by Garry Simkin

Some air-cooled Coopers have been prominent throughout their lives in Australia and New Zealand, but others remain shrouded in a certain degree of mystery. One such is a big-twin with a 1098cc JAP engine – chassis number 10-48-50 – which was later to be seen with its engine strewn across the paddock at Bathurst in 1957. Here it is, a sad sight, but more on that later.

Strewn across the paddock at Bathurst Easter 1957 or 1958

There are no reports of 10-48-50 being first seen in Australia, so Sydney’s John Nind seems to have taken delivery of his new car in New Zealand.  Perhaps the car had been ordered by a local customer and was shipped to New Zealand but then Nind took over the order? Maybe he just couldn’t wait for an early season start so had the car delivered there? What we do know is that after a sprint the previous weekend, his first race start was at Wigram airfield near Christchurch on 31 March 1951 for the premier event, the Lady Wigram Trophy race. With a brand new car, what could go wrong?

John Nind makes a good start from the second row of the grid in the Lady Wigram Trophy race 31 March 1951

Despite qualifying fifth-fastest and leading initially, Nind completed less than one lap in wet conditions before an accident sidelined him. He had entered for the Easter Bathurst meeting but it appears that delays in getting the car back across the Tasman Sea, plus possible accident repairs, made him a non-starter.

According to John Medley’s monumental history, Bathurst:Cradle of Australian Motor Racing, Nind was next entered for the Bathurst meeting of October 1951 and initially led the six-lap handicap race before retiring; the race was won by Alf Barrett in the author’s Cooper Vincent 10-41-50.

Perhaps not being all that Nind had expected it to be, the car was then advertised for sale in Australian Motor Sport in December 1951 as Cooper “1,100” in almost new condition, under 100 miles competition. Spare wheels, tyres and tubes unused. At reasonable reduction on new cost. John Nind, 38 Pemberton St; Strathfield, New South Wales UM8086

So the Cooper went to Ash Marshall of Sydney who was third in a Redex handicap race at Gnoo Blas instead of Bathurst as was usual, at Easter 1953. Only motorcycles raced at Mt Panorama that year because the Australian Sporting Car Club had fallen out with the authorities and shifted its meeting to Orange. Eventually the Australian Racing Drivers Club took up the challenge of running car races at Bathurst and has done so ever since.

Ash Marshall, right, at Easter1953 alongside Dick Cobden in Mk5-L9-51

Then the Cooper was sold to Newcastle’s Gordon Greig who was listed only as a reserve for the 18^th Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park in 1953 and did not start in the race. Jim Madsen was the next owner, and it is his name on several photos we have of what is now a dark-coloured car. This is seen below at an unidentified Mt Druitt meeting but I am fairly certain from the helmet and other features that the driver is the next owner, the known-to-be-diminutive ex-motorcycle racer Ron Williams.

Ron Williams, probably, in Cooper 10-48-50 at Mt Druitt, date unknown

Ron entered the car for the Bathurst meeting at Easter 1957, and finished second in a closely fought three-lap scratch race just behind Frank Gardner’s C-type Jaguar, which must have taken some doing. He was just ahead of Bill Reynolds in his John Crouch Motors entered 996cc 8/80 JAP engined Cooper.

Either at this meeting, or maybe Easter 1958, the car had some massive engine trouble, as shown in the opening picture which graphically illustrates the sad truth about the big-twin Coopers’ reliability over longer distances. Bathurst, which this photo is assumed to be at, was really too much for them.

Moving on, the next owner was Phil Boot, also of Sydney. Victorian John Harnett told Loose Fillings some years ago that he recalls going to Boot’s place to buy the car for Graeme Keilerup. He mentioned selling the JAP engine to Tasmanian Dave Powell Snr who, with his son Dave Powell Jnr, did quite a lot of racing with various Cooper JAPs on the Apple Isle.

In place of the JAP there was then installed a 1098cc Coventry Climax engine, a project started by Hartnett but later completed by someone else; it was known as the JHM Climax before becoming the Birchwood Cooper.

With a BMC 1498cc engine the car then became the Birchwood Cooper

Fast forward some years and John Bodinnar acquired the car as well as Cooper 10-32-49 before both moved on to ACT vintage car enthusiast John Prentice. 

Current photos of the remains, below, show the chassis has been seriously modified over time. The lower part of the early ladder chassis has been retained but the hoops of 1/2 x 3/16” flat steel have been removed and upper tubes as in a Mk8 or later Coopers have been welded on. A lot of work is needed to restore it to its former glory but it is all do-able with the right skills and effort. John also has the Birchwood Cooper body panels.

With thanks to Stephen Dalton for his help.

Speed Monarch will be a hardback book in full colour with over 500 pages and over 400 photographs and drawings from the Fernihough and Henne albums and papers in the Brooklands and BMW Munich archives. The book has comprehensive coverage of early American, Australian, British, French, German and Italian world’s motorcycle speed record attempts before World War 2. Publication in print and digital formats is planned for later in 2024.

Zoom to 200% in your browser settings to see the book text more clearly.

Here are some sample double-page spreads from the book , the first showing some early French motorcycle record breakers ...

…. and the first motorcycle road races on three and two wheels ..

In America there was a different approach to racing on banked timber board tracks and here some of the world’s fastest speeds were ridden …

The massive concrete track at Brooklands, below, was the scene of early British record breaking;

After his Cambridge university days, Eric Fernihough became an enthusiastic Brooklands racer, almost exclusively with JAP engines …

Meanwhile the leading British dominated speed records during the nineteen twenties …

All sorts of ideas were put forward for record breaking motorcycles following the lead taken by land speed record car designers …

Phil Irving, second from right, below, was the designer of this fully enclosed streamlined Brough Superior JAP ……

German technology with a high-revving, supercharged BMW, was all but unbeatable …

Eric Fernihough took up the world’s record challenge with a supercharged Brough Superior, eventually taking the absolute record from Ernst Henne …

Ernst Henne took the absolute world’s record back and Eric Fernihough built a new supercharged Brough Superior with more extensive streamlining. He was to be killed during a record attempt in Hungary on 23 April 1938. Mourned throughout Europe he never received any recognition from the British crown or government.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

by Richard Anderson

At Loose Fillings we must admit to only being vaguely aware of something called Formula 4 which in a way superseded the pioneering British 500cc Formula 3. We are also aware of a 125cc movement that briefly flourished in Australia about which we someday hope to write; anyone care to make sense of the stack of Clisby photos we have? Now Richard Anderson has written to us from New Zealand with news of  his rare 1967 Briham Formula 4.

In Britain the first alternative to 500cc racing was a 250cc formula that started in the early 1950s. The class first ran at a semi-private meeting at Brands Hatch on 17 April 1955 and the 250 MCR ran its own meetings at Brands Hatch in 1955/56 before joining up with the Austin 7 originating 750 Motor Club. The last outing of these cars was in July 1963 when two of them ran in one of the last UK 500cc races at a 750MC Silverstone meeting.

Click below for a classic bit of British newsreel from 1966 on what came next:

Everybody’s Racing Car (1966 )

This was Formula 4, and Richard has sent us the history below by Mark Wenden in UK who can probably be regarded as ‘Mr F4′ being the owner of a number of F4 Cars and all the drawings, blue­prints etc for the Johnny Walker cars mentioned below.

Formula 4 racing can trace its origins back to 1962 in the US where the first F4 races were held. The cars were typically scaled replicas of Fl cars and powered by 250cc motorcycle engines. It didn’t take too long for the idea to be brought to Britain by American servicemen working in Europe, and in 1963 Trak-kart built the 500cc Triumph-engined TK. As the concept gathered momentum in Europe in 1965, Tecnokart in Italy began producing the Tecno which was powered by 250cc Ducati engines, (below)

In the same year, the first Johnny Walker cars appeared from their Gloucestershire factory with the JW4 Mk1 powered by the 250cc Villiers Starmaker. Johnny Walker was better known at the time for operating a bearings and machine tool business. He had a keen interest in motor sports and saw the potential of Formula 4 after their first car emanated from someone who had approached them with a design into which they built in the Villiers engine.

The car initially competed against 750MC cars, and with the interest this created, Johnny Walker Racing Ltd was subsequently born. They then entered negotiations with the RAC and FIA for the formula to be officially recognized. The first car, the Mk1, was the 250cc but it proved to be slow and unreliable, so the 650cc Mk2 was born with a BSA engine. Reportedly it was capable of 120mph around Castle Combe.

One of the conditions of the new formula was that the smallest class cars should have a basic price (complete with engine) of less than £650. The regulations allowed for 3 classes which were 250cc and 650cc using motorcycle engines, and 875cc which used car-derived engines. Engines from Ducati, Villiers, Husqvarna and Bultaco predominated. The Johnny Walker Mk3 & Mk4 JW4’s were fitted with 875cc Imp and Saab engines. All the classes were tightly controlled for cost and engine tuning.

Initially the grids were small, but for 1967 and 1968 they had a series of about 7 rounds which included the British Grand Prix meeting at Silverstone in 1967. Notable works drivers for JW4’s were Bev Bond and Derek Minter who had switched to four wheels following his retirement from motorcycle racing.

The most prolific manufacturer was the Italian Techno company which produced a Ducati 250cc-engined car. A significant number of cars were produced by Tark (Estonia) though these probably didn’t compete outside the Soviet block. From Spain came the Nogeura with Bultaco engines, along with numerous others produced in small numbers.

In the USA ‘Red’ LeGrand produced cars with the 700cc BMW engine and transmission, below.

In the UK by far the largest producer was Johnny Walker who produced approximately 50 cars. Also from UK were Vixen, Evad, Ginetta, Briham, along with many owner-built one-off cars. Unfortunately, just as Formula 4 was starting to get going, Johnny Walker’s firm suddenly went into liquidation. This left Techno as the only major manufacturer and a handful of smaller companies producing specials.

Enter Briham: in 1966 the brothers Brian & Peter Hampsheir built a Villiers Starmaker 250cc engined-car to meet the RAC specifications. The car was extremely light thanks to its innovative use of Mallite sandwich construction. Mallite was a product produced primarily for the aircraft industry and comprised a sandwich of end-grain balsa wood laminated between two sheets of thin duralium. Extremely strong and very light in weight, McLaren used Mallite in the construction of the M2B, their first Fl car.

Formula 4 racing ended soon after. but the cars lived on by adapting to compete in many different countries, and in 1970 the 750MC took Formula 4 under its wing by amending the regulations to allow for 1000cc engines and aerodynamic devices.                

The Hampsheir’s car used the material in a completely different way, with a top panel and 4 bulkheads dropping from it, then bonding the “monocoque” in a fibreglass shell using steel reinforcements for suspension (explain better). It was exhibited at the Racing Car Show in January 1967 and then the car was modified to take a 650cc Triumph (pre unit) engine and Norton gearbox, (it was re-designated as PRH4).

The car proved to be extremely quick and was very advanced with rocker-arm front suspension and inboard coil-overs front and rear; it tipped the scales at about 220kg. This prototype car was invariably on the front row of the starting grid, however lack of reliability of the old Triumph engine reduced the number of chequered flags it received.

The brothers then set about producing 5 cars (designated PRH4, 2-6) al1 of which were fitted with the later Triumph Bonneville engine and exported to the USA via Jan Winkel of WREP inc, their US distributor. My car’s early history is unknown, but we do know that it is car number PRH4-3 (the second of the exported cars) The original Triumph engine had been removed early in its life and replaced with a Yamaha XS650 engine of 1975 vintage.

With 5 gears, more horsepower, electric start, and no oil leaks it is a worthy successor to the old Triumph. The engine bares the insignia of Anderson-Robinson who modified these engines, as “streetracker” engines. I do not know what modifications have been made but the engine certainly has some punch.

PRH4-3 has been recommissioned with new brakes, chain & sprocket, wheel cylinders, 6 point harness, the original 10″ sized ‘wheels (in place of the 13″ minilites) fitted with new tyres, and is pretty much ready to go racing.

Richard Anderson’s Briham F4

Editor’s Note: see also https://loosefillings.com/2017/03/29/masterly-modern-interpretation/ for Bob Britton’s contribution to the art

There may be more big-twin Coopers now running competitively at one time in Australia than there have ever been. Can someone check?
Peter Fagan reports, with great photos thanks to John Lemm

The 2023 Vintage Hillclimb run by the Sporting Car Club of South Australia at Collingrove in early October was attended by four air-cooled Coopers this year, all big-twins. They were made up of three J.A.P 1100’s from the ‘Chas McGurk Racing Team’ plus the Cooper-Irving supercharged Vincent. Chas was present in the pits to keep a watchful eye on things and was handing out timely advice, both tuning and driving tips, when needed.

We were blessed with a magnificent sunny day and 25degC which should have made for fast times, although no one expected to get close to the 35.07 seconds best set by Derry Greeneklee in his Mk9 Cooper back in 1991.

The Sunday morning practice run was pleasingly uneventful except that the Mk9 driven by Brian Simpson failed to fire, only to miraculously come to life minutes later. The issue would plague the car throughout the day until a broken wire was found behind the dash.

Peter Fagan in the Mk6 set a benchmark 38-something-seconds time in practice, but would only better this once as he pushed to discover the limits on multiple corners. Throughout the day he found the grass on the three separate bits of the track. One was the tight right-hander up the top that would prove difficult for all four Cooper drivers as they struggled to get their cars stopped and back to first without under-steering off.

Rod North in the Mk5 Cooper-Irving tirelessly chased a sub 40 seconds run, a target that he was cruelly told he could not go home without achieving. He improved with every run with the supercharged Vincent sounding magnificent and delighting the crowd at his first ever event at Collingrove.

The Cooper Irving, running a supercharged Vincent engine is now being run by Rod North . Originally run by Dick Cobden as a 500,  it went  to Reg Smith, then Lex Davison who had Phil Irving install the blown Vincent .

Brian Simpson managed a fast 39 seconds run before chasing a brown snake into the long grass on his next run. The competitors following him thanked him for clearing the wildlife off the track, but the electrical gremlins had left him short of track time to post a faster time.

Brian Simpsons Cooper Mk 9 JAP 1100 twin is also ex Derry Greeneklee and has an extensive New Zealand history, and its history can be viewed at Loose Fillings, back issues, # 28.

Stephen Denner in his Mk5 JAP was frustrated that his times kept disappearing from the timing screen, so he had no idea if he was improving throughout the day. He was sure there was a conspiracy against him but despite trying, could find no evidence. He did however keep the Cooper on the black stuff and had a successful day.

Stephen Denner in an ex Derry Greeneklee Cooper #2 that came out of  South Africa from Richard Baker, having been raced there by Arthur Mackenzie.  For more on this car go to Loose Fillings, back issues, # 41

Peter Fagan in the Mk6 finally put a clean run together and ended with a 36.50 seconds run to be the fastest air-cooled and second fastest overall, included the fastest overall first split.

Peter Fagan’s Cooper JAP 1100 #126 is also an ex Derry Greeneklee car,  having been obtained from Peter Wright in the UK in 2012. It has history with a supercharger being fitted in the day.

This was a fantastic social event set in the magnificent Barossa Valley and the weekend included organized social dinners on Friday, Saturday and Sunday plus a tour to a winery for Saturday lunch, making the drive from interstate well worth the trip. And to still have the four Coopers running well at the end of the day was a bonus.

Peter Fagan

Post Script: in Loose Fillings # 49 Derry Greeneklee has listed Collingrove times for Coopers over the years.

The Skirrow went into limited production in 1936 and was a development of a prototype that Harry Skirrow had built for Belle Vue, Manchester speedway. It was all part of a plan to start up speedway car racing, which was a raging success in the United States, in England.

Belle Vue decided to build their own cars so Harry started a company called Skirrow Special Cars Ltd to build his. Car Speedway Ltd was set up to run the business side of things and there was a National Association of Speedway Car Racing Circuits that licensed drivers in 1938 and 1939. The photo below shows one of the Belle Vue Elto-engined cars ahead of a Skirrow-JAP at Coventry speedway some time in 1938 or 1939. When the war started, racing  came to a stop for the duration.

The photo below shows a brand new car at London’s Lea Bridge speedway where they were built for Harry Skirrow:

Post-war, about a dozen or so of the  JAP 8/80 V-twin­ engined cars were bought up and kept in Northamptonshire by Dave Hughes who founded the Brafield speedway  in 1949. He took the cars to speedway tracks all over the country, organized races and did what he could to revive midget car speedway racing.

Some Skirrows were still racing in 1962 but cannot have lasted much longer. Sometime in the 1960s, one of the most successful of the pre-war midget drivers, Les White, bought one of Hughes’ cars. lt was just ‘for old time’s sake’ said his son Malcolm who did a ‘light restoration’ on it and demonstrated it from time to time at a local speedway.

When Les retired from the garage business he sold everything up and the car went to America, eventually to a private collection in Florida. From there it was sold to Canada, and then I bought it without an engine and shipped it to Sydney with the aim of restoring it and running it in Vintage Speedcar Association events. Here is the car as it arrived,

The chassis has two pairs of BSA FWD springing and drive mechanisms, one at the front and one at the back as can be seen in the following drawing:

The rear wheels are obviously fixed direction-wise and both ends are without dampers. The front uses a BSA steering box and column with a Bluemels sprung steering wheel.  A double sprocket on the front-mounted engine drives forward and rearward Rudge clutch assemblies which are on counter-shafts running in cast aluminium mounting cases. Exactly as on a speedway bike, a final drive sprocket is fixed to each clutch and drives a shaft on the ends of which are flexible joints and all the other BSA bits and pieces . The following video shows the chassis and the transmission after the body was removed:

The whole of the chassis and running gear was stripped to bare metal and reassembled with repairs and replacements such as the flexible drive couplings using the invaluable assistance of the BSA FWD club’s spares scheme. The sprockets were replaced and a new rear drive-shaft was the only significant part that needed to be custom-made.

I was prepared to make an engine more or less from scratch but I was lucky to acquire a post-war  8/80 JAP and Greg Summerton has made a new crankshaft and reconditioned the bottom end. The cylinders need to be relined and a new timing cover machined to accommodate the prewar total-loss Pilgrim pump. Cylinder heads and rocker gear need a service of course and there are brand new Mahle pistons andTerrys valve-springs in boxes as well as new valves. There are Amal type 27 carburettors with twin float-bowls. but no magnetos.

Rudge speedway countershaft units and clutches seem to be like gold but I found two sets of these to replace the ill-fitting Norton units. The very stylish body, which is mainly several heavy pieces of welded sheet metal sitting directly on the chassis, has been extensively reconditioned with some new panels and it is now ready for final finishing. Here it is at the moment:

Nobody knows how many Skirrows were made but I have seen a reference to Harry Skirrow saying there were just 17. Several were reportedly destroyed by bombing in the war, two ended-up in Australia but have since been lost and, allowing for a few to be scrapped, that would line-up with the dozen or so that Dave Hughes had.

There seem to be just three complete Skirrows surviving including this one. Bugatti expert Ivan Dutton has one which he bought at auction about ten years ago; it is complete and running. He also has a real treasure in the substantial remains of demon-driver Spike Rhiando’s Skirrow as well as one of the Elto-engined cars built for Belle Vue. It was Spike Rhiando’s spare engine for his Skirrow that was part of a deal for John Cooper to build a long chassis car with the 8/80 JAP at the rear. Spike first raced this in the Isle of Man in 1948.

The Skirrow was a pioneering series-production single-seat racing car with strong motorcycle connections. Significantly, it was the reason the 8/80 JAP, as developed by Eric Fernihough for his world’s motorcycle record efforts, went into limited production.

It’s a sweet little car and if you would like full details of what has been done, and still needs to be done, with a view to making an offer for it  please get in touch by email below.

Terry Wright

tsrwright@gmail.com

There is another Loose Fillings article about early English speedway car racing at  https://loosefillings.com/2015/12/13/bugattis-did-it-too

The following abbreviated version of an article by the great Brooklands tuner Robin Jackson recently surfaced in a tidy-up of founding editor Graham Howard’s Loose Fillings papers. The article first appeared in Autosport in 1954. Garry Simkin’s commissioning of a new Norton engine made by Charlie Banyard-Smith in his restored Mark 9 Cooper (photo below by David Williamson) seemed like a good excuse to give its wise words a fresh airing.

Garry Simkin in his Mk9 Cooper at Eastern Creek

Some years ago, it was decided to investigate the possibilities of improving the performance of the standard Norton engine specifically with a view to its application to 500 c.c. car racing.

The first task was to obtain a clear picture of the standard engine, and to ascertain, if possible, what were the factors limiting its performance and what possibilities there were of making improvements. Essential, therefore, was a test set-up which would reproduce accurate and repeatable data and which would allow the running of the engine on an open exhaust pipe fitted with a megaphone, under conditions that as near as possible simulated those that were met in the 500cc car.

A programme of investigation on the standard Norton engine was put under way with a view to ascertaining where possibilities lay for improving its performance. At this point it might be as well to digress and point out that the most suitable shape of power curve for a motorcycle engine is not necessarily the best for a 500cc car. The average racing motorcycle has as much horse power as the rider can use at the bottom end of its power range; the general tendency, therefore, when developing a motor-cycle engine, is to seek for higher powers at higher rpm.

In the case of the 500cc car, however, the driver is able to use all power that can be obtained from the engine over the lower portion of the power curve, and as practically all circuits demand good acceleration rather than sheer maximum speed, the essential requirement for a 500 c.c. car is that one should produce a very good power output throughout the entire range of the engine. It is very rarely, if ever, that power at the top of the scale, when bought at the expense of the bottom end, produces faster lap times on the actual circuit.

When testing at Goodwood we decided to shorten the exhaust pipe by 2 ins. (using the same standard megaphone) and gained an increase in rpm, down Lavant straight of 250 to 300 and a drop of 200rpm approaching St. Marys’. The lap times increased by 1/2 sec, showing that extra power at the top end, when bought at the expense of the bottom end, does not improve lap times but, in fact, slows them.

As it was a necessary requirement from a commercial angle that the standard Manx Norton cambox had to be used with the cylinder head, one was, of necessity. limited as to the alterations one could make to the head, since obviously the valve angle and valve positions had to remain basically the same as the standard engine.

It was accordingly decided, after examining the test data of the standard unit, that the best hope of obtaining an improvement in the performance of the engine was to try and improve its filling; accordingly, the inlet port was moved round from the standard Norton position of 15 degrees to the front-rear centre line on the front-rear centre line and the exhaust port was also moved on to this line. In place of the normal exhaust ring nut (which comes loose and the thread strips) a short length of steel tube was cast into the head, over which the exhaust pipe slides, thereby providing a slip-joint.

The new Jackson head – are there any in use now?

At the same time as this was done the cylinder head was stiffened considerably, as it had been found that a certain amount of distortion of the head on the standard engine took place with the resultant nitromethane was used. The possible alterations to the shape of the inlet port were to a large extent governed by the existing valve angle. A considerable amount of development work was done on the shape of the port on an airflow rig which consisted of a Wade supercharger, the airflow on the inlet side of which was measured by a British Standards sharp edge orifice. The air from the outlet of the supercharger was led through suitable ducting to the inlet port, a static tapping being taken off the ducting to a manometer, which read the pressure differential across the inlet port and the valve seat.

Cross-sectional drawing showing the best shape that could be achieved for the inlet port

The airflow at various valve openings was plotted against the manometer readings and by this means the shape of the port shown above was developed. A cylinder head was then made and bench-tested, having a sparking plug in the same position as the standard Norton engine. This head showed a small   improvement in power over the standard head, but there was evidence of detonation at the maximum B.M.E.P. condition which occurred around 5,000rpm, which was definitely more pronounced than on the standard Norton head.

The engine was run under these conditions and a careful examination was made of the carbon deposit on the cylinder head and piston. Evidence showed that detonation was taking place adjacent to the edge of the inlet valve seating on the opposite side of the head to that in which the standard plug was fitted. It was accordingly decided to introduce a second sparking plug in this position.

The question of providing two simultaneous sparks then had to be solved. Initially a B.T.H. magneto was used, but it was found that this instrument did not produce the requisite voltage to operate the sparking plugs under the maximum B.M.E.P. conditions met with on the engine. Two Lucas twin spark magnetos were then located which had been developed in the pre-war years and these were reconditioned by Joseph Lucas Ltd.

Power and rpm graphs for the Jackson head.

Running with the Lucas twin-spark magnetos, an improvement in performance was obtained and the tendency for the engine to detonate was slightly reduced. It was found that whereas with single ignition the required timing was 34/35 degrees before TDC, with dual ignition the correct timing was 28/29 degrees before TDC.

An examination of the cylinder head showed, however, that there was still evidence of detonation around the edge of the exhaust valve seat immediately   opposite the plug which had been fitted adjacent to the inlet valve: accordingly, the head was drilled and tapped to accommodate a second 10mm sparking plug. Further running using two 10 mm. sparking plugs was carried out and the tendency for detonation was found to have more or less completely disappeared. it is of interest to note on the latest standard square Norton engine, that burning due to detonation takes place in exactly the same location as we found when we used the standard Norton plug position on our head.

Whereas previously the power output of the engine reached the peak around 6,500r.p.m. and then fell off, the power output now carried on beyond the peak without any falling off up to 7,000 rpm The engine also showed better power around the satisfactory minimum rpm, of 4,400, which was attributed to the better combustion conditions obtained with dual ignition and the better mixing of the fuel with the air. Prior to the introduction of dual ignition, the piston crown was kept close to the cylinder head round its circumference. Due to the position of the sparking plugs, which are very near to the cylinder head face, a piston of this type would have produced partial masking of the plugs; the piston was accordingly chamfered as shown at 45 degrees, with the result that with adequate valve to piston clearance, which is reckoned to be 6 mm.at TDC, a compression ratio of the order of 12 1/4 to 12 1/2 was obtained, which appeared to be the optimum ratio.

All 500 c.c. car engines are run on virtually pure methanol, with the result that whereas the fuel consumption on petrol is of the order, of 730 pints [414 litres] per bhp hour, on alcohol it is [of the order of double that]. The carburettor therefore has to mix a very much larger volume of liquid with the air than in the case when petrol is used, and, broadly speaking, the carburettor delivers a mixture in the case of petrol which is akin to a relatively fine mist-while in the case of alcohol this approximates much nearer to a thunderstorm.

To summarise the position to date, it would appear that the result of fitting this type of cylinder head has been two-fold:

(1) To raise the actual power of the engine throughout the range; and

(2) To extend the range of the engine over which useful power is obtained from 6,500 rpm to 7,000 rpm[T+RW1] .  

---

 [T+RW1]

Loose Fillings hears that the Holinger Vincent is coming up for sale in West Australia where it has been in the hands of Jim Runciman since the early 1980s.

Peter Holinger, with his wife Beverley, built a world-wide business in competition gearboxes. He trained as a machinist at the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation at Fishermans Bend, Melbourne, and in the mid-1960s played a key role in machining components of the Phil Irving-designed Repco-Brabham V8 engine. He became one of a number of Repco people – Paul England, Ivan Tighe and Keith Young were others – who built Vincent-powered hillclimb and racing cars. Even more were built by other enthusiasts. From 1933 to 1954 give or take a few, some 650 Vincent-HRD motorcycles were sold in Australia and many of these engines found their way onto race tracks, hillclimbs and speedways during the nineteen-sixties.

The Holinger Vincent, a beautifully-built spaceframe car, first appeared unsupercharged in late 1963. It was soon supercharged and its engine stretched to 1400cc, in which form it was competitive with the England and Tighe cars. With the car converted to wider wheels, Holinger set a new outright record at Lakeland hillclimb in1968, but the car never quite achieved an Australian championship and it was retired in 1970. It has never been fitted with a body. Next for Peter, the first of two Holinger-built Repco V8-powered hillclimb cars appeared in 1972, and with these cars Peter won four Australian championships, in 1976, 1978, 1979 and 1988.

Peter was a keen hillclimb exponent and his first car, which was an original design, followed the general path of the time with a Vincent based engine in a very light chassis. This design was almost a continual work in progress from 1963 and in 1965 or 1966 was in supercharged form. As Peter put it, the car was designed to run 1000 yards (the approximate length of most of the local hillclimbs). The car delivered a standing start ¼ mile time of 10.33 seconds and it is not unreasonable to consider this may have been the fastest time then recorded in Australia as It was prior to the establishment of drag racing in the country.

For tyres, Peter utilised a Tasmanian recap on the rear called a Tiger Paw which was not fully cured so it gave a lot of mechanical grip. Post 1966, he began to design and build his Repco V8 engined car and bits of the first car were sold off to a number of parties. Through David Rapley, Jim Runciman managed to purchase the chassis, running gear, and final drive from separate parties and subsequently purchased the engine from Brisbane to where Peter had sold it. The one item missing was the steering rack which had been used in the newer car. Jim says that Peter generously made another steering rack so the car is very near to 100% original.

The basic space frame is constructed from chrome-moly tubing which has been nickel-bronze welded. The front and rear suspensions evolved from practice at the time which used twin wishbone front suspension with coil overs and at the rear has a layout which looks very Lotus like. The brakes are drum all round but were subsequently changed to front discs which is outside the CAMS Group M period so Jim has returned these to the original drum configuration at the front. The car is fitted with a ZF pattern limited slip differential and new pawls have been made for this. The original pre ’66 Lynx style wheels are with the car however Jim made patterns, cast and machined new wheel centres and had new aluminium rims spun.

The motor in the current state of tune using a Marshall J100 supercharger produced 165bhp at 6000 rpm in the era. When Jim repurchased the engine, Peter Holinger stripped and reassembled the bottom end and then passed the job of assessing the state of the engine and gearbox to Vincent man Ken Horner. The crankshaft was custom built and the unit was dismantled, reassembled in the crankcase with new main and big end bearings and succesfully test run. The primary drive is fully geared as is the supercharger drive. An electric starter and adaptor have been manufactured by Ken Horner and incorporated into the supercharger drive to simplify starting. The gearbox internals are as made by Peter in the original casing and the gear ratios are designed for car use.

Peter Holinger’s utterly committed hillclimbing style is captured in this Bruce Leeson photo from Silverdale, New South Wales, in 1968. The sole instrument is the tachometer, mounted above the driver’s left foot. The never-bodied car is running its later composite alloy wheels.

The car is currently for sale at $80,000 and Jim Runciman can be contacted at 0419 847888 or runcimans@westnet.com.a

By Garry Simkin

Long the bane of air-cooled cars has been the starting of these things. In early days one relied on a couple of healthy pushers to get your beast up and running, but inevitably, just at the time that you needed that push, they had wandered off. Or they didn’t get up enough speed, didn’t understand about bringing the engine back onto compression, or just gave up. Towing wasn’t always an option given confined spaces, but sometimes a hill climb offered a downhill run to the start line which sufficed.

In the early 1990s when I resurrected my JBS Norton I figured that there had to be an easier way, so I cut up some square tube, fired up the TIG welder and got to work making a starting machine using two four-inch rollers and a hefty Nippon Denso starter motor. This worked well as I could start the car on my own so no assistance was needed. Others liked the idea and I ended up making about 15 of these devices. Whilst making life easier at race meetings some assistance was still needed to lower the ‘’hockey -stick ‘’ jack under the other wheel and get you off the rollers and on your way.

In time various people experimented successfully with onboard starter motors on the air-cooleds and in due course Terry Wright fashioned an automatic transmission flex plate onto his JAP twin drive sprocket and used a chassis mounted reduction starter on his Walton JAP. Brian Simpson made a similar arrangement for his Mk 9 Cooper JAP 1100 which works well. Fellow Mk9 Cooper Norton owner Grant Cowie then turned his hand to fitting a starter to his car, using a Harley Davison ring gear adapted to the Norton clutch sprocket which worked well and looks like this:

This inspired me to attempt the same thing with my Cooper Norton and a Harley 84 tooth ring gear was slimmed down and adapted to the NEB clutch (which we use here instead of the original Norton type – Ed) sprocket, and uses a modified Japanese car starter sitting above the gearbox. Adjustment with regard ring gear mesh had to be provided for when the gear box is moved fore and aft to alter chain tension. It looks like this in the car.

New ‘hockey stick’ shaped plates running from the ‘’triangle’’ at the back axle and connecting the top of the Norton box and on to the chassis had to be profile cut and modified to hold it all together. A lot of work for sure but one push on the starter button has it running, and once again no outside assistance is needed.

The motor is a 1.5kW reduction unit from CAE Performance Products in Chewton, Victoria and can be seen running on our Facebook page as we haven’t worked out how to embed it here.

Grant Cowie is running a light weight on-board battery with an isolator switch, but at this stage I will opt for using an Anderson jump plug and remote battery to fire it all up. An aluminium cover over the starter pretty well hides it. Its a lot of work, but as we get older we need to make life easier for ourselves. GS.

Loose Fillings editor Terry Wright adds some notes on his experience…

My approach only a few years back was a little different to Garry’s which has the starter motor cleverly mounted above the gearbox and driving the clutch assembly. For the Walton-JAP, with a new-build 1270cc reproduction of the 8/80 JAP Bruce first had in the car, I chose to drive the engine mainshaft from a forward-mounted motor on the mountings that once housed a supercharger. I made up a double main sprocket using a ‘flexplate’ from a little Daihatsu which was screwed to the drive sprocket on the mainshaft with a suitable spacer. The starter motor supplier Hi-Torque in Victoria provided a gear on the motor to suit the teeth on the flexplate. Installed it looks like this:

Knowing no better, I picked the biggest race car starter motor in the store, which was sufficient to start a V8 race motor. Almost certainly this was overkill and unnecessarily heavy, but boy, did it go! It went so well that I wondered if it was responsible for my first attempt at a pressed-up flywheel assembly shifting fractionally. Everyone I consulted said ‘no way’. Not being entirely convinced I collaborated with engine-builder Greg Summerton in South Australia and engineer Roald Pedersen in Norway who had access to some modelling software to do various calculations and the tentative conclusions were that everything was alright.

The above jumble of engine stuff is masked as below by a cowling in the same shape as the fuel saddle tanks that Bruce Walton used.

The new pressed-up crankshaft that Greg made has shown no sign of shifting under the starter load and is smooth as silk in operation. Garry says he has found no need to retard his ignition for starting but with the programmable Harley Davidson ignition I adapted to the JAP I was able to set the ignition advance to zero for rpm up to 500.

For the record, the motor I used was rated at 2.5hp or 1.9kW. So I can say with certainty that a 1.9kW starter is fine with a big-twin and 1.5kW works on a Norton or other single cylinder engine as Garry has been using. Note though that Garry is driving his crankshaft via the primary chain so think about how this change of gearing gearing. Whether the weight and cost savings of a smaller motor would be satisfactory remains to be established. Maybe someone would like to have a go and let us know?

From Brian Thorby who has restored one which was also once
destined for a UK 500cc car but never quite made it.

1943 Lawrance Series 30 Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) Air-Cooled Engine and DC Electrical Generator

This 500cc (30 cu in) twin-cylinder air-cooled ohv engine was close-coupled to a 5Kw 28 volt DC electrical generator in line with the crankshaft. The complete installation was mounted within a sound-insulated casing aboard several types of WWII allied aircraft to provide on-board electrical power independent of the main engines. This unit would have been installed in Consolidated Catalina  Mk I & Mk IVb Flying Boats, operating from Woodhaven by Wormit on the Tay Estuary.

On 10 May 1943 1477 (Norwegian) Flight RAF, manned by Norwegian aircrews who had escaped the occupation of Norway in 1940, arrived in Fife to fly D.H. Mosquito fighter-bombers at Leuchars, and Catalina Flying Boats based on the Tay at Woodhaven. The Mosquito crews were  moved to join the Banff Strike Wing in Morayshire in September 1944, leaving the Catalinas as a detachment of 210 Squadron Coastal Command RAF. The first Flying Boat, Serial W8424, alighted on the Tay on 18^th May 1943, and was named Vingtor. Until 1945, these long range anti-submarine and reconnaissance machines performed valuable anti-U-Boat escort for convoys, and also ferried personnel in and out of occupied Norway, where the crews’ intimate knowledge of their homeland came into play.

On these long flights of up to eight hours duration the Lawrance APUs droned away at an amazingly fast speed of 4,000 rpm. When peace came in 1945, the Catalinas were flown to Oslo as 333 Squadron, passing to the control of the Royal Norwegian Air Force. The PBY Catalina remained in Norwegian service though various marks until 1961, until a suitable replacement long range coastal patrol aircraft was available. These aircraft would have flown overhead Montrose on virtually every flight from Woodhaven during the war. The people of Wormit, close by to Woodhaven Pier, have maintained contacts with Norway in memory of their wartime visitors who fought bravely in exile until their homeland  was liberated.

In emergency, besides charging batteries and powering communications equipment, the APU could also power bilge pumps, in the event of the PBY’s hull being holed by enemy action or striking submerged objects. The engine is designed and constructed on typical aviation principles with twin magneto ignition systems; high-specification materials and finish. The compression ratio of 9: 1 is very high for a stationary engine, but was specified to suit high octane aviation fuel. A five cylinder radial-layout version was supplied for use on American B-24 Liberator Bombers, used by RAF Coastal Command as well as by their own USAAF Squadrons.

This Type 30D Lawrance APU engine was restored by Brian Thorby of Brechin during 2009, as a loaned exhibit for Montrose  Air Station.

From MASHC TECHNOTE No. 007

An interesting addition to Loose Fillings’ ever-expanding knowledge of air-cooled cars in Australia and elsewhere has emerged with a letter, photographs and a press cutting which have been sent to us by once Melbourne, now Perth resident Allan Ould.

‘I served my apprenticeship as a motor mechanic with Peter Menere in Brighton, Melbourne’, Allan writes. Peter Menere Motors was always full of interesting European cars, including racing cars such as Bugatti, Cisitalia, Lombard, and later ones such as Cooper Bristol, Alta and BWA. We also prepared cars for the early Armstrong 500 races at Phillip Island and the Mobil Economy runs.

‘My enthusiasm for motorsport was further encouraged when I joined the 500cc Car Club. It was a revelation to meet people like Phil Irving, Charlie Dean, Murray Rainey, Bruce Walton, George Wade, Paul England and many more.

‘As soon as I was legally able to, I had my first taste of competition driving with Ron Edgerton’s BWA at the Templestowe Hill climb. Thus began a lifetime involvement in competitive motor sport. A friend who lived nearby (Bob Minogue) had bought the “Sidney Rudge” and I became interested in building my own 500cc race car.

‘I had become friendly with Murray Rainey, who was a brilliant driver, a very good engineer and a great person. He regarded being diminutive as something of an advantage in terms of being a “lightweight driver” and he made good use of that. His supercharged Cooper Norton was a sight to behold (and to hear) at Fisherman’s Bend. An interesting aspect to that car was the debate between Murray and Phil Irving in that Phil maintained that ‘Blown Nortons’ didn’t work well and Murray was determined to disprove that (which he did), winning the first race at Phillip Island (below)

‘Murray had in mind a project for a hillclimb car and had gathered parts for it before he decided to concentrate on other projects. In about 1960, I bought the parts from him for what was to become the ‘Lawrance 500’. These included a 500cc ohv Lawrance engine which was US-made and originally used as the engine for a ground generator (or APU) in a Catalina flying boat. The engine was beautifully made to aircraft standards, twin magnetos, two plugs per cylinder etc, but designed for reliability, not maximum power (below).

 ‘Murray had fitted a Roots-type cabin blower as a supercharger and added an SU carburettor, but had not developed the engine further. Also included were a modified ‘WD’ BSA gearbox and a final drive made up of some Ford Popular parts and special castings.

 ‘With great enthusiasm (and a lot of reference to the Costin and Phipps book “Racing and Sports Car Chassis Design”), I built a chassis Jig and proceeded to build my first race car. Eventually I was to learn that the real lesson from building the car was that this young man had a lot more to learn about racing car design and race engine development.

‘With the car completed in 1962, I turned to the not inconsiderable task of trying to develop the engine to produce hoped for horsepower. The combinations of unknown optimum cam profiles, ignition timing, 12 lbs + boost and jetting for methanol, presented a challenge to say the least. I do still remember sitting down with George Wade in deep discussion about cam profiles! It would be hard to access such knowledge, freely given, in this day and age!

‘There were endless test days at Fishermans Bend airstrip, with handfuls of needles and jets just to get the engine to run reasonably, but full success was never achieved. Fortunately, these were in the days when you could access the airstrip just by flicking the chain off the gate, so we weren’t paying for circuit hire

‘I also clearly remember driving through the pits at Winton (which were pretty rough then) and feeling the chassis flex. That was my first lesson re weight vs torsional rigidity in good chassis design.

‘Some months after finishing the car and having raced it only a few times, I began a job with General Motors which entailed a lot of traveling and I didn’t ever have a chance to sort the car out. I sold the car (I think in 1963) at about the time I began work at GMH. At that point I lost track of the car, as I was away from Melbourne for most of my time.

 ‘After a couple of years with GMH, I fulfilled an ambition to work full time in top level motor sport and travelled to England where I worked for several years on the Brabham F2/ F1/ Indy and Tasman teams. Due to having the opportunity of working for that brilliant designer, the late Ron Tauranac, the young man eventually learned a LOT MORE about racing car design, (and engineering in general).’

So, dear Loose Fillings readers, do any of you know what became of the car? It must have been too good a chassis not to have survived for some time, maybe with a four-cylinder engine fitted? We would be interested to hear, perhaps via our Facebook page.

OR THE BLACK ART OF VALVE TIMING.

“I have a question”, writes our correspondent Demon Tweeks … “What’s a good all round valve timing for a Cooper JAP for sprints, hillclimbs and short circuit racing?”

 Good question! But perhaps a more important enquiry might be this one. How good are the standard JAP factory speedway cam, for those three forms of competition?

The answer is … VERY good!  Which begs the next question. What are the real valve timings of a Speedway JAP? 

Here’s where it gets interesting, because although we are given when we try to replicate the factory valve timing figures in JAP manuals, we seldom get even close. As Professor Sumner Miller famously used to say.’ Why is this so?’

Happily, there is a logical explanation for the variation between what the factory says the valves should be doing, and what our best investigative efforts sometime produce. This is because the manufacturer very seldom if ever, tells us what tappet clearances were used to establish their published valve timing figures!

That means if we want to replicate factory timings, we have to try to work out ourselves what tappet clearance they used, and because there are so many options, doing that can take up a lot of viewing time, so it’s easier to go back inside the house where it’s lots warmer.

So, we must ask … Is there a universally accepted tappet clearance that we can use for comparing valve timings. The answer is both YES and NO! 

YES, because most modern camshaft grinding firms quote valve timing figures based on 50 thou tappet clearances, (or lash as the Americans say). This makes direct timing and comparisons of camshafts easy……but 50 thou! That seems an awful lot! Why 50 thou?

The clearance of 50 thou is chosen because good camshafts are ground on the opening and closing sides of the lobe so that for up to 30 degrees of crank rotation, the valves are only GENTLY lifted a few thou off, and lowered onto their seats. You can’t see them but the cams have ‘quietening ramps’ both side of the lobe. This means if we check our valve timings with NO or little tappet clearance, we will get greatly extended opening periods, which will almost certainly make nonsense of any published timing figures we might be trying to replicate.

So, to eliminate this confusion, modern camshaft experts mostly use 50 thou tappet clearances for reference. But since we are working with camshafts that were ground 70 years or so ago when this technology wasn’t universally used, that’s not much use to us. Thus, the question remains unanswered. What checking tappet clearance did Mr. JAP use when he published valve timing figures for his Speedway engines in 1950 and will we ever know?

Perhaps we might! Because there is good news to hand! Working together and combining their genius, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot discovered by trial and error that if we set our checking tappet clearances to 20 thou all is revealed! 

The following published valve timings for a Speedway JAP now make sense!      

INLET Opening 44 BTDC.  Closing 62 ATDC.
EXHAUST Opening 65 BBDC. Closing…34ATDC.  

This is a major breakthrough! Now we know what the manufacturer did. Their checking tappet clearance was 20 thou! Now we can do the same. We can set our JAP tappets at 20 thou. and play around with the various keyways until we get as close as we can to the factory JAP valve timings, which we know from experience give a really wide spread of power all the way up to 6000 RPM…… Bingo!

But the serious racer is never satisfied! Is there a better cam? Something with more overlap? More lift?  There is always the temptation to try something different.

As JAP speedway engines became less competitive internationally, JAP concessionaire George Greenwood introduced a new short-stroke engine with a camshaft which had been around for quite a while and had significantly broader valve timing. This was variously known as the Special or 84S cam and the temptation to try it out in our Cooper car was irresistible!

The published JAP timing figures for this camshaft were…

INLET Opening 60 BTDC. Closing 80ABDC.  
EXHAUST Opening 80 BBDC. Closing 50 ATDC.

To get a better visual idea of the value of these numbers, just draw a circle freehand and divide it in quarters with a horizontal and a vertical line. Now mark TDC at 12 o’clock and mark on the circle the approximate degree positions of the two sets of timings given above for comparison. We see immediately the 84S camshaft has 110 degrees valve ‘overlap’ at TDC against 78 degrees.

And how did these two quite different JAP camshafts compare in performance when installed in the same engine and in the same Cooper car by Demon Tweeks? 

The only really good thing we could say about the 84S cams was that they gave the engine another 500 maximum revs through the gears and in a straight line, but that was their only advantage. Missing was the easy starting and the beautiful flexibility of the early cams which allowed the engine to pull in any gear without the necessity of slipping a fragile clutch and /or changing down half-way through a corner.

On the race track there was little difference in lap times between the two camshafts as long as the track was dry. But if the track was wet, the later model’s peaky cams made survival much less predictable! This was demonstrated at a wet Wakefield Park, Australia meeting where Brian Simpson’s MK9 Cooper with standard factory cams had Chas McGurk’s 84S-engined Mk6 for lunch!

So there we are. Standard speedway cams are definitely the go.

Over the years that your correspondent was learning all this, your editor Terry Wright was also investigating the cams used in his ex Bruce Walton cars, blown and unblown, and can add more on the subject of camshafts and their individual characteristics –  the good, the bad and the ugly. He will do this in a future article.

In the meantime, ponder the fact that no JAP material appears to make any mention of a 20thou checking clearance!

Demon Tweeks

by Demon Tweeks

The dimly lit workshop is cluttered with bits of old Cooper racing cars. 

It is nearly midnight. Outside it rains heavily. Two elderly men are seated on empty 20 litre drums staring at a MK6 Cooper JAP with the right front wheel removed.

The bald one, approaching a hundred, speaks softly to his old friend and confidant Uncle Des.

“You know something Desmond?” Chas McGurk mutters sadly, “these Coopers should stop a whole lot better than they actually do!”

Revived by a recent Mars Bar, Uncle Des shows interest in Chas’s surprising statement.

“What do you mean?” Des quizzes. “I thought they had pretty good brakes!”

“Not really,” Chas goes on. “Our Coopers weigh less than 400 kilos with driver and fuel. They have 8 wheel cylinders, 8 leading shoes, working in 4 good cast iron linered drums with 2 master cylinders!

Above: Mk6 Cooper brakes as Des and Chas saw them

On paper that’s as good as you can get! They should stop on a sixpence……. but they don’t!  Even with really good linings we have to lean pretty hard on that brake pedal, much harder than you would expect.  It’s not a big problem at sprints and hillclimbs, but it’s a different story when you need to knock off a hundred miles an hour in a hurry at the Mallala hairpin.”

Anxious to help and always up for a challenge, Des leant forward carefully on his drum and asked for a torch. He studied the Cooper’s exposed brake set up for some time.

Impatient for a verdict Chas prompted him. “What do you reckon?” he said.

“I think it’s got something to do with the brake shoes,” Des said. “I don’t think they self- energize much…… or at all.”

“The brake shoes,” Chas repeated, seeking clarity, “what’s wrong them?”

Des took a deep breath and got started. “This is only a theory,” he warned, “but this is what I think. What we are looking on this car and most other Coopers, is a Lockheed twin leading shoe set-up straight off a Morris Major.  Is that right?”

“I believe so,” Chas nodded.

“Well,” Des continued, “let’s compare this arrangement to a typical Norton twin leading shoe brake. The Norton has both brake shoes located on the backing plate by fixed anchors at their trailing ends, so that when actuated they pivot outwards. As the leading edge of the linings makes contact with the rotating drum, a natural self -energizing action of the brake shoes takes place, and the result is a powerful effective brake!” 

Chas, who was following Des’ dissertation with great interest nodded. He was right on it!

“But that’s not what’s happening here,” Uncle Des went on. “The shoes on the Cooper are not fixed. They are floating! They move around. They don’t pivot, and when these brakes are applied and the lining makes contact with the drum, instead of energizing the leading edge of the shoe like the Norton, I reckon these shoes simply slide in the direction of drum rotation and wedge the trailing end of the shoe against the blind end of the opposite cylinder.”

Silence followed Uncle Des’s hypothesis. “And you reckon,” Chas said after considerable thought, “that the self- energizing effect of this form of leading shoe arrangement is minimal?”

“I would make so bold,” Des admitted shyly, “to suggest the trailing end of the shoe could be doing most of the braking.”

Chas exhaled slowly. “That’s a big statement,” he grinned.

“I will give you supporting evidence,” Des continued confidently.

“If you Google Lockheed Brakes of this design you will find this proud boast. Lockheed state, and with some emphasis, that this design is a ‘Non- grabbing brake!’

“Now what does that suggest? The logical inference is that it has little self- energizing tendency! And something else! Do you remember those good looking twin leading front brakes Triumph and BSA put on their bikes in the 70s? They used exactly the same Lockheed shoes that are on the Coopers! The only difference was they were mechanically operated.”

Chas nodded knowingly. “They looked good,” he said, “but they were a hopeless bike brake.”

The two seniors lapsed into a reflective silence. Then Chas asked the $64 question. 

“Should we tell anyone about this? And would they believe us? I suppose we could run it past Brian and Garry and Steve and Terry and see what they think? They’ve all got one of these things at home.”

“And while we are talking,” Uncle Des interrupted, “there’s something else weird about these brakes.”

“Please don’t tell me,” Chas said, shutting his eyes tight so he couldn’t hear. “What?”

“Have a look at these wheel cylinders,” Des said. “Notice anything odd about them?”

Chas gave them the once over. “No,” he confessed. “I can see they are early Morris 7/8” single ended Lockheed brake cylinders, but what’s odd about them?”

Uncle Des prodded a nearby cylinder with his Phillip’s head screw-driver and said, “They’ve got no bleeder screws,” and handed Chas the torch for a closer look.

Chas checked. Des was right! Eight brake cylinders with no bleeder screws! The brake hose supplied oil to a brass union on one wheel cylinder which fed an external pipe to another brass union on the other wheel cylinder. The only bleeder screw present was screwed into the last brass union at the end of the line making it possible when bleeding for fluid to completely bypass the cylinders!

Chas shook his head as he tried to work it out.

Des helped clear his thoughts with a brief summary. “The way this is plumbed,” he said patiently, “means that when you bleed the brakes, it’s very difficult to get all the air out of the cylinders, because there’s only one hole in the cylinder and that’s where the brake fluid enters. With no separate bleeder screw, any trapped air will be trying to get out through the same hole as the oil is trying to get in! Right?”

Chas worked on it for a minute and then gasped, like when Archimedes discovered why boats float.

“That’s why it’s so hard to get a decent pedal when you try to bleed these brakes, and why you’ve got to adjust the shoes up tight to get the wheel cylinder pistons right in, and clamp off the hoses and bleed one wheel at a time, and kick the pedal hard and fast. And what makes it worse, the cylinders all point in different directions. Up, down and sideways. And remember these cylinders were ever only used on the Morris front wheels in a horizontal position.”

There was another long silence. It was longer than usual. Uncle Des and Chas looked at one another.

They were both thinking the same thing. ‘Why do we do this to ourselves?’

They smiled as they said ‘Goodnight’.

 

A  DIFFERENT COOPER NORTON

Recently, New Zealand motor race historian Milan Fistonic sent me this shot of a Mk9 Cooper Norton, being worked on in the grassy pit area of the long since closed racetrack at Levin, New Zealand.

Captioned as being of Jim Berkett, with Cooper Norton Mk 9-28-55, it is of particular interest to me as it was from Jim that I purchased my JBS Norton in 1971. At the time Jim told me that he also had raced a Cooper as well as the JBS , and had on occasion swapped the Norton engines around. Here’s another period picture of Dick Butters at Levin:

The JBS was in the rafters of his plumbing business, the engine was sitting in the back of a VW Kombi van and the remaining parts were spread near and far. The mounting plates on the engine certainly didn’t fit the JBS, however others included in the collection did the job.

This particular single-cam pre-war engine was one of a very small number of race engines which were a fore runner to the venerable double knocker Manx engines which won hundreds of races in both bikes and F3 cars. Indeed most books on Nortons don’t even have information on these small-run engines, however they appear to have been used in 1935 and 1936 works bikes.

In time I had the JBS up and running, and at an event held by the Hawkes Bay Car Club in NZ in 1972 it was spotted by Ron Frost who immediately identified it as ‘’Curley Drydens factory experimental engine’’. Ron (RWA Frost) should have known, as he was not only a motorcycle racer and successful F3 car racer in his native England before settling in NZ, but he introduced many 500 cc F3 cars into the country, including my JBS. He was the driving force behind the construction of the Levin motor race track inside the horse racing facility there, much like his fellow countryman Geoff Sykes did with the Warwick Farm racecourse in Sydney.

It would appear that top Norton tuner of the day, Francis Beart may have worked on this engine given the quote from Iota magazine of March 1951 that he maintained Drydens ‘remarkably fast single cam engine‘, and that FB 444 is punched onto the drive-sidecrankcase.

Fast forward to 2017 and an approach to Derry Greeeklee saw me drive  to Adelaide and snap up a Mk9 Cooper that he had obtained from New Zealand some years earlier, mainly for the 1100 cc JAP engine that was then in it. I was keen to put it back to its original 500 cc F3 form and obtained a Manx engine from Charlie Banyard-Smith in the UK to do this. This Cooper is the exact one that Jim Berkett had owned back in the late 1950s, so now I have not only his old JBS but his Cooper Mk9 as well.

And that’s where the picture gets even more interesting, as sitting in the back of the Cooper in the photo is the single cam ‘’Curley‘’Dryden engine, which is still in the back of the JBS.

I have a copy of the Motor Vehicle registration papers that were used at the time in NZ, even for racing cars. Whilst there’s probably no doubt that Frost imported the Cooper, the first name on this form is Raymond Drew of Wellington. Although not on the entry list, he appears to have competed at the opening meeting at Levin.

Subsequent owners appear to have been Alistair McBeath, then Jim Berkett, Peter Slocombe, Dick Butters, Basil Brimelow, Garth Forsyth,  then maybe it went to Bill Clarke, John Holdsworth – who fitted the twin JAP – Derry Greeneklee and then Garry Simkin.

Fully restored, above, with a new engine , the car has had one short run on the disused airfield at Schofields in western Sydney and had a few ‘bugs‘ sorted out subsequently. When the big bug that is keeping us locked down at the moment is sorted, hopefully it will be out and about on east Australia racetracks.

