|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
20 Aug 2017, 19:22 (Ref:3760610) | #2701 | |||
Veteran
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 9,891
|
Quote:
|
|||
__________________
When asking; "Is he joking?" Best assume yes! |
20 Aug 2017, 20:00 (Ref:3760612) | #2702 | ||
Subscriber
Veteran
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 8,781
|
My first tow car was an old 3 litre Rovee . Think I told you some years ago the garage owner helped me when I was just starting racing . Anyway it had leather seats and loads of room in the back seat . Now they were happy happy days .
|
||
|
20 Aug 2017, 21:24 (Ref:3760627) | #2703 | |||
Veteran
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 2,886
|
Quote:
John Brundle was a bit of a character. I remember him coming into Hethel on occasions in a Triumph 2.5 PI rally car, may even have been ex works, can't remember now. He was a Lotus Service agent in those days. |
|||
|
21 Aug 2017, 02:02 (Ref:3760641) | #2704 | ||
Rookie
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 87
|
Bauble, there isn't enough space on this thread to explain my wife. Every time we move, I cringe. It's like a "right of passage" for the new house to receive her "christening." I keep hoping these houses will slow down and not jump in front of her. It's highly irregular to be on a first name basis with the guy that owns the local body shop, the brick mason, and trim carpenter! I'm steady money for them. I have grown to accept the whole thing as bad karma. It's "when," not "if."
|
||
__________________
"why yes honey, I do think you look fat in that dress" |
21 Aug 2017, 02:36 (Ref:3760645) | #2705 | |||
Veteran
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 12,853
|
Quote:
JB also had ,a bit later,an ex works Escort mk1 rally car,he needed all of the room on most bends in our neck of the woods.🤣 They were the days when Marty would fill my cars up at the pumps at Tottenhill. John always had an interesting car or two ther. |
|||
__________________
Living the dream,Chief instruktor and racing on the worlds best circuits-The Nordschleife and Spa.Getting to drive the worlds best cars-someone has to do it, so glad its me. |
21 Aug 2017, 05:30 (Ref:3760665) | #2706 | |||
Ten-Tenths Hall of Fame
Veteran
Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 14,830
|
Quote:
Still want a 2.5 pi, but really would like an estate.... |
|||
__________________
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. (Einstein) |
21 Aug 2017, 08:14 (Ref:3760693) | #2707 | ||
Veteran
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 9,441
|
I used a 105e van complete with 1500 GT engine and sometimes a twincam for towing a two wheeled trailer for the race car that was filled up with all the spares/petrol etc. I often used to go 5 up as well to meetings all over the UK and abroad, health n safety and towing laws
|
||
__________________
Balls of steel (knob of butter) They're Asking For Larkins. ( Proper beer) not you're Eurofizz crap. Hace más calor en España. Me han conocido a hablar un montón cojones! Send any cheques and cash to PO box 1 Lagos Nigeria Africa ! |
21 Aug 2017, 09:35 (Ref:3760710) | #2708 | |||
Veteran
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 5,703
|
Quote:
I paid more attention to weight distribution and fitted a stabiliser to the trailer after that episode! |
|||
__________________
Incognito: An Italian phrase meaning Nice Gearchange! |
21 Aug 2017, 10:13 (Ref:3760720) | #2709 | ||
Veteran
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 5,887
|
Talking about trailers, mine was also a single axle job, albeit with a solid wooden floor that was somewhat higher than a standard car trailer; this meant that we couldn't load it conventionally.
