[Glenn R]

Ditto here never seen it with this body, I thought it had rolled in it's original form?

[ukdrn]

Ditto here never seen it with this body, I thought it had rolled in it's original form?

It does ask the question why it didn't have the cockpit on.

I wish I could remember what Mike told me about the second car many years ago
Good thread.

[cunningplan]

Ditto here never seen it with this body, I thought it had rolled in it's original form?

Looking at the photos of it rolling, I would say it was the original car, the later one with the cockpit cover had a wider track at the rear.

[Old Boy Racer]

Any idea what happened to the Sammy Miller Oxygen thread - I have some more pics to post. Has it gone, moved, or is it just me that can't see it?

Cheers

Robin

[ukdrn]

Any idea what happened to the Sammy Miller Oxygen thread - I have some more pics to post. Has it gone, moved, or is it just me that can't see it?
Cheers
Robin

Robin that threads gone but you can post in this 9 page thread about Sammy, thanks.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=280&hilit=sammy+miller

[Old Boy Racer]

Thanks - will do
Robin

[johnlich]

I worked at Laporte Industries in the seventies. Laporte made High Test Peroxide and so, naturally, Barry sought sponsorship from the firm who agreed to supply the fuel for Blond Bombshell's rocket motor. I worked in the IT department and was told that the BBC (I think) were coming to Laporte's data centre (we were in Kingsway, Luton then) as part of a series of short documentary pieces in the week or so before the Pendine Sands record attempt.

For some reason the company got cold feet about allowing their name to be linked to the record attempt but they still honoured the agreement and provided the fuel Barry needed. My job was to write a bit of code which would display on one of our ICL mainframe display terminals so that when the film crew filmed in our data centre it would look as if there had been some hi-tech design going on; in fact our mainframe was designed for commercial data processing and couldn't knock the skin off a rice pudding computationally speaking and had played no part in Barry's project.

I had a think and decided that displaying a graph of car acceleration would look pretty on the screen but I hadn't the foggiest idea what one would like for a rocket car so I nipped over to see a very helpful chap at Irvine Parachutes in Letchworth who showed me what the deceleration curve would look like after the chutes were deployed at the end of the run - so I wrote a short programme to display that. On the day of filming one of our computer operators dressed in a white lab coat to give that authentic "boffin" look pressed the keys to run the program!

Some years later the O&M manager and myself were wandering around the Laporte site which was falling into disuse by that time and came across a door to a shed which had been padlocked, I think on the instructions of the Sheriff of Bedford. However the window adjacent was not secure (honestly) and we climbed inside. At this distance from the event I can't remember everything we saw but I do remember there being at least one spare rocket motor and an undamaged chassis - it looked brand new - with Alan Herridge's name on the chassis plate.

[eraider]

[ukdrn]

Some years later the O&M manager and myself were wandering around the Laporte site which was falling into disuse by that time and came across a door to a shed which had been padlocked, I think on the instructions of the Sheriff of Bedford. However the window adjacent was not secure (honestly) and we climbed inside. At this distance from the event I can't remember everything we saw but I do remember there being at least one spare rocket motor and an undamaged chassis - it looked brand new - with Alan Herridge's name on the chassis plate.

Very interesting John, how long ago was this?

[MikeH]

Well the time has arrived. I saw the message in the web site. Apologies to Jon for never sending the stuff. This is Mike Huggins still living and hence writing from Italy. Believe it or not I have finally scanned all of my old shots of BB 1 and are ready to send. The tale also has a surprise for me. Some of you may know an English Author/Jounalist by the name of David Tremayne; he recently saw this site and his interest was spured by the link to me and Ferrari, were I work; David also covers F1 GP as well as LSR books etc.. The short of it, we are now communicating about the BB project, he was quite anaware of the second car, BB 2. He sent me some pictures of the BB 2, which I found very moving. I'll expand on that, the second car ran only for a short period, maybe half a year I can't recall now, and I never had a camera handy to record the event, so alas after it shunted, the project folded and I never had an opportunity to take a picture. Hence it was more than a pleasant surprise to see the car in photo after all this time. I have also written a history (WIP), a personal view, of the project and how I related to it. At the moment, the essay is mainly written as notes and not really readable, a little fragmented and rambles, yet another task to do, but I hope to finish it at some point. I'll answer a few of the questions I saw in the the thread; I can confirm the car was totally new, only the rocket motor being used from BB 1 and maybe the steering box, I designed the car in my living room close to Leavesden Airfield where I lived at the time. The car as you see it in the pictures was how it was run and yes the car suffered a suspension problem, actually a rear wheel upright broke whilst testing at Bruntingthorpe. The casting that were used were not heat treated (at all), as specified on the drawing, and hence no where near strong enough to do their job; this is/was a fact. I have covered things like this in the history, so I won't go over it here too much. It's good to see there's still some interest in this after all this time. I'm sure Barry would be pleased to see it. One last point, David said how good it would be to find BB 2 and restore it, ohhh.. the temptation is there. I would agree. If anybody can help on that front, but it's probably a vain hope. But of course, I still have the original drawings I did...........