Wednesday, June 30, 2010

wire wheels and a bobtail.

Damien in Canberra sent me this. Where is it now?

Monday, June 28, 2010

A couple of Mark 7s in "Just Cars".

The above car is the ex-John White, ex-Ric Kemp, ex-Graeme Muir, ex-Norm and Pam Helling Mark 7. In the Ric days it was no stranger to SA having done several trips this way, but when Graeme and Bev moved to Aldinga it actually came to live. Graeme did quite a restoration job (as had Ric before him) and at the time fitted a turbo VL (Nissan) and auto. It continued in that form in the hands of Norm and Pam for many years until they traded it in on an E-Type at Collectable Classics and from there it went back to Victoria. It's now back to a red motor, I see (with triple Webers), and a Supra 5-speed.

This is a surprise, Alan only sold it at the beginning of the year. He's now sold the Lotus as well.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Old Buildings

Despite the developers, Adelaide is full of great old buildings. I love it. It's a bit like Kapunda only grander. This is inside the GPO in the hall where you buy your stamps. It was last Monday, when it was so wet and dim that hardly any light was coming in through that giant skylight.

History

Oran Park 1975. Looks like Clearihan leading Warren. But look at the flares and I don't mean on the cars.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

A nice Mark 7 for sale

Bolwell Club members may remember Anne West, a Mark 7 owner who was involved with the club some years ago. Anne passed away in July last year. Part of her estate is her Mark 7, below. Anne's son, Marcus, and his sister would like to see the car go to "someone with the passion for the Bolwell marque."Marcus is in WA, but the car is in Victoria, on the Mornington Peninsula.
The car is a '69 model. It has a 186 in it with a Yella Terra head. It has a Torana front end and a Jag rear end. "The fast back has been modified to have a lift back in it. The auto electrics were redone a few years back by a qualified auto spark. The interior is OK, but could do with a little detailing."
More details are to follow but meanwhile expressions of interest will be forwarded to Marcus.

eBay FYI

Mark 4 body for sale. Apparently it was a complete car but the rest went for scrap. These remains are up to $1000 last time I looked. Far be it from me to comment.Someone might recognise it from the round tail lights and the cut-out in the bonnet.
That's one chassis you won't be able to pick up, Steve.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

For Ashley and Travis.

Here's a series of photos of a particular Mark 7. Ashley and Travis don't know each other but they both have an interest in the same car, sort of. Ash because he has just purchased it and is now faced with the task of putting it back together again, and Travis because it was his dad's car when he was a little kid. The car in question is the one that spent a lot of time in a boat yard in Fremantle. Ashley contacted me after talking to one of its former owners, Colin McAskill, enquiring about its SA history and whether I had any pictures of it from the old days. Here are some of the ones I sent him and below is what I was able to tell him.
The car was originally bought from Kadala Industries by Brenton Stanfield, an electrician, on 10/10/1970. (by the way, Ash, being a Kadala car it should have a chassis number somewhere). Brenton lived at Renmark at the time but later moved to Colonel Light Gardens and then to Mt. Barker (the SA one) where he was when Murray Willmott bought it from him on 4/12/1973. Murray and Colin both worked together at ATO at the time and became bitten by the Bolwell bug as Colin drove a very smart V8 Mk.7, the one Chris Gascoigne is restoring now. He used it in ProdSports and just about everything else for about 4 years until he got really serious and acquired the Ron McPherson racer. He sold it to Colin who passed it on to Geoff and Sue Mann, Travis' parents, on 5/1/1977. After a few years of racing it was getting a bit tired and Geoff turned it into a very smart car and it was he who painted it that attractive metallic blue. Anyway, the SA registration expired in 8/8/1980 about the time that the car went to WA. I'm sure Stacey or Barry can fill us in on its WA history.
Photo 1 is Murray at AIR........
.....and photo 2 is also at AIR with Ken Stratton hot up his clacker.Photo 3 is at the Hamilton Easter and it's a nice little exercise identifying all those people. I can see Brenda, Murray, Vern, Ronnie, Monica, George, Teri Lucas, Pip, a very young Peter Mac to name but a few.Photo 4 the car is accompanied by another familiar Bolwell when it was in the hands of one lady owner who "only drove it to church on Sundays".Photo 5 was taken immediately after its new paint job when it was trailered to One Tree Hill to be photographed for the 1978 calendar. That's Murray's trailer, my AP5, Peter Taylour's bum and Geoff's Fairmont GS wagon. Not sure about the Monaro.Both Geoff and Travis are into 240Zs these days which is not a bad thing.

Monday, June 21, 2010

A few Buchanans you might not have seen before.

Just to change the subject tell me about these Buchanans.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Japanese Cobra

Yes it looks just like any other Cobra.And here's all the body bits.And talking of body bits, it's not until you see this promo shot featuring some little Japanese people that you get an idea of the car's size.
Yes, it's a "Baby Cobra", a scaled down body dropped on a Cappuccino.

