Guys, dont add to the 1931 thread, put your memories here instead!!
I had to google Supreme trap and the memories came back.
The place i was trying to remember was Stanfields mouse trap factory.
The first time I walked into the joint I was gobsmacked!
"Heath Robinson" was the designer! Well the Boss actually designed it all and kept it going.
You have to read the history of the factory, just google "Supreme Mouse trap" and go from there.
The factory was run by the Kids and the REAL action was out the back, where the Boss and a bunch of trusty alloy beaters were making stuff by eye and hand. Sandbags, wheeling machines, mallets, presses, torches all the hand tools.
There were alloy body Jags, F2 and FJ single seaters, sports racing specials and the lord knows what else.
We were getting alloy sheet parts made up, stuff we had no way of doing ourselves.
The factory was amazing with all these overhead conveyor ropes carrying wooden traps from work station to work station.
The whole thing was 1940's style work benches just stacked high with about 1 million traps.
The workers were a real happy bunch.
These were the days when you could drive a couple of K and pick up just about anything for performance work on cars and parts to design equipment for the emerging electronics technology. I was doing engine research and repair , hand in hand with developing printed circuit controls for production industrial machinery. I dabbled in hot up work making things like CDI ignition systems and wiring looms for cars.
Ahhh the good old days, Lynx, Ford competitions dep, J&S with those plastic sports coupes, running a sports car in competiton with the boys, speedway and then I walked away from it all and concentrated on Electronics in Industries. Oh and a few hobbies like computors, vintage cars (IE what you drove because you were broke) and yes..........coins!
Fred.
I remember seeing a video years ago about those mousetraps.
Lynx products still available -same name same logo and manifolds and the Ram-Flo filters. In Victoria now. I assume name and right to products may have been sold off.
Lynx Performance Products (https://www.lynxauto.com.au/)
They did work on a rather hot Mini motor I built back in 1972.
I assembled a lot of CDI and transistor switched ignitions back in those days too.
Another I remember from that era was the Nota Fang (https://maas.museum/inside-the-collection/2013/11/15/the-nota-fang-an-australian-made-sports-car/). Rear engine sports car with Mini motor and Hillman Imp front suspension. Guy Buckingham built a lot of nice racers.
I am sure more of us old timers will remember and new posts will trigger more recollections. [Your turn Basil.]
Hi Jeff, your post triggered some more memories! Although not directly involved with any teams or working in a motor sport job I kept up with engine design in the industrial area so have petrol (or methanol) and diesel flowing in my veins!
I had a Morris Minor back then and worked the 1100 block and head myself.
It was a bitsa engine made out of this n that.
Being penny less I had to do the head work myself in my own workshop.
Also "balanced" the shaft and flywheel (statically!!). Must have got lucky there as the engine spun sweetly and did not fly apart.
I followed the tuning leaflets as a guide and modded the head to stage ohmygod.
It is a wonder I did not break into the water jackets stuffing in big valves, making the ports big and shiny and milling off a lot more from the deck that I should have.
The ignorance of youth!
Could never afford to have a dyno test but at a speed trial was clocked at 83 MPH by a tripod mounted speed meter by an white coat race "official".
My preparation for the test was to pump up my Pirelli tires to 40PSI and wind all the windows up.
Oh and I topped the tank up with some speedway fuel so i could twist the distributor a bit more advanced without the dreaded knocking happening!
Have no idea what revs I was pulling, my tach went to 5000 and I was way past that!
ahh the memories.
Fred.
Hi Fred,
I had a Mini with a 998 A series motor. Balanced bottom end (by a certain engineering company), BMC rally cam ("731" I think it was called and could be ordered at any dealer), Speedwell aluminium head, twin 1½" SUs and extractors. Went rather well but, being young and silly, I decided more performance was required.
Obtained a set of forged, high lift rockers with solid shaft pillars and spacers (instead of springs) to suit, 1100S (they were actually a slightly detuned 1275 Cooper S motor) valves to complement that, polished the combustion chambers, opened and matched the ports and probably a few other things I forget now.
One problem. The racing head had very shallow combustion chambers, shape quite unlike the tradional BMC "heart". No run on with that.
Shallow combustion chamber + high lift cam + high lift rockers = valves protrude past head face on full lift. Plus bigger valves means inlet vale overlaps bore.
So off to Lynx to relieve the top of block, and find a suitable head gasket (Cooper S). While it was there they lightened and balanced the flywheel -milled and drilled, there wasn't a speck of metal not absolutely required; looked like a slice of swiss cheese!
