Scuderia Ferrari transporter 1931.

My favourite 3-wheelers No.11

At Winton on Saturday.

Starting an RX8 powered Mk.7

Davies Craig Assists in Cooling the 'VW Beast'

You don’t often see Davies Craig thermo fans and an electric booster pump on a 64 VW Beetle, but this is certainly no ordinary Vee Dub!

This chopped VW has a sting in the tail via a Subaru WRX turbo engine and gearbox whilst being fitted with a water to air intercooler. This monster is being built with only one purpose in mind!

Its destined for the salt lakes in outback South Australia (Lake Gairdner to be precise) to compete in speed record runs conducted by the Dry Lake Racing Association (DLRA) that has become a magnet for high speed vehicles in much the same way as Bonneville in the USA.

Owner Mike Drewer who admits to being on the “wrong side of 60” says the project is his last fling in motor sport competition and was brought about by a combination of a passion for VWs and land speed record attempts.

‘My father had a VW when I was a kid and I also saw the Donald Campbell Bluebird Land Speed Record Car paraded in Adelaide after it had done 400mph plus on Lake Eyre back in 1964’.

While the little VW isn’t being built with that speed in mind, somewhere between 150 and 200mph ‘would be quite an achievement’, Drewer (who used to race Australian Formula 2 open wheelers) believes.

The car build has been undertaken by Simon Richards at Rickos Road and Race in Adelaide and commenced with finding a couple of old beetle bodies and a good floor pan.

‘It’s been quite a job with the six inch body chop, extending the wheelbase, installing an IRS rear end, constructing the roll cage, making a custom fuel tank, installing the on-board fire extinguisher system, making a parachute mount, building the coil over suspension, mounting a Wilwood competition pedal assembly and Kirkey race seat and full harness, and installing the Subaru WRX drive train’.

The engine is to be fitted with larger injectors and turbo monitored by an Autronic ECU and Motec data logging dash, while the gearbox has been converted back to a 2WD unit by Subarugears. X-Force Performance Headers will be fitted. 

The radiator and barrel intercooler are PWR units and Davies Craig thermos fans are mounted downstream on the radiator core which is placed horizontally where the original VW fuel tank was in the nose of the vehicle.

The passenger seat area now features a large ice box with internal copper coil for the Davies Craig electric booster pump to supply super cool fluid to the intercooler.

A Davies Craig electric water pump is also being contemplated for the vehicle which is nearing its build completion.

‘We still have to give it a ‘rat rod’ style paint job, obtain the Goodyear speed record tyres and set the car up with a heap of castor to achieve good directional stability. Then it’s a matter of dyno work on the engine, and plenty of test runs at a local airport’.

‘We won’t get to Lake Gairdner until next year, and then I guess I will see if I can still drive fast in a straight line!, Drewer joked.

Stay tuned for more news on this totally unique VW-Subaru.

Cozy.

What was I saying about "where do we put the mechanic?" Well, here's another one.

How times change.

Let's go back to the days before we had any drag strips. We did however have the 1/4 mile sprints out in the WRE grounds. This is Kevin Johnston and his Mk.IV Jag. He was the benchmark that we all tried to get near, setting times in the 18s area. My Vauxhall Vagabond never managed to get under 20 secs.

Matt's selling the Wally Mitchell Buchanan.

For sale: 1958 Buchanan sports/GT car .
Period Australian race car with cams COD group Lb sports.  
Approval to run grey motor Holden with or without Repco cross flow head. 
More details in add below or message me. 

http://www.my105.com/mobi/ListingDetails/id/16431

Another photobomber.

Bloody spiders!

My favourite 3-wheelers No.10

Stacey sent this one in.

There's another photo floating around, same car, same man, same pipe, and he's at a stop light alongside another car and the look on the other driver's face is priceless.

Grey stuff - No.56.

A big weekend coming up - The Winton Historics and keep an eye out for the Prad, Prad 5 to be precise. The Holden engine has gone back in ready for the weekend.

Meanwhile, good luck to a couple of South Aussie rotorphiles.

Ken Stratton with the Tiga.

and Peter Turner with the Norax.

And I expect Jim Doig and the Motorlab ASP will continue on its winning ways.

Talking about the Mini Marcos.

Here's a 4-door.

Paul is right.

When I said in a previous post that the place to go for a Mini Marcos was Japan he responded that Victoria had their fair share of them. Well he's right, I've found a few.
Like this one being prepared for historic sports.....

.....but guess where it came from - Japan.
This Mini Marcos was the subject of an auction in Melbourne last year.

And this one has appeared at at least one recent Geelong Sprint.

This is the same one when it lived in Queensland.

I do remember it languishing under a Hills Hoist in Qld for some time.
Here's another Melbourne car.