Substitute for paint.

I've been reading a fair bit lately about the Ferdinand GT3 RSX, the world's most eco friendly car created in Austria by artist Hennes Langeder. The body is not painted but is wrapped in gold tape instead. This helps to reduce pollution as paint contains "certain volatile organic compounds which get released into the atmosphere and not only lead to air pollution but also is harmful to one's health".
Wrapping cars is what Simon Wills does with V8 SuperCars and the like in Adelaide and Neville Cooper does as an artform in Auckland. The graphics are created on the computer of course and turned out on sheets of vinyl from giant printers in the same manner that the Bolwell calendars are produced on the Motown printer. The resultant vinyl sheets are then applied to the entire car body. Here are some examples of these wrapped race cars.
I believe it is cheaper by a reasonable amount than painting the car white and stickering it and more detail can be put into it. Body wrap is lighter than paint in the long run. Body repairers in the old days would find paint up to 5mm thick as panels would get a light rub back and painted over the top, "which looked OK from a distance".

Sunday, June 13, 2010

What brand of steering wheel is this?

This is the steering wheel on my Falcon ute. Does anybody recognise it? It may well be a cheap aftermarket job but just in case it's not, I'd like to find out its make and model. The reason being I'd like to check if it has an ADR approval. Our local cop is running out of things to defect this very roadworthy ute for and has recently picked on the steering wheel.Maybe the non-standard VB gear knob will be next.

More on power steering for Nagaris.

Alan Harmer has power steering on the awesome Nagari coupe he is building. Here are a few shots of the rack, pump and swaybar. The rack is standard for the twin turbo Supra/Soarer front end Alan has used."I have not modified the front end or steering at all as I imagine a bunch of Japanese engineers and possibly a Cray computer spent a lot of time ensuring it did everything just right and didn't suffer the bane of the car modifier's life, bump steer etc." says Alan.
*
Personally, I'm looking forward to the whole car being completed, so that we can all see what a wonderful Nagari it really is.

Friday, June 11, 2010

ProdSports

The order is Edwards, Gourlay, Maclurkin, Latham (79/80), after the latter two started batting for the other side as PG puts it.Ranald is, in fact following his 2 previous race cars.His TVR Griffith was obviously a 400 not a 200 as it has the Cortina tail lights.
Jack Griffith's cars were not slouches - 0 to 60mph in 3.9 seconds in 1964!
They were , apart from the drive train, essentially a Mark 3 Grantura. The only visible difference was the bulge in the bonnet and dual exhausts.
Here's a Griffith being offered for sale in the US at the moment.
The engine is a bit of a shoehorn job. The only way to fit the exhaust is to run it forward then down. We've seen that before I think.We refer to these cars as TVR Griffith but those names never graced the same car until TVR made a Griffith tribute in the 1990s.

30s Vauxhalls

For all those who rang about the Vauxhall bits this is roughly the model. It's called the ASX and is nothing to do with the Australian Stock Exchange. Roughly 1933, 1934.The wheels look to be 15". There's also a gearbox there.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

EKODORE

Remember the Folden? Here's another hybrid that PG has discovered in the carpark at the Lakeside Sprints. It's a VN with EK front and rear.

red white and blue

These are the colours (see previous post).

The many colours of Alan Edwards

The Nagari sports raced by Alan took on a number of colour schemes. Here's a few. Now that I've posted these photos, I should have included the previous Datsun 2000. Oh well, too late.Well, first up the car was white. The bonnet was divided down the middle, red on one side, light blue on the other, same as the Porsches of the era. Come to think of it Mike Finnis adopted that colour scheme for his Porsche after it ceased being the Kodak Porsche.Later it was black, green and yellow.And even later, black, yellow and red (Sound City and Shell).I've got a bit of a handle on where this Nagari came from, or how it evolved, but I don't know where it ended up. Does anyone?

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

for sale ad

Seen this one on CarPoint? Sounds good.

Nova 3

This is the Nova 3. It belongs to Steve Rowley and readers of Slipstream SA will have been following its restoration. Steve now has a couple of Mark 4s that are important to him and, as you can't deal with everything, the Nova is for sale. Here are a few details..........
Raced between 1970 and 1980.
Has had Ford 1500 & 2000sohc, Alfa and 13B rotary.
Has researched history with programmes and race results supplied.
The reason it looks a bit like an Elfin 300 is because the panels were supplied by Elfin.
Heaps more details from Steve himself. Ring him on 08-8767 2640 after 5.00 pm Central time.
He's looking for $25,000.00
Incidentally, if anybody has a Mark 4 chassis in any condition that they want to dispose of or if anyone knows of one, call Steve on the above number.