Saw this at Dragstagia and it looked and sounded great! Definitely the best race car/tow car combo there.
Your steering box extension is way neater than mine, I think I know how the extension is pulled onto the steering box splines using a cut off LR drop arm, presumably using a female threaded tube nut thingy. Do you have a pic of that part you could share please?
Sadly I don’t seem to have any photos. It’s pretty simple. The top of the drop arm is welded to the tube as you can see, along with the new drop arm. The original nut is welded to a smaller tube, that is a nice clearance fit in the outer tube, with a piece of hex bar welded on the other end. I added a dimple in the end so I can use a puller against it to remove it all. Pete.
Thanks, I just might re-do mine some day, I think tig welding helps a lot when trying to keep the nut square to the tube vs mig, and gives a neat pro look too.
I used the lathe to face the drop arm and the tube. Clamped it all together before welding. This helped to keep it all straight.
A lathe is a marvellous thing, so glad I have one, maybe turning a shoulder/weld prep on the nut to center it into the tube would help too.
I was out playing last weekend, with the car, plus two other cars at MPH drags. 1/8 mile flag start. Damon was driving the new car, Gavin was driving the Charles Bang Special and I was in my flathead powered sport coupe. The rail ran well too. End of play on Sunday it dropped a water pipe, probably due to the bumpy track. Nothing a support bracket won’t fix. Plus, Sunday it had a misfire. The rain had fill the spark plug tubes with water. Ran fine once it was boiled out. the following are from (colour)Andy “Tog” Rogers and (B&W) Tony Bruce. Wheels up in the wet, mid track on the 2nd to 3rd up change My coupe towing back the 1958 built Chinese Bandit and the 1963 built Charles Bang Special
Thank you for the kind responses. Time to update this thread. As the car only took a few weeks to build there was a lot of improvements to make, as well as some changes I wanted to do. First on the list has to be a roll bar. Something period and simple would be great. Single loop over the back. Sadly though, we needed it to satisfy those responsible for track safety. A hoop, a back stay and bars to stop a helmet from going through the gap. Not the prettiest but it’ll allow us to run the track. Another requirement needed to run is some way of collecting oil from leaks and blow ups etc. most use a diaper but with the low mounted oil pump I thought it may get caught up in the belt drive. So I chose to make an under tray that will have absorbent pads.
Happy with the ch***is it went off for paint. And, while the ch***is was out of the way I could get on with other bits. Improvements: I wanted to get rid of the big oil tank and dry sump, for no other reason than to clean up how it all looked. I made a very large sump with baffles and trap door. It also has an easy to remove gauze screen on the side and level sight. The sump was easy enough, the oil pump would be different. The pump is a ***an twin scavenge unit. Not cheap and because of that I didn’t want to make any changes that were irreversible. Removing the two scavenge sections left me with a long rear facing shaft. That restricted location options because now the sump is in the way. So I decided to machine up a spacer block and run the belt and pulley at the rear of the pump and push the pump forward. lost of hours, but it worked.
Yay! Painted parts are back. First thing was to final fit the under tray, and rework all the body panels. Due to rushing them they were never a good fit. This time they have swage lines, even panel gaps, bead rolls and a couple of louvres. Rear axle bells were powder coated, as wax the A front bean, wishbones and wheels. Bright white! Who thought that was a good idea for a bunch of grease monkeys? Engine in and oil pump mounting bracket made.
With the sump being changed we lost the hidden electric water pump. I chose a BMW boost pump, one for it’s simplicity and two for its availability and cost. Mounted on an aluminium plate out the front means I can run long water tubes for extra capacity. Modified and cleaned up the swirl pot header tank too. Now the engine with the new sump and the modified oil pump were in the car I found the under tray was lower that needed. The front was rolled under about half way down and the rest flattened off. I think I prefer it better.
