Yards And Yarns

[pallmall]

A High Boy or Hi Boy is a fenderless car with the body still at the stock height on the chassis.
Greg's car.


Further back there was mention of the V12 Allison dragster at the Sprint. Here is the same car taken a few years ago part way through a restoration by Garth Hodgetts. I have some more up to date photos, but blowed if I can find them.

[AMCO72]

Golly, just look at the poor old girl, really fallen on hard times. She has had a wheel change from back then.....the rears were truck wheels, nothing like as wide, and the fronts small car wheels, certainly not spoked. Just look at that engine!! I wonder why it didn't perform that day, I mean aircraft engines were pretty damn good, especially the Allison, they had to be otherwise our fly-boys would be in the drink in a rubber raft..... if they were lucky.......or perhaps not, waiting to be picked up. Anyway good to see she survived and is being loved by someone. Nothing like the sound of a V12 when it's going properly.

[AMCO72]

Greg, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were a big hotrod guru. Pallmall has pointed out that the yellow B4 is yours.....great stuff. I was reading the Morrari recreation and was thinking....yeh, a couple of dreamers, it will never get done, but dreams are free. Now I see why you want to do it, and I think you just maybe the best team to do it. I hope I'm around to see the finished article.

[AMCO72]

The engine on the dragster would have been putting out around 1200HP at about 2500rpm so would have to have been geared UP. This engine was never quite as good as the Merlin, used on the Spitfire, at high altitudes because of its lack of turbo-supercharger which was of course not on the dragster. Pilots always thought the American Packard built Merlins were better assembled than the Rolls-Royce version, which was a bit of a kick in the teeth for R.R. I don't think there was even a radiator on the dragster...probably just filled the water jackets with glycol and hoped for the best....maybe had a little header tank, as it would not have been running for long. Come to think of it modern dragsters don't have radiators either do they.

[bob homewood]

Clipping I have which I think was in the Motorman,the no 54 Anglia is the Dave Jurie car mentioned in another thread on here

[AMCO72]

The thread about Lost Race cars has got me thinking. Oh dear not another of Amco's ramblings I hear you say; nearly finished now and then we can all get on with deciding spelling. Cars that were lost, then found, rallied and sometimes raced, all before the big money hit the Classic and Historic car scene, indeed before the Classic car scene had even got under way. There is a big push today to find old race cars, and the thread about old Shellsport cars makes interesting reading. These machines have suddenly acquired a value, in cash and historic terms, way beyond what the original builders could have foreseen. My mate Barry who figured in story about Motorcade 81 is a consumate story teller. In the late 60's and early 70's he and I were hunting the highways and byways, barns and hedgerows, warehouses and lockups for that most illusive of cats......the Jaguar. During our forays into back- yards, pig-stys and chicken-coops in search of lost and forgotten cars we had a series of adventures and coincidences that you would only read about. And we thought, why not, lets put it all down. We did, and came up with a name.......'JAGNET...being the reminicences of a couple of big game hunters' . You may remember if you are old enough ,and before telly, a series of evening radio programmes called 'DRAGNET'.... thrilling detective stories, probably starting after 9pm when all the children had gone to bed, as they did in those days. Well we sort of borrowed the title, as we considered ourselves detectives following clues and leads, and altered it a bit to suit. The original is quite long so I will just put some extracts on here for your amusement. Needless to say, like all good detective stories, we had a successful conclusion to our endeavours. Barry ended up with a 1950 Mark 5 Jaguar, and I bought, first a 1948 Mark 4 then a 1935 SS 1 tourer. Barry's car was in very nice order requiring little in the way of restoration and he competed in a lot of JDC rallies over the years. He then went to live in heartland America to take up a teaching position at Kansas University. He was reluctant to sell the MK 5 so I offered to store it for him in one of our farm sheds. Needless to say I also got to drive it. He was away for several years but eventually returned, retrieved the car, and because he had money burning a hole in his pocket after American wages, had the car completely restored....a body off job. I think I would have left it as it was but never mind it now looks a million bucks and lives in Napier. My car, the 1948 MK4 was also in very tidy condition but after running it for a couple of years had it repainted and upholstered. When the SS 1 became available, I had been pestering the owner Dave Hill in Tirau, I advertised the MK 4, and the Emslies, father and son, motor body builders in Dunedin, flew up, bought the car and drove it home. The car ended up in the Queenstown Motor museum where it stayed for some years until that place folded and an Auckland JDC member bought it and has it to this day. The SS 1 came home as a rolling chassis, a trailer load of body bits, and 6 tea chests of sundry parts. Was a big job piecing it all together as I hadn't dismantled it, and it had had a fire in the wiring which had spread to the wooden frame. I was lucky that nothing was missing and eventually it all came together. I kept it till 1983 when I sold it to a chap in Perth WA. Was quite a business getting it there.....RO/RO cargo ship to Sydney...$1250, then train to Perth, $1250.....across the plain etc. It arrived in one piece...undamaged. Amazing!!! The amazing coincidence was that the buyer had a couple of years previously bought my old XK120, not from me of course, the one I had bought from Des Wild in ChCh, and he was able to take a photo of the two cars together on his front lawn, something I was unable to do. The last I heard of the SS was that it was entered in an auction in conjunction with the Melbourne grand prix. Dont know whether it sold but the auction estimate was $120.000. Not bad for and old bus that had cost me $2000!!! OK, enough of the preamble, next post will be the first of a few extracts from JAGNET.