I was very happy with the end result. Great performane, revved to 7,500 rpm and actually good fuel economy on a trip -as long as the carbies stayed synchronised.
One daybreak (cool air that time of day) I went to a remote selected road (about 10 miles straight and flat) and gave it a wind up. 7,000 rpm in top gear!
Assuming my tachometer to be correct that is 103 mph (167 km/h for any younger reader who stumbles onto this post).
[I wonder what the speed rating of the standard tyres would have been.]
Later I replaced the SUs with a Nikki twin choke carbie from a Datsun because the SUs needed synchronising too often. Manifold and air filter sourced from a well known firm. Negligible difference in performance and never had to touch it again after initial adjustment -borrowed an exhaust analyser from my then employer for that.
After I sold it last I heard it ended up as a speedway car. I still have that head plus a spare set of new valves sitting in the shed. Thought I might find a moke to put it in but that will probably just remain a dream.
AH MEMORIES. :good:
Oh Jeff that sounds like it was a little screamer!
Yep when you look at bitza engines you wind up making anything fit from different stable mate engines.
The engine I have in my Morris Major now was from a MG "Z" sedan 1500, but I bored it out to 3" to about 1600, with a crank from something that fitted. Ditto pistons. Not very scientific!
Then i used a land crab 1800 head because it gave me the biggest valves possible (thank you BMC!), ripped out the heart shape chamber to stop that glowing peak, then milled 3/16" off the deck to retrieve the compression ratio! The cam from something, actually has overlaps not the stock steam engine timing, and a lot of lift. Somehow the valves miss the bore edges so no relieving needed. Lucky! there are two 1.5" SU's on somebodies manifold with 12" ram tubes to shift max torque DOWN the RPM range. I fabbed up a set of headers, I had to cut a teeny bit out of the engine bay to fit that in, and ran down past a oxy sensor into the biggest truck muffler that would fit under the floor, then a 1.75" straight pipe to the rear. Makes huge torque up to 5000 rpm and I dropped down to a 3.8 diff. Speed? Not much more than normal really cant tell its too dangerous to drive fast anymore and i'm too old! But it pulls like train you only need 2 gears, 2nd and top.
Ahh yes..old guy car talk.......................
What's with the Morris'? My first 2 cars were both Morris 1100s. (I rolled the first one).
Unlike yours though, mine was stock standard. I use to enjoy driving those cars.
Soon as I got a job though, I traded up to an XY Fairmont V8. Had that car for 19 years.
Trigger, the Morris 1100 was the most advanced design of the era made by absolutely the wrong people.
Ford or GM would have given their eye teeth for that design and with decent engineering and management, the front drive saloon would have arrived in Australia decades earlier. The workers at Leyland tried hard but with the archaic production line and hopeless management the whole show was doomed.
The competition and special projects depts hand made some amazing cars that management just binned, but thats a story that can be told better by guys that worked there and have documented. I just heard whispers of discontent.
Having a Federal government that hated anything British did not help either! Leyland should have sold the Zetland site when they had the chance, moved to St Marys, built a new modern factory and made AUSSIE FWD cars, from the Moke upward for a profit, but that did not happen. (Rose coloured glasses there!)
If Ford had the Morris 1100 and the hatchback model (Nomad?) as the baby size car and made it properly, Toyota and the rest would never had got a look in.
Ford guys used to envy the 1100,1800 design series, the later models of those and the P76 and the Coupe Force. Great cars made by the wrong people.
Back to the Morris Major, I simply just kept it as the "back up" car that every body learnt to drive in, tow their broken down cars home, clear light scrub in the paddock with and drive to work when all else had failed! He sits in retirement now in the workshop, like me, and goes for a romp every now and then. The steering and clutch are getting a bit heavy for me to use and the suspension is uncomfortable (stiff springs) and the whole show is scary for modern drivers. No power, no brakes, no power anything, no aircon, dont ever take your hands off the wheel, Dad how can drive that? I keep it fully registered, costs nothing and we can do the shopping if nothing else works!
Fred.
Two words Steve for why Morris. I suspect could have applied for your 1100s too. I can't answer for Fred but he did describe himself as "Being penny less".
Available, affordable.Quotetoo dangerous to drive fast anymore
Let me guess Fred...standard brakes and suspension?
A friend of mine had a Morris Major back around 1972. He bought an MGB motor from a write off, worked it a bit and dropped it in. Fantastic acceleration and speed through the gears but cornering and braking were another story.
