The Roaring Season

I left NZ before the series was completed. He certainly started the series in a Reynard RF84

David McKinney wrote: He certainly started the series in a Reynard RF84

That being the case my recollection must be incorrect. He definitely campaigned the Valour very successfully at some stage. Maybe it was earlier?

Johno Jonstone is still alive and keeps reasonable health I will get Mr Donaldson to ask him how many he built.

Russ Noble wrote:That being the case my recollection must be incorrect. He definitely campaigned the Valour very successfully at some stage. Maybe it was earlier?

On thinking about it I think he ran the Valour the previous season then went to the UK and worked with Reynard for a few months and brought a damaged car home then built a new one around the retrievable parts. I think John built a new chassis for the car during the rebuild.

Richard, Grant Ellwood dropping in, still living in the backwoods of Virginia, USA.
This is a great forum for catching up with past racing friends. I remember getting a lot of help from the Lester family during my sporadic drives in several of Richard's Fords. Particularly memorable was the Tul which was getting a bit tired at the time (or was that me!)and had a load of understeer, particularly at Manfeilds sweeper. Richard explained that I should "pitch it" at entry to get the tail out and that advice worked really well as I can't remember how may 360s I made. And luckily I couldn't see anything hard coming at me because the tyre smoke was too thick!
Lots of memories.....

richard lester wrote:hi carlo,
i well remember those days--i used to enjoy watching Jeff race and as a young fulla not far away from getting into ff myself he was the guy i aspired to be.hell of a nice guy too and was very helpful to dad and i took as much info as i could digest as well.jeff had a great race brain and in my opinion was one of the best weve seen in ff,paul larsen ,shane drake,ashley stitchbury and gary croft werent too bad either(slightly different era though)..i also remember well lyn's harness marks after his wigram shunt ,that era had some extremely talented drivers who raced hard and fair and then retired to the bar.
you know its tough now that most young drivers/families start circuit racing with a career as motivation.very few have the passion to do without the luxuries of life while they get established and crikey do they ever come and go at a high rate now.

Jonno Jonstone built 8 Jonstones and 1 Hussler, the #3 car that is now Norm Smiths car was a new build Hussler with the original Chassis being still in Ch Ch. #9 Jonstone was built as a class 2 car, it is still in Ch Ch.The first cars were similar to BT21 Brabhams while the later ones were close to Van Deimons. Keith Cowan has #1 that is sometimes referred to as a Brabham.

And Keith fitted a BT21 lookalike body a couple of seasons ago - in Midland Racing Partnership livery!

Big Norm was sensational in the Hustler. I've heard some interesting theories why - he was a hero..proved you didn't need to be the size of a halfback to run at the front of FF.

Jonno with some of his cars,he is sitting in #9.

bob homewood wrote:

David McKinney wrote:The Stone brothers built five Cudas - but five didn't necessarily exist at one time


1. FF car raced by the brothers 1971-73. Don’t know what happened to it after that

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I think this is possibly Jimmy Stone 1971 in the first FF he built and raced before the Escort ,I wish on hindsight I guess like a lot of us I had labelled some of this stuff better

Jimmy told me he still has this chassis in a shed in NZ

Jimmy said he still has this chassis in a shed in NZ

Hello Howard,

Phil Foulkes does not run one of your old Pallisers. He runs a copy built by Kim & Bob Crocker. Sure, it has the original log book but the two WDF2'S chassis number 34 & 35 are not this car. The complete "34" resides in my warehouse as does the remains of ""35" I sold the ex. Ex. Nev Bailey WDF3, chassis no.4 some years back. It had been rolled, bowled & aresholed more times than a "K Road" Tranny.

Originally this started life as a Valour but my old mate Radar built a new chassis and raced it as the RADAR FF. First owner was Ian Simcox (a milkman in Mt. Maunganui I believe). First registered it on 04/09/1972. It was then sold to Trevor Larsen for his driving school at Bay Park. It then went to Geoff Goile of Ataimuri before my very good friend Harold Phillips bought it. Harold & Grant Ellwood altered the car substantially, especially the front end. It then passed on to "Radar" (Steve Grant) who built an entirely new chassis. You'll love this: Radar turned up for scrutineering only to be rejected because he'd used coach bolts in the suspension! Nice one Radar!
This car in now in the Sth. Island. For all the history including the present owner - Don't contact me.

A lesson to learned here: don't rely on your memory after drinking half a bottle of single malt.

The car John Crawford raced was the OCTO1077 F.F. At 3am this morning it suddenly dawned on me that I'd confused two cars, both based on Valour F.F's.
The Octo1077 was built by Dennis Martin to replace a Valour he owned and raced. Named Octo1077 after it's build date. John and Larry Mulholland rebuilt it in 81 and John raced it through to 83. Phillip Butcher then raced it for a season or two. Car still resides in the South Island.

