Upright slant 6

The Valano, as you know, is a very well built elongated Milano GT powered by a Valiant 225 slant 6.These 2 photos were taken at Templestowe hillclimb.In order to get the engine under that very low bonnet it was necessary to stand it upright. Who would have thought?Truth is, that was the way to lower it down between those very narrow chassis rails.

Power steering for Classics

Remember Rob Luck asking about off-the-shelf power steering? Well, Peter G has found this catalogue item.

Answering my own question

Well.......with a little bit of help from Peter G. Of course it's the Peter Mahoney Mark 4. (See below)........and here it is sharing the front row with the said Elfins.The car is still in the family with Peter's son campaigning it in Historic events at Wakefield Park.

Is it a Bolwell?

This is a Classic photo from the 60s that you often see in forums discussing Elfin sports cars. It's the other car I keep looking at. It looks to me to be Peter's grey Holden powered Mark 4 that raced so successfully back then. Then I think it looks too big. Is it a Bolwell or isn't it?

A world record?

Another one of Henry's photos, this time an MSCA event at Winton in the late 80s. There are 5 Mark 4s in the picture, from the left Jones' "Dinky", Royce's, Windham, Bruce rotary and Kemp (ex Sacre). I heard Tim Backhouse had his Mark 4 there too. The owner of the Zed in the foreground asks if this many 4s in one place could be a record. Probably is. Now to break it.The Nagari, by the way, was Peter Carpenter's.

Another Mark 4

Remember Tim B? He's in the Wodonga area these days and still has his Mark 4. See below.Tim has entered the debate on the variety of Mark 4 engines with his own version - Fiat 1438cc dohc.

While on the subject of Mark 4s, on the way home from Collingrove, I heard this tinkle on the road and now I know what it was.
It was the cover falling off the numberplate light. Does anybody have a spare Lucas lamp?

Division 4

This is a frame from an episode of Division 4 in the early 70s. Damien, in Canberra, showed me this and he describes the episode in detail in his excellent blog, "On Four Wheels" along with more photographs. You'll find "On Four Wheels" in the links. In another post, from October 2009, are photos of the two Nagaris at the Binalong Museum that belong to Sean. Damien's other blog, "Capital Diecast Garage" is also in the links.

Just a few pics from the top of Mt. Alma

You could have been forgiven for thinking this was an Evo/WRX event, there were so many of them, especially the Evos, but that wasn't what we went to see (with all due respects). Fortunately there were others to catch the eye.
Barry Lord was back with the Ascort. It still looks the same and still goes just as hard.

This is Richard Wright in the Elfin. Which Richard Wright you may well ask. Father and son share the same name and the same car. The same confusion occurred with them in our 6-hour team last year. Other clubman cars included a yellow early style Elfin and one of the old ASPs.A nice pink LJ XU1. There were other Toranas of the L34 and A9X variety and the usual yellowXYGT.A yellow Elise crosses the line.Chris Redin in the R100. Did every old friend of my vintage have a son called Chris?

Easter - where to next year?

To all of those people emailing me about where Easter is going to be next year, I apologise for not having replied. The reason is that I didn't know and tried to do my homework. I had heard that NSW had taken on the the task of organising it and they had selected Narrandera. Accomodation is a bit tricky there due to the Easter hotrod thing but for a number of reasons the NSW branch aren't in a position to do it this time. It's back to the drawing board and the Victorian club have come to the rescue and John Hartney in particular. Both the Victorian and South Australian clubs have their meetings tonight and I'm sure some ideas will get tossed around in both places but if you have any bright ideas for a venue give John a ring on 03-9762 6248.
Meanwhile, Peter G has extracted this photo from Henry's archive, taken at the 1989 gathering in Perth. Apart from Stacey's Hunter and Roger's RX7 down the back, there are 8 Nagaris in this picture. Peter is asking what are the chassis numbers of all 8? He already knows so I think he ought to come up with a prize for the "neatest correct entry".

Talking of hillclimbs, Mt. Alma was a few weeks ago.

Sorry all you Bolwell starved readers (I promise I'll get back to important things starting tomorrow), there weren't any to be found at Mt. Alma, not on the day I went. This is surprising because at the meeting the week before there were enough keen people to actually set a meeting place, time and day for an organised run down there. Andrew and I found no-one at the designated meeting place and no-one down at Mt. Alma. There must have been a change of plan but not being in the loop I don't get to hear about these things. No Bollies, but there were plenty of other nice cars. Late series RX7s are smart looking units, like this one below.

And this much more radical black one showing signs of a bit of use. It was pretty quick too.

While on the subject of quick Mazdas, congratulations to Clinton Faustmann in the 4-door RX3. 15th out of that field of 150 is no mean feat.

And talking about quick black sporties, here's Dave Hall's Z. That was pretty fast too. David is Peter's son. Peter was there with his white example and I saw him go up the hill on the practice run, but nothing after that. Same for the purple and yellow example of Kevin Mackrell. Something drastic must have happened to that.

This orange Z I've never seen before but it was certainly a smart looking unit.

I could go on showing you more Zs but I'd better not bore you.

This really attractive NSX caught my eye, though, at the bottom of the hill.

Just a few more shots from last Monday.

This young Celica driver shared the driving with her dad.

Most of these Commodore utes had a go.

You know I love Chevs from the 50s.

This is a 1954 model. It mainly differs from the 1953 version by having a different grille and a bigger back window.

And here's some of the Gawler cars (and bike) in the carpark.

There was actually a hillclimb.

Just in case you were wondering. "Come and try" turned out to be better than expected especially for the young ones and bodes well for the future. It was an "enter on the day" situation and nobody knew how many would turn up. As it turned out there were that many they were starting to wonder if they could fit them all in. I think everybody got 3 runs though so that's not bad. This is Doug Lehmann with his recently acquired Evo IX showing everyone how it should be done.

And this is a very quick XF Falcon ute. A very noisy one too.

This is why. It's a 351 Windsor out to about 383. Not as big as a certain orange 427 but I bet it'd give it a run for its money.You can't have an event without a Datto in it so here it is, a 2000 sports. See that little white Mk.2 Escort just disappearing behind the big tree? There were 2 15 year olds sharing the driving, a young lady and a young man. They improved their times with each run.

You certainly knew when this RX4 was going to make a run. It's a PP job and the blap-blap-blap was enough to wake up the dead.I would have shown a picture of Daryl Siggs' campervan going up the hill but he was too quick for me.