Engine Punk

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

Phil's wife it was who painted on those eyes I would like to say exactly when I first clapped eyes on Kermit - for it was indeed a momentous occasion - but I can be no more specific than Easter 1984 or Easter 1985. Or maybe Easter 1986. I can't honestly remember. The venue is in no doubt, though - Tregrehan Hillclimb near St Austell in Cornwall On that occasion there were bikes, cars and three-wheelers at the same event, which featured a very muddy paddock. The three-wheeler classes consisted of traditional asymmetrical sidecar outfits and symmetrical home made creations, often a triangluar frame extending backwards from the front subframe of some front-wheel-drive saloon, typically a Mini. Kermit as built was a stubby little fellow. It's now a lot sleeker to allow me to get in it. One of them was so obviously different in concept from the others and conspicuously supercharged that it held my interest as it came to the start line. This I subsequently came to k...

Podgy- our old school bus - was 848 BOR, a Thames Duple Yeoman coach built in 1961. Here it is seen at Truro in August 1974 (Photo: Brian Botley) By the power of the internet I have received this image of Podgy. A very good friend of mine Peter Yarlett, Professor Emeritus in Ferro-Equinology at the University of Andover (and chair of the Faculty of Yeast Culture) is not only interested in steaming leviathans, as you might have guessed from his distinguished title, but also classic buses. He sent me a link to a well-known internet auction site that advertised a black and white photo of 848BOR when owned by Creamline Coaches of Bordon, long before this fine example of a Thames Duple Yeoman ever came west and carried spotty, snotty school children to Goonhavern County Primary. The auction had long since closed but undeterred I contacted the seller and explained my interest. Unfortunately, that image had sold and was no longer available but after he'd read my blog he got back ...

Tarkus is the title of a 20 minute Emerson, Lake and Palmer prog rock epic describing the three battles of a turret toting armadillo on caterpillar tracks by the name of Tarkus. But of course I knew nothing of this until recently, being a punk rocking gear head. To me, Tarkus was the grandaddy of all Citroen hill climbing trikes. The existence of the hillclimbing Tarkus had often been mentioned just within my earshot in hushed whispers as I stalked around the Cornish hillclimb paddocks and pits. It was always in connection with a fire breathing supercharged Citroen powered trike called Kermit . Gradually, I pieced the story together and discovered that Tarkus was the inspiration behind Kermit. Tarkus was built by a chap with the suitably heroic name of Jake Challenger and is actually one of six. The very first one was originally designed around a two-stroke three-cylinder engine from a DKW (Vintage Thing No. 13) . Tarkus - small loud and very fast. I love the matching helmets...