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Showing posts from March, 2012

Vintage Thing No.104 - Luigi

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Luigi looks all shiny and new here. Those front wheels were reputedly off a Ferrari. They were ultra-light but were sold off for some ridiculously high amount before Luigi came my way. Luigi is Kermit's younger Italian brother. If my memory serves me right it was 1987 when I stumbled over Luigi at Tregrehan. Luigi is low and I am not. This was the same place where I'd seen Kermit (VT No.101) a few years before and at the time I thought I'd found Kermit again but this device was obviously Alfasud powered and had a great slab of radiator sitting up front. I subsequently discovered that it was called Luigi and entirely new. Luigi embodied a few lessons learnt from campaigning Kermit. These included the use of a single rear wheel (albeit a spectacularly wide rear wheel) with a Citroen suspension sphere pressed into service on the home made box section swing arm. Not a brillinat photo but it's the only image I've got of Luigi (or Kermit for that matter) in ac...

Vintage Thing No.103 - the Low Super Vee

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The Lomax Super Vee rose again after an intensive reworking by Pete Low so I call it the Low Super Vee Following the problems of the Super Vee engine, the Lomax Super Vee project was abandoned and the rolling chassis lingered at the Lomax factory until 1999 when my mate Pete Low (he of hopped up Armstrong motorcycle fame - see VT No.15 ) visited the factory. Pete had already built a very successful 2CV-based Lomax with which he'd competed in many Guild of Endurance Motorists events throughout Europe. After many giant-killing perfomance, Pete was on the look out for more power and having owned a Moto Guzzi Le Mans had formed a cunning plan. "To begin with, I was only thinking of putting a Guzzi engine into my much loved Lomax 223." Then on the 1999 Guild of Endurance Motorists event, Pete met Peter Van Pelt, a Dutch guy who had a Lomax business in Holland. He was competing in a 224 Lomax with a 1300 GSA engine but told Pete he could supply an adaptor plate to ...

Firedrake Files No.6 - Brecon Mountain Railway No.2

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No.2 looks big for an engine running on the two foot Last summer I visited Wales with a Great Little Trains discount ticket and the first railway on which I travelled was the 1'11 ¾ " gauge Brecon Mountain Railway. I'd never heard of the Brecon Mountain Railway until I'd bought my ticket. What with the rebuilding of the Lynton and Barnstaple and the recent re-opening of the Welsh Highland Railway, it seems "new" Great Little Trains are popping up everywhere. Look on a touring map of the UK and you see a preserved railway on virtually every page. It's too new to be featured in my little book on The Great Little Trains of Wales and because it runs on a standard gauge trackbed it feels bigger than other narrow gauge lines. The size of their No.2 allows quite large trains to be hauled, which is what today's passenger numbers require. A balloon stack would take you back to the Wild West but the lush Welsh landscape mean sparks don...

Vintage Thing No.102 - Lomax Super Vee

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For Lomax, the Super Vee marked an entry into a whole new market (Photo: Lomax Motor Co.) The Lomax Super Vee was a super three wheeler conceived by Nigel Whall who ran the Lomax Motor Co. Most Lomaxes were Citroen 2CV based but a handful had been built with air cooled Citroen GS and GSA four cylinder engines. A factory option by Lomax featuring even more serious performance seemed to make a lot of sense. As Lomaxes looked similar to the classic Morgan vee-twin, a large vee-twin engine would be ideal. A US serviceman stationed in the UK told Nigel that the Nostalgia Cycle Inc of California made an air-cooled vee-twin 1543cc engine using some V8 Chevrolet parts. Called the Super Vee, this engine had been conceived as an alternative to hogged out Harley-Davidson engines and was intended to power kit built choppers. On paper, this made a lot of sense. Chevy engine parts were cheap and the sheer torque of the engine promised excellent performance in a three-wheeler the weight of a...