[105angria]

IS that the Emslies of Emslies and Flockton that made Mistrales

[AMCO72]

OK, here we go. Excerpts from 'JAGNET..being the reminiceces of a couple of big game hunters'. Names have NOT been changed to protect the innocent! Narrated by Barry Parsonson 1971. [read in conjunction with post 172 of this thread] We pick up the story at about chapter 3 after a bit of a chat about our school life together, family ties, and the start of Jagmania. The Elephant guns have been stowed, provisions packed, and checkbook tucked into the back pocket..........THE HUNT IS ON......Henry Philips in Rotorua began putting out feelers on my behalf, and phoned one day to say that he had located a MK 5 for about $500. This was in my price range so we drove over to inspect.The car was a pale blue 3 and a 1/2 litre, what paint was left on it was original. The headlining hung down in taters. the upholstery flapped, there were no carpets and two of the doors carried the remains of rexine linings. 'She's a bit rough' says Henry, 'rougher than I thought actually' Talk about an understatement. We took it for a drive, for by some miracle the engine ran. She knocked and rattled and the cockpit filled with choking fumes. The oil pressure fell all the way from 25psi to about 3psi then sagged to zero on idle. We prayed it wouldn't sieze on the way back to Philips garage. I think somehow it was lubricated by the oil mist extracted from the clouds of smoke which pored from all parts of the engine. 'I'd only offer $400' says Henry. We wouldn't offer anything we said as we left for home. Early in 1970 I saw a quite fabulous MK 5 in Cambridge. I chatted the owner up who was not interested in selling, but he thought the car was worth around $2000, but where was I going to get $2000. Henry Philips sent another hopeful my way. It was a MK 5 painted 'BRG' The owner wanted $700 for it, and it was tidier than the earlier effort but the body was badly rusted, there was fungi growing out of the woodwork, and with a blown head gasket one could not easily assess the state of the engine. It didn't compare with the Cambridge car, but it was in my price range. Still I said no and let it go. I kept plugging my Cambridge owner without much success and continued to search else where. Gerald and I drove through to Tuakau to look at John Elliots MK 4 which he was trying to sell for $800, but decided it was in need of major surgery and left it. The car later turned up in Hamilton in the hands of Keith Wein after having been restored somewhat by Geoff Beatham. It was later sold to an Auckland buyer. About the same time, Henry Philips, still trying hard for us, told us of a MK 4 up in the Kaimais. The car had been in excellent condition the last time he had seen it, but was currently immobilised by a steering box failure, and had been parked at the Hill-Top tearooms for about 2 years. We phoned the owner who was reluctant to sell. Later he phoned to say he would sell, but when Gerald called at the tea-rooms he was out and the car guarded by a non too friendly dog, so inspection was impossible. We made a further arrangement to call but the owner was out again and the dog still in command. We never did get to see the car until sometime later when Geoff Beatham swapped it for another MK 4 that had also been living in the Kaimais. Life in that wet atmosphere had ravaged the car somewhat....it was restorable but would need plenty of time and money. I was still wooing my Cambridge friend and managed to get a promise of first option should he ever decide to sell. I followed up an Auckland ad for a MK 5 that had been restored and was in reasonable nick with a selling price of $1000. The vendor was reluctant to let me drive the car, which had a MK 7 gearbox, and only took it for a brief run around the block. I wasn't happy about this, even though the car LOOKED alright, and I decided to keep looking. I had been taught that cars, like books and women, should never be judged on appearance alone. Finally the Cambridge owner folded, but he would not sell the car outright for cash. I had to furnish him with a more modern vehicle of similar value. After presenting several cars for his inspection, he and his rather more choosey wife settled on a 1962 Austin A60 Estate. AZ435 was finally mine and the joys of owning that special breed of Cat were just beginning!!!!..................[next...Other Cats and Mutant offspring]

