve problems. They set off alright but I didn't spot them at Blue Hills so hope they were merely badly delayed and not a retirement

Another sidecar team with a Wasp had a similar problem, though, with their drive chain breaking literally within sight of the start. That was it for them - the chain was too badly mangled to re-use. Could've been worse I suppose, for there was plenty of help and light, which might not have been the case a few hours later. There was just the logistics of getting to the finish at Scorrier to pick up all their stuff to sort out.

I would say all the bikes required a severe looking at.

This 498cc AJS 18C doesn't have any jampots, the distinctive rear shock absorbers featured on most road bikes of this make. It's a highly evolved machine for trialling.

Among the classic British trials irons was this wonderful old Ajay. It looks a bit lumpy compared with the more sophisticated and manageable bikes in the background and that seat looks like the rider's going to be standing up all night regardless of whether he's in a section or not but what a fantastic machine. I have always admired the natural metal finish and black paint look for an off road bike an this one epitomises the sort of British mud plugger that I'd one day like

Too good to get dirty? Ken Brooks of Barnstaple says no. Very nice bike, good to see it doing what it was made for.

No heavier than this BMW R80GS. This was one clean machine and compared to my R100GS it looked small.

Get your step thru running and head out on the highway with a high rise exhaust, bar protectors and a seat that does NOT shout "Poseur!"

Despite all this classic machinery, the guys who seemed to be having the best fun were the step-thru riders. Nobody in their right mind would travel something 400 miles off road and in the dark on one of these things so - obviously - they are growing in popularity in MCC events as the differently sane realise their hidden sporting potential (Honda C90s and the like, not the differently sane - the differently sane's sporting potential was never hidden). Cheap, light and frugal on fuel, there's an element of an irreverent thumbing of the nose in competing on one of these.

Among the cars I spotted Tris White in his Troll (ex Ann Templeton) not campaigning his VW Imp for once (VT No. 49) Tris has done quite a bit of work on this car and I believe it's a very early one - I can remember it from my very first Land's End in 1987.

I was intrigued to see this Micra standing up for its trialling rights, entered by Darren Ruby and Andrew Waters from Launceston. It looks good raised up whereas I would be inclined to slam them (I have a bubble shaped K11). No issue about lights not working here.

As darkness fell, a few cars had last minute probs with lights but these were mostly of a minor electrical nature. We had exactly the same issues with the Cox Triumph.

Recent rule changes allow for external passengers to help with traction

And on the morrow, I moseyed on over to Blue Hills. There I met up with some friends, one of whom, Jeremy Cross, was marshalling on the Class O section at Blue Hills 2.

How had the C90s got on? Wheelie well - they may have dabbed here and there but were still in the hunt, among them Darren Brophy - Number 90 with 90cc of Honda Cub power

Blue Hills 2 proved surprisngly difficult - only a few hell for leather types with high spec machinery got up in one go.

Now that's what I call a carbon tyre print. This is the 1800 UVA Fugitive of Matthew and Barry Denny.

Jezzers had a fairly straightforward time of it on Class O, which has proved a huge success since its introduction, swelling the entry list and providing a less destructive route into the sport.

This gorgeous Wolseley Hornet of Robert Gibson and John Taylor ran in Class O.

Many felt confident enough to have a go at Blue Hills 2 having successfully got this far. I think the atmosphere in Trevellas Coombe gets to people with such echoes of engines revving and tyres spinning through the decades.

Finally, I got to meet Mike Warnes who so generously offered us the use of his spare trails car, the Husky. He cleaned Blue Hills 2 in his TR7 and I was able to thank him in person. He'd cleaned everything so far but Bishopwood.

This is Mike Warnes in his TR7, clearing Blue Hills 2 and on his way to a Silver award.

I was offered a TR7 last year and somehow managed to turn it down. This same car was subsequently bought by Adrian Booth and Ray Goodright got a Gold with on this very event. Did I make the right decision? I think so. Ray has been doing it for a while, too. There quite a few TRts competing so may be they are the car of the future.

Anyway, next year we should be in the Allard again.

Why Team Robert weren't in the 2011 Land's End Trial

2011-08-01T04:28:00.000-07:00

It's engineless! Team Robert were at this stage grubby but unbowed.

Close but so far away, it was a sterling effort by your brave boys but in the end our dream didn't come true.

It all began to go wrong when Rob discovered what was making the funny tapping noise when he revved the engine on the Candidi Provocatore Allard. This machine is now under his stewardship and he discovered that a stud holding on the centre main bearing had broken, allowing the main bearing cap to fret about.

If you look closely you will see only one stud for the centre main cap. The other stud is in two pieces, one of which is still in the block. Rob tried drilling it out and did a good job but the main bearing cap would still need replacing. To get the replacement to fit the block properly, that would need line boring the block caps and that's an engine out and strip job. Doesn't the oil pump look vulnerable without the sump on?

This can sometimes happen on these engines if they are revved hard. The options were either a) to drill the stud out and fit an undamaged main bearing cap and hope that it wouldn't be too out of whack to last the 600 miles or so that doing the trial would involve, or b) to replace the engine with one of his spare ones. Since he is something of a perfectionist and I knew he had an ex-French Army unit that had only done about 1000 miles since it head been built in 1991, I went up the weekend before the event to help swap engines.

Not the best picture I've ever taken but you can see where the new flathead V8 came from.

The French Army flathead Rob has was made as late as 1991 in downtown Clermont-Ferrand for a light 4x4 truck built by Simca and colloquially known as the SUMB. They were sold off as surplus some years ago and the Robster bought one. Several got squirrelled away across the Allard community and you can bet everyone knows where they've put 'em (unlike the squirrels and their nuts).

The new engine had been sat around for a while, though, so while I set about stripping the ancilliaries for the engine swap, Rob tore the engine down and then re-assembled it with new bearings, seals and gaskets.

There a few other items to sort out. The gearbox mount had been soaked in oil over the years and had to be replaced. Fortunately this is a truck part and Rob had one in stores. He also had new water pumps (there's one for each bank of cylinders) and a reconditioned gearbox.

It was a good thing the weather was fine the week before Easter for although the car was in a car port we were working largely in the open. By late on Saturday, Rob had assembled the bottom end and I'd got the engine out after taking off as much as I could to lighten it. The bonnet on these cars is so long the engine crane couldn't reach in from the front so I had to go in sideways. It was very tight against the wall of the house but I managed it.

Space was nearly the final frontier for us, too.

The following morning we made an especially early start for we still had much to do but were quietly confident we could get the engine to run. After an especially fortifying breakfast courtesy of Tina (Mrs Binky), who was dangerously becoming more like an Allard widow as the weekend sped by, there was the ceremonial swapping of sumps (the French engine has a very nice alloy affair but for trailling you really need the pressed steel variety) and the traditional decoking of the cylinder heads, which occurred early this year due to global warming. Obviously.

Are you one of those people who tries this at home when they say "Don't try this at home?" I was quite pleased I worked out a way to dangle the block like this with Tina's washing line (let's hope she's not reading this) so I could swap sumps. Note the twin water pumps.

Meanwhile, Rob fitted the valves and timed up the engine.

This engine is a sixteen valve - count them. They fit into strange casettes that look like medieval instruments of torture (see contents of nearest re-employed lemon sorbet container). Only Grand Whizz-herds of the Dark Arts can get these to fit properly whilst invoking the spirit of St Sidney.

Fitting the gearbox onto the torque tube was a sod. We had to work together on this, which was something of a surprise, as we'd been doing our own things for 20 hours or so beforehand. But it's good to have two of you blitzing a project like this because you spur each other on and bounce ideas off each other. We didn't get in each others way much and there no trapped fingers. Bonus.

So then we came to fit the engine in. Getting it in was easy for giants of engine punkery like Binky and Ginger of Team Robert but getting it to fit was another matter. Darkness fell and so did our hopes of hearing the engine burst into life. I had to drive back to Cornwall that night and tore myself away at 2100 with the engine hooked up on things we could no longer see.