And here's a Sydney one.

And an Adelaide one even.

Although in SA you're more likely to find a Taylorspeed Gem....

.......or a Pellandini......

......or an Ecurie de Dez........

because they were all made here.

Other cute little cars No.4

The Peter Hall Memorial 6 Hour Relay.

Planning our entry around 6 cars/drivers, the unfortunate withdrawal of the 2 Cobras left us with the following group.

Peter Mac/Bolwell Mk.7

Barry Schultz/ASP clubman

Norm Clements/Clemente clubman

Chris Westren/Roaring GT40

A beaut little competent team that couldn't afford to get any littler.

We approached the event with a feasible game plan that did come unstuck a bit. Practice the day before for 3 of the 4 cars enabled those drivers to set their lap times which turned out to work very well on the day for them.

One remaining driver, who works on Saturdays, didn't have that luxury and only had the opportunity for 5 cold laps on Sunday morning and tried to set a time from that. As you know, the 6 hour is a regularity event and lap times are critical. With this (as it turned out) inappropriate time, the number of breakouts was huge which pushed us down the list at the end of the day. We are gradually getting better though. 2 years ago we were 2nd to last and last year we were 3rd to last. This year we came 4th to last. The Bolwell ran well all day as did the ASP. The Clemente succumbed to mechanical problems, fortunately after Norm had completed his 10%. The GT40 sported brand new Wilwood front brakes which proved to be very effective but huge pad wear resulted in Chris doing his last few laps in the Bolwell. Club member, Chris Gascoigne, running in MX5 team 2 shared last place with his fellow team members. Actually, Chris G ran pretty well all day doing more than his share. It wasn't his fault that the rest of the team dropped out leaving him high and dry. Meanwhile, former Bolwell member, Ian Duncan, in MX5 team 1, hit the wall rather heavily and we were concerned for his well-being. However, he later appeared in one of the other team cars. Being a bit incapacitated, I was lucky to be able to take a seat in the press box and do my calculations and relay via lap recorder extraordinaire, Dino's radio, instructions to deputy team manager, Greg. Our neighbours, the Puma team, came one place ahead of us.

For consistency, a team of only HQs or Excels would be good.

Evidence of this was the "Sexcells" team coming third and the Scouts team (comprising Hyundais owned by the Scout Association) did pretty well too.

In the carpark we find Dino's 7....

.....another Clemente....

....the new owner prepared to recognise it as such..... and I managed to get a spot in the area reserved for black MR2s.

Something to aim for at PI.

280 Panteras in one street.

Must have been a sight for sore eyes.

Double decker.

So many variations of the Mini but this is exceptional.

My favourite 3-wheelers No.9

A 3 wheeled Mini. My question is why? Saving rubber maybe.

The real precursor to the SR6 IMHO.

Mark 4 owners tell us that the Mark 6 is basically an extension of the Mark 4 and maybe so.

Take another look at Soren's car, Mk.4 front, rear engined, built by Kerry Luckins and Soren's dad, Garnet Luckins in 1962-63. Did Alan Newton take inspiration from this?

Following its restoration, its first outing will be the upcoming Sandown Historics. Wouldn't it be great to see both cars side-by-side.

PS. Late news. Both cars at Sandown is a definite possibility.

Other funny little cars No.3

Didn't take long.

SOLD

Going to a good home in Victoria, to a former owner who has been very much around the Bolwell scene for as long as I can remember. It'll be in good company with another Aussie special (historic racing royalty).

My favourite 3-wheelers No.8

How's this?

Photographer Shoots Formula 1 With 104-Year-Old Camera, And Here’s The Result

If ever there was a sport that required rapid fire photography, Formula One racing is it. Which makes what photographer Joshua Paul does even more fascinating, because instead of using top-of-the-range cameras to capture the fast-paced sport, Paul chooses to take his shots using a 104-year-old Graflex 4×5 view camera.

The photographer clearly has an incredible eye for detail, because unlike modern cameras that can take as many as 20 frames per second, his 1913 Graflex can only take 20 pictures in total. Because of this, every shot he takes has to be carefully thought about first, and this is clearly evident in this beautiful series of photographs.

Paul was inspired to cover F1 racing with his trusty Graflex after seeing a 1969 magazine containing images of that year's Indy 500. Noticing that the photographer had captured the event deliberately blurry and out of focus, he set about trying to recreate this technique with modern F1 as his subject. He first started shooting F1 racing at the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix, and he's now so passionate about the sport that he's even launched a magazine called Lollipop, a publication for Grand Prix enthusiasts. Check out some of his pictures below. You can also find him on Instagram.

That's Bored Panda's first and latest logos.