The building of my Mark 7 convertible - episode 2

In this picture, the car is now completed and no longer belongs to me. I sold it unfinished to Colin Michael who had John Evans finish assembling it. John repainted it black. I had painted it white. (It looks better black, IMNHO.) I had some photos of it after I had painted it but they got lost somewhere at Fibrecar. I took it to a Show and Tell and painted the engine Holden Engine Red and put a "161" sticker on a standard rocker cover I bought for the occasion. It didn't fool too many people!

Anyway, as you can and will see, John did a fabulous job on it. Colin had been hassling me to sell it to him and when I decided to go back to Uni, I did the dirty deed and sold it to finance my studies. I've had sellers remorse ever since!

The bonnet bulge you can see came from an early Corvette. Royce had a Corvette bonnet stashed up in the rafters and it seemed perfect for the job. The bulge broke up the flat expanse and gave the bonnet added height which I think it needed visually and it also stiffened the bonnet. Unfortunately, I didn't take a mould off it. I thought I'd do another one later but in the meantime Royce threw out the Corvette bonnet in a clean-up!

The ripples you can see in the reflections on the guard come from the corrugated factory skylight and not the guard! Here we are, full frontal. John Evans' great paint job is fully evident here. John made and fitted the headlight covers. He used to do a lot of van customising including bubble windows. He also fitted the flush covered turn indicators which are a bit hard to see in the photo. He also fitted shortened Fairlane tail lights to the rear which you will see further down.

I bumped into John by chance a few years after selling the car. He told me he had it back to do a major repair on it. It seems the owner after Colin had had a head-on argument with a Ford F100, if memory serves me correctly. The front of the body was completely smashed up to the windscreen, though, the bonnet must have survived reasonably well. Fortunately, and perhaps incredibly, the driver only had minor injuries. (Great cars these fibreglass cars!). John was lamenting having to stick all the broken pieces back together to reform the front of the car. He knew it was a one off. I then told him I had a mould for the complete front including the windscreen surround. He looked at me for a moment with his mouth wide open and then said, "You're kidding me!" So we settled on a price and I went off to make a front panel and John went home the happiest man in Melbourne that day!

This final picture is noteworthy for four things:-
My trusty Suzuki, the even more trusty Mr. Ric Kemp, the flattering way it shows up the rear deck conversion and the shortened Fairlane tail lights.

All these photos were taken at Fibrecar, by the way. I had a lot of good times there working again with Royce and when Don Elliott was there as well it was a lot of fun. One time I must tell you about what a great whistler Don is.

I hope this has been interesting, John, and not too long winded. It's been enjoyable for me looking back on the project.

Cheers,

Jim.

It's been enjoyable for me reading this and I am sure enjoyable for everybody else too. I have some nice photos of that car myself which I will share in a little feature I would like to do on Mk.7 convertibles. Your old car also featured on the 1993 club calendar. (I think it was 1993). We've got copies if anybody is interested. I remember the car being in Sydney, owned by a member of the NSW club. Then it went to Qld and I think it was last year it was advertised for sale. Gee, Ric Kemp's thinned out a bit hasn't he.

The building of my Mark 7 convertible - episode 1

By Jim Shanahan.

Some weeks ago Jim offered to send some photos of the construction of his Mk.7 convertible and here they are - over to you Jim.......

Hi John,
here are the pictures of my Seven I mentioned. I thought I'd give a little commentary on each one.

When I started doing some work for Royce in the eighties, I knew I'd have to build myself a car. When I had worked for Bolwells I had struck a deal with Linley Hughes to build a Nagari but I never had the cash to do it. So here was my chance again!
I started thinking, though, that I had built plenty of Nagaris (bodies, at least), why not do something different? I thought of making a Mk.7 but I was aware of problems with the roofline including the flat back window. There was also the issue of having the fuel tank in the passenger compartment. (Though, it's my wish to do a coupe in the not too distant future.) A convertible Mk.7 would fix these problems and it certainly would be different. It could be done by grafting on a Nagari Sports rear deck. Simple, right?! All the moulds were there, so why not?