[AMCO72]

Part 2. JAGNET......'Other Cats and Mutant Offspring' ......Early in 1971 we did a tour of Waikato SS owners. In Tirau we looked hopefully at Dave Hills SS 1 tourer which was then an interesting collection of bits and pieces. Dave wasn't interested in selling the car, but Gerald persisted and eventually became it's owner. We then looked over another SS tourer under restoration. It was being done fairly slowly and still hasn't emerged. Passing a house in Tokoroa we saw a couple of blokes painting a MK 5 in a similar billious green to a previous car we had looked at. Some peoples idea of British Racing Green has to be seen to be believed. We stopped for a chat. Yes, they would be willing to sell and a figure of $1600 was mentioned, but that colour was going to make it a hard proposition to find a buyer. Another MK 5 lay rusting on the lawn. Any parts we asked. The price for rusty oddments was beyond belief. We left with only a boot badge from the rusty wreck which later graced the the boot of Geralds' MK4. Incidentally, that boot badge was only fitted to NZ assembled MK 5's so is quite unique. Sometime late in 1972 we heard of a MK 4 out at Maramarua owned by a Maori gent named Bill. On arrival we were confronted by a MK 4 and a 'half'. The bulk of the car was indeed MK 4 but the front mudguards had been modified to take MK 5 headlamp fairings and the P100's removed. Amongst an interesting array of pre and post war American machinery on the farm was the body of another MK 4 which contained pigs! The MK 4 and a half contained fowls! To the enthusiast, parts is parts. How much did they want? For each of the oddments in the shed the price was '50 dollar' Too much says us. 'You come back nearer Christmas when the old man is hard up says the missus....maybe he will let you have them cheaper. We never did get back until much later and by then the MK 4 and a half had been sold. While on the premises we collected some bits from the pigsty MK 4 and went to Mercer in search of the 4 and 1/2. A guy called Roy had bought it and was initiating a restoration. He was later transferred to the South Island and drove the car down. An intrepid motorist if ever I saw one. Our next encounter was to be with the weirdest machine ever. Gerald was still searching for an SS and had advertised in the Beaded Wheels wanted section. A character from Opunaki phoned to say he had an SS for sale for $350 dollars. We couldn't lose, and the car sounded like an SS 90 or 100 from the verbal description. We grabbed an A frame, cheque book, took the day off and headed south in an air of anticipation. This car really turned out to be something. It's components were representative of every model between 1932 and 1952....twenty years of Jaguar history in one machine. Parts had come from 1932 SS 1's to 1952 MK 5's and everything in between, all cobbled together into someones idea of a sports car. Th body was someones dream that had curdled into someone elses nightmare in the process of it's amateur construction. The engine could never be run because the water could not be got from the radiator to the block by any known means. It was a complete shambles. We shrugged and turned for home....another wasted trip.........Next....The search for parts.

[AMCO72]

