HIGH COST
HARD WORK
BUT GREAT FUN

by IAN PHILLIPS

Reprinted from AUTOSPORT October 7, 1971
 
About this time last year the urge to go racing became greater and greater after I had spent virtually every weekend for six months watching other people do it. Now with my racing season having been brought to a premature end it was decided that a recap on how I went about starting racing on a shoestring might be of interest to some of our readers who feel the same way that I did a year ago.
Anyone in our offices will say "here, here" when I admit that when it came to my talking about going racing that I was on a big ego-trip; I was going to be world champion material without a doubt. The big choice to start off with was what would be the best formula to display this talent to the flocks of team managers that would be coming along. Of course a big factor in this choice had to be how much ran I afford? With help from my parents £800 was raised. This would have enabled me to go racing in the ultimate low-cost formulae such as Formula 750, 1200, FV and possibly small saloons. Tin-top racing I dislike anyway and would not consider it although it obviously dots have its attractions to those less bigoted than myself. It was for no specific reason that I ignored the other formulae mentioned although they obviously play a very important part in that they provide a very competitive form of racing for the real shoestring man. For example a potential championship-winning 750 car can be purchased for around £300. Also they have the added advantage of giving scope to garden shed car building. Most of today's leading designers, including Colin Chapman and Eric Broadley, started off designing cars for 750 racing. The fact that I have no inclination on this side and am virtually incapable of filling a car with petrol let alone anything else, is as good a reason as any for not considering them. With the genuine low-cost formulae ruled out a whole number of formulae, FF to FAtlantic, came into reckoning although with my budget the majority were ruled out. It was then that the decision was taken to share. Oliver Sharpley, whose brother Mark had been racing in clubmen's for three years, was an old friend and he wanted to go racing so we teamed up. The choice of car from then on was only clubmen's. With his connections and mine through AUTOSPORT it was a logical thing to do.
Having pooled our resources we looked around for a car and the Clubmen's Register newsletter Buy and Sell column produced the answer. In Harrogate there resided a Gryphon for £700. This sounded like a good prospect and further investigations were carried out. Andy Diamond, one of the leading runners in the formula over the past couple of years, was racing a Gryphon, and was able to give us details of the car and in fact he now has the building licence of the Gryphon clubman. The one we were interested in however was built many years ago by Vee expert Stuart Rolt. It originally had a Mk 6 U2 chassis which had been given IRS and various other mods. The present owner of the car was Lawrie Loveless who raced it on the northern circuits with a 1500 cc engine in. When we contacted him we found that it was in pieces waiting to have the new 1600 cc mill installed. The car sounded like a good buy and so one foggy Saturday we travelled to Harrogate to see it. Although in pieces everything seemed OK especially with a trailer and a spare set of wheels and tyres thrown in. £700 was eventually agreed upon and two weeks later it was collected. Great excitement ensued. It was followed by a great deal of money spending and hard work. We decided upon a number of alterations to the car starting with the chassis. The whole thing was stripped down to its bare tubes (it had not been bolted together when we picked it up) in a couple of days and then Patrick Head, who had designed Mark Sharpley's car, drew up the chassis modifications. While the drawings were being done the chassis was stripped laboriously of its cream paint. Later we discovered that this time could have been saved by having it sandblasted which would have been about £2 and 99 per cent quicker. When the drawings were ready the chassis was taken to Maxperenco in Didcot and they did a very neat job on the changes. The alterations were to the floor tubes to accommodate a new pedal assembly. After the changes had been done it was then taken to Arch Motors for stove enamelling and painting. When it arrived back at the garage it looked superb to such innocent eyes in its matt black finish.
While the chassis had been away much thinking about other revisions and dismantling and cleaning had taken place. All the hubs had been dismantled and cleaned, the bog standard engine had been stripped down also, The engine was the centre of much attention. In its standard form it was not going to be tremendously competitive but to take it to a reputable tuner would have been prohibitive. In other formulae it is virtually impossible to get away with not buying an engine from Holbay or some similar firm. We knew that people in clubmen's were going to engine builders for their demon units and that the best of them was costing £800 new. This for us was not on. So our Cortina engine bored out to 83.5 mm with a standard head (later found to be cracked) with one steel strap on the centre main, wet sump and C rods was going to have to do. The crankshaft was sent off to be crack tested and nitrided with the rods. This was done by Stuart Rolt at a very reasonable price. All of them turned out to be all right despite a bit of blue on one of the rods. One of the pistons however was found to be slightly oval and went to Hillthornes to be righted for £10. We also bought other things for the engine; a competition head was secured for £30 and a Lucas competition distributor for £10.
