Engine Punk

English by looks but rear-engined in nature (Photo : Saco) When I wrote about Little Jim in my original post , there was a conspicuous gap in the narrative. Some details about the pre-war Little Jim were known to me but the next prototype for a very small car for the Rootes group was even more mysterious. All we had to go on was a mention in the Henshaw's book about the Hillman Imp,  Apex - The inside story of the Hillman Imp. This, of course, was the eventual flowering of the small car concept developed by Rootes. In the Henshaw's book, Little Jimmy i s described as rear-engined and powered by a two-cylinder version of a Volkswagen air-cooled motor. These pictures of Little Jimmy popped up on the Auto Puzzles website in 2014 and eventually appeared via a link on the Imp Club Facebook page. What's that coming over the hill? (Photo : Grobmotorix archive) It took a while for the puzzle to pan out. By a process of elimination, the Rootes group were eventually identified and C...

  It all looks so innocent At the 1999 MCC Testing Trial, I took these photos of a Skoda convertible with a difference. These are rare cars and getting rarer but this car was unique. It was based on a VW Beetle chassis. Beetle chassis have much to recommend them and during the sensational seventies many manufacturers used them as the basis for their exotic kit cars. The Nova and Eagle spring to mind. There were many lesser known ones like the Centron and the Car with No Name . The obvious thing to do, to counterpoint all those exotic faux supercars, was to mount a convertible Skoda bodyshell on a Beetle chassis and go trialling with it. This is the Skeetle built by Dave Nash. Dave built a series of trials specials on Beetle floorpans, which used MGB and Reliant Scimitar GTE bodyshells as well as this one with a Skoda body. Beetles and Skodas have a great deal of trialling heritage so combining them in this way seemed to be an innovation that would be assured of immediate success....

VAT 69 caught my eye in the car park of our hotel after the 2022 Exeter Trial The 92nd Exeter Trials people's choice for Spirit of the Event went to Hughie Walker and Angus Frost with their Austin 7 special VAT 69. Their climb up Simms was a tremendous crowd pleaser and finishing one of the wettest Exeters in a machine without roof, doors, sides and windscreens was nothing short of superhuman. From a distance, VAT 69 could be mistaken for a GN special that had eaten its greens. Through the trees and rain it sounded a bit like a vee twin but those cylinders are at the widest vee possible - 180 degrees. This is an engine whose barrels have fallen out. They dislike each other so much they can't be in the same engine compartment. They are horizontally opposed. That power bulge down the side is for the driver's feet I like flat twins. The layout is still relevant today in modern cars for packaging reasons. The term horizontally opposed sounds earnestly belligerent but 180 degree...

Here is our old school bus after it had been sold on. Don't those mirrors look small? I found this mage on the net years ago but can't find it anywhere anymore so can't give credit for the source. (Photo: TBC) Once I was old enough to go to secondary school in Newquay, I had to walk ¾ mile out of the valley up to Penhallow on the A3075. Here I caught a white and orange bus operated and driven by Bussy. His real name was Peter Harmes and he had a hotel in Newquay. While kids in Perranporth came to Newquay on green Western National double deckers, usually Bristol Lodekkas, the smaller villages inland were served by Bussy and his Bedford YRQ with Willowbrook Expressway coachwork. This coach was more of a bus really and nowhere near as glamorous as the delightful Podgy , a Duple Yeoman-bodied Thames Trader operated by Mitchell's of Perranporth, hich took us to primary school in Gonhavern. It wasn't even sign written.  FAF987L seated 45 and was and supplied n...

Team Inappropriate lurk in the hotel car park. Preparations for “Noddy goes trialling again in an Arkley SS" began some months before the 92 nd Exeter trial. After the Tamar Trial in October, I had come to notice a notchiness to the steering on the Arkley-MG . All that wheel waggling to move the front wheels from lock to lock, persuading the car to elbow its way up sections like Angel Steps, seemed to have taken their toll around the straight ahead position. The steering wheel would move freely for about a centimetre at the rim but then grew stiff. There was also the small matter of the MoT in December. I know my car is exempt but I like the peer review of my work by a professional. I ordered a replacement steering rack and discovered there were two sorts. You can have a thin one or a beefier one. I ended up with a thick one but found that the Arkley-MG used the thin sort. They’re not interchangeable. During a chat over a brew of tea at his workshop, Adrian Booth told me that ...

Rickman Metisee of Neil Browne This year's Tamar Trial took me to some obscure parts of countryside that were probably familiar to regular competitors. The 2019 event impressed me with the varied sections, some of which were very close to home but previously unknown to me. Simon Riddell and Nigel Cowling said on that occasion that they were trying to show us more of the county.  Groover Groves and Luke Butler at the start of the Tamar Trial in their Troll. Graham Beddoe was on a marathon post-Covid road trip so my navigator and bouncer for the 2021 Tamar Trial was Adrian Booth. Many of the hills were familiar to him and I knew the sections in Lew Woods and, of course, Crackington and Angel Steps. The hydraulic jack had been a bit lazy on the  Launceston Trial  earlier in the year. The pump for this had enjoyed a quieter life raising the roof on a Fiat Punto and after some experiments with electric power steering pumps, Adrian decided something beefier was required. He fo...

The Coates Orthoptera just before last year's President's Trial On the 35th Launceston trial earlier this year, many people were frankly amazed by the performance of Roger Ashby in his Coates Orthoptera. It sounded so crisp many of my friends thought it was running a Ford cross-flow engine and it nearly won the event outright. I’d seen the Coates Orthoptera before and, in chatting to Roger in the past, discovered that, although the components are fairly commonplace, they are put together in a very effective manner. The powerplant of the Coates Orthoptera at the Launceston trial featured a single downdraught 1.5" SU. This followed experiments with twin 1.25" SUs and Roger says the car ran a lot better. The Coates Orthoptera is essentially an Austin 7 chassis with a Ford side valve 1172cc engine. This was quite a common combination during the fifties and typically used an E93A engine but the Ford motor in the Coates Orthoptera is a later 100E. These offer many advant...