There was still a week to go before the Land's End but when I checked in the following day Rob had bitten the bullet and taken the engine out again so that he could fit the engine to the gearbox. And did I tell you what a bastard it was to fit the box onto the torque tube? Rob managed it in the end. Some neighbours took pity on him and helped heave when he was hoeing underneath the car. The only thing was the engine was not in line with engine mounts and it was fouling the bulkhead.

At last we discovered why no-one had fitted a Simca V8 into the Candidi Provatore car before. The block is stronger by virtue of being slightly bigger in most directions. After Rob put in a marathon of grinding the bulkhead back in very restricted circumstances, we realised we wouldn't make the start after all.

I was still determined to be entered somehow and put the word out I was available as a bouncer and incredibly a complete stranger offered us his spare trials car. Well, I suppose Mike Warnes is a gentleman of the MCC so I shouldn't be that surprised but, all the same, this really goes beyond generosity. However, while I was still focussed on simply making the start, Rob was more focussed on getting the car right. It was just too late to arrange insurance to cover us in Mike's Escort based special, which he calls a Husky, or organise picking it up from South Devon.

Mike Warnes on Blue Hills in his Husky during an earlier Land's End. Obviously not a Hillman Imp estate but the subject of a very generous offer that in the end we regrettably couldn't make use of (Photo : Mike Warnes)

Rob also sensibly pointed out that if we broke it, we would have two cars to get going again instead of just one.And frankly, that one was enough.

So I spectated this year, while Rob carried on at home with the Allard. Next year, everything should be sorted. The bulkhead must have been made of dural for Rob was on his back grinding it for the best part of two days so that the boss around the oil sender unit wouldn't foul on it. There were some little jobs, too, like fitting the heads, carb and dynamo back on and getting it MOTed.

Were we so deluded that we could've managed it? Obviously we were, with the benefit of hindsight but in a wholly good way. So long as your foresight is faulty enough that it doesn't pick up on the inevitable problems and you have faith in your intellectual capacity to deal with any eventualities you are duty bound to have a go.

If we knew what lay in store for us we'd never get out of bed.

"I say Ginger," said Binky, "why not see if your Micra engine will fit instead?"

Vintage Thing No.84 - Wolseley 1500

2011-07-30T04:24:00.000-07:00

Although looking dignified in black, many Mk1 Wolseley 1500s were spectacularly two-tone. Their lines seem to suit that sort of paint job

Wolseley - ah! the name - it sounds to me like a slightly sozzled English bank manager, Captain Mainwaring's disreputable brother. Wolseley could be an adjective for wobbly wooziness whereas it is really a name synonomous with quality motoring and advanced aero-engine manufacture. Fought over by the William Morris and Herbert Austin for its expertise in overhead camshaft designs, the marque of Wolseley became a luxury Morris as British motor manufacturers emulated the American big 3 in its marketing structure as well as its mass production techniques. Wolseley subsequently suffered the indignity of badge engineering under BMC but survived as a make of motor car until 1975.

And straight from the stranger than fiction department, woolly old Wolseley has its origins in sheep shearing equipment. There used to be one of these machines preserved in a garden at Trewint, just off the A30.

It's because I like the name of Wolseley so much that I featured it in The Wormton Lamb, where every BMC product is re-badged as a Wolseley. This meets with considerable success because the citizens of Wormton understood the Wolseley virtues.

This is a very smart interior on a Mk1 Wolseley. I don't think I'd change the wheel for a sportier one.

Through its lengthy career, the Wolseley remained an aspirational vehicle within reach of the masses. Despite a flirtation with sports cars in the thirties resulting in the Wolseley Hornet, they were not high performance motor cars but upright and respectable, smelling inside of leather and wood polish. For many years they kept their own ohc engines but latterly the valves went downstairs in search of production rationality. As my Uncle Tom, used to say, "If you got a Wolseley, you'd really arrived" and this continued even when they were little more than booted Minis and idiosyncratic Landcrabs. Despite the liberties taken with the good name, many types of Wolseley retained a degree of their own identity and one of the better ones was the Wolseley 1500.

This is the Mk2 version with internal bonnet and bootlid hinges and a new chrome flash on the wing. (Photo Charles 01)

The Wolseley 1500 is the less sporty relation of the Riley 1.5 and both have their origins in a replacement for the irreplaceable Morris Minor. I can remember my dad being outpaced by the Riley version once, when we had either an 1100 Escort Mk1 or a 1250cc Hillman Avenger. See how I've forgotten which one of our family cars it was but remembered the performance of the Riley?

As evidence of the downright ornery-ness of the British buying public, fewer people bought the Riley than the Wolseley. BMC made 103,394 Wolseley 1500s and only 39,568 Riley 1.5s. But I can't talk. Instead of having a Riley, which not only goes faster but looks nicer and has a tacho, I've had two Wolseley 1500s. As usual, though, I didn't try too hard to get them. They sort of found me.

The first one had been standing for something like 6 years in Zelah, literally in sight of all the traffic that passed through the village on the old A30. As a child, I used to car spot registration numbers with a preference for black and white plates and noted this car among all the others. Six years later, and having just passed my driving licence, I noticed this old car was still in exactly the same spot.

Discreet enquiries revealed it to belong to an elderly couple who knew my grandparents and when I asked them if they wanted to sell it they gave me the car. In fact they gave me a very early Austin A30, too, of the AS3 variety, which lay in the field behind the Wolseley. Goodness knows how long that had been there.

Years of exposure to the elements, thanks to a broken driver's window did this to my first Wolseley 1500. There was nothing much to weld to even if I had a grinder and a welder, which I didn't. Anything can be saved but sometimes a man's gotta know his limitations. Note boyish attempts at using Trustan 23 rust converter on what there is left of the floor

The Wolseley had been used as a gate in a village land dispute. At some stage it had suffered a broken driver's window as someone forcibly moved it away from the gateway it was faithfully guarding. After that the weather got in and, by the time I arranged for a neighbour to drag it home, the sills and floors had rotted away. Its back was broken and another neighbour who welded cars advised me not to bother. After giving this advice a stiff ignoring, I realised it really was too far gone. I was also pursuing my further education so wasn't around to repair it. Eventually, I let my mother sell it for scrap along with the A30, which was so rusty the lower front suspension arms had collapsed. I retained some parts of these cars for many years afterwards, though, and my interest was briefly rekindled whenever I fell over an engine or rear axle in the shed.

Rusty panels everywhere. Working on it in the open didn't help, either. How much better set up I am today!

Unfortunately, I don't have very good photos of these cars. They were tucked in close to edge when I got them home and what photos I do have just show what a terrible state they were in.

The Wolseley seemed quite large and luxurious to someone who drove a Hillman Imp (VT No. 40). And when it rained the faded red paintwork was revealed to be actually two-tone - maroon over purple! When new in 1958, it must have looked sensational and I've never seen a similar colour scheme on one before or since.

If you look closely at the picture of my Imp with the Mini van side next to it on Hillman Imp (VT No. 40) you can just make out the sad remains of my first Wolseley 1500. I had no MIG welder or grinder back then.

The man responsible for this car's good looks is reckoned to be Dick Burzi. He's somewhat in the shadow of Gerald Palmer, who did the Wolseley 6/90 and its smaller sibling the 4/44 and, of course, the associated Riley and MG variants. I regret to say that I know of no other cars credited to Dick Burzi but I like what he achieved with my Wolseley and also the Riley 1.5.

Palmer produced several studies for the Minor replacement but one day Leonard Lord told him "Dick Burzi and I have designed this new Minor at Longbridge!"

Palmer left BMC shortly afterwards.

According to Paul Skilleter in his book on the Morris Minor, the front end treatment was the work of Sid Goble. I think the Riley version works especially well and there were Morris and Austin versions for Australia but these don't have the same old style radiators or presence on the road. For example, the Wolseley's radiator badge lights up when you turn on the headlights. Why don't modern cars do this?

