The Roaring Season

We know it was when Bob was there working on the car in December, 1970...

But now it seems it may not have been on the front page either. I might have to give up this pursuit.

Oh, yeah, while you've been doing that, thumbing through papers particularly from the late forties, weren't you amazed at the number of people who were executed after the war?

And from the late thirties... did you learn that the upcoming Olympic Games were not the first ones put off in Tokyo?

[quote="Ray Bell"]In chatting with Bob Britton (Rennmax) today he told me that the Bay of Plenty Times had a front-page picture of him working on the Rennmax he'd built for Feo Stanton - the car which began as the Rorstan Climax and became the Rorstan-Porsche.

It's quite possible that the photo involved will give us some clue about how Bob triangulated the engine bay of the car, so I'd like to know if it's possible to find the paper or the photo.

Can anybody help, please?[/quote]

it's a tedious task going through old newspapers, I've just written a book on Road Racing Circuits and spent over two years researching and a lot of time doing such a thing. Try facebook pages in the area, history ones, some kid somewhere will have had a scrapbook, someone willl have a clue. Get an idea the time of the year it was too, this helps hugely. Think about why it would have been on the newspaper, a lead up to a big meeting, particularly local would be a good bet. See if you can find someone with progammes from baypark that year, that may give you the slightest clue.
good luck, it's very rewarding. My book is at the printer at the moment covering 157 road racing circuits that motorcycles used since 1928, a lot of it done the way you are doing too.

Sadly Kevin Clark passed away quite a while ago.

Thanks, Milan...

I actually meant the first photo you posted. But I'll chase up Allan Dick.

As the caption shows, the photo was taken by Allan Dick. Allan has a Facebook page so you should be able to send him a message.

Milan, a further favour if I may...

Is the photographer who took that shot named? And if so, can he/she be contacted?

Another shot of the Rorstan-Porsche

[attachment=0]img505 (2).jpg[/attachment]

Ray,
In this excerpt from the Graham Vercoe book it mentions Kev Clark as the mechanic for the Rorstan Porsche.
Is that someone who could still be contacted and assist you ?

[attachment=0]0624210139_3.jpg[/attachment]



(Ken H)

There looks to be a brace going down between the trumpets.

Thanks, Milan, again that's very helpful...

It's not a pretty sight, really, as a racing engine. It has to mount fairly high and all that fuel injection stuff up the top looks heavy too.

Does that look like a brace from the chassis to the bellhousing in behind/below the link to the frame coming down from above the engine?

Ray

There is this shot

[attachment=0]img504 (2).jpg[/attachment]

Thanks, Milan, that's very helpful...

Britto ties in the building of this car (or the rear end of it...) with his honeymoon. But he didn't get married until the middle of 1971, so that doesn't work out.

Feo Stanton did, however, pay for the job by shouting Bob and Barbara a trip around the South Island.

So we're looking for a front page of the [i]Bay of Plenty Times[/i] in December, 1970, or possibly the first few days of January 1971. What we're really seeking is information on how Bob triangulated the engine bay of the chassis in a vertical plane, he has no recall of how that was done at all.

The [i]Motorman[/i] article says he "partially used the engine as a stressed member" - something else he doesn't recall. But the pictures do indicate that was a possibility.

There's no pics with that article, is there?

[quote="Ray Bell"]I need, in this quest, to establish just when the Rorstan-Porsche first turned out for a race meeting...

Having established that it ran in the '71 Tasman races (kind of an exaggeration, DNA and DNS being seen against the entry on the Sergent site), I now need to know if it was there at the pre-Tasman Gold Star events in December, 1970.

Can anyone establish this for me, please?[/quote]

The Rorstan-Porsche did not appear at any meeting before practice for the 1971 NZGP event on January 9. The report below is from the February 1971 issue of Motorman.

[attachment=2]img502 (2).jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=1]img502 (3).jpg[/attachment]

Faloon's entry for the first round of the Gold Star Championship at Pukekohe on October 4, 1970 was listed as Rorstan F.1 2000cc so they were planning to have the Porsche engined car there. The Motorman report of that meeting has this comment. [i]Bryan Faloon's space-frame Rorstan arrived with its usual four cylinder Climax engine as the 2-litre Porsche unit hadn't arrived from overseas.[/i]

Entries for all the meetings until Levin on January 2 1971 had Faloon driving the Rorstan Mk 1 Climax.


Also in the February Motorman was this clip about the handling of the car.

[attachment=0]img503 (2).jpg[/attachment]

I need, in this quest, to establish just when the Rorstan-Porsche first turned out for a race meeting...

Having established that it ran in the '71 Tasman races (kind of an exaggeration, DNA and DNS being seen against the entry on the Sergent site), I now need to know if it was there at the pre-Tasman Gold Star events in December, 1970.

Can anyone establish this for me, please?

The roll bar structure is all about getting the top of the engine bay triangulated...

There's a triangulated rectangle of tube runs from that across the top of the engine which somehow feeds into the gearbox bulkhead, which can be seen fairly clearly in the top picture.

We're pretty sure there was no reliance on the engine for chassis stressing, but the pic on the front of the paper might help prove or disprove that.

Oh, yes, it's late 1970 issues I need, not 1971.

Perhaps they had bought into using the engine as a stressed member? Fairly substantial structure on the rollbar, for the time!

Mr Primotipo himself came up with this Bill Mason photo...

[img]https://i.postimg.cc/hGFKxK4K/C5901837-8043-4-B87-B6-D5-67-C1-F01-CDD4-C.jpg[/img]

...and, like me, still can't fathom how the engine bay was triangulated vertically.

Ray,
This is a good "Primotipo" article about the Rorstan race car.
Good luck with your search.
Ken

[url]https://primotipo.com/tag/rorstan-mk1-climax/[/url]

[attachment=0]Rorstan Mk1a Porsche - Copy.jpeg[/attachment]
(T Marshall photo ) Bryan Faloon in action at Pukekohe 1971

Excellent, thank you, I'll do that (if I can)...

Tauranga Public Library have copies of all BOP Times newspapers. Contact Harley Couper at the library.