I wondered what it would look like. Royce said he didn't know of a Mk.7 convertible but he had seen a Mk.5 convertible (the one on your blog a couple of weeks ago, no doubt) and that it looked good. I fooled around with some photos and drawings and then decided to do it.

The photo below shows the new body out of the original mould. The mould was rough but surprisingly good considering the number of bodies that came out of it. I didn't bother making the roof as I was only going to cut it off. The pic shows the rear deck attached and roughed in. The photo below shows the rear after I had taken a mould off it. The holes were then cut in front of the boot lid to make the blisters for the Lotus struts to stick through. The rear edge and style line were picked up some as I thought it would look too droopy at the back without the roof line to visually hold it up. You can see this in the extra distance between the tail-light recess and the deck lip.
There was a fair bit of filling required both on the deck and on the rear quarters to get good looking panels. This was then glassed over then gelcoated (various greens) and blocked back two or three times. Final pointing up done in good ole bog! The boot and deck sides required more work than I had anticipated. The panel and bootlid had to be shortened to fit the body but this left three distinct curves instead of the nice single curve of the original rear edge. Anyway, a little cutting, a little bogging and a lot of sanding (always sanding!) and it was done.

Well that was the hard bit I thought. Now for the easy bit, filling in a few whoops and dips in the front.

The next picture shows the body propped up on drums and the wheels as well. Under it you can see the HR front end with MG steering. I believe the car no longer has this arrangement. You can also see various bits of mouldings tacked onto the body. There are Nagari wheel arches and shortened Nagari headlight recesses.

I had started to fill a few whoops and dips and I was having trouble making one side match the other. After much puzzling, I finally took a tape measure to it and was I surprised. "Hey Royce, this car's not symmetrical", I yelled across the workshop in amazement. "Yeah........didn't you know that?" "Err.....no", was my quiet reply. I'll never forget it. Welcome to the wonderful world of Mk.7s! Nearly all the work I had done up till that stage had been with Nagaris and they were symmetrical. It never occurred to me that the 7s weren't. It's amazing how good they look given the lack of symmetry. I guess it's because we are so used to looking at peoples faces which are certainly not symmetrical.

I then thought what a dumb idea it was to do a Mk.7 instead of a Nagari. But I'm glad I did as it was very satisfying once I bit the bullet and took the diamond saw to it. I guess it's the nature of Mk.7s for each one to be an individual car. You can't leave them the way they are straight from the moulds as seen in the pic above anyway. I think this is why I find them so interesting. I positioned the headlights a little higher, maybe an inch, to comply with the then lighting laws. The passengers headlight was moved forward and outwards a little to match the driver's side. This all helped to make shaping the guards with a flowing line easier.

To disguise somewhat what I had done, I moved the radiator opening up as well together with the lower pan and also spread the opening a little to match the wider spread lights. This also gave me the chance to make the opening a bit more symmetrical, too. The picture shows the top of the nose filled in. The bonnet line seemed to flow better now onto the nose which was a bonus. The guards are yet to be filled and shaped.

There were lots of other things I would have liked to have fixed up or straightened but I knew I had to draw the line somewhere if I wanted to get it on the road in a reasonable time. The project gave me added respect for what Graeme Bolwell and Ross McConnell had done in making the Nagari pattern.
This photo shows the front having been shaped using a resin and microballoon/talc mixture as a bog and then glassed over to consolidate it all. I think the doors came out of moulds that Don Elliott made off his doors after he fixed the shape up. But I'm not certain of that. Speaking of Don, he was often at me to take more pictures of it during the build but I wasn't that interested. I wish I had taken his advice more. I'm glad I have the few photos I do have now.

The front was surfaced by first hitting it with an angle grinder to take the high spots off and then coated with bog. This was sanded back by hand and then gelcoated with a mixture called "plug white". This process of bog and gelcoat is then repeated once or twice. I put green tinter in the plug white so as to be able to see where I'd sanded and to be able to pick out the low spots easily. I have a photo of the whole body covered in this green gelcoat but I don't have it scanned.