Both Burzi and Goble probably had inputs to other BMC cars but Issigonis and Palmer were the big names of the time and their work remains unsung apart from this particular design.

This is the final version of the Wolseley 1500, with wider side grilles to the front panel.

Both Riley 1.5 and Wolseley 1500 used the BMC "B" series engine in its 1489cc ( 73.025 x 88.9mm) size but the Wolseley spec was much more cooking than the Riley with just a single carb. The Riley had bigger drum brakes, too, and I robbed these off a Riley in a scrapyard at Carharrack for my Minor, along with its twin SU carbs. The idea was to create even more of a Q-car out of my Wolseley than a Riley 1.5.
The Wolseley put out 50 bhp and the Riley managed 68 on big valves and its twin SU carbs. Both types seem to have shared the same camshaft, though. Most exotic engine among the B series family was the MGA twin cam with 108 bhp but that engine really ought to be in an MGA (if you could find a homeless one)

The Mk3 was also modernised with the rear lamp clusters from the Austin A40, so Pininfarina had a hand in the facelift (although he probably never knew this). They don't sit quite happily on the Burzi lines, though.

The B series engine is heavy, though, as I found out when it came to removing the unit in my free Wolseley. I made some sheer legs, the borrowed winch jammed, then the winch suddenly unjammed and the sheerlegs collapsed. Against oily fingers blood looks almost fluorescent. I subsequently discovered the 1489cc B series engine was almost as heavy as a Rover V8 so you can guess what I began fantasised about, especially as a hillclimbing Riley 1.5 got a mention in the motoring press during the early eighties. I fancied there was more potential for surprise with the Wolseley than a Riley, despite the latters more sporting mien, due to the Wolseley's more dignified styling. I saw the the glove boxes being filled with supplementary gauges that would only be revealed as the precursor to some inferior motorcar being burnt off.

These boyish plans might still come about.

"Buy Wisely, Buy Wolseley." So I bought Wolseley but still may not have bought wisely.

Back in the early 90s I saw another Wolseley 1500 for sale and bought it cheaply with a few weeks tax and ticket. It was another 1958 version, with the external bonnet and boot hinges and the very upright front end and smaller side grilles. This one was all black but had the same leather interior as my old one except for the driver's seat, which was an old blue vinyl affair from a Morris Minor. But it needed work and, as I was living up the line still, I took it off the road and it suffered somewhat in storage.

But it's now in the dry and awaiting its turn. A few years ago a work colleague said she'd had one and would I like a complete interior for £50? It was an exact match for my car, too, so maybe God drives a Wolseley. I have also acquired an MGB engine and overdrive gearbox to fit into it. The idea is to keep as much Wolseley-ness as possible while improving on the performance of a Riley, making a late fifties version of the Triumph Dolomite Sprint if you like.

Every Wolseley 1500 I've had tried to tell me it needed more power

You see, I've moved on from the Rover V8 idea, much as I still like it,because this it should prove easier to do and result in a more balanced package. The back axle will need uprating nut I have heard of a twin pin diff conversion and there are Morris Minor halfshafts that fit that are reckoned to be unbreakable (if not quite affordable right now)

My black Wolseley 1500, the day after I got it and still road legal

I've got a lot of welding to do but have already done the rear wheelarches on it. Sills appear for sale occasionally but at £125 a pop for each side I'm still holding out for some new-old-stock. I've got glassfibre front wings and would really like a GRP panel radiator panel, too. With a new cross member, floor repairs and sills, this old car will rise again in the not too distant future but will have to wait for some other projects to be completed before it takes its turn.

I shelled out on repair panels for the rear arches soon after I got the car. I like to start at one end and work my way to the other.

But it's day will come. Did I mention I've got disc brakes for it, too?

Boconnoc Steam Fair 2011

2011-07-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

On the left a Foden steam tractor. On the right a Tasker Little Giant steam tractor. Both different approaches to what a steam tractor for the road should look like.

There were many rumours about this year's show, largely to do with the introduction of a £5 entry fee for cars, motorbikes and tractors. Many of my friends refused to go, saying that this move would kill the goose that laid the golden egg and that people were just getting greedy when times were harder than ever. In the fortnight before the show, idle barbie-side talk (the summer equivalent of idle fireside talk) was that support was so poor cancellation was being discussed.

I thought I'd go along anyway and to be honest you wouldn't have known there'd been all these problems, although there didn't seem to be quite so much there. It's a wonderful setting and I really hope no geese are killed and we can all make golden omelettes.

Boconnoc featured tractor pulling again this year. Those beer cars rose up from the base of the rad every time the throttle was blipped. I wouldn't want to sniff this chap's diff, though.

If exhibitors paid the £5 exhibition fee they could enter as many exhibits as they liked. I talked to one chap I know and he said he got mother-in-law, son and his girlfriend into the show for that fiver. In that light it seemed to good value.

It still think the die-hard Cornish boys won't go next year. Some say they feel they are being made to feel like second class citizens and I've been told each steam engine gets £400 in appearance money. But it is a steam fair and the traction engines are what bring the public in.

Those who didn't go to Boconnoc are all looking forward to Morval Vintage Rally (27th to 29th August) and Lanlivery Vintage Rally and Country Fair (10th and 11th September). In fact, I've been swept up in their enthusiasm and will be at Lanlivery with my Allegro (VT No.23) because my Hillman Imp (VT No.40) won't be ready.

So what vehicle would I have liked to have in my garage?

I had a Matchbox model of one of these. If memory serves me right it was called a Thames Estate Car and had more windows. I reckon this a van that's been converted. If I wanted to get in my garage I'd have to lose that roofrack.

I have many happy childhood memories of the Thames vans and minibuses and on a rarity factor alone one that is not a camper van must be an incredible survivor. I particularly like the way it doesn't look restored. Cherished is the word that springs to mind.

The saga of the images

2011-07-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

Eventually I have established that the server for my website was changed by my internet provider and when the old address was switched off my pictures disappeared some time after the change over. Older posts were affected and it took me some time to notice this. A couple of years ago the link from my Anarchadia website connected to the old server and for a while it appeared that Engine Punk wasn't being updated. Regular readers may remember their favourites showing my impressions of the Lincoln Vintage Vehicle Society as the most recent blog entry.

So it wasn't a Blogger problem as such.It was me changing IT horses in mid-stream. No backup is now available because all the change occurred 2009, so it's a case of re-loading the images but the blog needs a bit of weed (still damn and blast tho).

Work is going on in the background to restore the old posts in bite sized chunks, like when I'm waiting for the immersion heater to boil the bath water after some intensive welding exploits in the garage/studio/ laboratory/playroom(s).

But now I know what the jinx was I feel content to return to blogging again.

In the meantime, here's a picture of some tastefully arranged Ford Anglias.

The 105E club stand at the Vintage Vehicle Gathering at Powderham Castle this year. Note to self - I really ought to get an Anglebox....

Disappearing photos

2011-06-20T14:44:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I noticed some photos didn't appear on older posts. Now i know it's a lot worse that just one or two.

Anything before 8th Nov 2009 has a web address like this - http://www.anarchadia.co.uk/uploaded_images/DSCF7249-738261.JPG - if I hover over the black space where an image should be. Click on it and I get the 404 URL not found message.

This Cornish engine house at Luckett has not disappeared - yet. By the time you read this I hope to have restored the photos on this blog

Anything after this date has an address like this - http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_

fT8ad5hT86c/SwWzgVvNrtI/AAAAAAAAAF0/egi0Syyh76s/s1600/DSCF8227.JPG. Click on the image and up comes the enlarged photo, just like used to happen to all my pictures back in the good old days.

The blogger help forum is full of people moaning about similar problems, a lot of them citing problems with Picasa. However, I load my pictures from my PC. From other advice on the forum, I suspect there's been an account change and that the photos are now irretrievable.