One of the mechanics would hold up the trailer from the hitch to almost head height, and I would drive the car on to the trailer. At the point that the weight was at a fraction, and I really mean a fraction, towards the front, the chap holding it would let go and allow the hitch to drop gently down on to an empty 5 gallon oil drum. The first time we carried this out in public - we had practiced in private many times before - all the other competitors stood and gawked thinking that we were mad. Probably we were. However, we never had any problems or accidents, and there was one slight young women who often helped us out whenever she was at a circuit with her Clubman racing boyfriend (who I found out just recently that had married her, and she passed away in the last year or so), who bet my mechanics that she could hold the front up during loading. She was right. Once hitched up to the Zodiac tow car, the car was pushed slightly forward and chained down, and everything chucked in the Anglia. As Iain would say, happy days. |
||
|
21 Aug 2017, 10:55 (Ref:3760729) | #2710 | ||
Veteran
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 9,441
|
Double post
Last edited by GORDON STREETER; 21 Aug 2017 at 11:03. |
||
__________________
Balls of steel (knob of butter) They're Asking For Larkins. ( Proper beer) not you're Eurofizz crap. Hace más calor en España. Me han conocido a hablar un montón cojones! Send any cheques and cash to PO box 1 Lagos Nigeria Africa ! |
21 Aug 2017, 11:01 (Ref:3760732) | #2711 | ||
Veteran
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 9,441
|
A Zodiac ! blimey that was posh and could easily seat 5 passengers, if I took 5 someone had to sit on someone's lap in the old van. This happened on loads of occasions and when I was banned from driving my mate used to drive and his girlfriend used to sit on my lap ! I actually got married to her years later and he is still one of my best mates !!
|
||
__________________
Balls of steel (knob of butter) They're Asking For Larkins. ( Proper beer) not you're Eurofizz crap. Hace más calor en España. Me han conocido a hablar un montón cojones! Send any cheques and cash to PO box 1 Lagos Nigeria Africa ! |
21 Aug 2017, 11:52 (Ref:3760738) | #2712 | ||
Veteran
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 11,064
|
Are the single axle trailers allowed in England? We us them because they are light but safety wise they are less comfortable than double ones.
|
||
|
21 Aug 2017, 13:31 (Ref:3760745) | #2713 | |||
Veteran
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 9,891
|
Quote:
I am none too sure of just how old some of these memories are. |
|||
__________________
When asking; "Is he joking?" Best assume yes! |
21 Aug 2017, 14:16 (Ref:3760750) | #2714 | ||
Veteran
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 5,887
|
Gordon, the Zodiac came from the same second-hand dealer as my Anglia, and it was probably not fully paid for just like my Anglia. Somehow we just never got round to paying them off, and the dealer never really worried about it. At that time, most of the car dealers that I knew, and I knew quite a few of them around North London then, were making so much money that they didn't always know what to spend it on, so the £50 quid that I was supposed to pay for the Anglia meant very little to him.
It was a long time ago, and things were certainly different then. And some of the types of people that I met in those days you wouldn't be able to get near nowadays. Such as going around to Stirling Moss' little house in Mayfair, and asking him if he wanted to join us for a drink or two in the Steering Wheel Club around the corner. Now that is something that is really interesting, because the architecture for that house that was constructed for him was way ahead of it's time, and it still looks like a fairly modern structure even to this day. Actually, it used to look quite out of character at the time. About the posh bit with the Zodiac, we only chose that because of the long hauls up to Oulton for a Saturday meeting, followed by Mallory on the Sunday on the way back. That was a gruelling weekend back then, especially as we would have to change the gearbox and diff on the Anglia for Mallory, having changed them for Oulton before leaving. And three or four people sleeping in the Zodiac on Saturday night was not the most pleasant of experiences. Last edited by Mike Harte; 21 Aug 2017 at 14:24. |
||
|
21 Aug 2017, 14:21 (Ref:3760751) | #2715 | |||
Veteran
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 5,703
|
Quote:
|
|||
__________________
Incognito: An Italian phrase meaning Nice Gearchange! |
21 Aug 2017, 14:39 (Ref:3760752) | #2716 | |||
Veteran
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 4,117
|
Quote:
I was glad we started to use four-wheel trailers later on, when we used slightly bigger cars (and went upmarket with a LWB Transit tow-barge) as it wasn't unusual to arrive at a rally start to find that one of the trailer tyres had disintegrated and we'd carried happily on 3 wheels..... I don't think much of the "budget" went on trailer prep and maintenance |
|||
__________________
Richard Murtha: You don't stop racing because you are too old, you get old when you stop racing! But its looking increasingly likely that I've stopped.....have to go back to rallying ;) |
21 Aug 2017, 14:56 (Ref:3760755) | #2717 | |||
Veteran
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 9,441
|
Quote:
|
|||
__________________
Balls of steel (knob of butter) They're Asking For Larkins. ( Proper beer) not you're Eurofizz crap. Hace más calor en España. Me han conocido a hablar un montón cojones! Send any cheques and cash to PO box 1 Lagos Nigeria Africa ! |
21 Aug 2017, 15:49 (Ref:3760759) | #2718 | |||
Veteran
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 11,064
|
Quote:
Thanks Lancs, down here we are restricted to a total weight, trailer plus its load, the maximum for a single axle is 1600 kilos with an ten per cent allowance (I've been told). What they do check is the driver's licence. |
|||
|
21 Aug 2017, 17:14 (Ref:3760774) | #2719 | ||
Veteran
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 5,887
|
50 years ago, it never crossed our minds to even consider what the weight of the car and trailer were; just put the car on the trailer, filled it with tools and full jerry cans of fuel and off we went.
