The Roaring Season

From the SI it's a trek I've only done once. No one wants to travel on Xmas day so it was get there early and Xmas dinner in a pub with a lot of other SIslanders. Several nights in a scruffy motel then a ferry crossing day after boxing day where nearly everyone incl the crew were hungover. Warned at ...

And that's what a knobbly Lister could have looked like. The 50's era comment about "give a brit a sheet of alumimium and he'll make something ugly" stands proven.

Even if I have got the quote wording slightly wrong.

Jellywrestler of course was talking about a motorcycle classic race meeting. But I suspect there may be lessons to be learned from the bike side. The organising club for classic and post classic racing in the SI is CAMS. In order to keep the sport growing and attract competitors they have long had a ...

The "Road race" term I assume came about to differentiate between scrambles/Motocross on a soft surface and races held on a hard formed surface. "Scrambles" held on rough ground were certainly run here well before WW2. My father talked of riding in them as well as Hillclimbing around the Canterbury ...

In the motorcycling world a roadrace circuit has a formed surface and has both left and right hand turns. Historically the surface can be almost anything from rolled and oiled dirt to modern hotmix. But it's as smooth as possible. It's quite distict from a motocross cicuit which should have a ...

The engine pic is a Riley with four Amal carbs - and a pair of what look like SU float chambers.

Interesting to see. Pretty well all the corner footage is the left hander off Hills Road to the start finish straight. Ironically because it's been bypassed by the modern road layout it's probably the only corner in it's original state.

The nose may be modified to fit the NZ number plate. Around that time the regs on how they were mounted were sometimes difficult to obey with sports and low cars generally.

I'd try a little warm water on a corner first to see if the top paper will lift.

Good luck Spyda.

I also see Pat Hoare driving a Vauxhall Special. We'd now identify it as RA2 which of course morphed into the 260M Zephyr.

I knew they'd run a bent sprint and hillclimb prior to the first Lady Wigram over those roads. The hillclimb was on Maffey's road at the back of McCormack's bay. Story in the family is that the old man - Wally Thomas - had a guest drive in Hec Green's Wolseley special. I'd never heard of this ...

Firmly resisting the temptation to make it look better than the original I trust ?

Met Gary Dixon at a funeral not long before his death. My wife worked with his and from memory it was someone from their work's funeral Anyway, got talking to him as he'd seen the Mk2 jag we'd come in. Both of them were upfront about his prognosis. He said he wasn't far off finishing the Buckler but ...

The hotel is the Occidental or later Perry's Occidental Hotel. Hereford st Christchurch. No idea how it's got King's Hotel on it. Quite a bit of history on line up to it's demolition post quakes. If memory serves it was where Phil Hill found a trove of music box wax cylinders while in ChCh to race ...

The cars were completed the Thursday prior to Wigram. They were based in Hutchison Ford premises in central Christchurch. I don't know if they were painted on site or fresh bodywork was freighted out from the UK. I walked in the back door to find the cars deserted but finished. Just as in the pic of ...

There are enough 500's tucked away that Auto restorations did a batch of 500 JAP engines some years back. I saw the raw castings and some machined cases too. I suspect that any 500 Manx Norton engines used in cars are now back in bikes due to the high prices being achieved for Manx Nortons.

The red cylinder block on that Scott means nothing. It will be ported to modern specs as most were even then and are now. I suspect if you wanted to re- enamel one using the correct materials, red is readily available from marque specialists. And yes, you could use any high temp paint - but the ...

There's a mixture of periods there. Yes, 60's with the pudding basin helmets - but well into the late 70's with full face helmets too.
The Scott in the bottom pic looks very like a well known British rider and machine who was very successful in vintage racing.

the in box has a finite capacity. It's full. Until it's emptied nothing can get in.

I've tried 3 times in to get a Pm through to you. One sale lost.