I have no recollection of an account change. I'm reluctant to do much more blogging if something can arbitrarily change like this - and boy do I have some good stuff for you!

I don't want to restore 400 posts worth of images individually, either.

Nobody from Blogger seems to be saying anything about this on the help forum.

Engine Punk is my little "notes to self" about obscure stuff, so I feel I'm missing out on some weird stuff that probably doesn't appear anywhere else on the net.

What is the point continuing this blog if some geek somewhere makes a change - or recommends a change to me if it was me who did this - without appreciating that I can lose so much visual content?

Doesn't bode well for the digital future of cloud computing, does it?

The Undertones in Plymouth

2011-04-15T04:22:00.000-07:00

The Undertones played in The White Rabbit at Plymouth Bus Station on 9th April and it was a great gig in a very intimate venue. I was there with my little gang of south west punk rock enthusiasts and this was just the kind of show we enjoy. The crowd were a great bunch, too, and produced the oldest crowd surfer that I have seen to date. I hope that record only stands to be broken.

Er, it wasn't me, although I did fall over in the mosh pit and lost a shoe for a couple of numbers. Good job I had the indestructible socks on.

Doyle and The Fourfathers. For once I think the music press might know what they're talking about

Support was provided by Doyle and The Fourfathers who are widely tipped for greater things. It's difficult to give a band like this a proper appreciation when you don't know their songs, don't listen to the radio because it only plays crap and the main acts tunes have become hard wired into your brain after so many years but I liked these guys and have added them to my Amazon basket (awaiting me finishing listening to the CDs and downloads I already have - it's a kind of resolution, not even a New Year's thing).

Anyway I rate them and recommend you check 'em out.

Intrigued? So were we. The Undertones and Doyle & The Fourfathers enter The Twilight Zone.

A strange old black and white sci-fi horror film played throughout the nite and this intrigued me because I didn't recognise it. We later discovered it was Children of Spider County, an episode from The Twilight Zone and although we couldn't hear the sound it added to the arts club, underground, B-movie atmosphere.

It was a gig for the indulgent connoisseur so we were particularly indulgent.

The Undertones always seem to be enjoying themselves with lively banter between the band members. Last time they played in Plymouth the drummer was ill and they had a stand in but he was in good health and form for this show. They also said how much they appreciated the highly appreciative audience, which was - highly appreciated really. There didn't seem to be so many youngsters as at the SLF gig in Bristol so we were mostly about the same age and it was just one big party. Besides myself there were quite a few fallers - it was slippery in there - but it was good sport hoicking each other up and laughing at the mishaps of like-minded strangers.

They played their first album as well as their hits including their You thrill me all the time the song that prompted the late and great John Peel to say, "I can't tell you how much it pleases me to say this but here's the new single from The Undertones."

My favourite remains Over You. It's so simple but, just like I fought the law, quite difficult to play well. or at the very least play it the way it should be played.

Inside the SS Great Britain

2011-04-13T14:25:00.000-07:00

The ship that launched a thousand faces. And many more great steamships

Following the Stiff Little Fingers gig in Bristol, I stayed over night in Bristol with the intention of having a quick look around the SS Great Britain. I'd been round this as a student when it was little more than an empty hulk in the mid-eighties when it was included as a visit to support our history of design lectures.

The reconstruction of the interior is stunning compare to the empty and broken shell I saw back the 80s. This is the Promenade deck and it must have been a fantastic feeling to walk here while at sea in any kind of weather. The natural light has been used to brilliant effect.

The hull is still very holey. This view is from inside the forward hold and shows the light coming through what should be very thick iron plates. It's incredible how the SS Great Britain managed to float back into Bristol, a case of sheer determination over the laws of bouyancy The big shiny ducts are part of the de-humidifying system

Since then it has changed virtually beyond all recognition and the quick visit became in an depth wallowing in anti-corrosion technology and sheer reconstruction chutzpah. What was an empty hulk is now a steam ship once more and with all the interior fittings re-created you can understand what an extraordinary vessel this must have been when it was launched. It's the grand progenitor of all modern vessels. There were steam ships before but this one was so fast, so powerful and so big - the dock where it rests today had to be built specially for it - the SS Great Britain made unarguable economic sense. It was fast, powerful and big so could carry more passengers a greater distance more quickly. Lots of similar vessels followed but the SS Great Britain was the first.

The story of its recovery from the Falkland islands is epic in itself and I remember being fascinated by the idea of a ship having a piggy-back ride halfway round the world. That's how it was explained to this seven year old anyway.

But in 2001(Check) the custodians of the SS Great Britain realised with horror that the salts that had impregnated the iron hull had reacted irreversibly with the metal and that unless something drastic was done the ship would crumble away to nothing below the water line in a few more years.

To arrest this, a vast dehumidifying system now operates in the dock under a glass ceiling and any moisture that seeps through the walls of the dock is carried away in progressively bigger pipes.

Deep Thought II is one of two industrial strength dehumidifiers that keep the hull crumbling away to nothingness. The humidity in the dock equals the Arizona desert i.e only 20%. I got thirsty. I'm used to a more overcast 99.99%. 100% is where it would be raining.

Its future now appears assured, whereas in 1980-something I couldn't help but be struck by the monumental task of looking after this great iron edifice in the open air in a damp dock (rather than a dry dock) not so far from the salty seaside.

I particularly liked the engines. Reconstructed to the original design, these were awaiting overhaul since they have worked far longer and turned far more revolutions than the prototype ever did. Technological advances happened so quickly that it was cost effective to replace this somewhat inefficient design after only 9 years.

This is the chain that connects the crankshaft above to the propeller shaft below.

The chains that drive the propellor shaft reminded me of the chains on the Royal Albert Bridge across the River Tamar, a bridge I know well from the weekly commute into Plymouth. They seem to have been something of a Brunel trademark. The Royal Albert Bridge chains were originally destined for the Clifton Suspension Bridge but when the money ran out and construction stopped they were sold off to be used across the Tamar. Bridge building at Clifton was eventually resumed after Brunel's death and it was completed in 1864, 21 years after the SS Great Britain was launched and 33 years after rioting arrested construction. Two of the lengths of chains that were eventually used came from the Hungerford pedestrian bridge that Brunel designed. A third set of links for Clifton was made by the original ironfounder.

When the SS Great Britain came home, it was the first time it had ever travelled under the Clifton Suspension Bridge!

My ticket allows me free entry for another 12 months so I hope to see this gigantic inverted V4 running.

When it was built this 1000hp engine was the most powerful in the world. 9 years later the owners rebuilt the vessel with something more efficient, such was the state of technological advances in those years.

The impression I had admiring all the conrods and chains and gears was of being in a giant watch. It's a sensation that any steam punk would love and in one of the salons you can sit by a waxwork of Isambard Kingdom Brunel himself - although in real life I don't he ever sat down or was still for long.

Another reason for returning is to find out how they manage corrosion on the ironwork above the waterline. It's still exposed to the elements and I forgot to ask what paint they use.

Stiff Little Fingers at Bristol

2011-04-12T14:24:00.001-07:00

The best old school punk band still touring (Photo : Kevin Ruscoe)

I've been seeing Stiff Little Fingers at least once every year over the last ten years and my mate Gary has now seen them over 30 times. For me they are the best punk band to see at the moment and their songs are just as relevant as they ever were.

In a way that's quite sad. The world has not improved much in the last 30 years. Tin Soldier and Wasted Life mean as much now as they ever did, even taking into account the success of the peace process in Northern Ireland.

But really these are anthems about the human condition. Alternative Ulster could apply to any city, any community.

Originally, the support was to have been Spear of Destiny but Kirk Brandon was ill. So a local band by the name of Los Conios stepped in. They were not received as well they deserved, despite being a local band. I liked their recent single, Split, which I've downloaded from Amazon, but felt their tempo changes were sometimes a little abrupt and may be a bar to future success.I'm a simple chap with simple tastes

SLF did not disappoint. They played Listen, to my considerable delight. They hadn't played it for ages.

