that Bars Leaks Ad reminds me of that Stalwart of of Kiwi Do-it-yourself - Robbie !!
that Bars Leaks Ad reminds me of that Stalwart of of Kiwi Do-it-yourself - Robbie !!
Bob, sounds like you & I might be cut from the same piece of cloth..
AMCO72, The pic I have of the HWM in the NZ motor Racing photo book 1966, its definitely in need of some care & attention, so I agree with your 'rough' description. Interestingly Lycoming Special features in the same photos & also wheels with similar steel strips!. However the strength of any wheel modded in that fashion was largely in the hands of the guy on the welder.
With reference to 'bodgy tricks', no these cars or more correctly owners/drivers have been unaware of the potential danger they are/were in, they knew that something might be amiss, but had no idea what that might be, In some cases they had taken steps to address the problems, but the root cause had not been found, simply because it was so basic in nature & overlooked.
I widened/made most of the steel wheels on cars I raced, was convinced by the 'techs' @ Teretonga when I built the V8 Cortina that they would prefer I used a 'MANZ' preferred wheel manufacturer in the future, did as I was told & ordered a couple of alloy wheels. What happened, second club meeting & the center of the RF disintergrated, luckily on the slow down lap, VP of MANZ came over for a look afterwards, I left him with a very clear direction on where he could stick their recommended suppliers from there onwards.
Last edited by Jac Mac; 07-23-2011 at 06:22 AM. Reason: extra
I was in the Hamilton car club in the mid 60's and can remember the V12 engined dragster. I seem to remember that the whole run was done at not much more than idle speed, and yes it popped and banged the whole way!! Safety standards were pretty laughable in those days too. I think we only had to stand in the paddock behine the fence!! Also remember going to some of the hillclimbs that HCC put on at Horohora. Red Dawson storming up the hill in his Willys Corvette was fairly spectacular to say the least!
I remember the HWM-Corvette (as it was by then) getting scruffier and scruffier with each year
But in defence of John Donnelly, if you're right about the year, he would no longer have been the owner/driver
Didn't look too bad in 1965 for 12+ year old car.
OK, so who was the owner in 1967/68 when it 'competed' at the Hamilton Car Club sprints, because it has done a BIG downhill slide from that picture. Its condition when I saw it looked as though it had taken part in a Butchers Picnic race at the speedway!!! Originally the car would have had an Alta motor, I think, then maybe a Jaguar engine would have been fitted fairly soon because the Alta was a pretty dismal thing. It certainly had wire wheels, as the photo shows. The wheels in 1967 were solid of some sort, as widening wire wheels leads to all sorts of problems, not least the access to the centre-lock wheel spinners. You have to wonder at it's miserable life in 2 or 3 years. Mind you we were pretty rough back then. There is that well known picture of John Riley, fag hanging out of his mouth, in the Monza Ferrari with silver overspray all over his tyres after some touching up with the spray can! Does anyone know what happened to the HWM, can't recall seeing it at at Classic racing events. I mean this was an iconic car in it's day so I'm sure it 'survived'......it was only JUST surviving in 1967. Probably snapped up by some English entrepreneur and whisked back home. Just maybe the owner of the HWM at that meeting , is out there, reading this, and can enlighten us, because I'm almost certain that it not make any runs that day because of problems other than 'loose' tacked on spokes.
Right, got that out of my hair, now the other iconic car at the sprints that day was the 'other' GTO. It is very common amongst car spotters to exclaim how UGLY the car was, well sometimes I wonder if these people have actually SEEN the car in the flesh and heard it running. You can't compare it with the 'real' GTO as clearly the whole thing is a compromise with the short wheel base. But I put it to you that it is one of the MEANEST looking machines you will ever see. Look at that photo of DT4889 in post 9 of the GTO thread, obviously fresh out of the panel-beaters, perhaps that should be body-shop, and another one with Pat Hoare standing proudly beside it, and if that doesn't break your heart then you have no business reading these pages. By the time Logan had purchased it, it was starting to look a bit scruffy and it didn't improve in his ownership.We had it in a motor show in the Claudlands show building in Hamilton where that first picture in the GTO thread was taken, and you can see the faded looking red paintwork, more orangey than Ferrari red, The whole thing was starting to get loose and floppy back then, maybe the harsh suspension had shaken it to bits because I'm sure it had not done a big mileage. The other thing was that the interior was so tacky! The trim round the dash/doors etc was some weird sort of black padded diamond embosed vinyl!!!! Can you imagine it, well it's worse that that, it all looked so amateurist. Was supposed to have been done by some upholstery guru in ChCh, well I dont know who picked the material but he [would have to be a he] had no taste. The instruments were oddly laid out too from memory. BUT, I dont care.....that car really did it for me, and frankly I dont give a stuff what the car-spotters think or say, that machine should never have been put back to original. Was absolutely unique, and I'll have it in my garage any time thank you!!