JAGNET Part 3......SEARCH FOR PARTS:...One of the constant worries associated with owning a vehicle that is old is that of obtaining spare parts. The owner gets obsessed with gathering about him sufficient spares to cover most emergencies. I caught this disease too and set about searching for a source of bits. The idea was to buy an intact, but unrestorable, MK 5 and dismantle it for storage. My first attempt involved an approach to a guy who drove a dilapidated MK 5. I was going overseas on study leave and I needed to divest myself of an ailing A30 countryman, with an ominous knock in the mechanicals, and this other Jaguar owner was keen to swap. The MK 5 was very tired but continued to run despite a bent conrod which sounded like somebody working in the engine with a jack-hammer. The deal fell through because this potential Austin owner was suspicious of the knock in the A30. That MK 5 is still running, and still knocking which says something for the stamina of the marque. The next attempt was to be more successful but extremely frustrating. I heard on the grapevine of 2 MK 5's for sale, one restorable the other a wreck. I approached the owner and offered to buy the wreck. All or nothing was the response. I offered $200 for the pair and left. A week later my offer was accepted and I now owned 3 MK 5's. Gerald and I took both cars out to his farm and began to reassemble the engine on the restorable machine. After some ingenuity we got the thing together and it was time for a try out. We primed it, attached a battery and pressed the starter. The engine turned but refused to fire. Further attempts only succeeded in flattening the battery. Towing was in order. The Ferguson tractor was hooked up, and the car with engine churning towed along the drive. All to no avail. A reprime produced the required result. With no bonnet and no exhaust manifold the flames leapt about 2 feet from the ports and the noise was deafening. With a bit of tidying up the car looked vaguely respectable though attempts to polish the hand painted bodywork failed to produce a showroom shine. We then decided to sell the car to recoup some of the outlay, and this is where the fun really started. The previous owner had lost the ownership papers, and couldn't remember whether the car was in his name or that of his wife. They seemed to be living in about 6 addresses at once and couldn't remember which house the ownership papers might be at, and they needed the papers to decide which of them would sign the change of ownership form. Without the papers we couldn't register the car; without registration we couldn't get a WOF. Without the WOF we couldn't get the ownership papers or copies thereof in my name. The previous owner wouldn't sign anything or do anything in case it cost money, and they couldn't be contacted because they were not sure which of the 6 house they would be living in. Dealing with these people was like sellotaping eels to a greasy pole. Finally, on the verge of a mental breakdown, I registered the car in my name, got a WOF, told the owners that the change of ownership papers were overdue, and they could be fined. They accepted my offer to pay for the change, had a fight over who should sign the form, ended up by both doing so, and the business ended. We sold BS4440 for $500 to an erstwhile enthusiast who later sold it to the man with the machine with a bent conrod for $250....it's a small world. He was offering both cars for $400 a few months later, both in running order.....just. The wreck MK 5 we dismantled for parts, and despite the fact that the car had not been moved from it's place in long grass for over 10 years, many of the parts were in usable condition. If I learnt anything from this business is that, persistance pays, nothing is ever like it sounds from a distance, and there are some pretty odd people out there...weird even.

[AMCO72]

OK, re reading all this now it seems a bit dated, after all it is over 40 years ago. But we certainly had some fun. The interesting thing is the prices we paid for these cars. The classic and historic movement was just getting underway. I think the first issue of Classic Car, the English magazine, which became Thoroughbred and Classic Car was in 1972, and reading copies of those early issues now it all seems a bit quaint and innocent. How things have changed, especially in the 80's when just about anything with wheels, that was more than few years old was being snapped up by 'collectors'. Well a lot of that lot got burnt, big time, good job I say. Fairly average E types were regularly selling for $120,000, now you can pick up those same cars for half that. I am at the moment trying to sell a 1954 MG TF 1500 for an elderly widow here in Cambridge. She, or rather her family, WANT $39,000 for it, exactly the price her husband, now deceased bless his soul, paid for it at the height of the Classic car boom in the late 80's and early 90's. I think he got sucked in because it is an American import, left hand drive, and has a fairly restricted market here in NZ. I even got in touch with the Classic MG club in Southern California but had no luck there either. I am sort of it's guardian and go for a spin from time to time ,but although it has had over 5000 lookers on a web site there have only been a couple of enquiries. So things have certainly changed from when Barry and I were hunting these things down. Glad we did it then, because old pensioners like me can only sit at their computers and write about such things now......Sigh.