They also tantalised us new songs from a forthcoming album. It's been coming forth for years but is coming forth even more now!

And as an encore they gave us I fought the law.

Jake said "Everybody else has murdered it so we might just as well have a go."

It was an inspired choice and done just as well as the highly appreciative audience liked.

Jake said during the set that Stiff Little Fingers always feel the Bristol crowd made them feel very welcome and that's the way it felt to me. When Jake did his windmill arm thing (on any else his age this could look very silly) the crowd in front of me looked at his/her neighbour in amazement - it looked that good.

A great performance from a great band in a great venue. The crowd were great, too!

I moshed. In the circumstances it was impossible not to.

Vintage Thing No. 83 - Chrysler Heston Airflow

2011-03-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

At the National Railway Museum in York, to emphasize the importance of streamlining in pre-war industrial design, some inspired person had arranged for a Chrysler Airflow saloon to be parked next to the Duchess of Hamilton. The Duchess of Hamilton has been rebuilt with the eye catching fairings it had when new. Many streamlined engines lost them during WW2 when speeds were slow and access problems hampered maintenance. Mallard is probably the most iconic of Britain's wind-cheating locomotives but the LMS engines were their great rivals. And they had go-faster stripes.

So what would the streamlining enthusiast have chosen for his motor car? From stepping off the Coronation Scot hauled by the Duchess of Hamilton to his Schneider Trophy winning Supermarine seaplane, our man would have travelled in a Chrysler Heston Airflow.

The Chrysler Heston Airflow - Chrysler Charlton Heston Airflow sounds impossibly heroic - was the UK version, modified for use in Blighty by the importers based in Kew, who had a penchant for naming the UK-market Chryslers after London suburbs such as Kingston and Richmond. Shame there wasn't a Chrysler Tooting. Anyway, the looks of the original Airflow proved controversial in its home country so the Chrysler Heston Airflow was re-styled slightly. Personally I think it looks better for it.

It struck me long ago how outward looking American car manufacturers were before WW2. Many black and white films from that era based in far flung corners of the world have Chevies and Dodges serving as taxicabs. The US was exporting cars, penetrating markets they subsequently gave up on. After WW2, the US auto industry had enough on its plate satisfying domestic demand and satisfied expansionist aims abroad by developing local designs for specific markets.

In some ways the Chrysler Airflow and its contemporaries pointed the way to later Detroit thinking about "world cars" for the Heston variety featured right hand drive, servo brakes and an overdrive gearbox. Other Chrysler models even had small bore motors to deal with the ludicrous tax system based on a car's RAC rating, which was a function of its cylinder bore. But whatever the regional differences, all Chrysler Airflows, whether built in the US or Canada or tweaked by the concessionaires at Kew, were recognised across the globe as being the same car.

The original Chrysler Airflow looked like no other car when it was introduced in the US in 1934. Photo : Randy Stern

As far as I know the Duchess of Hamilton never went into a wind tunnel but the Chrysler Airflow was born in one. Carl Breer, Fred Zeder and Owen Skelton set out to determine the most aerodynamic forms and the Airflow was the result of their endeavours. Wilbur Wright was also consulted on the cars aerodynamics and their studies showed that the typical American car of the thirties cleaved the air more cleanly if travelling backwards - a slight usually heaped just on the Austin Allegro.

It seems obvious now but if you paid attention to the aerodynamic form you got free horsepower or used less fuel. It also gave your products impact and excitement.

But the Chrysler Airflow was a bit too rad. When I first saw one I thought it ugly. The years have been kinder to it but back in 1934 it was too extreme. The Heston version is easier on the eye.

Less streamlined than the original Airstream, I reckon the Heston looks better.

On paper, the Airflow had a lot going for it. It had a semi-monocoque bodyshell and was famously strong with publicity films showing it tumbling down a cliff before being driven off again. There was no structural wood and its power-to weight ratio was an industry leader. The packaging was good, too, with the widest front seat in its class and an umbrella handbrake to make the most of this broad bench seat. The engine was mounted further forward to achieve a 50/50 weight distribution and increase space further, with the passengers seated between the wheels rather than on top of them.

At its launch, the Chrysler Airflow was upstaged by Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion" car, which looked even weirder, although this was not a production car. Fuller described it as a study into the taxing mode of a flying car but it suffered a fatal accident, prompting claims it was unstable.

The main problem with the Airflow was that the welding processes in manufacturing often failed, compromising build quality and structural integrity. Its looks counted against it and competitors capitalised on this with slur campaigns. Unfounded rumours suggested it was unsafe and that "ground hugging weight" made more conventional cars hold the road better.

Chrysler reacted quickly and produced the Airstream, a much more conservative design in keeping with the rest of the industry's idea of what streamlining should look like without having actually been - well, streamlined. In Britain, the Airstream became the Airglide, because that pesky limey outfit Singer had already registered the name as a trademark as the enthusiasm for all things streamlined and fastbacked spread.

Inside an American Airflow. Photo : Trekphiler

In subsequent production years, the Airflow soldiered on but progressively acquired a more conventional grille in 1935 and a boot (or trunk) in 1936. The Airflow's final year was 1937 and its failure to inspire the American buying public has been cited by many historians as the cause for Chrysler's conservative styling from then on until Virgil Exner successfully persuaded the board to push the styling theme forward from the middle of the fifties. Some theories suggest that the Airflow made so many older Chryslers look so old overnight that secondhand sales and trade in values suffered, as if designed obsolesence had got out of hand. A more carefully managed approach to updating the group's cars was certainly the result.

Few Heston Airflows were sold in 1934 so many were kept in stock and sold the following year with updated grilles and an "L" added to the model designation, L being the engineering department's code for the 1934 model year. Thus the CU model Airflow became the CUL. Any not sold in 1935 had an M added to become a CUM in 1936. Therefore, a 1936 Airflow could've been built the year before or the year before that!

I think that by 1936 they'd given up making new Airflows although they were still offered until 1937.

The Heston Airflow had a baby brother in the form of the Croydon Airflow, which was a re-badged De Soto masquerading as a six-cylinder Chrysler. There was also a Royal Airflow, in actuality a Chrysler Airflow Imperial. Michael Sedgwick, the motoring historian, described these as elephantine, for they rode on a 146 inch wheelbase, weighed over 2 tons, did 10 miles to the gallon with a 6318cc nine bearing engine and could be had as a saloon or limo. Sedgwick reckoned only two Royal Airflows were imported, one sporting the updated grille for 1935.

That spare wheel cover is a lovely shape - but what does it do to the airflow?

So this 1935 Chrysler Heston Airflow is a rare survivor. Never common, it has somehow avoided fuel crises, being used as a stock car (the fate of many big yankee cars when the MOT test came in) and the terrible twilight existence of being old, fast and cheap, which is where I usually catch up with classic cars.

The powerplant was a typical Chrysler product of the time, a side valve straight 8. It doesn't sound very inspiring until you get to the cubic capacity - a rather superlative 5296cc from a bore and stroke of 82.5 x 123.8mm. The RAC rating was 33.8hp so it was expensive to run but the manufacturer's quoted horsepower was 122 at 3,400rpm on a 6:1 compression ratio. I haven't any torque figures but it was probably "adequate". An optional aluminium head pushed the CR up to 6.5:1 and later versions of this same 5 bearing engine put out 138bhp for a 90mph top speed by the outbreak of WW2.

In short, this was American state of the art. It was just the sort of engine that excited the chaps at Railton and Brough Superior, chaps who combined US engines with lightweight British chassis and coachwork to produce what Michael Sedgwick (him again) so aptly called "Anglo-American bastards." They had no pedigree but were pre-war supercars and something of a bargain compared with a Bentley or an Alvis or a Lagonda.

It strikes me, though, that the Chrysler Heston Airflow was already lighter than the average US sedan so could have rivalled these supercars and it's interesting to note that Chrysler in Kew seemed to have had the same idea.