Back to the picture: you can see the Hemi motor being lowered into position. It was a Valiant 265. I had thought of putting a Buick V6 in it but in the end opted for the straight six. I reasoned that the chassis was set up for a straight six and the Hemi was available during the model run, as well. It was only one inch longer than the Red motor. Royce cut and welded a small recess in the HR crossmember, welded up some engine mounts, which is what's happening in the picture, and it fitted in beautifully.

Prior to the motor going in, Royce also welded in a space frame of sorts into the chassis to stiffen the whole thing up. The chassis came from a car that two brothers had down Morwell way and used to hillclimb it. I can't remember their names unfortunately. This car was bought by a chap whose name I also can't remember for the moment (I think I'm having a Senior Moment here!). Anyway this chap wanted to fit a 350 Chev in his car and had a space frame made up. So I bought the original chassis. Except it was hardly original any more as it had a Lotus independent rear end in it mated to a Holden diff centre. If you look at the photo you can see the rear wheels cocked in on an angle as they are unweighted.

The chap I bought the chassis from saw my convertible and wanted one, too. I made him a panel but I don't know if the car ever hit the road. I had started to use flat glass side windows but ended up using the rear door windows out of an old Toyota Corona. I forget who discovered this idea but I was happy to borrow it and they worked out a treat. Royce advised me to use Volkswagen window regulators as they utilised a cable drive and so the handle could be mounted anywhere and at any angle. I also used the Volkswagen exterior door handles. They worked well too.

The Seven body was full of odd little surprises. When I came to fit the Nagari Sports windscreen top I found it an inch or so wider that the seven pillars. I ended up spreading the pillars to fit it in.

To be continued.......

Kevin Cociani on B8/81 and B8/90

Hi John,
Well your information is correct, I bought chassis 81 from Vern Leng. He was getting a space frame chassis made for his Nagari B8/81. My chassis (103 or 104? - I can't remember right now) - (really chassis 90 - Ed.) was damaged and Vern wasn't happy with the way his car handled, so offered chassis 81 to me.
All I did was replace the badly worn shockers and suspension bushes and repainted the chassis and the coupe drives beautifully. I bought a brand new body from the Bolwell factory.

Just to refresh your memory, I'd bought a Nagari in 1978 (103 or 104?) - (90) and wrote it off after 2 weeks of owning it. I hit a tree in the country when I lost control at around 130mph. I still remember, (driving at 10pm).. I lost my high beams for some reason and kept driving using low beams heading towards Mannum cruising around 110 mph and I caught up to 2 HQ Monaros doing around 100mph, I over took them like they were standing still, once I got to my side of the road I glanced at the speedo and saw 140, I instantly lifted my foot off the pedal then looked up and the road had veered to the left and I had passed the bend. The Nagari still took the bend sideways in at incredible speeds, still trying to control the car, the car then turned and slid across the road and hit a ditch which was shaped like a ramp and found myself flying through the air. To this day I still say if the car was made of steel and not fibreglass I wouldn't be here today.

The car was fully restored to concourse condition more than 25 years ago, but now I drive it with more respect...
The car was a lethal weapon back then and even in these times and technology of today the Nagari is still lethal. I've driven a lot of cars but nothing compares to a Nagari, and that is why I've still got the car. I've had plenty of good offers but I can't see myself parting with it..

You can put this story and the attached pics in your Bolly Blog, looks like you have started something John. Your blog is getting pretty popular!!

Cheers Kevin Cociani Damaged
Unfinished
Chassis
Rebuilt Bolwell coupe

Dick Murphy - I'm answering my own question

Talk about a bad memory. Here I am wondering about where The Dick Murphy car has gone and right under my nose is an email the club secretary received last year from the current owner.

Hi John and fellow Bolwell car owners,
My name is Dave Hamlin and on arrival in Australia from New Zealand in 2005 I purchased a Mk. VII Bolwell in a very sad condition but mostly all there. So starts the restoration of this car which has some history of being raced by Dick Murphy, Barry Coleman and Brian Rhodes all of Western Australia. Brian Rhodes has recently seen the car and acknowledges that parts of the car did in fact come from the very car he raced and wrote off in 1976. The car was put together in WA by Dick Murphy of "Autosport", Kenwick WA and completed 03.12.69, chassis no. WA 007, engine number 186S123102. I bought the car from a WA Bolwell car club member, Stacey Nicolaou in 2006. Mostly there BUT all wrong from the way the car was originally built.

