PAG 29, page 2
Vintage Specials, Silly Old Fools and Young Guns !!!!
By ‘Gear Gnashin Neil’
Gear Gnashin Neil here…….Oh yes…...At last …..Victorious in the Pembleton Challenge 2006. You will have read elsewhere that the results have been counted and I managed to beat the Old Pembleton Master himself…..…
I took the scalp of ’The Almost Legendary Albert Crackleport.’ How good is that ??? In his own car too…..
Ha ha hah !!!
I’ve now been presented with the award. ‘Tuning for Speed’. Bedtime reading for sure, all sorts of stuff about Vincent cylinder heads and Norton valve timings…..mmmmmm Must mean something to someone.
Anyway the Northern Section were victorious, that’s the main thing.
Enough of my ramblings anyway it’s on to the ’Vintage Specials section …….
Neil, Fresh from VSCC Shelsley Walsh last weekend, I have some photos which may be useful in PAG.
I mentioned in passing last Summer, paddock chat that the Walkers were building a new veteran/vintage special which had a wooden chassis, a V8 aircooled engine (in which the only components contained in the crankcase were the pistons, valves, rods and crankshaft - everything else was external and exposed). It is phenomenal - even has a wooden-braced front axle - and lethally fast, rather like an eight cylinder "Thunderbug". It photos well.
Can you use it, or do you have enough material for now?
regards,
Mike M
Of course I can use it...email me a few details and I’ll pop it in the column
Chat soon Gear Gnasher
Neil,
I was able to catch the owner/builder recently. The key to his car's "aged" presentation is careful and thorough research. In his case he has photographed and extensively examined cars and records of the period (including Airships!), specifically noting the style of fixings and fastenings so that he could manufacture replicas - especially brackets/straining wires and pipework. Like us with Pembletons, he has to start with a donor car identity and he invariably chooses a GN cyclecar. The fact that early GN bodywork was so light and flimsy is a bonus - very few actual originals now exist; most have had replacement coachwork at some stage in the last 90 or so years.
The transmission is open (so no casing numbers etc) and so armed with an identity of, say a 1917 GN, the addition of a 1908 engine is acceptable. The coachwork is then built around the 'known' identity bits, using whatever components of the right period you can find - particularly if they bear the letters "GN". The use of brass strip, plain copper rivets and lots of copper pipework, all hand-finished is then "patinated", along with the aluminium body panels. Needless to say, the builder wasn't about to tell me how he "aged" his handiwork, but an etched surface finished with a heat-treated wax is obvious. Once complete, the car is never washed - maybe the odd patch of excess oil is wiped, but not fastidiously. Since the external rockers are liberally oiled before start-up and then lose their pressure fed oil in motion the car (and exposed bits of the driver) get doused.
The beauty of it all is that when registering the car, having declared it as basically a modified 1917 GN, the authorities have to challenge any bits they believe don't belong. Since the car looks the part (and there aren't many Inspectors over 60!) the identity was accepted.
I particularly like the under-bonnet pipework, including the inlet manifolds, which the builder made up himself, although he says he has trouble discovering which cylinder is misfiring, when it only pulls on 7!