Engine Punk

It took at least two generations of family members several years to find this article so you can imagine how pleased we were to see this - the top half of the title page. I am very excited about this because a very long search has just ended successfully. Various family members have been looking for this for years and now my Uncle David and I have found our little Holy Grail. Great Uncle Walter's duplex boat- a kind of early catamaran - has been revealed at last and in a most unexpected way. World famous among out family members, this odd vessel is mentioned in an unpublished biography of my great great grandmother, Susanna, written by her grand daughter, Winifred Scott. It's been a cause celebre across more than three generations because it's remained out of reach for so long. Regular readers may remember Great Uncle Walter . He was uncle to my grandfather and to my mother's Auntie Winnie. He was a war artist, entrepreneur, photographer, writer and inventor an...

The most amazing of Jake Challenger's trikes is for sale (Photo : Bonhams) As I mentioned earlier, Jake Challenger created a series of special three wheelers named Tarkus after the ELP track and the last of the series (I'm tempted to say latest for you never know) is this device featuring a 3 cylinder radial engine of his own design that uses BMW R100 barrels and cylinder heads. Stable as a very stable thing, if you're going to leap aboard Tarkus be sure you're wearing split screen goggles and a sheepskin jacket (Photo : Jake Challenger) I had an e-mail from Jake this weekend to say he's selling it and having spoken to him again and found out some more details I can divulge that it's in Bonhams Motorcycle auction at Stafford on 29th April . Unfortunately, his wife Cynthia has had a knee replacement and can no longer get in Tarkus. The standard BMW components look like they should've been made for use in a radial 3 cylinder engine (Photo : B...

It would be rude not to show the Allard's engine to everyone, especially if they've never seen a flathead V8 before No awards for us this time in the Land's End Trial but it was still hugely enjoyable and this morning I've nearly lost my voice from shouting so much. Partly this was from shouting directions over the noise of the engine to Binky who had ear plugs in to protecting his hearing from said engine - and apparently my shouting. I also get quite excited at times and tend to shout encouragement while bouncing about for traction. Crackington was one long yell that gave me a sore throat by the top but we cleared it well. Bishop's Wood was brilliant because we got off the restart that defeated us last time in 2009 and I loudly enjoyed Cutliffe, too. As we were running late this year I got to see Rodney's Revenge in the daylight and we were very pleased to clear that one. But it was the restarts that gave us problems. In Class 7, we had to do 8 restart...

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...