With regards to the HWM I have a picture of Beowulf passing the HWM at the Levin 1966 March meeting. According to the Levin book the driver was a G.T.Hallen from Waitoa, the HWM was entered as a HWM Corvette with a 5300cc motor. It looked pretty rough, Beowulf is no object of beauty but alongside the HWM it looks good. Gone are the lovely wire wheels, in their place are widened steel ones. Crude flairs are tacked on and the whole thing looks tatty and rough. It didn't feature in the results so I guess it went about as badly as it looked. Where it is now goodness knows. According to Vercoe Gavin Bain bought it in 1989 and had started restoration with a Cadillac V8 motor.Originally Posted by AMCO72
This particular HWM had a 5.4-litre Cadillac V8 from its inception in 1954, and from its first NZ appearance in 1957. It was raced in NZ initially by the Avery brothers of Hamilton, who used a variety of drivers in the latter years, including Ron Roycroft and Roly Levis. By the time they'd finished with it (1962) it had an 7-litre flat-six Continental aero engine - I can still hear Ron Roycroft accelerating out of the Hairpin at Ardmore and being almost out of earshot before he changed up.
A youthful Peter Haskett acquired the car from the Averys, then sold it to Donnelly, who replaced the Continental engine with a Ford Thunderbird and then the Corvette. Graeme Hallen raced it in the 66 and 67 seasons, then John Monehan put it over a bank in a hillclimb and it was soon part of the Roycroft collection.
It eventually passed from there to Gavin Bain around 1989 and I did hear he was going to re-fit a Cadillac engine, though there was also some talk of a Jaguar unit
First picture shows Donnelly at Pukekohe in 1965, the second the same driver 12 months later. In the interim the Corvette engine had replaced the Thunderbird, steel wheels replaced the wires, and a tatty appearance replaced the more pristine
Graham hallen most likely
If you check recent HRC entry lists you will see he is still tearing around
and correct, the "bones" of this car are with Bain
I think that this was another of the cars that got bitten by,"The Firestone Bug" 1965 makes the timing right,and no doubt that was the reason the rudimentary panel work happenedFirst picture shows Donnelly at Pukekohe in 1965, the second the same driver 12 months later. In the interim the Corvette engine had replaced the Thunderbird, steel wheels replaced the wires, and a tatty appearance replaced the more pristine
First picture shows Donnelly at Pukekohe in 1965, the second the same driver 12 months later. In the interim the Corvette engine had replaced the Thunderbird, steel wheels replaced the wires, and a tatty appearance replaced the more pristine
David(or anyone else)
Do you know anything about the #40 in the 2nd pic?
Cheers
Lee
Lee.....I'm being silly here, but I'm sure you already know that it is a Daimler SP250 [Dart] Beyond that I cant help. And Bob, I just love your 'bitten by the Firestone bug' !!!!!! You mentioned in one of the earlier posts that a performance tyre means BIG. Were they made for some specific class...in America perhaps. They cant have done the unsprung weight much good.
Regarding those WIDE wheels on the HWM. You can those steel strips, like spokes, that the scrutineer was objecting to in the HCC sprints. Rough as!!!!