And nobody seemed to keep to the speed limits, either. Can remember going full chat along Six Mile Bottom (what an evocative name for a road) with the Anglia keeping up behind when we were overtaken, at some considerable speed differential, by a Mk ll Jag towing another Jag. The wind displacement caused by their passing was enough to actually lift the off-side trailer wheel, causing the trailer to bounce from one wheel to the other for the next mile or so before we could bring it back under control. Just another thing that got tucked away in the memory bank, because they were happy days. |
||
|
21 Aug 2017, 17:22 (Ref:3760778) | #2720 | ||
Veteran
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 2,886
|
Back in 1979, trekking round with the European Formula Ford Championship, Pete Argetsinger had an ex BRS Austin parcels van as transporter/accommodation. It was permanently unreliable but that didn't prevent him from getting done for speeding in Germany. However, he was on the end of a tow-rope at the time, behind somebody else's transporter...
|
||
|
21 Aug 2017, 17:58 (Ref:3760788) | #2721 | ||
Veteran
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 11,064
|
Seems that some of us lost memory… sometime. During the 2011 and 2012 seasons we had hard fights on the track with Boissy and some others. And on our way back home we did it again, I could read at least 100 mph with the trailer. When I changed from the Capri to a heavy 635, the cost in trailer's tires was huge. The speed tickets were not bad too…
|
||
|
21 Aug 2017, 18:01 (Ref:3760789) | #2722 | ||
Veteran
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 3,820
|
Keep it going guys! For somebody who in spite of being retired now didn't start circuit racing until early this century, I can never get enough of these tales from a lost era...
|
||
__________________
a salary slave no more... |
21 Aug 2017, 18:51 (Ref:3760796) | #2723 | |||
Ten-Tenths Hall of Fame
Veteran
Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 14,830
|
Quote:
I was highly amused, as virtually every horse trailer in the UK seems incapable of being towed more than 40mph! I once followed a Vovo towing one across the S Downs near Goody, and the driver was doing 30mph, but running the N/S trailer wheels through every culvert and drain! The nags would have been more comfortable with the trailer going twice as fast but actually on the road. |
|||
__________________
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. (Einstein) |
21 Aug 2017, 19:17 (Ref:3760800) | #2724 | |
Veteran
Join Date: Mar 2013
Posts: 1,062
|
OK , a little towing story . Not me but a friend who often did the same events .
We were both rallying in Holland , forget which rally , but in late 80s . He clipped a post on the rally in his Manta , gentle roll but took out the windscreen glass . Went to load on to the trailer & his V6 Transit which promptly broke the oil pump / distrbutor drive . So while I was still on the event , he set off for the Zeebrugge ferry with the rolled Manta with no screen , towing the Transit with the trailer behind . Other than a rainstorm , he got back OK . He was based in Felixstowe so only a couple of miles from the ferryport back in England . |
|
|
21 Aug 2017, 19:17 (Ref:3760801) | #2725 | |
Subscriber
Veteran
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 6,426
|
||
|
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Iain's (Delta Racing Car) Builder's Tea Break 2015 | Peter Mallett | Historic Racing Today | 2608 | 10 Jan 2016 11:28 |
Delta's tea-break thingy, the lighter wassname - 2013 | Peter Mallett | Historic Racing Today | 2719 | 1 Jan 2014 12:38 |
Delta's Tea-Break Natter (The Lighter Side) 2011/12 | John Turner | Historic Racing Today | 3787 | 3 Jan 2013 10:05 |
Delta's Tea-Break Natter (The Lighter Side) 2011 | Peter Mallett | Historic Racing Today | 2796 | 21 Nov 2011 09:57 |