Nilmah

You may recall Dave Hamlin appearing on the BCCA forum. He lives in Perth and is working hard to ressurect the old Dick Murphy racing Mark 7 which, by all accounts, has had a bit of a hard life. Anyway, Dave is an ex-pat Kiwi. In 1992 Dave Robertson and he built the car in this photo and Dave (Hamlin) campaigned it in classic racing in New Zealand until 2004, taking out the 1999 sports car championship of the of the Southland sports cars. It ran a 300hp 186. He was planning on bringing the car with him to Australia but CAMS showed very little interest in it and couldn't find a category for it so he left it behind. He did, however, bring the motor which is being transplanted into the Mark 7.

Rumours

Yesterday, Peter Jones got married to his partner, Jan. That was a surprise, well, to me anyway. Congratulations to you both.

Carpoint

Beven has just pointed out to me that there's a fine description of the Cheeseman/Jones B8/49 on Carpoint and here's the link -
http://carpoint.com.au/used-car/BOLWELL/NAGARI/Queensland/csn6504941.aspx

Burnout

I'd like to join everybody else in congratulating Jamie Whincup in securing the 2008 V8 Supercar Championship. It's so long ago that he may not even remember, but I had made him a special go-kart suit when he was a kid. It was a special request from Graeme Whincup, who, at the time, I thought must have been his dad, but his dad is David. Graeme must be an uncle. Shows how much I know. Thanks Getty Images and Fairfax for this photo. It's Jamie's burnouts, celebrating his win that I wanted to talk about. Call me a silly old git if you like, but I think these burnouts send out the wrong messages. I don't think our town is all that different than others but Friday nights around here is the time that the young lads get fired up on Perkins' sponsors' product and demonstrate their burnout "expertise" to their mates. Already, a young 17 year-old has been cleaned up by an out of control Commodore as he stood too close to the "action". It's a very dangerous passtime. Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Jamie himself crashed the Falcon doing a calebratory burnout in Tassie? He has shown us how good he is on the racetrack. I think he ought to leave it at that.

Mercedes diffs

As you know, this very hot 351 Mk.7 is up here in Kapunda getting a job done on its diff. It's a fairly strange diff, being an early Mercedes, presumably from a Pullman model and seems to be independant on one side and live on the other. In addition to that, the diff has been locked for motorsport. Because of its inflexibility, it has broken an alloy central mounting and this was the cause of its clunk, clunk, clunk that originally caused the last person to drive it to think the gearbox was buggered. Cars with locked diffs, as well as being hard to drive normally, can also be unpredictable. It was that diff that spat previous owner, Steve Rowley, off the road at Williamstown causing the need for a replacement wishbone and some body repairs to the RHF corner after tangling with a tree. In the interests of a happier life while cruising in the country, the locked diff is coming out being replaced by the spare one which seems to be in pretty good condition. This new diff has a ratio of 2.9:1. One of its many WA former owners, Errol Du Boulay, says that with the 2.9 diff the car is good for 300 clicks. The car is scary enough at 200!

Family Forum

Hey everybody, I'd like you to meet my little grandson, Zander. He's 4 and I'm very proud of him.

Flat bonnets

After blurting out something about maybe being the first one with a flat Nagari bonnet (see comments on RFN-145) Peter G quickly came back with 'remember the prototype?' He's right of course but the photos were publicity shots and the car didn't have a carby. However, the flat bonnet obviously existed. The next question was 'did any of the 6-cylinder Nagaris have flat bonnets?' The only photo of a Holden 6 powered Nagari I have is this one (B8/35) that was owned at the time by Colin Sullivan. It has a very small bump right in the middle. Peter Bartolo later converted it to a 302 Ford. The other 2 six cylinder ones ended up with Ford V8s as well.

In the background is the orange 4-cylinder Nagari but that already had the bulge. That too was changed to a 302 V8.

more RFN-145

Here's a third photo of the car from the Malcolm Haskett days. It's too long ago to remember why B8/26 is up on the ramps. Jon Gutte emailed this picture. It's in his backyard at Lobethal. Is that Type 3 a likely donor car for the Dino body?

This is the inside front page of a book begun by Ian Knowles where he recorded every cent that he spent on the car even down to parking fines which way back then were only a dollar. The book passed on from owner to owner and that first page lists all of the owners as they acquired the car and added their names.

RFN-145

Here's another story about the life of a Mark 7. It started life in 1968 and was first registered half way through the following year. It was built by Ian Knowles, of Oaklands Park, another of that elite group of SA Mark 7 builders I mentioned in that post on the ex-Ken Stratton car. The build cost was $2000. I know this because Ian documented everything. It was in undercoat grey when first registered, but soon ended up Sebring Orange. At that time it was powered by a grey motor from an FB. Two and a half years later, at the end of 1971, it was acquired by Roger Wright from Fullarton, then Leabrook, then Seacliff. Roger was the first secretary of the SA Bolwell club. He worked in an office of the Commonwealth Public Service. These offices had lots of fleuro lights. See the grille. It's actually from a fleuro cover.Three years later, in December 1974, Bruce Carter bought it, the first of at least a couple of Mark 7s that he had. That's the same Bruce Carter that is the prominent accountant in Adelaide these days. The next owner was Colin McAskill. I don't know how long either Bruce or Colin had it but Nicholas Taylor, of Semaphore, bought it in July 1976. Six months later he passed it on to Malcolm Haskett who also lived down the Port way. Malcolm was a young mechanic and he set about refurbishing it. It emerged a nice shade of dark green and became powered by a 186 red motor from a HR.Two years later, Malcolm was bitten by the racing bug and in 1979 he stepped out of RFN-145 to take over Murray Willmott's orange racing Mark 7 as Murray had stepped up to Ron McPherson's white one. Haven't heard much from Malcolm for some time but last I heard he had bought himself a Clubman to race. Brenton Oakley, from Seaton, was the next owner and he had it for a couple of years before passing it on to Wendy Maslowska in 1981. Wendy was Gus Safranko's girlfriend, now wife. She had it for another couple of years until George Mocatta of Hackney bought it. He only had it for about 7 months and Andrew Maschmedt bought it in October 1983. Andrew used it extensively in MSCA sprints as well as being a daily driver. In August 1988 Jon Gutte who was living in Unley Park in those days bought the car and has owned it ever since. Jon and his wife Lisa and their little kids now live in the main street of Lobethal and their front verandah makes an excellent grandstand when the Lobethal GP re-enactment is on.This last photo was taken this year at Birdwood when we went there for breakfast.

Macclesfield stage

Congratulations to stage members Phil Creer, Terry Creer and Matt Reynolds on gaining their 5 year awards from Classic Adelaide.

Cracks

Finally bit the bullet and rubbed back through the layers of 2-pack etc. etc. (well, Colin L did) on the Mk.5 bonnet. The cracks are horrendous and widespread and deep. It's only to be expected I suppose, it's pretty old. Maybe it's had a hard life, I wouldn't know. That 2-pack is pretty hard stuff. It'll all be OK in the end when it's glassed up.

Copycats

Anonymous inspired this with his comment on the black DBS. Here's a few makes that saw the need to use Nagari tail-lights. The first one is the Reliant Scimitar GTE where they try to disguise the fact by placing the reversing lights alongside. Second is the Bristol 411 series 4 with a different approach.

Third is the Sunbeam Vogue.

Fourthly, we have the Hillman Hunter, obviously trying to look up-market.

Finally, the Aston Martin DBS.

I've got a huge collection of photographs of the Veskanda including studio shots for West End promos but couldn't put my finger on a rear view. I'll have to keep working on that.