Engine Punk

Looks quite innocent don't it? Many people remember the turbocharged 2CV that Car magazine featured back in the eighties. It famously caught fire but showed what could be achieved in squeezing out more power from these little engines. This supercharged 2CV6 belongs to Alan Mills and although he didn't build it, he's still developing it. The exhaust note was a bit of a give away. It had a much harder edge to it and the ends of the pipes looked like blow-off valves. Behind the standard headlamp bar is the cover for the belt drive to the supercharger. You can just see the little blower under the carb. Those are tool boxes either side of the wheel to maximise traction and that front bumper is a roll of lead. The supercharger fits on top of the engine and is driven by a belt behind the standard cooling fan. It's a shortened Roots blower and sits under a down draught carb. Not a great shot but we were about to climb Crackington on the 2015 LET The clever ...

Stephen Bailey's MG Midge during tea and cake after his successful ascent of Sutcombe Hill A Midge was a kit car you built from plans available back in the eighties. More of a self-build affair, some parts were purchasable to ease the construction process. Most were based on Triumph Herald chassis, which made the process of construction fairly easy especially if you had a vintage style radiator shell to hand. Stephen Bailey built a Midge but then felt he could build another one specifically for trials. Instead of a Herald he managed to find a pre-war MG chassis and used most of that as the basis for his Class 8 trials special. hardly anything else MG went into. The running gear is mostly Ford with a 1620cc Kent engine. This has a single SU on quite a long inlet tract for torque, hence that round thing on the bonnet. I think he used Triumph uprights I asked him how he'd registered it and he said he'd built such a long time ago the DVLA trusted anyone who was bui...

For us the course closing car was never far away So Binky and I couldn’t manage to repeat our performance from last year but we still had a great event. It was a difficult trial and by the time we got to the sections the already wet conditions had been churned up quite badly. There were a couple of hills that we cleaned that were so difficult we were euphorically elated when we cleared them. And those feelings lasted for a long time afterwards. Having replaced all the joints in the steering linkage and also the central idler bearing by the time of this year’s Exeter , Rob recently had the toe-in re-adjusted and now rates the steering as good instead of vague. His regular car is an MX-5 so he has a good benchmark. Backalong, the MCC used to swap the order of starts around – the others being Cirencester and Plusha Services in Cornwall - but since 2013 Popham has always been the latest starting point. On the Exeter 2015, we thought this affected our performance. T...

Following on from our "outstanding failure" on the Exeter and Silver-that-would've-been-a-Gold-had-we-not-muffed-up-a-special-test in last year's Lands End (but we've put that behind us now), Binky and I have high hopes for the 2015 Land's End Trial. The only thing is, we're right at the back of the pack so may be renewing our acquaintance with the course closing car. The sections on the Exeter were said to have deteriorated significantly by the time we got to them but for this event I'm hoping that pervious entrants will have laid a sticky layer of rubber just where we need to find any grip. Binks hasn't had to much to the Allard since our last outing so I'm looking forward to this year's Easter motorsport extravaganza. We aren't really in it for the pot hunting, just for the crack. However, at Candidi Provacatores our policy is one of continuous improvement. Attitudes may change if we find we're getting up the hills a...