While the engine bits were all over the country the rest of the car was beginning to take shape. The panelling had mostly been done by our two very willing unpaid helpers John Heitman and Mike Grimm, The aluminium was bought from Arthur Mallock as were the radiator, nose-cone, rear wings, windshield and front fins, None of which was cheap but except for the fins were necessary. The reassembling of the hubs was a fairly lengthy process as we found them so be a mixture of Triumph Herald and Vauxhall Viva bits. All the bearings were renewed when we had found what type fitted which side. In the end we standardised them for Herald all round.
The suspension was left completely alone except for renewing the rose joints all round. The delivery of the rose joints from Associated Engineering took almost two months and held up assembly for a considerable time. Although very necessary items they were also rather expensive. When the hubs and suspension had been mounted we ran into trouble over fitting the wheels. The wheels we were using were heavy old Cooper things which did not fit properly. One of the wheels had to be machined extensively while studs and spacers also had to be made. The studs were almost £1 each and due to an incorrect measuring, two sets had to be made up. This was all done by a local firm. Having decided to stay with our potentially uncompetitive engine, we thought that a demon set of tyres might help to offset this. The tyres which came with the car were part-worn old Dunlops. Although Firestone YBl1 had been superseded by the B17 compound in F3 it was still considered demon in clubmen's so we opted for a set. It did not quite work out like that as for some reason we got B17 fronts and B1l rears, The rears were in fact virtually the last remaining ones of their type, being experimental Fl fronts for the 1968 South African GP. Anyway we got this mixture and it set our sponsor Elm Farm Racing back a cool £130.
The gearbox was brand new and untried when we purchased the car and we were advised to have it run in on a test bench before fitting it. We offered it to Fergusons who estimated £30 for the job and this was rather a shock. So we rang up Hewlands who said just fit it and run it gently for half a dozen laps and it will be fine; this was good news indeed.
We retained the existing diff which was a 4.1 and the fuel tank, while we purchased a new set of dials, seat, mirrors, brake piping, and all the electrical switches, attachments, and wire. The brake and clutch cylinders were fitted with new internals while the clutch itself was sent off to a local garage to be relined for competition. They claimed to have sent it to Borg and Beck but it later transpired that this had not been done and it came back fitted with standard lining.
When all the bits were acquired assembly began in earnest. After the suspension had been fitted, the old steering assembly was fitted with, I have since been told, some difficulty although the reason is not apparent. With the new chassis tubes in and the complicated self-made pedal assembly fitted we encountered a problem. The new tubes did not allow for gearbox drainage or for the fitting of the sump. It was obviously too late to do anything about this so a tapered drain plug was fitted so as not to foul the tube and the sump was suitably modified at one corner. The major hang-up was that to drain the gearbox it would almost certainly have to come out. Because of our new pedals we then found that the existing engine mount would not fit on that aide. More panic and quick designing. Every logical design turned out to foul the steering, so eventually a strange L-shaped piece was made up which came up from the engine over the steering arm and on to the chassis. This along with many other self-made pieces was done at Jeffrey Racing cars which we discovered building FVs and 750s just up the road near Witney. Actual assembly was relatively quick and as we decided to keep the existing bonnet there was no extra panelling to be done except the firewall between the drivers legs and the engine and the transmission tunnel. Ferodo DS1I hard racing pads were fitted as we thought these were the best to have and £30 worth of sparking plugs were bought from Champions. When the engine was fitted Maxperenco produced an exhaust system which was then modified slightly by Mike the Pipe. Finally the car was sprayed by us orange and matt black.
With the car ready to go we had to find something to transport it on, a place to test it and fuel and oils to run it on. We had acquired a trailer with the car but this soon fell to pieces. In the end not far short of £100 was spent on the trailer and although it was very sturdy it was not the right thing for the job at all and has given us aggro throughout the year. With a little foresight a lot of money could have been saved by buying a brand new one. Parental connections enabled us to be able to go and test the car at the local aerodrome at weekends. As fuel contracts do not run to club racing, ordinary 5-star juice was purchased but with oil the club competitor need not worry. Both Shell and Castrol will accept contracts for championship contenders and we originally signed with Castrol and received four gallons of engine oil and four for the gearbox. Although we are grateful for this of course, a suggestion might be more engine oil and less for the gearbox. Although two contracts were sent in (one for each of us) at a three-month interval we only received goods for one. Eventually we changed to Shell which gave us eight galls of engine oil and four more for the gearbox.
