Engine Punk

This is just like the model I had but with more paint remaining.  Many years ago, at a secondhand toy sale at school, I bought two Dinky Toy model vans. One was a rather sorry looking Morris Commercial J type van in the livery of the GPO and the other was a cheeky Trojan 15cwt Dunlop van. They got played to pieces. The Morris Commercial looked thin and underfed. The Trojan looked much more robust. In the undergrowth at Tinker's Park I was reminded of these two model vans when I stumbled across a scanned image the other day of the remains of a Trojan van. I had found this relic in the bushes at a show at Tinker's Park , near Hadlow Down in East Sussex, in or around 1990. There were many other interesting things in the undergrowth and the only means of identifying it was by the maker's plate on the bulkhead. Only once I'd found that, did I know what it was and that a model of it had brought me so much pleasure as a child. I photographed it as a mem...

In my earlier musings about the blown Trojan engine, I wondered if they had any performance potential. Well an owner of one of them has been in touch to say No. “It was the most gutless, gas-guzzling, useless piece of junk one could hope to drive, and its top speed was about 40 mph if one ignored the mechanical thrashing. One can only imagine its diff ratio!” This was from Paul Edwards in wobbly Christchurch , New Zealand , who’d owned a pick up version of the van version you see here. The supercharged Trojan 15 cwt van - not big down under “My Trojan used an aluminium head on one side, and cast-iron one on the other. I used to show people that it was, in effect, a W6!”  Paul’s was built in 1953 so probably had the enlarged 1290cc variant of this engine, which originally boasted 1186cc. That swept volume doesn’t include the pumping pistons of course. “It's the word 'supercharged' that promises so much, “ says Paul. “Imagine if the Japane...