Dave Silcock Jags

[Oldfart]

[QUOTE=Howard Wood;7706]Steve you will get your hand spanked by the forum creator for getting so far off topic!

Early race car aero aids were very much from the "angled bit of tin" school of design

I am not sure that I totally agree Howard. Some yes but..
Have a look at Chaparal, one of the leaders, they knw well about endplate and assymetric foils, as did the one on Scotts' Jag. Likewise the ones tested on the Mini van at Colerne and other places by Bruce.
One I did for a lower powered sprint car was calculated to be producing over 500 pounds of downforce at 75mph with much less frontal drag than the flat tin ones. Then we realised that a fair bit of sprint car wing is just to hold up the "sails" on the sides!

[seaqnmac27]

This is a very interesting thread to me These 5 pics show 2 different Silcock Jags in very different settings. There are the 2 pics my dad took from Pukekohe, not sure which year, however the other 3 are from the Noosa Classic Car SHow of 2009 and it shows the Silcock XK120? in a state of restoration.

[Howard Wood]

O.F, I should of course have said "MOST early race car aero aids" because there have always been some clever bastards out there. Interesting you mention sprint cars, a subject I know absolutely nothing about except that looking at the way they have evolved with enormous end plates suggests that the rudder effect may be as much their main funtion as pure down force. Do they put vertical angled flaps on the rear of the end plates. a form of trim tab? The end plates on a circuit car are primarily to prevent air spilling off the sides of the wing (and somewhere to place sponsor's messages) and as such don't need to be much bigger than the wing profile, and would probably follow the wing profile if the height regulation allowed it.

[Steve Holmes]

That'll be the car Michael May ran at the Nürburgring in 1956

Thats the one David! Brilliant. Again, I'm working from memory here, but I vaguely recall this car was faster than the factory team cars, and as such, they protested the wing, citing it hindered viewing. Not sure how true that story was, or if it was one of those stories that gets tweaked slightly every time its told. Either way, it seems the wing wasn't tried again?

[AMCO72]

Definately NOT the Silcock X Brian Middlemass XK 120. That car was well up and running by 2007. Different number of louvres on the bonnet.....similar bulge to cover webers, but Silcock car's bonnet was not chopped off above the grill. No wires etc etc etc...... The real thing was for sale for $80,000 3 or 4 years ago. Dont know whether it sold, but certainly did not need re-restoring in 2009.

[seaqnmac27]

That is very interesting because I was just going from the articles they had about the car in front. Itr makes sense as I looked for it again last year, as they said they were going to be bringing it back each year until the project was complete and it wasn't there last year, unfortunately I didn't get there this year.

[AMCO72]

JIM......calling JIM from 'Tok' .....come in JIM. Thats a big ten-four JIM. Info on the XK needed by 'historians'.

[thunder427]

.....Plus the Silcock XK120 was 'Black', as stated in another thread on this subject, I rode in the XK in the early 60's ,had drilled wheel for brake cooling and the bonnet had leather strap ,very 'thoroughbred' looking!!!!...regards thunder427/MJ

[AMCO72]

XK120 is now dark green. Owned by Bryan Wyness in Auckland last time I looked. Think Bryan is a pilot with AirNZ, or something to do with AirNZ....maybe a technician....'mechanic'!!!!!

[AMCO72]

seaqnmac27.......are these guys in Oz CLAIMING this to be THE Silcock XK or are they just building a 'replica' of it. This is just what we have been hammering out in the 'race replica debate' with the custaxie. I guess there are other replica XK's out there in NZ but they are not claiming to be the real thing. The car is too well known here for that to happen, but there are still some cheeky devils out there willing to give it a go!!!!!! JIM from Tok......come in please.

[markec]

In the pits

[Rod Grimwood]

Lyall Martin who had Lyall's Carpainters on the shore painted Daves 120 and yes it was a very dark green. Lyall actually did all Daves work back then. He painted a few classic cars and alot of race cars overh the years.

[AMCO72]

I'm not sure when you look at seaqnmac27's photos, whether you can tell if the body is aluminium or not. Daves', the X Middlemass car was a genuine early aluminium bodied car.....one of the first approx 250 made. The park lights are chromed attachments, not welded and leaded as on the metal bodies. When the car first raced it was on drilled disc wheels...must have been Middlemass who converted to wires. Dave originally bought the car from Sydenham Park Car Sales.....yes Ron Sylvester, for 375 pounds!!! AL6246 was to do a lot of racing miles in the next decade.

[thunder427]

.....David worked at A.R.Mackay's,the Christchurch Routes Group Agent ,also sold Plymouth's (Savoy, with the fantastic fins!!!) were he was a mechanic,I believe on the Commer trucks,I'm thinking the Jag had a dark colour trim, my mind keeps telling me perhaps an Dark Olive Green ?!!!!!!!! ..........regards thunder427/MJL

[bob homewood]

Lyall Martin who had Lyall's Carpainters on the shore painted Daves 120 and yes it was a very dark green. Lyall actually did all Daves work back then. He painted a few classic cars and alot of race cars overh the years.

Lyall painted all Don McMillans cars as well ,from memory there was a family connection between Dave Silcock and "Big Don "

[ged]

are we sure middlemas car is x silcock if not brians take on what competion 120 should look and go like was great. i was a big fan . Maybe a thread could be started on his work and influence on the classic scene

[AMCO72]

Yes ged, the Brian Middlemass car was definately the x Silcock machine, and it was Brian that really made the thing go, taking it to a whole new level of performance and probably driving, although Dave was no slug behind the wheel. And yes thunder427 the trim is now a medium to dark green, but has been reupholstered at some stage in vinyl....but nicely done.

[David McKinney]

All this talk of the ex-Silcock XK120 - he raced two. The first was AL6256, later campaigned by Middlemass, and the other AR325. Both were originally steel-bodied

[AMCO72]

Well there you go. It takes a historiain to set the record straight. How thinks do get muddled in the mists of time. Bloody amateurs!!!![Me]

[AMCO72]

Ok.......I am glad that NZ's foremost Motoring Historian has put me straight on that, and that I may have posted some incorrect information, but I am now totally confused. I drove ONE of these cars in about 1974/5 when it was owned, briefly, by Chris Lachner in the JDC. He was using it as a road car...totally unsuitable, no hood, and had come out to the farm to show it off to me. We went for a 'burn' up the Bruntwood Straight...[see yards and yarns 141/142] and had no sooner pulled back into the yard, when there was an ominous clanking from the engine and everything went dead. Chris, who was a singer of some note, had a rehearsal to go to, so we loaned him a car, and pushed the dead XK into the barn. Over the next week or so I dismantled it to find the problem, which should have been obvious....was in fact the timing chain. My JDC friend eventually retrieved the car and I lost contact. NOW, the puzzle is this. Was it AL6246 or AR325 ????? It definately had wire wheels so was PROBABLY AL6246. So, the car in Australia could be AR325....the second of the XK's with the steel wheels, of which I was totally ignorant at the time. Remember these were just troublesome old English sports cars, and this was reflected in what we paid for them back then.....about a $1000 dollars in my case for the XK120C. The fact that FAZZAZ sold AL6246 for $80,000 thirty years on reflects the way the Classic car scene went. SO, seaqnmac27....the car you saw in OZ could have been AR325....certainly had the right wheels. Need to enlarge the sign-board at the front of the car to see what it says. Perhaps you can remember. Now if Jim from Tok had come to my rescue early in the piece I wouldn't have made this stupid mistake. Come in Jim!!!!