Engine Punk

Good old Lee - he'd brought some overalls just in case Well, we had great plans the other day to fit a luvverly pair of specially shortened drive shafts into the rear axle of the Candidi Provocatores Allard, refit the axle and do the Testing Trial the following weekend but it didn't work out. This was the view along the good shaft and - as you can see - it's twisted along the length of the keyway and probably wouldn't transmit power for much longer We did a trial fit of the driveshafts and turning them in the diff it sounded "funny" - funny as in odd. This is the end of the broken shaft Bolting it up locked the diff and not in a good way. A lot of head scratching followed but we were heartened by the arrival of one of our buds, Lee Peck, motorsport nutcase, engineer and all round good egg. After more scrutiny, it would appear that the newly machined driveshafts are not a matched pair and that one of them has the gears machined into it at ...

Binky points out what looks like a piece of snapped steel carrot still in the hub This weekend I whizzed up to Binky Towers to help make good the damage what we done to it in the Exeter Trial, namely replace the halfshafts. People in the know have told us to replace both shafts and not just the one that's broken. The theory is that the survivor is probably structurally compromised in some way and will fail before too long when subjected to the sort of stress we'll put it under. It's far better to get a pair, although I suppose we could have the unbroken one tested somehow. The rear wheel was decidedly wonky The Allard hadn't moved since it was put away when it came home from Ilsington so we gingerly pushed it out of Rob's packed workshop into the carport where it usually lives. This has been boxed in with scaffolding until recently to fit solar panels to the roof of their house. Once the car was in our operating theatre for the day, we jacked it up and rem...

Goff Imhof's competition Allard J1 This picture of a splendid old war horse basking in the sunshine at Wiscombe Park hillclimb back in 2008 defines the concept of Vintage Thing. The ghosts of many competition successes hang heavy on this Allard J1. Not many cars have been haunted by so many benign (petroleum) spirits. It started life as Geoffrey Imhof's works team car and he campaigned it vigorously in trails, rallies, hillclimbs and races until the powers that be decided Allards were a bit too successful. Never knowingly over-restored but extremely sympathetically maintained, it bears its history proudly and although some people may turn their noses up at its allegedly scruffy appearance, to me it is a thing of great and brutal appeal. To learn more about this car's illustrious history visit the Candidi Provacatore site here . For some years it's belonged to Roger Ugalde who still campaigns it in classic trials whenever he gets the chance. With a 3917cc (8...

There aren't many engines that burst out of the engine bay and assume a life of their own but the flathead Ford V8 is definitely one of them. Look - there's one that's escaped even now, wriggling across the pebbles of my scrap buddy's drive. As Rob puts it, this engine won World War 2. That's a bit of an exaggeration but it was really what the flathead Ford V8 got up to afterwards that makes if of interest to me and marks it out as a Vintage Thing in its own right. You've probably heard of the phrase Anglo-American Bastard? It was coined by Michael Sedgwick and covers a wide variety of British cars that used big, low-stressed American engines in stripped down chassis and lightweight bodywork. This trend began before World War II with things like the Brough Superior and Railton and carried on right up into the sixties with the Gordon-Keeble, Bristol and Jensen. Some of these cars weren't so much Anglo-American bastards but more love children. Liberat...