He now has a bright yellow Morris Minor convertible with a Nissan motor and 5 speed box. Real head turner.
A little bit of history;
Nissan started making BMC A series motors under license sometime in the 1950s. However they quickly modified it;
•5 main bearings instead of 3
•8 ports instead of siamesed
•crossflow
•alloy head
•overhead cam
and so on.
Meanwhile BMC was doing their own development......................................................."if it ain't broke why fix it?"I think the Austin 11800 was about the pinnacle of BMC/BL
. Then downhill all the way
. A last ditch effort in Australia produced a good car, the P76 but much too late to the market -The Buick/Rover derived alloy V8 was a beaut but the less said, the better as far as the six cylinder engine is concerned.
Hi Jeff, Pennyless!
The Major cost me about $250 in 1966, it was almost brand new, low miles, but the guy had broken the diff, easy to do and flattened two tyres.
I saw it rotting in the street with nearly a years rego on it, he wanted $500. I should have offered $100.
I fitted a billet steel crownwheel carrier, the original was low spec cast iron, the carrier and the axles used to fatigue and shatter.
Over 80ftlb torque at 800 rpm and high cyclic variations used to pound the transmissions!
I never quite got to converting the front brakes to discs, had the whole front end from a Marina (remember those?) ready to go for years, too slack to do it. Left the drums on, so slack! The front ends had POSITIVE camber and added 1 deg more with every inch of ROLL!!! When you turned into a corner the things used to roll and go into terminal plough understeer. Yike! The inner pivot points for the suspension arms were in the WRONG place and NO ROLL bar. All they needed was shifting the top link pivot centre and nail a bar across. I was going to do all that with the disc front end. In the end I just set the static Camber to MINUS 1.5deg with spacers, dropped the ride height 2" fabricated my own wide wheels and bar, behold, he turned in like a magnet nailed the apex and the tyre wear was even across the tread instead of ripping off the outside shoulder! I think he has about 300k miles under the belt. At the back added a second main leaf and threw 3 small leaves off. Oh and changed dampers to tube all round. Yes I rebuilt engines, steering racks and diffs as required over the years but never needed to change a gearbox. I saw guys with Holden specials adapt that Austin design box to give then a 4 speed. They never broke in service but were a nightmare to work on. Typical Austin design, alloy casing for lightness and with 1000 bolts and 10,000 parts inside. Not like the Borg Warner box in the Marinas, had 8 bolts holding them together, no bolts inside and a big magnet in the bottom well so all the broken teeth had somewhere to hide and not get caught in the works!!
I am rambling................
Cheers.
Ah, the Morris Marina. I remember them well but not fondly. The Tasman and Kimberley weren't much better; they would have been better off just upgrading the land crab.
My snide remarks aside those vehicles in good condition would probably be worth a bit now. I can't remember how long since I have seen one on the road.
Quote from: 'fred lever' pid='122980' dateline='1597016658'
Having a Federal government that hated anything British did not help either! Leyland should have sold the Zetland site when they had the chance, moved to St Marys, built a new modern factory and made AUSSIE FWD cars, from the Moke upward for a profit, but that did not happen. (Rose coloured glasses there!)
If Ford had the Morris 1100 and the hatchback model (Nomad?) as the baby size car and made it properly, Toyota and the rest would never had got a look in.
Ford guys used to envy the 1100,1800 design series, the later models of those and the P76 and the Coupe Force. Great cars made by the wrong people.
Fred.
Evan Green used to attend meetings of our car Club,NSSCC,back when he was BMC/BL PR Chief and on one occasion back in the early 1970's mentioned they were doing it tough.
He blamed an American,GMH/Ford/Chyrsler,conspiracy to share the Aust. market and force BL out.They had first dib on many parts from Australian suppliers and also better relations with the Automotive Unions,they also had several leading Auto. journalists in their pockets,not Wherret thou.,he picked a fight with almost every Oz. manufacturer at some stage.
http://www.bluestreaksix.com/history.htm (http://www.bluestreaksix.com/history.htm)
QuoteThe competition and special projects depts hand made some amazing cars that management just binned, but thats a story that can be told better by guys that worked there and have documented. I just heard whispers of discontent.
Yes indeed, an ex Zetland engineer (left just before the final crunch) was plant manager where I worked in the mid seventies. He didn't talk much about it* but it was obvious, from what he did say, that staff thought management was out of touch (too much British influence?). Also development and testing staff thought they knew better what would work -in hindsight they may well have been right.
*He is a teetotaler so was not possible to shout him a few beers to help get him talking!
