bigbanger wrote:More of a case of John Thorby coming South. John ran the Ford Consul 315 with the Holden six for a few years in the NI, then moved to the HB Viva with the V8 (not sure who originally built it). Around 1985? John moved to Chch and ran the Viva V8 in OSCA with some engineering help from John Harcourt who knew a thing or two about Rover/Olds/Buick alloy V8 engines. When John T gave racing away, the Viva sat in John Harcourt's Prebbleton workshop for some time. I had left NZ before the car went to anybody else, but when John Thorby ran it it did not have the big box flares pictured, they must have been a later addition.
Is the 6 cyl Consul the same car that Phil Rudd owned? (the AC/DC drummer from Tauranga).
Rod, further to your great photos of the Stanton Corvette I thought it might be apropriate to ad a little snippet of info. re the diff.
Morry and Charlie had problems wearing out the teeth on the crown wheel and pinions in the early days of developement, so they fitted a Cadilac cw&p which was beefier, this required the carrier flange the cw bolted to, to be further to the side, (the cw being thicker), this they made themselves and incidently, it still had the differential gears in it, i.e. it wasnt just a spool. Still seeing evidence of flex that was effecting the mesh of the gears they made an adjustable rubbing block that rubbed on the back of the cw opposite the pinion so as to reduce the distance the cw flexed away from the pinion on accelleration, also when setting up the mesh, instead of giving the gears backlash as we normally do, they set them up with no backlash!
I imagine what is inside that old V8 diff housing these days is probably more modern and probably incorperates a limited slip as well!
I should mention that Morry and Charlie incorporated a device that enabled them to lock the two rear axles together, or to uncouple them so they had the normal differential effect. Everyone will have seen the diff housing at the back with the chains going forward to sprockets driving the axles, well the inner ends of those axles were splined, and there was/is an internally splined tube/sleeve that could be slid over both axles thereby making them solid, they often used that configuration for shingle hillclimbs, they could then slide the sleeve sideways so it de-coupled the axels if required!
Morry and Charlie had a great affinity with chains, as is bourne out by their chain drive steering system, but that's another story!
PK.
shellsport wrote:You are on the money there Tony it was built up there , I think the Consul was the 315 of Derek Mitchell and was Holden engined , will confirm with JT .
Shellsport, is this the same handsome fella on the left with Herbie. I remember JT at Taupo back in those original days of of the big marque and 'Destitute Racing' with a safety pin through his ear along with the dayglo hair, and that was way before anyone had piercing as a optional extra. He is a clever bugger as well as a character.
Jenny Mossman raced the Consul after JT, and was a very quick and tidy driver.
Paul if you look at the very top of photo and in the middle of cross frames, you can see the axles and the sleeve as mentioned. It is in out position. I picked up the chain conversion for steering, only thought old speedway cars did this (when converting to left hook). I think you could spend a lot of time picking up all the 'special engineering' that went into making this big piece of NZ Motorsport.
Rod Grimwood wrote:Shellsport, is this the same handsome fella on the left with Herbie. I remember JT at Taupo back in those original days of of the big marque and 'Destitute Racing' with a safety pin through his ear along with the dayglo hair, and that was way before anyone had piercing as a optional extra. He is a clever bugger as well as a character.
Jenny Mossman raced the Consul after JT, and was a very quick and tidy driver.
Thats him Rod , the only one i know who could get away with smokin a durrie on pit wall !