In 1937, Chrysler UK briefly offered the Super Power Eight with this very engine. The bodywork was designed by racing driver and record breaker Capt George Eyston and built by Carlton and although it weighed 35 cwt it could nearly do the ton. About half a dozen were built and one survives although I've never seen it. Illustrations show a kind of British Airflow.

It also strikes me how similar The Chrysler Airflow was to the Citroen Traction Avant. These cars were contemporaries and pushed the boat out for technology. They looked lower and racier than practically anything on the road. Both caused huge problems for their manufacturers. But one car has entered the hall of motoring fame and the other one hasn't. One found a place in the hearts of its people, the other barely gets a memorable mention anywhere.

It's interesting to note that although we know who designed the original Airflow, those responsible for the facelifting have gone unrecorded.

It seems incredible that this is an anonymous design but Sir William Stanier certainly did not produce those lines. The question is, who did?

There's a fascinating parallel with the Duchess of Hamilton, here. Although clearly a Stanier pacific, Sir William Stanier hated streamlining! The designer responsible was probably Tommy Coleman, one of his senior draughtsmen.

Didn't he do well?

Shinkansen

2011-03-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

The Bullet Train still looks fantastic almost fifty years after its introduction

Another observation from my trip to York was about high speed rail travel. At the National Railway Museum was a Japanese Bullet train. Much as I like steam engines, I remember the first time I heard of the Bullet Train. It looked like a piece of space technology on rails and travelled at over 130mph. I liked it despite my loyalty to steam. This was a truly futuristic form of travel, a revolution based on first principles rather than one that had simply grown out of tradition.

So could we have a Bullet Train in Britain?

At the museum, actors were putting on a small story telling play about the Bullet Train or Shinkansen - literally the new main line.

They put across the point that the Bullet Train rejected the standard gauge of 3'6" with which a British engineer had saddled the country from the outset. It adopted standard gauge but the train in the museum was conspiciously wider than anything that ran in Britain - the loading gauge was still much wider.

They also showed how Britain was overtaken in technology by Japan.

Could the Bullet train ever happen in Britain?

In a way it has. The 395 Class on the High Speed 1 line from Dover to St Pancras were built by Hitachi using Shinkansen technology.

There's currently the debate about the HS2 between London and Birmingham. HS1 was the UK's belated answer to the super trains on the continent and happened becasue the British were shamed into building a high speed link to Channel Tunnel.

HS2 looks good to me when the UK has a transport system many third world countries would be ashamed of.

You'd think it would make environmental sense, too, but people who live on the proposed route through the Chiltern Hills claim it'll make a scar across their landscapes. Personally I think a train enhances a landscape and would love it if the Liskeard and Caradon was re-opened as was proposed recently.

The HS2 would be more intrusive, though, due to its sheer speed. Putting the HS2 in tunnels under Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty doesn't always work - when the high speed train bursts out of a tunnel it produces a tunnel boom. If you're not expecting it in a sylvan setting it could be quite a surprise. Maybe it would be best to keep it above ground. Then we could admire it instead of hide it.

If the HS2 ran somewhere else, these people would give a damn about it. Another lot would probably spring up in their place.

Would they prefer people drove their cars from city to city or flew? That is not their problem. Devalued property prices are.

I remember seeing an interview with a farmer whose farm was bisected by the LGV Nord line from Brussels to Calais. A British film crew asked him if he was unhappy about this and he said, "But of course, but this is for France!"

The HS2 probably won't just stop at Birmingham but will stretch up Scotland. Currently, rail travel can't quite match air travel for speed even when you factor in the messing about at check-in. A national HS2 service might almost match internal flights and have less environmental impact.

The Bullet Train boosted the local economies of the towns it served as well as saddled the operators with debt but its long term positive impact probably can't be counted in vile money. I think that is what this French gentleman understood do well. The protesters might have a point when they claim that the business case doesn't stack up but for me the HS2 represents a "Thunderbirds" moment when advanced transport technology can only be admired.

I'm in the yes camp then, although the yes camp website seem full of business case acronyms only someone with an MBA would really understand.

If we are clever we can preserve our environment and have our high speed links.

But the less said about the premature demise of Maglev in the UK the better.

Magnetic levitation is what the Japanese are investigating for the next shinkansen. And this has already happened in Britain!

Except that it was restricted to a low speed section at Birmingham Exhibition Centre and Airport and was closed in 1995 because it had become unreliable.

I am old enough to remember maglev systems appearing on Tomorrow's World (a TV programme about new inventions) but am young enough to remember the excitement maglev systems instilled in me.

These are truly trains that fly and the next generation of Bullet Train will be superb. I just hope it happens in Britain as well as Japan like this proposal.

Finally, I can recall another wild proposal. I think it was on Tomorrow's World again but was essentially a sexed up version of Brunel's atmospheric railway. Instead of carriages being propelled by bullet in tubes, this atmospheric railway featured carriages inside the tubes. With more extreme pressure differentials in front and behind of these passenger carrying units, vast speeds were proposed and the whole system would be underground. In fact, the proposed sytem could girdle the earth at speeds approaching those of air travel.

I'm not sure if earth quakes were an issue with the underground tubes but suspect that if we're brainy enough we can solve anything.

Loser cruiser? Chauffered loafer!

2011-03-11T15:34:00.000-08:00

Wrightbus have successfully won market share in the fiercely competitive bus market. I'd never heard of them until recently. Obviously I'm a lapsed industrial designer. Or they build buses too quietly.

Some people refer to modes of public transport, particularly omnibuses, as loser cruisers. I think this originates from Margaret Thatcher who described "A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself a failure."

From a snobbish Tory point of view, public transport is not aspirational. Despite my engine punk proclivities, I am an enthusiastic and regular user of public transport. Having adopted the train and walking as the means of my commute (apart from the short drive to the station) I have become a leisure driver. Apart from shopping trips, these days I drive purely for pleasure.

From my latest environmental audit, I am greener than most. This always surprises me because engine punks like me are suppoosed to be public enemy number one.

I use public transport, my cars are looked after better than most, I don't have a dog and I will leave no legacy of carbon emissions once I'm gone because I don't have kids. The main area of improvement is to update my domestic appliances and heat my home more effectively. My most recent exploration of foreign parts only added to my surprisingly green credentials, foreign as in not Cornwall.

I spent a weekend on a jaunt up to York and back, simply because I'd never been there and wanted to see the Jorvik Viking Centre and the National Railway Museum. Driving was one option but I did a little travel plan and found much better alternatives. In my experience, cars are no good for point to point city centre travel. They're only really effective for touring or convoluted journeys. If you can do without flexibility, public transport comes out tops and for inter-city travel, trains are best. No wonder they call them inter-city.

Rather than leave my car for several days cluttering up the streets in town - I refuse to pay parking fees following the debacle over charges at Liskeard railway station (see earlier rants on this blog) - I caught the rural bus that runs hourly passed the bottom of my road. The rail service was a direct connection to York through Birmingham New Street with no changes and chatting with Jo in the ticket office confirmed that by booking well in advance I had saved over £50. The price of the tickets was less than a tank of fuel to drive up to York one way, even if I took my most economic road module. In the end, it didn't quite arrive on time but only 10 minutes late

Once in York, I walked a great deal and also sampled the open topped double deckers when my feet got sore.

Tourist buses used to be old and decrepit but this Dennis Trident was a very smart conversion. You could sit up front in the warm or take photos at the back also in the warm! If you sat on the right - as far as you could go to the right - you sat on top of the heater. Lovely! And with that special perspective that double deck travel gives you, too

I like these sight-seeing buses. I've used them on a number of visits to historic cities and they all offer 24-hour tickets and the ability to hop on and off if a part of the city takes your particular interest.

I also sampled the regular bus services and although the one I really needed was a bit unpunctual and could be cheaper, there were still no concerns about navigating to a parking space.

It wasn't all such sweetness and light on the rail journey home, though. Signal problems at Morpeth slowed progress before my train reached York and then an abusive passenger who insisted on smoking had to be arrested at Newcastle.