Guest author Peter Jones again

Here are a few pictures of the superb restoration job Peter Jones and Ron Cheeseman are doing on B8/49 which I have had stored in my computer since mid-2006. Take a look. Then read Peter's account of "A Tale of Two Bollies"

A TALE OF TWO BOLLIES – PETER JONES, CAIRNS


For anyone who read my story on the trials and tribulations experienced during Targa 2000, here’s proof that it’s hard to give up Bollys.

I’ve had the pleasure to own Nagari number B8/76 since 1984 to 2006 when Peter Schmidt took up the caretaking role. Over the years I have removed, replaced, changed, painted, fixed or broken just about every component or piece of fibreglass or steel that came out of the factory, and many that didn’t. With all that ownership and seven visits to Targa Tasmania under the belt I finally decided it was time to let the dear thing entice some other eager petrol head. So my faithful navigator and I queued up for Classic Adelaide 2005 with the intention of making that the swan song.

Classic Adelaide was duly run and completed relatively trouble free and I stored away lots of good memories doing so (another article perhaps?) Anyway, as the Nagari was about to be loaded onto the TNT truck for the trip back to Sunny North Qld, John Low, SA Bolwell President Supremo, found a prospective buyer. It all looked good and there was a fair amount of back and forth discussion happening as I approached 21 years of ownership.

So I was waiting by the phone, expecting the prospective buyer to call from Adelaide, having resigned myself to the fact that I was REALLY going to sell it, and having convinced my partner, Jan, that I was REALLY going to sell it……Jan has heard this before of course. Years ago we were contemplating getting a swimming pool built and I said I’d sell the Bolly to finance it – the first day we dived into the pool Jan asked “How come the Bolwell’s still in the garage?” Well, these things happen, don’t they?? …………..back to the story at hand, waiting by phone.

Phone rings. Caller ID shows 08 SA number. Answer. It’s not “prospective buyer” but a fellow Nagari owner from Hobart!!! Confused? I was. And then the bombshell – “I’ve decided to sell my Nagari – and I want you to buy it!!”

Now over the years I’ve come to believe that Nagari owners are suckers for punishment – who else is going to sit beside a throbbing V8 in 35+ degree summer heat while being gassed by exhaust fumes while still telling all and sundry that he’s enjoying himself. But I won the “sucker stakes” in less than five minutes and suddenly found myself the proud owner of B8/49, and a cold sweat forming as I picked up the phone………

“Hi darling, you know how I said I was selling the Nagari……”
“yes yes yes yes yes yes”
“Well, ………….I’ve bought another one.”
Stunned silence.
More stunned silence.
“You’re gutless aren’t you? Too scared to tell that to me face to face so you’ve chickened out and phoned instead…..etc etc etc”

Actually, I had considered writing a letter, posted from Sydney on my way out of the country. But all is good – rang faithful navigator who proved he was just as big a sucker as we quickly negotiated to go “halves” in the project thereby shedding some of the load.

B8/49 is progressing through a complete rebuild. All stripped down and chassis painted, driveline back in, body back on, wiring and trim done. Only the fiddly bits remain now and it will grace the For Sale columns…….and this time I’m not, definitely NOT, going to buy another Bolly.

Though the Mark10 has a certain appeal……………

Peter Jones – April 2008

Black Nagari sports

After making the comment that I couldn't recall any other black sports versions, in come the flood of protests. Here's a photo of Dave Bruce's black sports. It's chassis number 4. It's not a factory built sports though. It's the ex-Borelli, ex-Nicholson coupe. Dave made the conversion about 1990 according to Peter G. and it was painted black both before and after the body swap.That's Dave looking right at you.