Thanks for the link Basil. I hadn't seen that before. Love the comment "When the Freeway was discontinued BMC still had a reasonable stockpile of Freeway badges left over." BMC/Leyland were masters at badge engineering. Run out of Austin badges, no problem, stick a Riley badge on it and change the grille a bit (in the case of the Mini that meant hanging a "proper" boot on the back). Happened much more in England than Australia.
And the Australian engineers were good at doing things that England told them was not possible. Another example is the mini wind up windows. Can't be done said the headmasters back at Birmingham. So they did it anyway and released the Mini Deluxe. Wind up windows were introduced in England later but, to save face, they wasted money by developing their own version.
E&OE. I am mostly relying on memory here. I think it is reasonably good but there has been evidence otherwise before.
One example of Badge engineering.
Morris Mini
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/1959_Morris_Mini-Minor_Heritage_Motor_Centre%2C_Gaydon.jpg/800px-1959_Morris_Mini-Minor_Heritage_Motor_Centre%2C_Gaydon.jpg)
Austin Mini (Austin Seven in some markets)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Austin_mini850mk1_governorhouse.jpg/800px-Austin_mini850mk1_governorhouse.jpg)
Wolsely Hornet
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Wolseley_Hornet_Biggleswade.JPG/800px-Wolseley_Hornet_Biggleswade.JPG)
Riley Elf
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/Riley_Elf.jpg/800px-Riley_Elf.jpg)
Oh the memories. Having sold car parts for nearly 42 years, I remember all the vehicles.
The only car I ever modified and then only slightly, was a TA Torana 4cyl. Worked the engine
a little, a set of extractors off the HB Brabham, improved air intake and it went quite well.
Was stolen not long after and the wife never wanted to drive it again, so sold it off.
Yeah Jeff, some one will know more about some of the brilliant guys that worked with special projects versus dumb management.
I have seen a photo of a demonstration example of a car hand made by the projects dept in the 60's to combat the new Falcon and Holden models.
The photos showed the 3 models side by side, the Ford (XP?) looked like a space ship, the Holden (EK?) looked like last years model Morris and the BL car was as good as the Ford. They expanded a (Austin ??) sedan body (NOT one of those Freeway things!) used full Independant disc front and drum rear suspensions from other BL models popped in a Blue Streak 6, BW auto trans and had what looked like contender to me. The head pommy boss man took one look and ordered it to be crushed right now! End of story no discussion o you are fired. That was BL management!
The whole car could have been tooled up and made with the exisiting shop gear and parts bin and it was a Taxi drivers dream for marketing.
At that point Morris/BL/Leyland whatever they disintegrated into, died. When you piss off the people in the works that actually make things happen and they leave or give up, no smart triple certificate manager you bring in from British head office will make any difference to the end result. The yanks knew this and Ford used "can do-get it done" types who could actually know a good thing when they saw it.
I'm rambling again!
Fred.
Nothing wrong with a bit of rambling on.
Quote from: 'JeffH' pid='122987' dateline='1597042668'Thanks for the link Basil.
No worries,there is a great paper kicking around the Internet the last 20 years or so,written by an ex-BMC Engineer(?) that details life at Zetland in the 1960's.
I can't find it at the moment but it goes into detail about how they siamesed the centre bores on a 1500cc B-series,after being told by the UK it can't be done and not to waste time trying,to get it to 1620cc and then how they added 2 cylinders to turn it into a 6.
Also went into details about the Union troubles at the time,also the major theft problems,they had to have toolkits,jacks,spares delivered direct to Dealers etc.
Great read for BMC Fans....This link is to the Wolseley Forum,someone on there will probably know where it is these days.
https://sites.google.com/site/wolseleycarclubofnsw/home/wolseley-cars/the-wolseley-24-80/how-to-make-a-blue-streak-missile (https://sites.google.com/site/wolseleycarclubofnsw/home/wolseley-cars/the-wolseley-24-80/how-to-make-a-blue-streak-missile)
Gee Jeff you bumped my memory there, yes in an archive somewhere i have all the tuning leaflets from Morris, MG and BMC AND the paper on turning a head into a 8 port. Also notes on supercharging using a modded head with heaps of airflow. There was a guy on the web that specialises in tuning B series and dyno tests each mod so there is no BS involved.
I'm way past it now and the B and C series are history anyway.
If I did anything now I would do what most guys do, stick a Toyota van engine , box and diff in the shell.
Rear wheel drive, unburstable box and diff and 3 times the HP stock!!
Good stuff.
Fred.