He was probably still cross about what Thatcher said about him.

That is the problem with public transport. You share it with the public and sometimes, no matter how good the technology or organisation, your fellow travellers let you down.

This can also happen on the roads, of course, but since most people on the roads are driving wheeled cages they can get angry with each other and smoke in privacy.

I regard people going the same way as me as companions who have the same interest, namely that of reaching our destination. In fact, I am usually going in such an odd direction that anyone even crossing my path is worthy of comment. With that little bit in common, we can then share all sorts of other enthusiasms and advice. We even had some community singing on the return train, which now an hour late, lost its path at Birmingham, so we had to alight at Derby and board the following train, which was also running down to Penzance.

Sometimes, though, I don't want to share anything with them because the general public can be truly horrible but this is rare.

By the time I got back to Liskeard, the buses had stopped running so a taxi was my choice of travel. It was expensive (7 quid for a 3 mile journey) and I could have walked but there's no footpath and I had a little too much luggage to drag around the - surprisingly busy - country lanes after dark.

So there I was, home again having been chauffered virtually the length and breadth of the country. I'd do it again, too. I think at 1.85m tall I am the maximum size for a public transport user. Some railway carriages offer poor leg room, presumably so they can cram more passengers on. The regular DMUs on my weekly commute are so poor I often wedge my legs in and afterwards my knees don't feel right having been pressed hard up against the seat in front of me. Cross Country trains are a lot better but I still got my feet trodden on by the passenger in front.

What chance would Ivar the Boneless have had of a comfy journey? At 9 feet tall, this Viking conqueror of York would've hated public transport. Some say his Boneless nickname stems from having a twisted back. Others say it was because he was impotent (although I think boneless is a twentieth century description). Both maladies could have resulted from poor seating arrangements on public transport. Another, theory is that he was such a limber fighter that he moved as if he was boneless. Maybe he could've contorted himself into a modern train.

Richard Seymour in a short film telling the secret of how he won the design contract for the Inter City 250

Among other things, in the National Railway Museum I watched a short interview with Richard Seymour of industrial design consultancy Seymour Powell, the company responsible for the design of the most recent high speed trains in Britain. His winning pitch to his clients centred upon reviving the boyish aspirations of being an engine driver. This struck a chord with me - that's engine punk!

So the wheel is turning, turning away from Thatcher's doctrine about failure. Public transport is once again becoming aspirational.

There's more.

To a simple country boy, bendy buses are amazing and York had several. Best of all were these Wright bendy buses. I didn't have the opportunity to sample one myself because I ran out of time but I aspire to. I think they look sensational!

Bendy buses have a bad name in Britain but I undertand form a friend of mine in the logistics world that this was a media inspired slur and all the claims of being fire traps and cyclist killers are lies. They might be difficult to get on a normal size low-loader but would you really try that with a double-decker, the bendy bus's alternative? Only the fare dodging claims stand some scrutiny and even then they're not as bad as the media claims.

And because they are bendy maybe old Ivar the Boneless could've coped with them better than squeezing his lanky frame into a longboat.

Cars and motorbikes have a spirit of adventure about them. Commuting to work does not and should not. Who wants to appear to struggle in to work? Apparently, SUV drivers do and, stressed out and spiteful, they compensate for their mundane lives by trying to look as if they are a bit exciting. Nobody really believes these people have an active life style when they see what lard arses they are. When I see a SUV commuting, I see the fear that dwells in their drivers' hearts - the fear of road rage, getting lost (which is having a real adventure and being able to cope with it), of finding somewhere to park and of being able to afford the parking space once they find it.

And these are the sorts of people who call the likes of me a loser through my choice of transport.

This is the sensational Wright StreetCar, making small boys want to become bus drivers. Inspirational and aspirational, just the point Richard Seymour was putting across.

The only way to really avoid public transport is to have your own dedicated road. Even if you fly you're sharing airspace with someone so that dedicated road should be empty of all other transport.

In short, it should look like a Bus Lane.

There's scope for a different kind of excitement with travel. It may be a mundane everyday journey but see what nonchalance I display as I hop from one form of transport to another while SUV man is still looking for a parking space.

So rather than a loser in a loser cruiser, on public transport expedition I felt like a chauffered loafer. I had no worries about getting lost en route or of finding somewhere to park my bus or train at the end of the journey. I could get something to eat, read, walk around, sing with my fellow passengers and look out of the window. Or just fall asleep. The only things I didn't do were flash up my laptop or watch a DVD. My simple journey was cheaper than using private transport, too.

So who's the loser now?

Chauffered loafing - try it! Now!

Confusing the hell out of the White Notation

2011-02-28T15:36:00.001-08:00

The White Notation is a means of describing different types of engine but I've been exploring some more of A E Durrant's works on obscure steam railway engines and found a very curious pair that defy classification according to their wheel arrangement.

Wheel arranging sounds suspiciously like flower arranging to me but is really a very serious business involving weight restrictions, chassis flexibility and maximising adhesion. Most engines can be classified very simply and the White system quickly allows an impression of the engine to be formed, whether it's a humble 0-4-0T or an express 4-6-2.

The French, being the French, had to be different and used their own system that counted only the wheels you could see from one side, so a 4-6-2 became a 231 - perfectly logical but determinedly different.

However, neither system copes perfectly with some engines.

Look closely between the middle and trailing driving wheels and you'll see an extra pair of carrying wheels. To my eyes, these appear to be vestigial limbs but they were critical to successful operation (Photo: The Steam Locomotives of Eastern Europe by A E Durrant)

The first one is a Turkish 2-6-0 or mogul with an extra pair of carrying wheels between the middle and trailing driving wheels. These engines were very successful across the Turkish system but for the lightly laid Chemin de Fer Ottoman Anatolie (CFOA) their axle loading was too heavy. This line was built with French capital and was originally to a narrow gauge of 1100mm. It was subsequently widened to standard gauge but the civil engineering works imposed a 15½ ton axle load. The solution was to spread the weight of the engine with an extra axle, thanks the long coupled wheelbase on these moguls.

Using the White notation, Durrant classified them as 2-6-(2)-0, which is a good compromise. The French might therefore call it a 13(1)0. As it's something more than a Mogul perhaps we should call it a Rajah. With the extra wheels, the axle weight fell to 13½ tons.

This is a six-coupled pannier tank with a similar pair of carrying wheels. This magnificent O gauge model was built by Dennis Allenden and looks like it came out of a steam punk novel. (Photo Model Railways)

A similar arrangement was used on the Etat Belge and a lovely O gauge model by Denis Allenden (a Brit living in the US modelling French railways) featured in Model Railways magazine in 1974, from which these pictures are taken.

I was fascinated by this engine as a boy, not only because of its extra carrying wheels but also because it's an 0-6-0 pannier tank and, until I saw this, I thought pannier tanks were unique to the GWR. This engine was designed by Alfred Belpaire who gave his name to the distinctive square topped fireboxes featured on so many famous engines in the latter days of steam. The square chimney bothered me a bit but what was almost frightening to my youthful preconceptions of what an engine should look like was the pair of extra carrying wheels nonchalantly inserted between the driving wheels.

Magnificently weird, these engines were built in 1873 for fast suburban services between Brussels and Ottignes and were derived from an earlier design of tender engine. The extra weight of the pannier tanks meant the axle loading would have been excessive if these extra wheels hadn't been inserted. (Photo: Model Railways)

That's just where they were needed, though, and their inclusion made the civil engineers sleep better at night.

Weirdest of all Mallet locomotives and a tribute to complexity, this locomotive's wheel arrangement defies description. (Photo : Florisdorf)

However, I humbly submit that this engine confuses the hell out of any wheel classification. It's a rack and adhesion Mallet locomotive built by the firm of Florisdorf (flower village?) for the 760mm gauge Bosnia-Hercegovina Railway in 1906. Ostensibly an 0-4-6-0 locomotive, if you look closely what appear to be wheels are actually cranks that drive the rack mechanism within the frames. Further inspection reveals two undriven carrying wheels at either end of this bogie, which has no adhesive power.

