Engine Punk

As the sun sets on the Goodwood paddock I spotted the dull gleam of unpainted alleluiah I'd never heard of this device until I clapped eyes on it last year at the 2011 Goodwood Revival but it seems it's "world famous in Ulster". It's the McCandless four wheel drive 500cc racer and like most good 500cc racers from the early fifties it sports a Manx Norton engine. But in the spirit of pioneering experimentation every wheel was driven. McCandless to me is synonymous with the designer of the Norton Featherbed frame and it was the same Rex McCandless behind that piece of rolling sculpture that produced this little four wheel drive car. Its purpose was to gain first hand experience of how powertrain, steering and suspension would interact when all wheels are driven. Not a great picture but you get the idea In 1951 McCandless met fellow Ulsterman Harry Ferguson and the two embarked on a project to develop a four wheel drive car for the military. Believing ...

Tarkus still seeks a new sponsor Tarkus is up for sale again. Incredibly, it didn't sell at the last auction so Jake Challenger is offering it through Bonhams again at their sale at the national Motor Museum at Beaulieu on 8th September. As you can imagine I would like this device very much but don't have the money or anywhere sufficiently dry to put it. I hope it goes to a good home. To those with the resources, I say buy this extraordinary machine. Alternatively, buy my books - The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb - from Amazon and make me the eccentric millionaire I am properly destined to be (I'm merely eccentric right now).

Steampunk Summer 2012 I will be reading excerpts from The Horsepower Whisperer at Steampunk Summer 2012 at Woodland Valley Farm, Ladock near Truro this Saturday (September 1st) and talking about my work. I might even read some of The Wormton Lamb, too. Tickets are available from Limelight in Truro and Tanya's Courage Trust in Penzance. It's not just me, you understand, there's also a huge line up of steam punk activities and something like a dozen bands. Should be brilliant if previous ones are anything to go by....

Pemtillie Castle makes a great venue for a speed hillclimb. It was wet, though. This Alfa Dana 500 was using Castrol R so smelt divine. This is a new event based at Pentillie Castle on the western bank of the River Tamar and centres on a speed hillclimb up to the house from the river and into the estate beyond. Pentillie Castle featured on the telly a few years as a country house in need of rescue and has become a prestigious wedding venue. Unfortunately, the tarmac drive to the house showed signs of wear sufficient to make the blushing bride bounce out of her bodice in the backseat of the nuptial Bentley limo. Actually, I just made that up but the potholes were so bad that the Coryton family had the whole drive re-surfaced. Then, local enthusiasts said lets have a speed hillclimb on your lovely new road and after a lot of preparatory work the first event was held today. Another fragrant competitor using Castrol R was Stuart Evans in his MG J Special Unfortunately, it ham...

Sarah Blackwood (who rocks) (Photo : Last FM) So you already know that I enjoyed The Creepshow with their new line up. Since then I've become aware of the circumstances that led up to the changes in the band. Sarah "Sin" Blackwood has left to concentrate on her other projects and the rest of The Creepshow will continue in a slightly different direction. I don't know how the dynamic in bands works. Her older sister and founder member of The Creepshow, Jen "Hellcat" Blackwood, left on maternity. If The Creepshow was a corporation maybe she could come back? And surely being the little sister of a founder member must give Sin some security of tenure? I'd seen the video footage of The Creepshow with Sin in action and would love to have seen this little blonde piece with the big guitar rock out live (in a graveyard by a swamp somewhere) but that's not going to happen. Fortunately, The Creepshow can still cut it so I wasn't disappointed. Just ...

There's now five in The Creepshow (Photo : Creepshow Facebook page) I couldn't quite believe it when I heard that Canadian psychobilly rockers The Creepshow were going to play at The White Rabbit at the bus station in Plymouth. I still bought a ticket and went along though and - yup - it was them alright, freshly bussed in from Newcastle no less (a mere hop, skip and jump for these hard touring, hot diggeddy-dawgs), complete with a new guitarist and a sparkly new lead singer. Kenda Legaspi is only little but she belts out the choons and ably fills the boots of Sarah "Sin" Blackwood. The extra guitarist allows Kenda to concentrate on vocals, although she did a great job of  The Garden, and I don't usually like the slow ones (but this one's really good) We also saw her joining us in the mosh pit! This was on purpose, I should add. She clearly lurves to rock out but needed a helping hand to get back on stage again - no, really. On the other hand, being...

If Cooper had made Coventry-Climax front engined cars, this is how they might have looked I'd heard of this car several years ago from a brief article in the Imp Club magazine and especially liked the ally panels created on an English wheel and the use of a front mounted Imp engine . This is a Hillman Imp special par excellence . The RBN actually uses the Chrysler Sunbeam block, a 928cc version of the Imp block used in entry level versions of these rear-wheel drive hatchbacks.The RBN also uses the Avenger derived gearbox from the same source. I think that feature line that runs all the way round the car works especially well However, the chassis is Triumph Spitfire, shortened by a foot and clothed in aluminium bodywork hand wheeled by its constructor, Philip Robinson, who took 18 months to build it. The 928cc Chrysler Sunbeam engine responds just as well to tuning as the Imp engine. The bulge in the bonnet was for an earlier single carb The engine is highly modi...