Look for 
labels: new additions.
==========================
Future Hednesford Raceway, as seen in 1946:
Therest of my website is fairly 'exclusive' and unique. In this section I have collected oddments from everywhere: the InterNet, newspapers, books, magazines, etc.
Click on the link below for a ---
Terrifying 12-slide sequence of a sprint car crashatWilliams Grove:
============================================================
Banger Heaven!
===============================================================================
Graham Hill and his son Damon
=============================================================
A future F1 world champion with his father, a brilliant F1 Ferrari driver: who are they?
===============================================
In 1968 you could buy a Lotus 49 Grand Prix car, less engine/gearbox
for only £------------
======================================================================================
"The Man Who Fought Sugar Ray"
A terrific pieceof writing --- About the bittersweet experience of knowing you are very good, --- and the shock of coming up against the best ---. Pdf file of a Road & Track article from 1972.
====================================================================
Strong women
These arebig lists,so don't expect to remember or recognize names. Butyou will be surprised by the sheer number and variety of young andadult women who race cars and motorcycles, on and off-road.I gave up adding to the lists a few ears ago because the growingpopularity motorsport among women means that it's no longer'news;'
=========================================
=
======================
Women Pepare to Race
=====================
Women who race Motorcycle Sidecars: insane?
===================================================
Racing Mums and their Kids Women riding Motorcycle Trials
========================================================
Women riding Motocross
Women and nonsense
==============================================================================
=============================================================
Whose BRM is this, with afour-cylinder motor? Photographed at Ragley Hall hill climb in 1964
Hillclimb champ TonyGriffiths. Chassis BRM 487, making it a P48 Mk2. model. It had a 2.5litre BRM four-cylinder engine, went eventually to the Donington Motor Museum,and today appears in historic races in the hands of Barrie Baxter.
==============================================================
"When I get old, -----"
The late Jack Lordwas racing stock cars in 1963 --- there's a Belle Vue photograph ofJack on the SENIORS IN THE SIXTIES page --- and the photo below,courtesy of his son Glenn, was taken in 2013 at Warton, testing hisOutlaw car --- that's sixty years later! What a man.
MYSTERY ENGINE
Can anyone tell me what engine and/or intake manifold is under the hood of "Darkie" Wright's stock car?
It's a Ford 429 "shotgun" semi-hemi,known as The Boss, arare motor built around the late 60s and early 70s. NB: the Cobra Jet 429 is NOT the same. It was known as a high revver.
==========================================
Oddity: Loggersworkwith oddball equipment. This log skidder ---forestry's equivalent of the farm tractor --- was a prototype built bythe Texan company Le Tourneau. It's a diesel-electric.Thediesel engine drives a generator, which feeds current tothefour electric motors, one in each wheel hub, and to the log-haulingwinch. This one was abandoned by MacMillan Bloedel on "Haida Gwaii" (formerly known asthe Queen Charlotte Islands) off the coast of BC in Canada.
December 2012: (A big-Mb high-res file) Heavy-duty mechanics, please --- can someone predict what's gone wrong with this log skidder?I can see a new bearing-race under the white cloth. Do thesetractors have a reduction gear in the hub? The photo was taken atSalmon Bay, BC, Canada. That operator looks mighty tee'd off andis probably looking at a day's work lost.
==================================================================
September 2013: Modified sidevalve V8. Photo fromnewsletter of New Zealand's HISTORIC STOCK CAR CLUB.
Raced in1960 by Gary Wike, this Ford flathead V-8 is described as having Hogancylinder heads, using twin spark plugs per cylinder, fired by twincoils, and drinking from fourcarbureters standing on "twisted-leg" intake runners. The distributorwasprobably a Nash, as Nash used twin-plug heads and a "16-cylinder" distributor for their straight-8-cylinderengines in the 1930's. "Hogan" refers to a chap called Garth Hogan, and his farther, who made custom finned cylinder heads in the old days.
=================================================================
March 2013: Theweirdest Indy car ever was brought to the Brickyard by Smokey Yunick in1964. Duane Carter managed at the risk of his life to put in some150mph practice laps before another driver crashed it. It did notrace, but has since been rebuilt for shows. Have a look at these old and new photos, and imagine yourself in that seat at 160-170mph on the backstretch.
Beefy: a sprint car rear axle with quick-change gear (it's not a true differential, just a ring gear on a solid axle)
============================================================== Weirdest log skidder: Built by a Texan company, Le Tourneau.
Thediesel engine only drives a generator, whichsends electricalcurrent mto the electric motor in each of the four wheels, and to thecable winch. This skidder is now at the Port Clements Museum in HaidaGwaai(formerly theQueen Charlotte Islands) in BC, Canada.