Body panel have gone off to paint, so I get the chance to work on all the small bits. Front shocks. Didn’t want to fit tele shocks, can’t afford decent lever arms so that leaves friction shocks. I bought so of the discs that are fitted in towing stability aids. About 4” round, made from sintered material and cheap. Two of these discs sandwiched between three steel plates. The outer two locked to the ch***is with the middle one connected to the lever arm. A tension nut on a fixed bolt through the middle. I had a spare pair of pedal rubbers so I fitted them to the gearbox mounts so we have somewhere to stand on when getting in and out to save standing on the under tray. speaking of under tray, I fitted a bulkhead behind the gearbox and fixed under the pedal rubbers. Support brackets for the water pipes
Great job. Is that a ‘67 F250 Canper Special in the pics? I had a red and white one just like it. 352? NP 4 speed MT?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I think the roll bar and the rest of the build that is as well constructed as this is is pretty!
I added a seat back for a bit more comfort and to fill the gap. The green paint inside the body panels was supposed to make it look like I used old aircraft skin, but the colour didn’t come out quite right A bit of rework on the brake lever In order to “lose” the roll bar I wrapped it in strips of alcantara. Time had come for the first meet of the year and a chance to see what the little 4 banger could achieve.
Sadly things didn’t go to plan. I had turned the carb intakes forward and up jetted the carbs prior to going. Although the car ran fine static, under load it was flat. We ran a 17 something seconds. So slow I didn’t bother picking up the time tickets. I spent a lot of time scratching my head as to why it wouldn’t work. Make more changes, no improvements, more changes, still nothing. That was Saturday evening. Last change to the car ready for Sunday thinking ‘it’s got to work’. First thing Sunday, fire the car up to warm it and ******! The ****** electric water pump had failed. End of play for the car. Back home with the car, I put the carbs back to how they were, still wondering why they didn’t work, and fitted the old electric water pump in place of the cheap ****e that failed. But, there is some good news. We had a seat cover made in white leather. Such a sensible colour!
Dragstalgia is the next meeting. Full of excitement and anticipation we set off. It was really hot, like a lot hotter than we normally would expect. 38°c hot. We didn’t run on the Friday, like a lot of others too. The track was very quiet. Saturday I wanted to retard the timing a couple of degrees due to the excessive heat. Just thought it might help the engine from getting too hot. Can’t find the timing mark! I know it’s there! Then it dawned on me, crank key! Yup, removing the pulley and cover reveals the key has sheered and the pulley hub cracked. End of play, again! And probably the reason I couldn’t get the car to work at the last meeting, nothing to do with the carb. Insert angry emoji face here! Back home, I’ve got 4 days before the next outing. Thankfully, a mate called Craig runs a company called Rotoshim. He has just made a prototype of a crank gear that is one piece with the pulley hub. It has straight cut gears and comes with a matched indexable cam gear. Lovely bit of kit. Sadly I didn’t take any photos of the crank gear with its hub, just got straight to making it fit what I have. But it’s a gear, shaft and flange. I believe when they go into production they will have a standard pulley attached. For my engine, I needed to mate it to the pulley that was fitted. It’s not just the pulley but the belt drive for the oil pump and trigger wheel for tachometer. I cut a castellation on both parts and a centre dowel.
With the cam and crank gears sorted we set off for MPH. A great weekend event of 1/8 mile flag start. Very relaxed with a fantastic organising team. Two days of side by side racing with mates, and two evenings of music, chat and drink. Finally the car was running good again. We bolted on a pair of old Hurst cheater slicks that were smaller in size and rock hard. Best of all, they were cheap. We had a 50p bet (67 cents) on the Chinese Bandit against my 4 banger. The Bandit being a 1958 built topolino with a stout 304 ci flathead. Surprisingly the 4 banger won the bet. we now have to wait till next May for the car to prove itself on the track. Due to my dad having his 90th birthday on the same weekend as the Hot Rod Drags in September, I shall miss out. I did try jokingly to get him to change his birthday celebrations to another weekend, but he was having none of it. I’ll leave you with a bunch of of photos from MPH. Credit to the photographers. And finally. A midnight, outside the beer tent an impromptu cackle fest. The Chinese Bandit, the Charles Bang Special and the Charlie Bang’er.
The Jalopy Journal
