Engine Punk

VAT 69 caught my eye in the car park of our hotel after the 2022 Exeter Trial The 92nd Exeter Trials people's choice for Spirit of the Event went to Hughie Walker and Angus Frost with their Austin 7 special VAT 69. Their climb up Simms was a tremendous crowd pleaser and finishing one of the wettest Exeters in a machine without roof, doors, sides and windscreens was nothing short of superhuman. From a distance, VAT 69 could be mistaken for a GN special that had eaten its greens. Through the trees and rain it sounded a bit like a vee twin but those cylinders are at the widest vee possible - 180 degrees. This is an engine whose barrels have fallen out. They dislike each other so much they can't be in the same engine compartment. They are horizontally opposed. That power bulge down the side is for the driver's feet I like flat twins. The layout is still relevant today in modern cars for packaging reasons. The term horizontally opposed sounds earnestly belligerent but 180 degree...

Team Inappropriate lurk in the hotel car park. Preparations for “Noddy goes trialling again in an Arkley SS" began some months before the 92 nd Exeter trial. After the Tamar Trial in October, I had come to notice a notchiness to the steering on the Arkley-MG . All that wheel waggling to move the front wheels from lock to lock, persuading the car to elbow its way up sections like Angel Steps, seemed to have taken their toll around the straight ahead position. The steering wheel would move freely for about a centimetre at the rim but then grew stiff. There was also the small matter of the MoT in December. I know my car is exempt but I like the peer review of my work by a professional. I ordered a replacement steering rack and discovered there were two sorts. You can have a thin one or a beefier one. I ended up with a thick one but found that the Arkley-MG used the thin sort. They’re not interchangeable. During a chat over a brew of tea at his workshop, Adrian Booth told me that ...