Comparewith a modern log skidder with its hydraulic grapple:
January 2012: Avisit to Lynmouth in Devon brought back the history of of theterrible 1952 flood that came down the West and East Lyn rivers after 9inches of rain fell on Exmoor in 24 hours. This rare car was recovered from the sea.
July 2011: In approx 1963 at Silverstone I saw this beast: a Ford Cortina rebuilt and raced by "Doc" Merfield, an Australian dentist. It had a 300-inch Chevrolet V-8kitted out with three Stromberg carbs. To keep it from tearingitself to pieces, it had a Jag XK-150 rear axle, and wheels from a FordZephyr. It was wild, and I bet the Doc had a lot of fun fightingit.In 1964 I photographed a tasty Ferrari 250 GTO--- This car was owned by Peter Clarke, but was snapped up by PinkFloyd's Nick Mason in 1978.
This Ferrari, in 1962was being raced byMike Parkes for Tommy Sopwith's TeamEndeavour. Chassis #3589, its distinctive three-vent side panel and tworows of hood louvres identify it. The car left the UK for the USA in1963,eventually being owned by
On top of that, acknowledged replicas, and unadmitted replicas exist. For example, Ferrari built 33 250TR sports cars, yet 46 [forty-six] documented 250TR cars exist today ---- suspicious.
April 2011: Inabout 1963 I took this snapshot at Silverstone, of thenew "LOLAGT". A year later the design was adapted by Ford for their GT40, which wenton to dominate Le Mans. Here, with the rear bodywork off, you cansee the Ford 4.6 litre single-carbureter V-8, and thosegorgeousrubber "doughnut" joints in the rear axles. Lotus F1 carsused themas well. The massive gearbox behind the rear axles was a Colotti. Thiscar was revolutionary in having a monocoque chassis, butwas still happily pre-computer, and you can see a good oldfashionedsocket wrench and a timing light on one of the bulkheads.=================================================================================
Novelty picture from the wild world of banger racing: Demo-Derby Rolls-Royces on their way to the big bang. I believe this photo is by the late Dave "Smiffyman" Smith, one of the sport's top track photographers.
Can a dumper truck at high speed crash through a military compound wall? Watch the video clip with sound on.
Whyare Turkish pedestrians and drivers so polite and obedient in thepresence of police? I took this photo in Istanbul a couple of yearsback. Would you give the young cop any "lip" if he stopped you?Click through this sequence of 5 photos and seewhy Turkish drivers and pedestrians stoppolitely when themotorcycle cops say so.
.
===================================================
Gravity racers. Look at the "street luge" racers on these PowerPoint slides. How fast can you make a snowmobile go?
- Like an arrow.
- Look at the arrow'sengines.
- Snow madness
- Snow insanity
- Dragster with chains and skis.
- Unconventional dragster
==================================================================
OffBritain's North-East coast lies Lindisfarne Island (Holy Island), siteof an early Christian monastery and home to these two Citroens,onemetal and the other -----
=================================================================================
Low tyre pressures are common in drag racing, and they often result in noticeable
Tire distortion;
Really scary tire distortion [photos at Santa Pod Raceway]
The late GillesVilleneuve (here with his son, champion-to-be Jacques)remains aCanadian hero --- when Gilles died in Belgium, the Canadian government sent a Boeing 747 especially totransport his coffin back, andPrimeMinister Pierre Trudeau attended his funeral. How many drivers get that kind of recognition?
Gilles was simple:he drove every car,good andbad,at andover its limit on every corner of every lap of practice, qualifying,and race, throughouthis career until he was killedin the final minutesof qualifying at the Belgian Grand Prix in1982 --- doing exactly what he loved.
Canada Post issued acommemorative set of stamps, and here they are: front cover; back cover; sheet of stamps.
Mystery motorcycle: Someone sent me a card, featuring a photo from the 1940's or 1950's, and apparently taken in France. What on earth is the tiny motorcycle?The tank badge says "RZ", and it is not a toy --- see the primarychain and clutch and tele shock absorbers. Anyone? "R.Z."may just be the name of the one-off builder. What's the 2-strokemotor? September 2014: Tom McFarland suggests a Francis-Barnet motor, maybe a 150cc. Certainly the FB "Fulmar" model had that forward-canted cylinder angle. Drop me an e-mail.
