Engine Punk

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 bu...

Regular readers of this blog will know of my appreciation of Allards but I've never seen any quite like this one or heard any references to it. The Allard badge might be on this thing as a joke but I have a feeling that it really is an Allard. I spotted this at a very wet hillclimb at Prescott in - I think - 1984. The pictures aren't brilliant but it was raining pushrods and back then my camera didn't have a light meter that worked so it's pretty amazing they came out at all. It's got a speedway JAP 500 cc engine under the driver's left elbow that drove the rear axle by chain. I think it had a gearbox and wasn't direct drive. There were some Formula 3 500s at the event but I managed to establish - probably by asking someone nearby - that it wasn't an Allard F3 car but a speedway racer used on the same cinder ovals as the bikes. If you look closely you can see the Allard badge on the nose an I am inclined to believe it is an Allard. It's got a split f...

I was over Adrian Booth's the other day shooting the breeze over cylinder heads and he pulled this out of a pile of other interesting stuff. He had another - all shiny and ready to be fitted onto the short block - but that belonged to somebody else so in defference to Adrian's customer I didn't photograph that but snapped this work in progress instead. The finished article looked rather fine, though you'll just have to take my word for it. It's a down draft cylinder head for a Modified Anglia Engine also known as the MAE head. I'd never heard of this before but as Adrian explained some of its history a distant bell began to ring. And you just have to peer down the inlet ports in the top photo to see what straight path the inlet gases now have. Usually they'd have to negotiate a right-angle bend. Cosworth were the firm most closely associated with the MAE cylinder head but there were many other firms of these versions including Holbay. Ford and C...

Tomorrow I will be at the Wiscombe Park Vintage Thing Fest. It's fifty years since the Vintage Sports Car Club staged a hillclimb at the glorious Wiscombe Park hillclimb between in Sidmouth and Honiton in South East Devon and there's a big commemorative meeting tomorrow - Sunday 11th. Today was a practice session and bikes were competing, too. We were treated to a procession of very special machinery and many of the drivers were going for it. Unfortunately, a Proteus C-Type Jag overcooked it at the Sawbench Hairpin and came straight for some of mates who were spectating. Fortunately it hit a tree and span to a halt. The driver was okay but his beautiful car was a bit knocked around. It was being used the way it was intended and can be rebuilt and no marshals, spectators or competitors needed rebuilding. That was the only down side to a great day and I am really looking forward to tomorrow. Just by way of a taster here's a sample of today's Vintage Things. Ea...