Stinson Special

I went, for the hell of it, to a Christie's sale at the Science Museum in about 1995 and was struck by a \model-A Ford engines dirt track racer. It had an unpainted metal body, and the tail was weirdly high up in the body. No bidders were interested, and afterwards I phoned the auctioneers to see what was what, and eventually bought it for the estimated price, about £6,000.

There were lots of these cars in the USA in 30s 40s and 50s, mostly amateur, race it on Saturdays, fix it during the week, and race next Saturday. Some guy had gone to the States, and bought a pile of bits etc from an old guys bars, and shipped them to UK. From them, he made up two or three cars. This one he made with a longer chassis, as it had a gearbox, though one off a Model-A truck with 4 gears. and a narrowed track (cut down Model-A at the rear, unknown at the front) and nice Kelsey Hayes wheels. It also had a nice hand fuel pump. not connected to anything, which I liked, though various people said I should take it off. I cut off a 4" slice off the tail and put it back on with brass rivets, cut off the rear wheel chrome deflector bars, fitted a Model-A gearbox, fitted a high speed flat head (made no difference), changed the rear differential gear ratio (the differential was locked), painted it red, etc.

It was fun to work on, and fun to drive, and not at all precious like the Bugatti, I called it a tractor.. Spares were cheap, available in UK, and you could get 'new old stock', ie spares from the 30s. Eventually I decided I needed a new engine, and I commissioned a guy in Texas to build me one. It was a Model-B with a stronger crank and pressurised oil system (shhh!), with a Dan Price overhead valve head and two Stromberg carburettors. Eventually it arrived, and somehow I managed to fit it OK.

I drove it round the block at Rylett Crescent, to the next village and back at Bishopstone, and lots up and down a nearby farmer's hill track. Great fun. Then Michael F worked on it. He found a deliberate blocking plate inside the exhaust! Could it have been an attempt at v

silencing? Taking it out made things a bit better. Then the VSCC scrutineer dangled a magnet over the Price head, and of course found it to be aluminium, and they banned it! The Secrets of Speed guy, Charlie Yapp, was making replicas on the Riley 2-port head, so I bought one. The problem was that the carburettor intakes were on the right side, whereas on the Price head they were on top. So I had to ditch the Strombergs and fit a couple of old SUs I had found.

It was more or less at this time in 2004 that Amber started to compete in the car (she was up for it, a daring horse-rider, and dead keen). I realised that it was much more fun seeing her improve, rather than seeing my own times stagnating, so soon she was doing all the driving, and I think she got better than me. Then I had my stroke, so it was all her. She didn't do a lot of work on the car, but I do remember her fitting the very awkward and large spring on the starter motor shaft.

Then she was at the Wiscombe hill climb, doing well on a wet track, when the car started skidding in the esses, It went off to the left, then into the right, caught and tore away the flimsy floor-pan, and bounced back out to the left and landed in the bushes. Someone said they had seen her feet as the far flew back across the road. I of course was in my buggy at the paddock, considerably worried . Amber was OK, and we managed to get the car out from where it lay and onto the trailer. We arranged to take it straight to Oliver Way, Ed's son near Petworth He straightened things out, and built a stronger floor-pan.

The car-mounted camera vibrates a lot at idling, but gets a lot smoother at higher revs.

Events

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