DIRTY STUFF
FOR years, my wife and I travelled all over eastern Australia looking after historic racing cars owned and driven by a retired Queensland chemist. We drove the kilometres to circuits in our own Subaru, often taking time out on these trips to look at places that were different, including vehicle museums.
At Easter, we would usually be at the Mallala track in South Australia, and after the racing, we might stop off at Birdwood, outside Adelaide, to check out the National Motor Museum. They had lots of stuff on display, including the old truck that made the monthly supply run from Marree to Birdsville, and a curious race car rebuilt over and over by Jack Myers of Sydney.
Jack was a remarkable self-taught engineer, and his car had begun life as an English-built, open-wheeled Cooper Bristol. This was a single-seat, front-engined Formula Two race weapon running a 2.0-litre Bristol six-cylinder in a Cooper Car Company chassis. Jack Brabham had dominated the Australian competition in his, before he left to race in the UK. Myers progressively modified his CB, fitting a Waggott twin cam-headed Holden 138 sideplate mill, creating a new chassis, and finally fitting front disc brakes. When the museum bought the car, they rebuilt it again and unveiled it to Jack’s widow.
The roads we travelled were varied, and one took us to Bathurst, where we checked out the National Motor Racing Museum, located alongside the northern end of Mt Panorama’s Conrod Straight. The museum features cars that have competed over many years on the Mount. We saw Toranas and Holdens and Falcons, plus a familiar blue car I was heavily involved with, the Ron Reid-built Hudson Special.
Ron told me that he had created the two-seat car to go calling on his future wife, as well as to race. The donor was a six-cylinder Hudson sedan, and Ron’s car was so original that when we got it out of the Gilltrap Museum at Kirra, under the driver’s seat cushion was a Ron-fitted leather seatbelt. He probably needed that when he crashed the Hudson at Bathurst, stuffing the lightened chassis so badly that he had to weld on a new rear half so he could go racing again.
When George Gilltrap was competing at Lakeside in that car years later, the sidevalve engine tossed a conrod out through the side of the cast-iron block. I had to strip the engine and heat the block in a wood fire, then oxy-weld in a pre-cut iron patch and let the block cool down over four hours to avoid cracks. That engine is still in the Hudson Special.
When we were racing in the North Island of New Zealand, during time off we discovered the Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) in Auckland. There was lots of fascinating gear housed there, but two displays really got my attention. One was a wall with a line-up of Rolls-royce-made Merlin V12 aircraft engines, beginning with an early version and followed by more powerful units as they were developed, ending with a supercharged Spitfire engine that put out 2400hp from a mere 20 litres’ capacity. Then we came across info about a brilliant NZ farmer who had apparently invented and flew the world’s first heavier-than-air machine in March 1903, nine months before the Wright brothers got theirs off the ground at Kitty Hawk, USA. As New Zealand was at the bottom of the earth with very limited media communications at the time, the Wright brothers got the kudos for building and flying the first-ever aircraft while the farmer from Kiwiland went back to growing sheep.
We then drove further along the North Island to Otaihanga to visit Len Southward’s vast museum. Its two floors showcased everything from one of the first Benz cars to a speedboat hanging from the roof powered by an ex-ww2 Allison V12 aircraft engine, complete with a twisted and bent propeller shaft. It seems Len had been out on Auckland Harbour, aiming to set a new speed record in this boat when something went wrong and the driveshaft tried to tie itself into a giant knot. There was another Allison-engined machine there, too; a purposebuilt quarter-miler rail with fat rear tyres and skinny fronts, which must have needed a very brave pilot to control the probable 2000 horses. And hiding in a corner was a red 250F Maserati F1 open-wheeler that had been raced by Bruce Mclaren before he went off to England to drive for Cooper.
There was a trip to Tasmania where we wandered around a race car museum at Launceston. There wasn’t much there except for a display of tattered 1960s rear-engined machines, collected in one area without any printed info about them. However, not long after we were there, somebody who knew old race cars jumped the ropes and discovered that one of those exhibits was Jack Brabham’s first Formula Junior car built under his own name. It had originally been bought and raced by Taswegian Gavin Youl, but now the engine was wrong and the car was very tired from too much competition. Later, that Brabham was bought out of the museum and fully restored to be sold to a Queensland chemist who was into serious Historic racing. Which, folks, was where we came in to maintain his car!
GEORGE GILLTRAP WAS COMPETING IN RON REID’S OLD HUDSON SPECIAL WHEN THE SIDEVALVE MILL TOSSED A CONROD THROUGH THE SIDE OF THE BLOCK