OK, this is going to be a long one so get comfy.......One doesn't normally associate wrecking yards with motorsport connections but in the 'old days' we in NZ were at the forefront of the homebuilt special and much of the raw material for that special came from wrecking yards. Clever guys like Hec Green, Wally Darrell, George Smith, Frank Shuter, the Stanton Bros, the list goes on and on, sourced their engines...often but not exclusively flat-head V8's, frames, axles, and almost everything else from a wrecking yard. Actually Hec Green is probably the odd man out there as he was VERY clever and designed and manufactured a lot of stuff himself. By the time all these bits and pieces had been cobbled together, and a thing of beauty stood in the driveway, a lot of hours rather than money had been spent. I should say that most of these things were definately NOT a thing of beauty and the scrutineers of today would have a heart attack if such devices were presented for inspection. Never mind, they did the business and some were extraordinarily successful, and some are still racing today 60 years after their initial conception. I mentioned earlier that I had bought my first car from a wrecking yard, not to build a special, but as a means of escape! It was however engineless and that came from another Singer that had been 'trucked'...a sort of early ute....a common procedure in those days. This car/truck had been sitting in a dirt floored shed not far from where I lived on Mt Pleasant and over the years through non use had sunk into the soft earth floor. I had known about it before I purchased the car from the wrecking yard, and it's owner Bob Scott, who had parked it up after one too many fires in the engine room...Bob was frequently seen beating out the flames with a coal sack....agreed to sell it to me for 10 pounds. The deal was that he would get the motor going again. I thought, yeh right, thats going to take some doing, but no. After cleaning things up, it had a magneto for the ignition so no battery required, some fresh fuel in the gravity tank, and sparkplugs and leads checked, it didn't take too many swings on the crank to awake the old girl from it's slumbers. Was music to my ears and I can still hear it today! We jacked it out of the mud, pumped up the tyres, amazingly they still held air, and I drove triumphantly down the hill to my home. My Mother nearly had a fit when she saw it.....'what will the neighbours think'. Stuff the neighbours, I had my first car and everyone reading this site has been there and remembers it well. I kept the good bits from the 'trucked' machine, installed the engine in the car from the wrecking yard and went cruising. Well sort of. She was a cantankerous old bitch and I spent more time under the bonnet than driving, but hey I was free. The cause of the frequent fires that Bob had experienced became obvious one day when I was watching it running with hood open..a tiny pin hole in the fuel line was allowing petrol to drip onto the hot manifold and all the stray sparks from the magneto set it ablaze. As I related, my friend Stacey had an Austin 7 and we used to have races round McCormacks bay road on a traffic cop, and traffic free course. I was amazed that the Singer could not beat the agricultural Austin 7...my car had an overhead camshaft for goodness sake, and was rated one more horsepower...8, so should have been able to eat the Austin. But no, and dont worry I had the accelerator THROUGH the firewall [what an appropriate name for that car] Both cars could get up to about 45 mph, but I can tell you that at that speed with everything flapping, rattling and vibrating, and oil smoke issuing from places it shouldn't, you felt as though you were really getting on with the washing!!!!!! I eventually sold the Singer when I left home to go to Lincoln because my Mother said 'it lowered the tone of the neighbourhood and insisted that I 'get rid of that eyesore at the front gate'. Goodbye old girl, the car that is, you taught me a lot. All I have left are memories, photos, and the 4, ring and open ended Whitworth Sidchrome spanners that I bought you back to life with.