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Hello , not too sure if you are inetrested or not but I used to work for George many years ago but he had retired from car racing when I started at WRA Engineering in the early seventies through to the mid eighties. The business was at 486 Honeypoy Lane Stanmore in Harrow, at the time he was with his first wife living in Brookshill just north of Wealdstone.
He took up yachting late seventies, brought a 38 foot GRP racing/cruising hull and built the thing in his front garden, his wife and kids did not take to it so he bought a fully fledged 40 foot racing boat but an acrimonious divorce brought that to an end a few years later.
After the divorce he remarried and moved home to Gordon Avenue Stanmore
He later took to racing again around 1982, borrowed a car from a chap, who might of had the name "Mr. Cheshire" but not entirely sure too long ago now. It was a professionally built chassis and he raced in the Monoposto Club series in that for a couple of seasons before buliding a car from the ground up, their records show he won in 1984 but I think he won a couple of years later too. Tried to find some pictures online but failed, on one of the years the car won it was shown at the Racing Car show at Hammersmith, it was black, ground effect car with side pods entirely home built, I personally made many of the bespoke (Ford based) engine parts, including crankshafts from solid EN40B nitriding steel, con rods from blank forgings, gear driven camshaft conversions and numerous other unique engine and chassis parts, not to mention the suspension and aero parts he used to regularly knock off whilst racing.
He appoached me one day with a request to come up with a plan to make the car faster, any ideas considered, whilst enjoying a few beers over the wekend I had a few eurika moments and suggested a couple of things that he took on board and used to great effect. Firstly reduce weight, on the understanding that if you stalled the car on the start or went of into the bushes then the race was not worth running as it was only a few laps long, so, (we already used a tiny sintered bronze clutch about the size of a tea plate), machine off all the flywheel bigger than the clutch ( improves thottle response too) throw away the starter motor, wiring, huge battery, alternator, cables and switches etc and tow the car to start it on race day with a small battery to run the essential electrics. The second plan was far more cunning, the ground effect worked best when the skirts are close to the tarmac but regs dictated a certain minimum height on the grid checked by a man with a golf club like tool to run under the skirt on the grid so how to get round that?
Many diesel engines use a "progressively wound" valve spring where the coils are more cloesly wound on one end making it stiffer as it compresses, taking this idea we had some springs made the same so they are initially soft then get stiffer as they get shorter, along with some clever shock absorber work that I had nothing to do with and don't know how they achieved it, the upshot being if you approached the grid slow enough the ground effect was lost and the car lifted on its suspension and easily passed the on-grid check, as soon as the car got up to speed the ground effect sucked it down on the "soft" part of the spring and the skirts touched the tarmac, an ideal situation. The skirts were strips of PTFE with adjustment slots and way above the minimum height on the grid, by the end of the race they were worn away to almost nothing, he took several sets with him to every meeting needed a new set for every race to this day I am sure his competitors wondered how on earth we achieved it, in case you are wondereing the springs were covered with a shield made of old aluminium beer cans and out of sight
I did not get on with his new wife too well and left his employment after about 14 years, WRA ceased trading two years later, George started another business, Crankshafts UK, supplying reconditioned commercial vehicle crankshafts mainly for export, it was based just outside Alton Buckinghamshire , near the RAF base. Bumped into him many years later just before he closed that business and retired to live in Spain I believe. I have tried to find out if he is still with us but he must be well into later life now if you have any news please let me know, would also like a photo of the car if you know anyone who might have one.
Sorry for the protracted ramblimgs of a now fairly old man myself, too many beers on a Good Friday off work for a couple of days!!!
Regards,
Steve.
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