[AMCO72]

You remember the story about Judith in the Fiat hitting one of Walter Byrnes' sheep down the Bruntwood straight. [post 142 Yards & Yarns] Well our family must be prone to hitting stray stock as we had a similar incident some years, and a lot of cars, later. By this time Angus had honed his driving skills on the farm driving the Fergie and an old Morris 10 that we used as a farm hack. Good fun that was. I mean, neither of these machines would exceed 20 mph on the grass, but what fun can be had at 20 mph! We had at that stage a bach north of Thames on the coast and we were heading there one weekend with a trailer loaded of construction materials, as the bach needed a certain amount of restoration. To give Angus some practice behind the wheel, he was driving, and the car was a 1972 Triumph 2000 Estate. We were getting along at a good clip heading out of Cambridge towards Tauwhare when we were confronted by a herd of dairy cows exiting a paddock and coming towards along a temporary, electric fenced race, on the side of the road. Well one old biddy decided to take a short cut and leapt the fence in front of the Triumph. Needless to say we....Angus.... hit the beast fair and square. Now a cow is a good deal bigger and heavier than a sheep and the unfortunate animal ended up on the bonnet, that is until the brakes were applied ,whereupon it slid off onto the road in front of us. Well the farmer and his wife came racing down to check on the animals wellbeing.....it was making terminal gurgling sounds, and not showing the slightest willingness to get up! Of course, it was the BEST cow in the herd, according to the missus, and I could see her calculating a large compensation in her head. However with a few well placed kicks the dozey animal scrambled to its feet and took off with rest of the herd that were at that stage gathered round their fallen mate.....as cows do! We all breathed a sigh of relief and continued on our journey, with the farmer muttering something about being lucky.......who, us or the cow....cheeky devil. It is interesting to note that the farmer concerned now has a tunnel under the road to get stock from one side to another. Right, what has all this got to do with Motorsport you might ask. Well the driver that day went on to be a successful competitor in several classes of NZ Motorsport, two 16th places at Bathurst, and in the biff and bash of close racing must be reminded of the day the BOVINE ended up on the BONNET!!!!!

[AMCO72]

The little bit about having fun at 20 mph on a tractor, brings to mind that wonderful BBC documentary with, a serious for once, Rowan Atkinson discussing the future of the motor car. He is shown in one clip having fun on a Fergie with sheep as mobile chicanes! Starts with Renault 5 racing and ends with Rowan driving a '2 horse power' chariot down a deserted motorway. Is brilliant. The title....."The Driven Man". Of course Rowan is a fairly accomplished Classic car racer himself. Has/had a very nice Aston Martin DB2.

[Carlo]

Rowan has recently set the best lap time for a guest on the current Top Gear program too

[beowulf]

Funny wasn't it how often in our younger days when we ended up in the ditch in our Model A or similar, and we were talking to the local farmer to give us a tow, some animal had walked across the road in front of us. This in spite of the lurid marks on the road. One time I blamed a mob of turkeys for my visit to the ditch. The cocky looked at me and muttered something about not being sure who the bloody turkey was.

[Milan Fistonic]

Talking about having fun on a tractor, who remembers this tractor race at the Grand Prix meeting at Pukekohe?

[Steve Holmes]

Was that from the '73 event Milan?

[AMCO72]

Right, and thats a Fergie 135 coming 3rd, and if it was a 'multi-power' version, which was a bit like an overdrive, it should have been able to EAT those damn Fords out front!!!! The Ferguson gearbox was a 3 speed with a high and low ratio, giving 6 forward speeds. The addition of 'multi-power' doubled that to 12 speeds and this gave the tractor quite a good road speed. Nothing like what the big tractors have nowdays though.....a permisable 50 kph, with no suspension, and huge tires feels about a 100!!!!!!!

[Milan Fistonic]

Yes it was 1973.

In the programme the race is listed as the Ford Tractor Race and it's my memory that all the machines were Fords.

There was a fair bit of cheating going on. A number of drivers didn't bother going around the hairpin; cutting across the grass to shorten the lap. In the background of the photo above you can see someone returning to the track after looking for a short-cut.

[AMCO72]

Good, that makes me feel a whole lot better......all Fords. Without colour is hard to tell, but you MUST be right because there is no way that any Ford from the early 70's could beat a Fergie. But I tell you what, NO Fergie, Ford, or Field Marshal, could beat the Massey Harris 101, and that was built in the 1950's......see post 112 Yards and Yarns. Actually, the only machine that came close was a David Brown Cropmaster, built about the same time as the Massey Harris. So the Ford coming third in the photo must be a Dexter because its a lot smaller than the 2 Fords at the front......Fergie size........FERGIES FOR EVER!