=========================================================
You have to love the North American sprint cars:
Unwingedsprint cars weigh around 1200lbs / and their 410 cu.in. motors onmethanol, routinely make 750bhp but when tuned to near destruction fora high-paying race, with compression ratios raised to a scary 17:1, putout up to 900bhp, which is good for an old pushrod two-valve design. Wheelbase can be as short as 7 feet (84 inches),direct drive with no clutch between the engine and the rear axle. In this photo you see theright-front wheel has no brake, only the left one ---- a hard pokeis enough to snatchthe car into the left-turn-only bends. Solidbeamfront axle,and solid no-diff rear axle with a single inboard disc brake.To see fifteen and more of these open their throttles from a rolling start willknock you off your seat. Look at theone below 'digging in' so hard that its 15-inch-wide rear tire is nearly peeling off:
Can you get more "opposite lock" than this?
More sprint car technology:
- Rear axle "stagger" and offset.
- Disc brake on solid tube axle; note, this is the left side SMALLER tire you can see!
- Spare axleshowing the quick-change gears --- NOT a differential, justanunder-and-over arrangement like a shotgun! The axle herehas the incoming driveshaft section pointing down.
Lastly,a uniquely-American formula, the "Supermodifieds" are so extreme thatthey virtually cannot turn anything but left: look at the engineand axlelayout on this red devil. Frame builders hang the big V-8 motors off the left hand side of the chassis, and the driveline runs down the car's left side to a diff that has the left rear wheel bolted directly to its stub axle — no visible half shaft at all. Supermod 1, Supermod 2, Supermod 3. These cars have lapped one-mile asphalt ovals at speeds approaching 160mph average.
===============================
Fiftyyears beforethe SMART car,post-war European countries,and especially Germany, were devisingthe smallest econo-cars imaginable. Someone passed on to me this Pdf slide show, thirty photos taken in a car museum, and most of these cars had single-cylinder 2-stroke motors of 200-400cc.
Thefollowing two scans are ofarestored Indianapolisroadster from 1960,a beautiful car:Front view. Overhead view. Imagine the sound of the full-race Chevy (de-stroked from 283 to 255 cu.in. and tilted 18 degrees)throughthat long exhaust. Incredible as it seems to us today,in1960 the builder used a 1939 Ford 3-speed transmission withLincoln-Zephyr gears.
Big motor for a motorcycle: the builder, C.F. Leonhardt,calls this machineGunbus,and the air-cooled V-twin engine displaces anastounding 410 cubic inches (just under 7 litres), and puts out 523ft/lbs of torque. "Boom - boom - boom - boom".
Of course, you could simply intsall a BMW V-12 car engine in your bike. But if you prefer English engines, you could slip a Jaguar V-12 into your motorbike. While we're on Jags,why do they have to have only four wheels? Here's a Jag with SIX wheels . Back to morereasonable bikes: Bad Dog Cycles has designed a V-twin of 3500cc, DOHC, 4-valve fuel-injected beauty, and isconsidering a larger 4500cc version. In 1956 a wooden-boat builder tried his hand at car building, and came up with this lightweight sports car powered by a rear-mounted Aerial Square Four m'cycle engine.
If you're my age youremember when motorcycle-sidecar racing used motorcycles connected to sidecars.Here are two of today's sidecar outfits, at Brands Hatch, minus their bodywork ----.
===================================================================
"The Garlits Explosion": Front-engineddragsters were a vicious breed that had a dozenways to kill you. Big Daddy Don Garlits had already been burned byan exploding supercharger, but the really scary event took place on thestart line at Lions drag strip in Califronia in 1970. The clutchandflywheelexplodedand theshrapnel cut the chassis inhalf andbadly injured Don. The entire roll-cage/co*ckpit parted from the frame, rotating in the air.
Do you likeoddball engineering? Here are some beauties, from various internet sources:
- A V-8 engined "kart";
- Dragster with a motor-at-each-end;
- Another dragster with a motor-at-each-end;
- Monster-sized hot-rod custom pickup (GMC V-12 truck engine of 702 cu.in);
- Aero radial-engined motorbike (1);
- Aero radial-engined motorbike (2).
"Stagger" is the difference in diameter between rear tyres, and this one is pushing it to the limit. Imagine gassing it with these wheels on the ends of your locked axle. "Stagger" at Skagit Speedway
Mostof us have fantasized driving a racer on the road:
[Photo from a Sprint Car calendar by Paul Oxman publishing in California.]
================================================================
Oddments: Inabout 1964 I photographed this daring experiment:a littleKIEFT "Formula Junior" single-seater loaded with a 4.34 litre(265 cu.in) Chevrolet V-8. The hill-climb driver was Ian McLaughlin ofStockland Garages in Birmingham, and the brilliant mechanic who builtthe car --- fabricating many parts from scratch --- was Jack Clewer,visible in the photographs working on the car. Jack and Ian are stillwith us today, and provided the information. The Chevy motor camefrom a garage outside London, and it was mated to a Lotus F1 gearbox. Ian McLaughlin and his cousin John competed in 13 Monte Carlo rallies.
