Feb: 12 hour Night Trial
Mar: Gymkhana
April: 120 mile Family Trial
May: Mountain Rally
June: Sprint Meeting
July: Signpost Trial
August: Gymkhana
September: 12 Hour Trial
October: Economy Run
Nov: Club picnic, hill climb
December: Concourse

The car had its beginnings in Adelaide, South Australia, sometime during the
fifties. From a fiery insurance write off, the remaining body was discarded and the chassis shortened some twenty inches - a lightweight frame and aluminium body was installed. Like many projects of the fifties, if it could have come to fruition instantly,
it would have been a competitive car but fluctuations in enthusiasm and available money saw it lose momentum, and so it changed hands three times before I purchased it from the original owner, a Mr Alby Lobb.

It came from him as a going concern in the sixties - later that decade historic racing took off down in Australia and it has competed successfully from then up until the present time.

A typical race weekend will start by packing up on Thursday (it's great being retired) and starting what will be a 1500km round trip to, say Phillip Island near Melbourne,Victoria for a two-day race weekend. I will always take a mechanic - they prefer it that way - according to them, letting me work on the car is like having two men away from work for the day - the three of them are excellent tradesman and all are lifelong friends.

For the technically minded, and starting at the front, the steering is 2/2-litre rack and pinion, the lower wishbone has had its outer pivot lowered I" by extending the lower king-pin housing down The torsion bars have had around .080" machined from their diameter over the full length to allow for the lighter body, When the chassis was
shortened, it was found that due to the chassis gradually tapering smaller at the rear, you could slide the back section up inside the front part after removing some 12" to 14". This has added strength to the shortened and welded area.

We have somehow managed to extract more than double the horsepower out of the motor - the head has been machined down to 3.275" thick, the inlet valves are just under 2" diameter and the exhaust is 1.75" diameter, it has a cam with a lift of 0.525" and each lifter has a light spring between the head and the top of the lifter - this keeps it on the cam and allows us to run lighter valve springs.

Four Corrillo style rods and forged pistons forced a second-generation engine build and the compression finish up at about 9.00.1. We still run the water manifold to the head but the exhaust manifold has been replaced with extractors of 1.625" diameter.

The gearbox has given us plenty of headaches, with the advent of better and stickier tyres, the mainshafts started breaking. For some reason Rileys drilled a radial hole in to the main shaft to a depth of about 1/2 the diameter of the shaft. It holds a spring and ball to locate the synchro hub but has proved to be a very weak point and we have broken two shafts due to this. The first cure was to weld up the top of the hole and cut a circlip groove in the shaft to hold the hub - but welding the shaft was not good enough and it still broke - this time destroying a set of close ratio gears in the process. I have now had two new shafts made up to my own specs and have had no trouble since.

The trunnion and torque tube have been done away with and an open style tail shaft is used. I left the brakes standard but added a booster to the front wheels.

The car competes against open wheel racing cars up to 1960 and holds its own very well all around Australia, it always finishes in the top 6 or 8 and usually in the top 3 or 4 outright.

I have been very fortunate to have owned a large service station for nearly 30 years - this came with a big workshop and tyre bays with "wall to wall" mechanics. I could never have done it working from home and doing everything myself.

I am sure you will all understand when I say I love that car - it has given me
hundreds of hours of fun and continues to do so.

John Virgo