timetravel wrote:Maybe Pete only started with the bare chassis and the steering had been fitted to something else?
Correct Timetravel, I've been in touch with Pete and heres his summary, which explains a lot :
I bought the car from a guy who came from a small village in gloucestershire near the M5 ..but I cannot remember his name ..he ran a small junior dragster briefly.
It was just a bare chassis with body and steering box. Of course the person you are speaking about may have had the remains of age machine as the chassis was bare,
the guy I bought it from also bought it bare..as I recall the original front end was very wide and looked too wide !!
The car in the pics attached to this is a different one, at that time there were a lot of flatheads around or under construction, I think close to 16!
I built a narrowed westminster rear for it ( many ratios available 5.6 to 3.4 I think)
The 'Lads' father bent up a front axle. ( the lads were 3 friends one of whom lived next door to Ken Cooper and ran the white falthead rail at the time)
The toolmaker at Grenadier ( where I worked) made up the front axle ends and the front wheel hubs ( from plans from "rachet jaw" Shaw). I welded up the bits and pieces of the rest of axle / steering and they were plated by Grenadier.
Motor was a blown up block from the "lads" , welded up and re-ported..that was a lot of fun !!!
welded up the block and filled it with tile grout ..bored 3/8" as I recall ?
Isky 300 ( I think) mushroom lifter cam imported direct
ex Ken C rods and pistons ( I bought his new pistons )
merc crank torn from a wreck at a scrapyard in northants ( I think) for a little more stroke
3 strombergs on a ? intake with home made ally cover alcohol fuel ..tried nitro also
I remember see the results when it blew up, Herb
Beautiful shaped ally fuel tank ( make to my design by the "Lads" father ) using a pressurised system , stock shimmed fuel pump pumped air into the tank, forced the fuel out through a large delivery pipe to a manifold split the supply to the 3 jugs
NOS magneto for a static flathead pump from "Wallys" incredible stocks of old parts .. a disused WW2 airfield in somewhere like essex. (Wally Wheatly,
Herb) ? This was rewound and dual points set up on Ken C's fixture
It also had aftermarket heads and thou I want to say Offenhauser or Edelbrok I don't think they were
The trans was varied a lot ....I think I had the following;
direct for a while ( with a thrown together clutch help from Ken C)
electric overdrive only from a westminster or such ( gear ratio changes with the westminster rear helped)
Then the best...a borg warner 35 ( I think ) with a clutch , from a jag with a manual valve body ( from John Whimore Drag n Fly) rebuilt heavy duty clutches and torrington bearings. As I recall it was push started so that it must have had a pump in the back, at one stage this was in Ken C's car which I ran for a while when building mine. I don't believe I ever ran the manual 2 speed thats in it now, but I must have kept the auto box because I think it ended up in Ken's car..not sure about that.
My car ran just into the 10's as I remember and when I ran Ken's car an off the trailer 10.72 was the best as I recall.
The objective was for my car to be as light as poss and everything was drilled and lightened..Ken was the king of light tho , I seem to recall his car without the motor trans only weighed something like 190 lbs ?????
Of course hard to be sure ..but that looks like my front end in those pics, thing thats weird is that the support brackets and tube ine area appear to have been painted..they were chrome moly so should have not needed to be ? the control rods were chrome so could have rusted and been painted ?
Herb
Hope that clears everything up. One thing Bill, did you ever find the diddycoys that were last seen running up Dartford high street with dragster parts under their arm?