Originally Posted by
RogerH
Thanks for posting the photos of Chris Amon in the A40 Special.
Some background on the car : it was built in 1947 by my great uncle Des Herrick as a speedway midget and was very successful in speedway and in hill climbs. In 1950 it was sold to Herb Gilroy who had Ralph Watson convert it to a circuit car with the midget Terraplane engine, a Bugatti gearbox and a Model T diff converted to IRS. In 1956 it was badly damaged in a Wellington hill climb and was totally rebuilt by Bruce McLaren and a few mates. In 1960 it was sold to Chris Amon as his first race car and by that stage it had a very hot A40 motor - Chris replaced the Bugatti box with a Singer one. The car then had many owners and was "improved" over time. It ended up in a Wellington warehouse for 20 years where I found it in 2005 and returned it to family ownership. It has now been de-modified back to 1960s configuration and I race it from time to time but currently it is having trouble keeping oil in the engine after about 3 laps!
The A40 special gained its name when Herb Gilroy acquired the car and fitted the Austin A40 engine with the help of Ralph Watson. I recall talking to Herb about his choice of engine when visiting Ralph and he was confident that the A40 was stronger than any equivalent BMC unit. He used to take it to 7,300 RPM. Details can be found here in the book Ralph Watson Special Engineer, refer to the section covering Miscellaneous Work. ----
http://ralphwatson.scienceontheweb.net/
HTML Code:
http://ralphwatson.scienceontheweb.net/