In fact we only did one initial session at theairfield which showed us that it worked and that it had chronic understeer. From then on it was considered ready for its first race. Having collected the car in November and set a target of March 1 to have it completed, it was first run on Easter Monday just over a month late. So be warned to not underestimate the task. With licences from the RAC at £1.50 and clothing gear worth £68 from Formula One I was ready to go, although I did not drive the car until its third race and various problems cropped up before then. One problem which came with the first race and never went was constant overheating. Both oil and water temperature gauges were permanently over the 100 degrees mark despite moving the oil rad outside the car, cutting a large hole in the bonnet and trying many different permutations of swirl pot. At one event the water got high enough to blow a hose. One of the first major repairs came when a brake disc cracked at Silverstone during practice causing one or two nasty moments. These fatigued Cortina discs were then changed for some machined Vauxhall 101 models. A few meetings later at Lydden Hill the brakes again gave trouble; twice as your pot-hunting scribe went into the hairpin the fronts locked up and it stopped mere inches away from a solid-looking bank. On the second occasion they locked on solid and the nearside front caught alight. When all the fire-extinguisher foam had been cleared and the assembly dismantled with the help of a number of fellow competitors it was repairable in time for the race if we could get some new pads. No DSlls were to be found so a trip to Dover saw us fitting standard Triumph Spitfire pads for £6 a net. With the locking traced to a catching balance bar these were fitted and the result made it seem as though we had had no brakes at all previously. The standard pads being much softer and bedding in easily. With the DSl1 one needs to spend almost a day bedding them in and they will last a season. The softer pads do not last as long, however, but inspired so much more confidence that to us it did not matter.
The gearbox also gave problems; third gear disappeared after four meetings and it proved a difficult problem to repair. The internals were Wooler gears and they only make one to special order these days. Their quote for a replacement was £15 and 14 days. We decided to chance self repairs and modifications which worked out at about £12 but only took 2 days. The result was satisfactory until a fortnight ago when it went again and resulted in the car being left rather second-hand in a bank.
The engine was a constant mystery. The overheating was always a problem but so was the choice of heads. The competition head was fitted originally and worked OK if rather sluggishly. The cracked standard head was fitted for one meeting for evaluation and proved to be more satisfactory. When the water hose went, however, a quick check for sudden loss of compression revealed two crystallised pistons. This was originally put down to the overheating and a new set were acquired from Ferraris Piston Service for around £30. While this was being done we also found that the standard head was bowed. It was taken in Osellis near Oxford and shaved and cleaned up for £8. Meanwhile the competition head was once more in use. This was fine but for a refusal to pull the revs in top. At the same time oil was blowing itself all over the place for an inexplicable reason. The car would just about manage to complete ten laps before the pressure started to go. The cleaned-up standard head was refitted to try and get the extra top revs. Although it gave us an extra second at Silverstone the rev counter showed no difference After one race we decided upon a major strip down and rebuild. When the head came off two more dud pistons were found. Further enquiries as to why this should be so revealed that the compression ratio of the standard head was 11:1 compared to the 9:1 of the competition model for which the pistons were designed. So she standard head was discarded for good. During the rebuild special Apex oil rings from Vegantune at about £6 were bought to stop the oil being blown up. After final assembly and a good running-in period at Silverstone the engine ran the best it has ever done.
Two uprights were needed during the season; one after an accident and one after a failure on the grid. These were obtained at a very reasonable price from Andy Diamond as were a new set of special lightweight strong Gryphon rear wings.
Probably the biggest single financial disaster was the ruining of a tyre on its first ever circuit test day. A wing retaining bolt was not sawn off to the limit and on Thruxton's fast right handers it rubbed on the tyre, cutting a great groove in it; bang went another £30 and the last of the type from Firestones. The tyres generally wore well and would have lasted out the season with no trouble. There were many other little things which cropped up throughout the year all of which cost money but are too numerous to mention in this brief guide of what can happen in a year's racing. As many people will probably know the car is no longer after a mishap at Castle Combe, but if all goes well it will reappear next year yet again revamped and I hope fairly competitive, A number of people might ask was it worth the sweat and money? The answer as far as I'm concerned is definitely yes and the yen for next year is starting to be unbearable already.