The Dennis Martin Valour chassis wound up in Shag Ellwood's ownership before being purchased many years ago by Don Short. Waikato based Don, still has it including the factory body moulds. As an aside to this, the aforementioned U.S based Grant Ellwood has been bitten by the nostalgia bug and has purchased a left hook, 1200cc Anglia. No doubt he'll cut the top off it and relive the days of his youth.

Six GLH chassis. The last one was purchased by Graeme Cowley who on sold it to me in the early eighties. Now owned by my old mate Barry Leitch (he is old - ask his sons)
and still unraced as far as I'm aware.

You can't beat a good FFord race for me the best race of the year is the Formula Ford Festval at Brands.
Sadly Ford screwed up FFord when they insisted on Zetec engine then went to Duratec and grids dwindled so now in europe there is no base line formula to have drivers from the top championships and various countries come and have a good bun fight.
In the UK we have many club series running and we have classic and Historic series for cars with various cut off dates, some are stronger than others but the Historic pre 72 cars are now silly money.
The best value for money series is Classic FFord for the post 72-82 pre rocker suspension cars are not silly money and there are no big wallet drivers with £5k motors semi pro race prep shop running the car for them and no young uns hot out of karting coming along to show you how to do it 2 seconds a lap faster than last years champ has done it in.
We have many Champion of series at circuits where we have local experts who hotly contest their series with anything form VD RF90-92 cars through to the later VD99-01 cars or Ray 05-09 cars we even have a couple of Spectrums over here now.
For me the best thing about FFord is there is always a race some where every month and some one on the track to race with whether you are front row mid grid or tail end grid filler material.
I enjoyed my last 2 season of driving my VD2k FFord as i have had in my Dallara F3 or my F2 cars.

DRIFT WOOD - ARE YOU HOWARD'S LONG LOST BROTHER?

No he is my father and my mother said he was a charming man and would like to meet him again someday!

Leave town for 3 days and return being defamed from all sides!

Hi Russ, it figures that the chassis from WDF2 #34 still exists. I have always told Phil he should hunt the chassis down and reunite it with its running gear.We assumed that Kim built a new chassis in 1976 incorporating our spare bellhousing because he had shunted the original chassis too badly to repair. Is that the case or did he merely build a new chassis with the updates to give the then 6 year old car a new lease of life? And by extention is the original chassis straight and complete?

And Drifty, welcolme to theroaringseason, this is the real deal, no bullshit here!

Hello Howard,

Certainly hope you don't feel that my remarks are defamatory. Far from it. Don't actually like these internet raves but thought I should at least put the record straight regarding the Pallisers and Kim's two "specials". My old friend DGM will no doubt chasten me for having a brilliant memory re. trivia but if he got his arse into gear and produced the concise history of NZ motor racing. Of which he is more than capable of doing. Then I would not be replying to you now. You could chew David's ear. "Listening Dave"?

Phil knows I have the complete car. We've spoken about it over the past few years.
Even has "Crocker Bothers Racing" on the bodywork! Although I think the signwriter of the time was being rather "pc" in putting the "r" and "c" into the sign.

The car Phil has is the second "Special" built by Kim & Bob. "Trident 2" as it was known. Trident 1 is still in existence also. I had it for many years before on selling it.
I do have the full history of these cars so no fudging on my part.

Not sure whether you realised but the two Pallisers you and Donald bought, were both raced by Bob Evans in the British FF series. Bob later went on to race F1 for BRM. He probably would have raced for DGM as well if he'd known him!

All the best,

Russ

The prior history of #34 was unknown to us although its condition when we bought it out of the UK would suggest very little use as it was like a new car. The second car we bought (Chassis no unremembered) we also bought out of the UK from a wild character called Mike Taylor who was a Snetterton specialist and we were led to understand the car held the FF lap record there. Whatever its chassis no it had started life as the works car and was built entirely from round tubes unlike the customer cars which featured a lot of square tubing for ease of manufacture. It was considerably lighter than #34 but in a very sad state when we got it. I only drove it in testing but it felt quite different to #34 and if I recall correctly quicker too.

Donald ran it in the 1973/74 championship season, we replace much of the damaged chassis tubes and sold it to John Dempsey who had been running an ancient Lotus converted to FF. Is that the car (#35) that you also have Russ or is there yet another Palliser?

Only three Pallisers came out here. The two that you and Don bought (WDF2/NO34 & NO35 and WDF3/NO4, the Neville Bailey car. WDF2/34 was owned in the UK by Dr.David Chrisp who lent the car to Bob Evans during his championship winning season with WDF2/35 which as you have said, is the ex. works car that Mike Taylor had.

Do you recall adding extra pickup points to the front of 34? This car is complete by the way but I've never had it put together.

In March 74 Don and yourself advertised two Palliser rolling chassis for sale and one complete car. I've always presumed this to be a misprint - any thoughts?