Catalina Park Katoomba - Some more Pictures and info

[GeebeeNZ]

Steve I think this should answer it.

Car No 41 (above) represents a quality that typifies the early post-war days of Australian Motor Racing. It was was written up in the
"Sports Cars and Specials" magazine of November 1956 (Price 3 shillings)
The writer - John Bartlett - described it as one of the best-known and most consistent cars ever to race on Australian circuits. It was strongly built,
could easily run at 120 mph, and often beat some of the most expensive imported cars.
SoCal was never a non starter, and never retired, in the 70 odd races that owner-driver Frank Walters entered during the two and a half years he
owned the car. And in those races -- averaging one a fortnight -- Walters usually managed to finish in the money.
What is more remarkable still is the fact that he always drove the car to every meeting he competed in. He used the car as a personal transport
around Sydney between meetings, and did all his own maintenance work on the SoCal in his home garage.
George Reed, Jesse Griffiths, Frank Walters & Alex Xydias
George Reed built SoCal in 1948 using a Ford chassis, a Mercury V8 engine and a standard four box as a basis.
Jesse Griffiths took it over and put in a Wilson preselector box. This was not particularly unusual. Tom Sulman had one on his old Maserati.
Griffiths, who was not at the time a member of the Australian Sporting Car club, took the car to Mt Druitt. But since he was not permitted to race,
he offered the car to Frank Walters to drive in the last race. The cars were already going into the grid. Frank hopped in and drove to the end of the airstrip and back to the grid. That was all the practice
he had in it. And SoCal won the race.
Frank was clearly impresed with the car, and managed to buy it. Soon after, he got in touch with an American V8 specialist, Alex Xydias,
who ran the SoCal speed shop in Burbank, Southern California. From then on Xydias actually developed the car by correspondence.
Xydias first sent out the Edelbrock head which was regarded as the basic step.
That worked fine but the stock ignition wouldn't handle anything past about 4200 revs per minute. The American sent out a Kong Guild
ignition set up. With this system Xydias said, the engine could go to 8000 rpm. Frank never exceeded 5500 rpm, and at that speed the
engine was as 'clean as can be'.
With the Kong ignition such a success, Frank decided that a special camshaft would be in order. he drew a map of the Mountt Druitt
circuit a and marked the rises and falls, making a note of the engine’s rpm at various points, the change points -- the lot.
Then he wrote a long description of every move he made during one lap of Mt Druitt. He posted this information to Xydias.
A new camshaft was made specially to match the car to Mt Druitt. Then Xydias completed the job by sending out an Edelbrock triple
manifold setup.
All done by correspondence !
Reliabiity
One time, Frank drove the car to Bathurst, took off the windscreen, fitted the aero screen, turned the headlights around and went on the track. He won one event and came third in the main event after leading up to the last lap, when the brakes failed at the top of the last straight
and he had to coast down the straight round the corner and over the line. Two other cars passed him in the process.
He fixed the brakes in the pits, drove to Orange the next morning, ran sixth in his event and drove home to Sydney that night.
In all the SoCal took part in about 70 or 75 races . Frank won the Racing Car Championship at Mount Druitt.in 1954.

Thanks to motomarques for the above information