Photo 2.
- Here it is later on, in action
It was running at a hill-climb atRagley Hall in Warwickshire when I took the two pits snapshots.
Later, Jack Clewer built a new intake manifold and fitted fourSU carburetors and a higher-lift camshaft. Eventually it wasdismantled and the V-8 engine went to a stock-car driver.
Kieft cars were built inWolverhampton. Industrialist Cyril Kieft built and designed thesingle seaters, and his great-grand-daughter, Savannah Courtenay, was a worldclasskart racer. The Kieftwasoriginally one of just five built for the Formula Junior category, withan Anglia 105E four cylinder engine.
=================================================================
Two more Oddments: First, the golden days of "Formula Libre" in England, when you could bring almost ANY darned thing to the track.
Chris Summers took atube-framed Lotus 24and dropped in a fuel-injected Chevy V-8 that he'd got from BP Researchbranch. This snapshot was taken in (approx.) 1962-64 atSilverstone. Theexhausts soundedwonderful. I saw this car launch from the front row down thestraight to Cope Corner, and his tires were "hazing" all the way —something that wasvery rare in those days.
Second one is a prototypeDiva Valkyr sports car, rear-engined, aluminium-bodied, and using the then-popular alloy Hillman Imp motor. Photo taken same time as the Summers one.Jack Reynolds hasidentifiedMike Aired on the left, and Mike Walton in overalls, and pointed outthat a Valkyr was also built, experimentally, with a bigCoventry Climax 2.7 litre (4-cyl) motor.
======================================================================
Holy! In 1988 thePope visited Ferrari's workshops and blessed one or more of their current Formula 1 Grand Prix cars. I don't know whether some supernatural agency helped with subsequent races.
First
Second
Third.
Glory days:when Grand Prix drivers could switch from an F1 car to asaloon to have some fun. Here are three saloons in1966 at Snetterton, four-wheel-drifting through a fast bend: a Mustang,a Galaxie, and hard ontheir tails the tiny Lotus Cortina of world champion Jim Clark.
Three more GT's photographed at Silverstone sometime in 1963 or 1964:Tojeiro-Buick GT : Racing under the EcurieEcosseteam colours, this rear-engined car had the then-new Buick alloyV-8.
Here is therear view. TheTojeiro originally had a Climax 2.5 litre 4-banger engine. A secondTojeiro was built along these lines and raced briefly by JackieStewart.
Oneof the two Tojeiro cars still exists, and was advertised for sale in 2009; hereare two InterNetphotos of the nicely-restored Tojeiro: one, and two. John Tojeirowas a brilliant ex-Fleet Air Armengineer who also designed the A.C. Ace chassis, the basis of thelegendary AC Cobra.
Sleek: This prototype Costin-bodied Lister-Jaguarwas built for Le mans. It mayhave been used in theracing film "The Green Helmet", as an open-bodied sports racer. Hand-beaten aluminium bodywork.
46 years after I took that b/w snapshot at Silverstone, i discovered that Lister Jag still exists, and is being worked hard .
========================================================
Is this the biggest engine ever installed in a competition vehicle?A German tractor-pull special called "Dragonfire" uses a massive 42-cylinder Russian submarine engine. Withseven banks of 6 cylinders each, it is 8,665 cubic inches, or 144 litres. When the tranny locks up, Europe moves East six inches —.
Thanks to keen-eyed Alistair Howarth, I can add this info:
Here's a tractor with three V-12 Allison aero engines (1,710 cu.in. each.)
And one with an old air-cooled radial engine probably from a WW2 bomber.
Here aresome more tractor-pull engines:
Radial 1
Radial 2
Radial 3
Four turbines
"Dragonfire" again
The "Michigan Madman", E.J.Potter had among his many weird and scary machines, a "Double-V-12" Allison aero engine, which naturally he put in a tractor. Allison built only 150 of these prototype bomber engines, but ol' E.J. got himself one.
It has 56 litres — 24 cylinders —Turbo-and-supercharged — two crankshafts in one crankcase — Over oneton inweight.E.J. reckoned it was one of the most beautiful engines ever made.
.
===========================================================
How would you like to take off the valve-train cover of your engine and see this? It's what drives the sleeve-valves on a 14-cylinderBristol Hercules engine. Just don't drop a spring-clip inthere —. The beast (they built tens of thousands of them) was a two-row radial with 14 cylinders.Until March 2010 I had labelled this a 12-cylinder, but my thanksto Fred van der Horst of the Netherlands for spotting my error.
===========================================================================
