Racecraft A-arms

Matt's Bolwell is back in the workshop. Here's another picture. George sent this one himself.

I'm getting quite a few emails about these wishbones. You've started something Peter.

They build Silvia race cars there as well and something tells me there's similar technology in the frontends.

1964 Pontiac Banshee coupe

Ever heard of the Banshee? It was developed by John DeLorean "to compete head-on with the Ford Mustang". However, like lots of nice GM ideas, it was halted by executives, this time because it might be "a serious threat to the success of the Corvette". So there's only 2 Banshees in existence, a roadster and this smart looking coupe which has only done 1500 miles in its entire life. It's coming up for auction next month at RM car specialists, Ontario, Canada.Why it caught my eye was that it makes me think of the Holden GTR-X every time I look at it. It even has a straight 6 under the bonnet.

Buchanan connections

Here's one for Roo. This car belongs to fellow Gawler club member, Allen Rowley (Steve's dad actually). In recent times it has been called the Morgan-Fiat Special and it was built in New Zealand. It has nothing to do with the English Morgan. Apparently Nat Buchanan had a partner in the business by the name of Morgan. The above body style was a later innovation and its looks are apparently just like the DB3S coupe but without the roof. Buchanan and Morgan had a parting of the ways and Morgan moved to New Zealand, taking a chassis and body with him. It is a twin tube chassis and some of us are wondering if it could be another Rizzo one. It was originally built up in NZ using a side valve Ford E93A engine. The Fiat powerplant came later. Can anybody else add to this little story?

Rare Bolwell for sale.

Due to a health problem that looks like precluding the owner from gaining the necessary CAMS licence to enjoy it, the mighty SR6 is on the market.

More details later. Meanwhile, tell all your historic racing friends. This is one hell of an Historic Racing Car. Any questions? Call me on 0413 226 009.

Progress in Madrid

Here's one of the guys in Spain beavering away on some dash parts of the Nagari. There's something vaguely familiar about the pale blue bench he's working on.

Tailem Bend

Only the day following the SA Bolwell club meeting comes this letter about an open day at the new Tailem Bend Motorsport Complex. It's on Sarurday, 13th of this month, too late to organise a run, but there might be someone who reads this and would like to go and have a look.

Clouds

Remember the dust in Broken Hill the other day? Well, same place, different day. A bit of rain got dumped on BH, remnants of a cyclone further North. Didn't reach Kapund though, although Adelaide had a 5 minute drenching yesterday afternoon. Must have gone around us.

Nagari wheels

Has anyone got any of these languishing in their shed that they don't want? Our Nagari owning friends in Madrid need one to make up a set..... and if there are any more and are at my sort of price, I wouldn't mind some myself.

F1 2010

Here's Renault's contender, the R30.

Tom

Tom Drewer has been home for Christmas. I think he's heading back to US tomorrow or this week sometime. While he was here this article appeared in the Advertiser.

A response from Roo re the Buchanan in the Elfin picture.

It's actually this one http://www.buchananmotorcompany.com/images/Buchanan%20Holden.jpg I believe it's the ex-Jim Wright car that raced at Bathurst in 1958 & 59 before being sold onto SA. http://www.buchananmotorcompany.com/images/buchanan%20tr2%20jim%20wright.jpgYou can tell by the white paint under the front lights and the the lack of cutaway on the front wheel arches. Only a small number were built without the cutaway, this being the first.

Just in case you couldn't view the 2 photos mentioned, I've reproduced them above. I'm still having trouble working out which one it is in the register section in the Buchanan Motor Company website that Roo organises.

more on the Chuck Manning Special

Remember the Chuck Manning Special? We talked about it a couple of times last year. There are a lot of them around America although Chuck only built the original one. After it won the inaugural sports car race at Golden Gate Park, it achieved such notoriety that everybody else wanted one, mainly because of its rigis chassis design probably. Chuck responded to this by supplying plans to anyone who wrote to him and the rest is history. This car has the protruding upper lip that has been mentioned in posts on the Mark 7 with Nagari doors. Maybe that's where the idea came from. Since those Chuck Manning posts I have heard from the odd US citizen reminiscing about the cars, including Ron Dona, who worked with Chuck at Douglas Aircraft in the 50s where they became close friends. In 1958 the both left Douglas in El Segundo and went to Aerojet in Sacramento. Ron is very familiar with the Chuck Manning Special and its innovations and below are some of his recollections.

Re: An overveiw of Manning's car and innovations. Some of this was documented 60 years ago in Road and Track articles but here's what I recall.

Chassis: Chuck did not feel that his chassis was of great interest. The design criteria was to satisfy his torsional stiffness (TS) requirement at a low weight. He said that when TS was met the beam stiffness would OK and mild strength steel would be adequate. Calculations showed that a single four inch diameter tube with the right wall thickness would be preferred to the heaver double ladder design, but that tubing was not available at the company surplus metals yard. A side note of the chassis was that after winning the Palm Springs race the press asked Chuck if he would divulge his chassis design and he said "send me $2.00 and I'll send a copy of it". The response was so great with bags of envelops containing $2.00 in them that the postal service sent investigators to find out if mail fraud was involved.

Transmission: This was an era before 4//5 and 6 speed transmissions were available and synchronizing low gear in three speeds was unknown. He found that double clutching to get into first gear while moving looses time; however, he demonstrated to me how well he could double clutch. His solution was to modify the Ford transmission to add synchromesh to first gear of his special. This was no small challenge. When synchromesh added to first gear that gear now spins at several times the top gear speed, all the time, creating many problems. While Chuck thought this was a break thru compared to the chassis and offered to sell plans for this modification few were interested.


Odds and ends: Engine camshafts of that era were crude and many local machinists thought they could build a better" winding stick" as they were called. Chuck created his own lobe profile based on a sign wave and had it machined at Iskenderian for his special. The Manning special was built in a detached two car garage behind Chuck's home in Inglewood, CA. As you reported no cars were built for sale. The last time I saw the car it had an egg crate grill and the headlamps were facing to the rear (typical Manning thinking-- headlamps are required but they might have less drag facing to the rear).

Ron Dona