sometimes everything seems to be trying to tell you something...

attempt 2, i lost the first one...

of late i have been thinking about the 36hp landspeed challenge. wondering how to go fast on the cheap. as you may have guessed from pervious posts money is always an issue for me, so finding a cheap option is good if it can be done (aka if i try to go the expensive option it won't happen).

a drop tank lakester would be the ultimate but OMFG the $$$ to get a real tank. both the aircraft and the hotrod guys want them so i haven't got a chance unless i found one "in the wild" and we didn't get a lot of ex airforce WW2 surplass stuff in this region.

aside from that there is a formula v locally that i put a deposit on and need to pick up. it's a 70's mk1 mako. it needs work but it is a doable project.

so fast foward to today. this morning i had to unload a truck at work. i got talking to the driver while unloading, he was an older bloke (68yo) and an interesting fellow. once we had finished i offerred to make him a cuppa. i may not smoke anymore, but i'll still have a cup of tea and a few minutes to relax/think after some hard work. while we were talking in the tea room, i worked out he was into fords, i stated that i liked old volkswagens myself to which he responded "i used to race formula vee back when i was younger, i bought my car off larry perkins... etc" needless to say i told him of the resergance of historic vee racing and grabbed his number incase someone has his old car and wants more of it's history. while we were talking he offered to have a look around his house for any old volkswagen info and to send it up in a box on one of the next trucks. as you can imagine i accepted with many many thanks. he was rather a character, from his stories it sounds like formula vee in the early/mid 70's was closer to a lifestyle than just a racing class. he must have been rather wild in his youth.

so as you can imagine i'm thinking more about "my" formula vee.

4 minutes later i wander around to the local pieshop for a quick snack (aka really late breakfast) and who should be there but the guy who has the formula vee i'm getting. everything is telling me i need to get this thing.

then this afternoon i messaged the secretary of the historic formula vee group in nsw to pass on this guys contact details and he emails back with thanks and a picture of larry perkins vee in the day plus reminds me that i have a 36hp sitting in his garage to be picked up next time i'm in sydney.

now i'm just thinking how bloody obvious a sign do i need to do this. maybe burning "god says you must race the vee in the 36hp challange" on my lawn might be a little blunter but hey if that happened i'd just take it as a prank anyway.  btw i don't really believe in "signs" (or god for that matter) and don't look for them either but when basically everything noteworthy vw wise and (everything out of the ordinary) in one day points in one direction i will make note of it. there have been too many times that everything has pointed in one direction, i have ignored it and it's all gone pearshaped, to ignore things like this now. plus lets be honest it is just a set of coincidences but it reenforces what i want to do already so i'll grab it and run:)

well at least run with it till i get destracted by something else... my attention span can be a little short at times. if something else comes up that includes learning new stuff or just offers an interesting change i'll get caught up with it and forget what i have been doing. eventually i will get back to the first thing but sometimes it takes quite a while.

i was going to post a pic of what is thought to be "my" vee racing back in '73 but the photo belongs to someone else who has open up his photo archives to the historic vee guys, so i'll be good and not break copyright.

edited.

pt 2.

the next question would be what class of motor, btw i'm assuming that we would use the same catagories as the us landspeed racers do.. i'd imagine SS (stone stock) would be out of the question as well you can't fit a stock exhaust in a vee. SSS (super stock single) is probably the best option as it is basically old school hot rodding everything with a single 28PCI on top. aka free crank, p & c, headwork (stock heads) exhaust, cam etc etc.

of course DSS (dual super stock), basically any pre 65 carb/s on stock or period heads, internally free...  running twin solex P-11-40's on heavily worked wolfsburg west okrasa head repros, would be my dream motor/class but financial reality says not a chance... (2 peice lifter/pushrods, custon LN niscals, pobjoy hillclimp spec cam if a 36 could handle it, poss twin plugs for a monster CR  etc etc) i'd imagine there would be no change from $15 000 for the motor... not going to happen. i seriously think there could be about 130 bhp (hell possibly even more if you aren't worried about engine lifespan) available from a 69.5 by 81-82mm 36hp to someone with the time / skills / patence and $. i just wish it was me.

SSS seems the most logical as most of the base parts i have (well i'd need some 40 hp big bore p & c plus if poss a okrasa/empi 69.5 crank to take it where i'd want to go). plus the traditional hotrodding aspect of the class really does it for me. hell you could even take a simple twin carb set up and shoot for two records. (national not international yet). at the moment i think basically all of the national records are open so are acheivable on a mild budget... aka get a car legal and there, then set a time and you get the national record. unless of course someone else has the same idea, then you will need to put in a lot more work just to be safe and sure.

edit:

pt 3

ok a quick read of the 36hp challange makes no mention of a class for lakesters etc so a formula vee might be out of the question... may need to do some research on that one...