Trevor Sheffield's SP250
I can probably recount here my own involvement with Firestone in 1965 ,I was involved with some mates in setting up a saloon car racing team ( Silver Fern Saloon Car Racing Team ) and was looking around for tyres for the 1965 /66 season and I got talking to some one I knew in Firestone about racing tyres ,they told me that they were going to become a lot more involved in NZ motor racing in the forthcoming season and bring in some race tyres .I looked at the tyres they intended bringing in ,they were all too big to fit under the guards of the cars we had ,but in turn they seemed pretty interested in what we were doing so we decided to go with them using their road tyres called the F7 in those days ,The Dunlop C49 was their direct competitor at that time .Well we used those F7's they certainly didn't have a lot of grip .but you could go pretty quick on them as long as you didn't mind a car that slid around .That was Jim Richards first season and he was part of our team as such ,I think those tyres really suited Jims style at that time which probably reflects a lot in those photos of him back then.Firestone came out around about the November Levin meeting with the F100 Cavalino ,yes they felt better ,but I think by then we had sort of set our cars up around the F7 so stayed with them.I never used any of the racing tyres as I said they were too big to go under the guards and also they were too large in diameter so the gearing would have suffered .I did try some tyres I think they called wide ovals or wide awfulls as I called them they were hopeless ,but they also brought out a small diameter nylon cased road tyre from the states which I used they were great
I think a lot of people put those big race tyres on with no thought about size ,diameters,side wall flex or construction and just built big hideous rims to take them
Oh I guess for the younger readers I should have said the the F7 and C49 tyres were cross plies ,the F100 was the first Firestone Radial which was brought out to counteract the Dunlop SP ,another reason we used those F7's and stayed with them was we got them for just about free ,one quid a tyre from memory ,that helped back then
Dale Mathers visit to the speed-show over the weekend reminded me of an anniversary. Exactly 30 years ago.....to the weekend.....the Waikato VCC staged a car,rather than a speed show in the Claudlands Show building in Hamilton. Not quite to the standard of the Auckland event, but not too bad considering the couple of amateurs who ran it. Myself and my mate Barry Parsonson were put in charge of the whole thing and we were fortunate to get the local radio station...1ZH, to come on board for a bit of free advertising. One of the DJ's was a car 'nut' so that helped, and we decided to call this extravaganza the...'ZH Motorcade '81'. Also helping that weekend was the weather which was awful, but just right for Mum, Dad, and the kids to attend an old car show. In fact 'Old Crocks' weren't the only things on display. We didn't have Logan's GTO but equally impressive was a 'top fuel dragster' which had won an Australasian title. This machine, owned by that hard case, X MP from Tauranga, Bob Clarkson, was a big drawcard and Bob was very generous with his time and effort in getting to the show. The range of vehicles on display was very impressive, with veteran, vintage, PV, and sports cars....military vehicles, motorbikes, stock cars, stationary engines, and pretty much anything else that had wheels.....no tractors though. The military stuff was especially impressive...as well as a jeep we had an X German army half-track, and a Sherman tank on a transporter outside. Several of the cars were started up at some stage during the 2 day show, and this always drew a crowd gazing at the mechincal clatter with the bonnet open. Can you SEE mechanical clatter, well yes, when Theo de Leeuw started his beautiful yellow 1912 Model T, you can actually SEE mechanical clatter!! Theo's hand-cranking proceedure drew gasps of wonder from young and old. On the saturday evening we had a motoring orientated quiz with the radio's DJ as the quiz master. Barry had thought up some fiendishly obtuse questions which didn't favour the enthusiast, sometimes a good guess would get you through to the next round. We had a huge response to that, I think the whole hall joined in as there were some good prizes up for grabs. The usual car care products and wine, and for the major prizes, a battery, Lesco fuel cans, jumper leads, spanner sets, and oil. Took a fair bit of leg work to get companies to donate...no Super Cheap then, but they all got a plug on the radio, so everyone was a winner . A team assembling a model T engine and installing it on a chassis, complemented Theo's demonstration of Model T ownership. The whole object of the show was of course to make money, but for specific reason. The club had got itself into O/D at the bank and noises were being made. At a committee meeting an entrance fee of 50 cents was decided on, not without some protest from me as I thought we should charge at least $1.00 !!!!!!!! sounds ridiculous now doesn't it. We also organised our own security with groups of us sleeping overnight 'guarding' all that precious machinery. Amazing how comfortable the back seat of a large vintage Rolls Royce can be. So the only things we paid for were the building hire which wasn't too bad, and some liability insurance. Was a huge success, and much back-slapping ensued, and our goal was reached, and then some.
I see Greg Stokes has posted some pretty sharp looking photos of his favourite cars on the Speedshow thread. If youv'e been reading this thread you will remember my buddy at Lincoln driving a B4......well the yellow one is just as I remember it, only it wasn't QUITE in that condition!! Greg, is that called a Hi Boy, and if so does this refer to the rear suspension being higher than the front or that the body has not been channeled, or only mildly so. Imagine roaring around the streets in that today....no hood, open to the elements. You wouldn't be able to park it up and go to the pictures, because it would be gone when you came out.....but that is what we did. I'm sure it didn't have a key, just a little switch for the ignition. God, we must have been mad...or young...or something!!!!!!
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote