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Hi Allen,
You are correct about the engines. In Argentina they ran the same car in both F1 & F2 races swopping the engines over.
My Mate Bob Walton bought his Lotus 24 in 65/66 and slotted the Ford V8 into it. He worked in the Rootes Experimental Dept so had access to Ford V8's. He needed it as at his first outing it threw a rod. I think Bob sold his Lotus to Peter Hawtin. Bob then bought the prototype Sunbeam Tiger LHD. converted it to RHD. We took this car with us to SA. I lost contact with Bob as he went onto J'burg. I believe he destroyed the engine as it ran out of oil ie; Castrol 'R' and he topped up with a mineral oil.
Dick Soames, all I can remember, is I think he lived around Solihull. I do remember that the door to his garage had a sign 'Pits' on it.
V8's were hard to come by in those days and I wanted a Chev. So I went to Brandon Speedway to see the stock car racing and met up with the reigning UK champ Joe Pratt. He ran a chev engined car with a Rolls-Royce Radiator on it. Joe was great invited me to his home and I bartered him a set of disc brakes for his wife's new Triumph Herald for an engine from a Bel-Air. My gearbox I bought in bits in a tea chest. After scratching my head for a couple of weeks I took it to Jack Knight to sort out. At the time I was a mechanic in the Standard_Triumph Comps dept. and I took Roy Fidlers rally car down to pick it up and got reported by some old coot of a judge for out braking him into a right hander. A sevre reprimand from Boss Ray Henderson. Despite all predictions of trouble with the ERSA it never missed a beat. I did run both engine and gearbox on Castrol 'R. Also my engine was bog standard so it was never under to much stress. I got the guys at Lockheed to build me a 10" twin plate clutch. The radiator came from a Triumph 2000. It was adequet, the problem with cooling was the Chev water pump, not man enough for the job. John, Chris Summers Mechanic fitted a marine Jabsco pump that worked well. I stuck with the Chev pump as no funds for anything else, also the Jabsco took abit of shoe horning into chassis and I just wanted to go racing.
Its been a good exercise writting all this down as it has triggered the memory. I do not talk much about the old Formula Libre days down here in NZ as nobody is really interested, so the memories fade.
If I can be of any further assistance, and keep the thread going, I will be only to happy to do so.
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