Dick Murphy

This very radical Mark 7 was built and raced by Dick Murphy in Western Australia. Occasionally he would venture over to SA to have a crack at what could be offered at Mallala. These 3 photos were taken at Mallala in the 60s. My understanding is that this car is now a road car and still living happily in the west. I'd love to be updated on it. Maybe all the WA racing legends were called Dick. I immediately think of an old colleague, Dick Ward, who built very quick sports sedans and operated a motorsport shop (the best place to buy rod-ends and chrome-moly in Australia). To me his most memorable race car was a tiny little Fiat Abarth with rotary power that well and truly mixed it with the big bangers of the time.

Those old days at Mallala were good for Bolwell people (pre Nagari) and it is where I met such people as Doug Seath, Rick Clough, Chris Wall, Ron McPherson, John Szabo etc. etc. etc. (there wasn't a Bolwell club in South Australia until 1972. We were such show-offs because we could get a better view of races by standing on our roofs, something Holden owners wouldn't do. I recall Ken Stratton had the strongest roof, I think he had glassed in an extra layer, and there wasn't any worry about scratching it - he drove that Mk.7 for years and years in its undercoat as did Grant Deckert with his.

Now that's a real chassis!

Here's a clipping from a page in an old 1981 Australian Motor Racing publication. It shows K & A Engineering's workshop and look what's in the foreground, it's the Van Elsen machine. K & A doesn't look like that anymore.

Wayne's nw car.

I was just emailing a couple of photos of B8/111 to Wayne Murphy for his scrapbook and thought I'd share them with everybody else. Wayne has just bought the car. It is rather accident damaged and I understand Don Elliott is building a new body for it. Anyway, these photos were taken in 1974 in the driveway of the owner at that time, Michael De Crespigny.
Remember, Wayne, MGB front blinkers on this one. Note also the recessed spotlights - just like your red one. I once had a red (vermillion fire) coupe, B8/43, that had those round holes on each side of the nose cone too. I think they look good. I'll show you a picture of it probably tomorrow if I get a chance.

How many Nagari sports WERE there?

Last month we established that the age old notion of there being 13 original Nagari sports was a bit out and we counted 19. Well, car number 108 turned out to be a coupe. However, in the late 70s this black one was built and took the previously unused number 13. It was built by Tony Grant, who worked at the factory, for himself. He made himself a body and the chassis was one that they had at the factory with wheels or castors underneath and was used for moving newly made bodies around. So that's back to 19 again. Tony was the one at the launch of the NEW Nagari who was offering crayfish in exchange for one of the new cars. That's not such an unusual practice. My brother-in-law thinks that crayfish is legal tender in Australia and has stayed in many a hotel in exchange for a few crays. These photos were taken at Calder at the launch of the Ikara. They were successful in getting an example of each of the models for display and the black car was the Mk.8 sports example. It's the only black one I know of. Look at the bonnet bulge on the silver Nagari coupe. It's off-centre. Was this one of the very rare six cylinder ones? I can't remember.

Here's the latest list of chassis numbers of original Nagari sports:- 13, 47, 55, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 77, 78, 81, 82, 111, 112 and 119. Any more corrections?

B8/81 update

That picture I posted of B8/81 in its silver livery was taken at Mallala but the details were a bit wrong I discover. The year was 1983 and the cars in the background were Ric Kemp's Mk.7 and Gus Safranco's Nagari. Vern Leng had already acquired the Ikara by then and was competing in it that weekend. The above photograph shows B8/81 on the track and the driver isn't as big as Vern. It is in fact the next owner, Robert Radman. Pete Garvin remembers Robert getting an engineering award for fitting a Chev in a Nagari.

Eureka!

From Peter Marr in Newcastle came this:-
John
Just been reading your blog and saw the pic of the Nagari with the Eureka. As it happens I was at a car show near my place this morning and was parked next to two Eurekas.
Regards
Peter Marr

It must be Eureka week. A yellow one is now living one street over from me in Kapunda. It is powered by a Datsun 1200 but goes pretty hard. I think those little 4 cylinder Datsuns are great. Richard's old Mk.4 that ended up in Germany had a Datsun 1400 in it.