Jason's Blog

Chatting to James Carruthers on the weekend revealed that he too has experienced a busted spring and knows of at least one other who has had similar misfortune. It's not that surprising really as this top spring must take a lot of the forces exerted on the whole assembly. Seems I can't link to the photo properly, Blogger let's me see it when composing but not once published so you'll have to go see for yourself here http://www.pbase.com/jcarruthers/image/7853836

:-( I was getting concerned that the Vitesse was riding very low lately and suspected the old swing spring might be a bit knackered so I acquired a nice new Canley Classics one and set about changing it today. It became a bit of a saga but I got it done. Lucky really as the old spring had broken the top (floating) leaf! I've only just finished and haven't yet had a chance to test drive the beast - something for tomorrow I think - I now deserve a beer!

I wonder if this is legit? My RBRR Co-driver, Andy Cook put me onto it via the TSSC message board so I thought "What the hell!" and signed up. WE'll need all the help we can get with fuel cost on the RBRR as it's quite hard to drive the Monster economically, it's so much fun if you boot it everywhere the temptation is to keep on the throttle :-)

WRX, the old World Cup practice/development car comes of age and attains the best result for the 2.5 PI and one of Culcheth's best - a outright 1st on the the 1970 Scottish Rally.

Andrew Cowan in the ex-1969 RAC Mk1 2.5PI rally crossing at Lydden - this is what they used to do with old rally cars, put them out to the rally cross circuits. Unfortunately the 2.5PI "rally tanks" were far to big and heavy for this sort of event.

Although the story that accompanied this picture was aboutthe World Cup Rally, these are 1969 MkIs at Abingdon. The story contain many name of the guys who prepared teh World Cup cars and is a great who's who of Abingdon - wonder if I can find any of these guys now?

Something for the MkI fans, VBL196H on the 1969 RAC rally, Culcheth at the wheel, Syer on the maps.

World Cup car preparation at Abingdon - interesting to note the pile of Rostyle wheel trims behind the door, bottom left - wonder what they are there for? The caption that went with this picture reads The Triumph bodies have been specially prepared by Pressed Steel with flared wheel arches to accomodate 15-in x 5 1/2-in Minilite wheels with Dunlop SP44 or SP Sport tyres. The bodies also have built-in ventilation louvres to reduce under bonnet temperatures/ Cooling ducts are also provided to the front disc brakes. Wind tunnel tests have been used to find the optimum position for the bug deflector for the windscreen which is particularly important in South America. An extremely strong roll-over crash bar is built into the car. The cars will have lightweight aluminium bonnet, boot and door panels with perspex windows but in view of additional equipment to be carried on board, the cars will undoubtedly be considerably heavier than the standard model.

If you've ever seen the wiring of one of these World Cup cars, you'll appreciate the job this poor guy had!

From the same batch of High Road magazines, here's an action shot of UJB642G one of the MkI 2.5 PI cars used for World Cup testing.

I was at the Soneleigh show on the weekend helping out Canley Classics so it was nice to find this photo in amongst some old High Road magazines - a bonus was that the opening pages contained some other great pictures but more of those later. It's the April 1970 issue and covers the run up to the World Cup as well as this Prod Sports artcle. No words about the car but I knew Dave would like it as he's recently acquired this very car - the plastic fantastic Spitfire.

Well I took the plunge and bought some new tyres for the Vitesse, it did tend to eat the old ones ;-) I was a bit amazed at the decline of the 13" tyre - it was actually hard work to find decent tyres at a reasonable price. In the end I went to Toyo Proxies from www.mytyres.co.uk I still have to arrange fitting but the tyres turned up here whilst I was away this week. I dropped into Canley Classics on the way home again (I have a project running in Manchester so when I'm not in Norwich or Reading, I'm there!). I had loaded up those two Herald tanks to drop off with Dave for when we fit the injection. I was a little late getting there (6pm) and the place was shut up but I knew they'd be in the pub and sure enough, down at The Manor was Dave and Brummy Dave who I bought the Vitesse off as well as Claire and Dave's mate Adam. Now Brummy Dave misses his Vitesse and I think regrets selling it but has always said he's pleased I bought it because he will get to see i...