Garry Simkin

PS Continuing our favourite theme of ‘things still turning up’ it might be mentioned that as opposed to a Mk8 Cooper, which has the engine sitting vertical, a Mk9 has the Norton engine leaning backwards at 15 degrees. To achieve this Cooper cast up special magnesium engine mounts, none of which came with the car. An observant fellow Cooper Mk 9 owner, Brian Simpson, noticed a pair for sale on Ebay and contacted Garry to suggest he bid for the pair. Seems not too many other people out there had these on their shopping list and they duly arrived in his letter box for the grand total of $35.

There is a better way, says Garry Simkin, who well knows the manipulations needed to time the magneto(s) on an air-cooled car.
He writes:

It seems like forever that I have used a cigarette paper to determine when the points open by way of setting the ignition timing of my magnetos.

As with many things in life, there is a better way. Recently, noted vintage car restorer and Mk 9 Cooper Norton owner Grant Cowie introduced me to the ‘Inductor Magneto Timing Light’.

By connecting the two leads to the magneto, and turning it, this device measures the inductive current, not continuity, to determine the exact of position of the points opening. This causes lights to indicate points opening and closing, but most useful is a rather loud beeping noise when the points open. Having the noise is great when you have your hands busy rotating the magnetos, and are trying to wrestle the cigarette paper while trying to get the drive sprocket onto the taper all the while tightening up the nut. It may be fine if you are an octopus, but it’s a messy and not entirely accurate business.

In his book Tuning for Speed, Phil Irving has mention of a method using a battery, light bulb, leads etc, but this also requires you to remove the centre screw. With the Inductor system no dismantling is required. It’s an all-round fantastic device which was primarily designed for timing aircraft magnetos. You can contact Grant Cowie at his Up The Creek Workshop on (03) 5470 5526 for more details and can check out his workshop and some interesting cars at www.upcreek.com.au

For magneto service Garry is happy to use Chris Zoch at Harrington, NSW, 0424 011 767.

Another cute little device was illustrated nearly a century ago in Motor Cycle magazine and it might be useful to those who like to rebuild their own crankshafts. Most of us with a lathe would put it between centres and then use a dial gauge to check the concentricity of the flywheels, but this little device might have a use if you are one of those people who might find themselves rebuilding their engine at a race meeting as people, including the editor, once did.

GREAT WINTON TURN-OUT

by Steve Denner with photos by Col Roper

A return to (only temporary*) COVID normal brought out a huge entry to the 44th Historic Winton in north-east Victoria on the weekend of 22 and 23 May. A lot of people had been busy in the shed for the last 16 months and the air-cooled owners were no exception. A veritable herd of the little wonders turned up to try out the cunning mods engineered in the darkness of the lock-downs imposed across the country.

Brian Simpson as usual brought out his Mk9 1100 (below) resplendent in fresh paint from chassis upwards, and he was relaxing in the security that an on-board starter gives the air-cooled owner against a stall on the grid or a restart after a “gardening” incident.

Fred Greeneklee brought his Mk6 1100 from South Australia for his “arriver driver”, Peter Fagan (21, below) , who was getting back into a race after a long spell of resting on his laurels. Nevertheless, he was soon on the pace in practice with a 1min 16s and 9th fastest in a big field of no less than 34 Group Lb sports and racing cars.

This correspondent was embarrassed to spin his Mk5 1100 (2 below) on the first corner of the first lap of practice, and being unable to restart was therefore awarded the stone motherless last slot on the grid for the first race.

Greg Snape with the Mk10 BMW 600 (S) put in a handy 1min 17s to put him 12th on the grid, although he was nervous about the future since pre-event servicing had revealed a soft thread when tightening one cylinder stud. Sorry, we don’t have a pic.

Grant Cowie had been doing a lot of work to improve the flexibility of the Manx Norton in his Mk9, while resolving a variety of gearbox issues. These were successful but still left an over-fuelling problem which dogged him for the weekend.

Rod North with the ex Davison Mk5 Vincent (S) elected to run Regularity as he is still sorting out mixture balancing between cylinders on this blown engine. Although he is an experienced speedway rider this was his first venture onto four wheels. Not surprisingly with the Cooper, he says he can’t see much difference! Nevertheless, by the end of the weekend he had destroyed any chance of a Regularity award by punishing his nominated 1:25s nomination with laps in the 1:19s region.

Alan Tidbury with the other Mk5 in Regularity was 5th in the final Regularity on Sunday. This is the car which had an FWA Climax very neatly inserted behind the driver which was coupled to a VW gearbox and transaxle by Bill Pile in 1959. It is altogether a very neat conversion and is perhaps an avenue that Coopers themselves should have explored.

As the weekend wore on, so the major and minor mechanical casualties were either repaired or declared mortal. Brian Simpson’s misfire was sourced back to a loose points mounting stud, but Peter Fagan’s charge ended on Sunday morning when the gear box failed to report for duty with a suspected second gear collapse.  This was a big disappointment after his 3rd place in the Lb race on Saturday, and with a best lap of 1:13.7 in the handicap before a spin and the gearbox expiring.

Your correspondent had an ignition lead disconnect from the distributor instantly turning into a 550cc Cooper, but reported for duty, started and finished in good shape for the final Lb race on Sunday. Unfortunately on the first turn melee found Greg Snape and the Cooper BMW stalled across the track after a tangle with another car. This resulted in a stop and restart to the race and Brian Simpson got everything in the Mk9 together and earned a 4th with a best lap of 1:13.56, winning the Cooper lap time challenge for the weekend.

* The guys were lucky. At the time of publishing, 1 June, the whole of Victoria is undergoing a minimum seven-day COVID lock-down and it may be longer. Great photos, thanks Col!

The Cooper Minx

Here we have a new theme – with hopefully more to come on the
subject of numerous air-cooled Coopers that had different engines
shoe-horned into the back of them

It wasn’t long after the early air-cooled Coopers started competing in Australia that many owners tired of their often cantankerous engines, JAP engines in particular. Notorious for bad vibrations and reliability issues, many of these were re-purposed with alternative power units, such as small Coventry Climax, Ford, MG, BMC and others. This car shown here with ABC presenter Peter Wherret driving, started with a 1096cc JAP, then had Manx Norton power and has spent the last sixty years with a pushrod Hillman Minx engine.

Imported by John Crouch and originally raced by Queenslander Les Taylor (below), it led the under 1500cc handicap race at the Easter Bathurst meeting in 1951 before clutch problems intervened. The next owner was Mrs Geordie Anderson who had a Manx Norton engine fitted and it became known as the LPS Cooper, LPS being the business name made up from the initials of Ray Lewis, Bill Pitt, and Charlie Swinburne.

Events the car competed in included Whites Hill (Brisbane) hillclimb and it also had a 10^th place in the 1954  AGP at Southport, Queensland. The next owner was a B Campbell who competed at Lowood, Qld, in 1957, then it went to motorcycle racer Tony Crick of Wellington, NSW who appears to have done very little running with it before was acquired obtained by Jim McQuire of Sydney. Jim ran it once at Orange, NSW with Alan Tatham doing the driving chores; it was still in Norton form.

Soon after, the Norton was hoisted out, and a 1500cc Hillman Minx engine was shoe-horned into the vacant engine bay, complete with the ubiquitous VW transaxle. A radiator was fitted in the nose with suitable plumbing, a gearshift linkage was made-up to suit the rear entry VW box, engine mods were done and the body work modified to suit. Additional spring leafs were added front and rear to handle the extra weight.

Meetings at Lowood and Strathpine in Queensland, as well as events at Tarrawingee and Hume Weir (Victoria ) plus, of course, various NSW events saw many miles racked up by drivers Peter Wherret (below) and Barry Collerson.

July 1960 saw it compete at the Castlereagh sprint strip where it recorded 16.00 seconds for the standing ¼ mile. Later it ended up with Monty South (who was a previous owner of the Sulman Singer) before going to Peter Cohen who ran in many hillclimbs with the car. He recalls replacing the original Cooper wheels with steel rims but the there is some uncertainty about just when this happened. He also tried reversing front and back wheels but only succeeded in turning too much understeer into too much oversteer. [One of the pictures below, from Amaroo Park, February 1966, has been digitally reversed to simulate them both being taken on left hand corners  – Ed]

In 1967 Peter on-sold it to David Hunt, who lost a wheel at Silverdale hillclimb, a situation that was to repeated by a later owner, the Cooper rear stub axles not being the best engineered of parts. The next owner was Doug Mcleod but we know little of his exploits.

David Kerr of Kurnell, Sydney was a later owner who competed in many historic events with his side-kick Bill Harris assisting. He, also, once returned to the pits at Amaroo on a truck, missing a rear wheel. David sold the car in 1995 and it is still in the hands of John Hermann in its Hillman Minx form, still carrying its 10/54/50 chassis plate.

Garry Simkin

Thanks to Kerry Smith, John Medley and Peter Cohen for their input.

Sports Car World, May 1960 has the following story by Peter Wherret on the fitting of the Hillman engine.

It is Higher School Certificate (HSC) exam time for year 12 high school students in Australia. Poor kids, including the editor’s grandson, have had to cope with a year in which practical work and engagement with teachers –  which could make or break some of them –  has been made very difficult. We wonder how they would cope with the following question from the last year’s Engines – JAP Racing –Maintenance examination as imagined by Steve Denner:

Introduction
A V-twin, 4 stroke engine has the cylinders disposed at 50°. The connecting rods run on a common journal. A half-timing pinion (HTP) has 18 teeth and runs on the end of the mainshaft, i.e. at engine speed, and clockwise viewed from the outside of the timing chest. The HTP drives the 36 tooth cam gear for No.2 cylinder, and this in turn drives the cam gear for No.1 cylinder.