I suppose that makes it a 2-2-6-0 but shouldn't the rack mechanism receive some recognition for its contribution to motive power, even if it is only occasional?

This engine is so weird I want to take it home to marvel at its oddness and look after it although in reality this layout didn't make much sense. This class of engine remained isolated and didn't run for long. Durrant says they lasted for 30 years and that the best means of describing their wheel arrangement is to use the German system, which would be 2zz+C.

The German system is a mystery to me.

I think it should be the exception to every attempt at classification and remain steadfastly unclassifiable and unclassified.

Vintage Thing No.82 - the Norvin

2011-02-24T14:44:00.000-08:00

Virtually line perfect, Norvins look the part but probably don't offer much over the standard Vincent. Still, wooargh, though, eh?

The green shoots of spring are bursting through and nowhere is this more noticeable than in my piles of old photos that not only grow but creep around the house. The date and location of this snap of a Norvin at some show or other have long been lost but the look of the bike was enough to stop me dead in my tracks.

For many years, Norvins were my ultimate British bike until I discovered the Egli-Vincent and that's more European than British. The Norvin was a logical extension of the Triton - put the best engine you can find in the best frame you can find.

While this worked well for the marriage between Triumph engines and Norton frames, the Norvin didn't make quite so much sense. The standard Vincent frame was more of a small box behind the headstock. The engine didn't really need cradling in tubes.

What counted against the Vincent during the late fifties and sixties was the look of its front suspension. Against the dramatic lines of a Triton a Vinnie looked old-fashioned and it was largely the dictates of fashion that saw Vincent engine squeezed into Norton Featherbed frames.

Worst of all, the engine had to be butchered to fit. You can make a Norvin out of a Vincent but you can't make a Vincent out of a Norvin. The integral gearbox on the Vincent engine has a rather beautifully engineered swing-arm pivot with taper rollers having a design life of 100,000 miles. that has to come off with a hacksaw if it's to go into the Norton frame, which of course has its own swing arm.

But I'm glad these bikes were built. The result is one hell of a machine and was immortalised by Paul Sample when it chose one as the mount for the ultimate biker hero, Ogri. This bike epitomises the half-breed. No engine seems to look out of place in the Featherbed frame but the Vincent engine fills it beautifully. And that's the problem.

The Vincent engine is almost too much of a squeeze. In slimline frames the engine has to sit high to clear the frame rails, taking the centre of gravity up with it. Some Norvin builders lengthened the frame tubes or cut the cradle away together.

I can remember discussing Vincents with the motorcycle chassis designer Tony Foale. The standard machine appealed to him far more for its purity of design. Most of the Norton frame was superfluous to his critical eye.

There were worse Vincent specials, though. Tony was appalled by a Vincent vee-twin plumbed into a Seeley frame intended for a Manx Norton or an AJS 7R, which appeared in Classic Bike magazine in the mid-eighties.

"The carbies are right where the downtubes are. Look how he's had to lengthen the inlet manifolds to get them to clear the frame. That's just by the rider's knees. The carburation'll will be well off - why didn't he get Colin Seeley to build a frame that fitted?"

The Norvin remained a very attractive bike despite these compromises and a dealer engaged in small series production to produce the Viscount in the early sixties. All my reference material omits the name of this "dealer", presumably to protect his identity from lynch mobs.

But the Egli frame appeals more to me these days, although Nero - to my eyes the ultimate Vincent Vincent - is fantastic.

Anti-railway conspiracies

2011-02-16T12:02:00.000-08:00

If you've ever suspected Dr Beeching wasn't playing fair read this.

Although partial to steam engines, it's internal combustion that I really like. It seems that much more accessible to me and oil based fuels still seem to pack the most bang-per-buck-by volume, which is critical for automotive transport.

But sometimes I come across stories where petrol and diesel powered machines were promoted for political reasons. One collection of these was The Great Railway Conspiracy, in which David Henshaw gathers evidence on deliberate policies to make railways unusable before citing lack of use as a reason for closing lines down.

But I recently came across a reference to another anti-steam engine conspiracy.

It was in A E Durrant's book on The Mallet Locomotive. It would appear that in the USA diesel engines were promoted by the oil companies, whose political might was sufficient to ensure that the operating companies remained fragmented and offer a united challenge to the premise that diesel was more modern and simply better.

Durrant describes this as a diesel confidence trick that spread to other countries. I could paraphrase his argument but in the following - albeit long - paragraph I think he puts his point across better than I can so I quote directly from The Mallet Locomotive.

"In that brief decade of the fifties, American railroads went from being a predominantly steam-operated institution to almost full dieselisation, and numerous powerful and modern steam locomotives were laid aside and scrapped almost before they had been run in. With them, of course, went the big modern Mallets, and the whole story is a sad one of how the large, powerful oil companies and diesel manufacturers either persuaded the railroads to buy diesels, using dubious comparisons between the best results of new diesels and average results from over-age steam, or by virtual blackmail in threatening to divert traffic from railroads not investing in their diesels. Thus administrations which had rejected a three-cylinder, or poppet-valved steam as ‘too complicated’ found themselves saddled with highly complex diesel power, plus expensive equipment service and repair it. What is more, they did not last. By the time a good steam engine would have been decently run in the diesel needed a new engine, or even completely renewing, and the initial few cents saving on fuel became a constant drain on capital for costly new components, assemblies, or complete diesel locomotives. The result was as planned – railroads made less profit on their main lines, and losses on the secondary services which they had close. Eventually, even the main lines may disappear and this is just what the oil and diesel interests want. The hundred-car freight hauled by a Mallet offers no profit to the diesel builder, nor to the oil purveyor. A three- or four-unit diesel to do the same work reverses the situation, but what the manufacturers really want to see is the train replaced by a hundred road leviathans – a hundred road diesels each of the 250 hp represent more profit very fact that the 8000 hp set diesel locomotives needed to perform the same transportation job. And, of course, for the oil supplier 25,000 horsepower’s worth of oil to cart the load is better than 8000 hp worth by diesel locomotive, and infinitely superior (to them) than 8000 hp steam locomotive burning coal or low-grade (and low profit!) residual oil. To speed the change-over, railroad mergers were opposed (as large, strong railroads might prove less tractable than smaller concerns frightened by cut-throat competition), and pressures maintained at Federal and State Government levels to subsidise the roads and tax the railroads. One man in the USA, just too late, saw what was happening and wrote a learned paper on the subject. He was not allowed to read it in America, nor to the Institute of Locomotive Engineers in Britain although Britain's Institute of Mechanical Engineers did permit him to read this paper in 1958. Unfortunately, the lessons were not learnt and the same commercial pressures which killed the American Mallets were allowed to swarm across the Atlantic and decimate Britain's railway system, together with its rolling stock and coal industries, thus reducing exports, increasing imports and throwing people out of work – all to enable more diesel lorries to wreck the roads and improve the atmosphere."

Durrant knew his subject and that final sentence seems particularly far-sighted when you realise he was writing in 1974.

In mitigation, I think inner-city air pollution problems contributed to killing off the steam locomotive but maybe one fully loaded train really is cleaner to run than the equivalent in road diesel engines. There is the argument that one big source of pollution is easier to ameliorate than lots of little ones - especially if the little ones are mobile.

I'm sorry to think the noble Mallet locomotive was cut off in its prime and suspect similar conspiracies are in train as I write this today. Public transport diverts money away from the government whereas highly taxed road transport brings in the dosh. We haven't learnt anything it seems and my generation is making all the same mistakes as the previous ones without aren't being so nice about it.

I doubt there's a future for the human race.

So lets celebrate and vaporise (as Heaven 17 once sang on Let's all make a bomb) - the internal combustion engine is still a thing of beauty and wonder to me - and leave the world to a species more worthy.