The mainshaft carries a key to locate the HTP, and the HTP has five equally separated keyway options for adjusting the valve timing.

Question
The current valve timing opens the inlet valves at 38 degrees BTDC.
Write the paragraph for the Owner’s Manual which will describe the
procedure for

1. Advancing the valve timing by 4 degrees
2. Retarding the valve timing by 8 degrees.

Steve has reported on last year’s answers and has added some useful drawings. Most candidates worked out that the arrangement of 5 keyways and 18 teeth is essentially a vernier coupling. That is, there are 5×18 (90) different positions that the half time pinion can be engaged with the cam gear. Dividing 360° by 90 means each position offers a 4° degree variation.

It is essential to start from the existing and known valve timing by marking the current engagement of pinion and cam teeth, and also the currently utilized keyway in the pinion.

STEP 1 requires the pinion to be disengaged from the crank with the cam gears held in position, and the crank rotated anti-clockwise and
re-engaged in a new key position as dictated by the required degrees of advance or retard (see table below).

STEP 2 requires both the crank and pinion to be rotated clockwise by the number of teeth indicated in the table, and the pinion to be
re-engaged with the cam gear teeth that were marked at the outset.

Condensed into a tabular form it looks as follows. The degree of advance or retard achieved is the difference between Columns 1 and 5.

The first response was from Mark Burns who eats lots of fish, does The Times crossword before breakfast, and consequently has a brain the size of a small planet. He also produced the drawings to support his solution. Planning permission has been applied for and many thanks, Mark.

Curiously no response was forthcoming from any Morgan Three-wheeler owners. Perhaps a cold chisel and 2lb lump hammer is all that is required to keep them running?

The author thanks all participants and thanks them collectively for saving him the trouble of exercising his own strained grey matter, and hours of random and pointless meddling on the workshop bench.

Stephen Denner

The editor is also most grateful, being about to re-time the Walton JAP engine that shed some cam gear teeth just in time not to make the Collingrove hillclimb a year ago.

Here’s something new to add to our occasional ‘Still things turn up’ theme. Let’s call it, ‘Whatever happened to …’ which is especially relevant to the Coopers that came to Australia, New Zealand and other places such in Asia and Africa and then became something else, often with four cylinders.

The excitement of having a brand new Cooper from England may well have soon rubbed off as local specials could sometimes show a clean pair of heels to Surbiton’s best. If you had a ‘big-twin’ JAP in it rather than a ‘500’, the chances were that its unreliability would get you down.

An obvious solution was to put something else in it and so the Loose Fillings team thought we should have look at things that people did to Coopers engine-wise. The first candidate has been described for us by Andrew Halliday who writes as follows:

Built in 1949 by the Cooper Car Company at Surbiton, Surrey England, car 10-26-49 was powered by a 996cc JAP dry-sump 8/80 V-twin engine and was painted red. The car is the oldest survivor of the first batch of Coopers which was imported to Australia by Keith Martin, the original Australian Cooper agent.  The cars arrived in Melbourne on 25 January 1950 and this one, coloured red, was purchased by Jack Saywell who had raced a monoposto Alfa Romeo before World War 2.

It was the second Cooper to race in Australia, and it made its first race appearance at the Easter car races at Bathurst in 1950 as number 4. It was timed at 190 km/h (118.4 mph) through the flying quarter mile down Conrod Straight.  In the under 1500 cc, 25 mile race, the car finished 5^th, winning the handicap with a fastest lap of 3 minutes 10 seconds.

In the October meeting at Bathurst (above) it finished 4^th in the 12 lap, 50 mile under 1500cc race, with the fastest lap of 3 minutes 13 seconds and fastest time. At the Easter 1951 Bathurst meeting it became the first car to lap the circuit in 3 minutes; in unofficial practice Saywell crashed into to the fence near Quarry Bend and during the race the car broke a countershaft sprocket.

The 1952 April Bathurst meeting was held as the 17^th Australian Grand Prix and the car finished 16^th. It raced at Ballarat, Parramatta Park and Mt Druitt winning a few races. The car was maintained at Jack Zeidler’s workshop in Leichardt, Sydney, and the engine was maintained by well-known motorcycle racer Don Bain.  With business commitments to deal with, Jack Saywell parked the Cooper at the end off 1952 and it sat around for five years.

In 1957, Bill Reynolds, a well-known speedcar driver, motorcycle racer and announcer at the Sydney Sportsground Speedway, purchased the car.  At the Easter Bathurst meeting, during the Bathurst 100 of 26 laps, the car caught fire as it exited Forrest’s Elbow and returned to the pits with flames shooting to the sky.  It was found that a float bowl had come loose, spraying fuel onto the exhaust pipes.

Bill raced the car at Mt Druitt (above), winning two scratch races and the NSW Sprint Championship, and he won the 501cc to 1100cc class at Silverdale hillclimb. Doug Chivas raced the car for Bill Reynolds at Mt Druitt, winning an under 1500cc scratch race.

In February 1958 Jack Myers purchased the car for hillclimbing, removing the JAP 8/80 and replaced it with a pair of 650cc twin Triumph twins which were later supercharged (below) .  One of the engines ran in reverse direction and chains served all three drives – primary, final drive and blower.  The final drive was through a Cooper ZF differential. The gearbox was from a 1938 Norton motorcycle.

The car was capable of 120 mph (200 kph) and a standing ¼ mile in 13 seconds and became known as the Tangerine Tornado. Ken Waggott helped engineer the car and would drive it too, only to break crankshafts at Gnoo Blas (Orange), Foley’s Hill at (Mona Vale) and Fishermens Bend (Melbourne ).  Eventually Jack Myers solved the problem at his Maroubra workshop.

Jack’s first outing in the car was at Foley’s Hill. Never having driven the car, he broke the record in practice and in competition bettered his time by 1½ seconds.  His next meeting was at Huntley’s Hill near Wollongong, breaking the course record. This would be the last time the car ran with natural aspiration, it then having a supercharger off a Spitfire fitted.

While on his way to the Bathurst hillclimb, Jack called into Marsden Park airstrip to do some testing and put a hole in a crankcase. He missed practice but knocked ½ a second off the record on his second run. He also won the NSW Hillclimb series smashing all four outright records in all competition events.

In 1960 Jack Myers again won the NSW Hillclimb Championship in the car. He then replaced the Cooper with a chassis built by Ron Tauranac, removing the two Triumph 650cc engines from the Cooper and putting them into the Ralt chassis.  Jack would lose his life in the Ralt at Katoomba’s Catalina Park on 21 January 1962.  In 1961 Peter Williamson had purchased the Cooper using it at Silverdale Hillclimb powered by an Ariel engine and finished third in 50.37 seconds.

The car was next purchased by Bob Joass who rescued it from decay. It was later owned by Peter McCleay until 1976 when Tony Caldersmith acquired it.  In 1990 the car was issued with CAMS first ever Certificate of Description and was displayed in a Parramatta bookshop shop window in Church St in 1993. In 1995 Matt Segafredo, a Formula Ford racer, purchased the car as he liked the look of it and it sat in his lounge room for years until Andrew and David Halliday acquired it for historic racing.

Scroll down for earlier stories

• The Mystery of the Seized Cylinder
• Magnetos – a care free alternative
• Art Seniors’ very fast JAP
• A short history of JAP speedway engines
• With and without glory
• Skirrow progress too slow!
• Starting trouble?
• Great Cooper pics on-line

GREAT DAY AT BUMBLE HILL in 1960

by Garry Simkin

In the Yarramalong Valley, inland from Gosford NSW, near the small village of the same name, is a stunning piece of road which seems ideally suited to make a decent long hillclimb. Steep in places, windy and newly black-topped, I have driven over it on many occasions of late and it seems to be an ideal venue.

In a chance conversation with John Wright of Gosford regarding the road, he told me that there were in fact a few hillclimbs held there in years gone by. On 11 September 2020 it will be 60 years since the Central Coast Car Club held a round of the New South Wales Hillclimb Championship on the hill, and not only was John there, but he had some fantastic photos to prove it.

Fastest time of the day was taken by Jack Myers in his WM Cooper, and the first of the air-cooled cars was 3^rd quickest, Geoff McClelland in his self built MacVincent.

 

Winner of up to 750 cc racing car class was Neal Simpson driving the Aquilla, a swing axle device that John describes as ‘an evil handling car’.

 

Geoff Surtees was second in the class in his Surtees JAP – see more on this car in Loose Fillings #32 at www.loosefillings.com/back-issues This car is shown in front of the Chrysler, with no number on it.

 

The MacVincent, number 67 has Loose Fillings’ founding editor Graham Howard to the right in the front-on shot (below), and with his back to the camera in the rear-on shot (earlier).

 

Car 18 is the Ewing with Harley Davidson bottom end and ES2 Norton heads. There is more on this car in Loose Fillings #14 and an obituary of Ron in #7.

 

Cars 30 and 31 appear to be Ralts, and we do know that Alan Hindes was competing in one on this occasion.

 

Thanks to John Wright for the photos and Brian Lear and John Medley for help with the details.

Here are a few more shots which give an idea of the range of cars and people then in action starting with Tom Sulman’s  Maserati 

 

Doug Kelly’s Cooper Climax type 41

 

…and don’t you love the Mk2 Zephyr ute –  what happened to them all – or weren’t there that many –  John Bisset’s Buckle is behind it