Trials and tribulations
Fuzz revives a competition special – with a bit of help from CCW
Fuzz’s latest classic resurrection for Car SOS is a 1964 Cannon trials special – and CCW ends up playing a part in tomorrow night’s episode.
Before the UK went into lockdown we headed to Shelsley Walsh to meet up with members of the Historic Sporting Trials Association (HSTA) to find out more about why trialling offers more smiles-per-pound than just about any other form of historic motorsport (more on that in a future issue of CCW). It just so happened that – in the best traditions of Car SOS needing a bit of a ruse ahead of its big reveals – Fuzz was one of our writers on the day.
The Cannon’s unsuspecting owner, Dean Yarrington, was at the historic hillclimb venue helping the HSTA with the 12 trials cars that it had brought along for the CCW photoshoot, and presumed that Fuzz was helping us, notebook in hand, with interviewing owners who’d come from across the UK.
Little did he know that Fuzz had also been working away, behind the scenes, on a trials special that he’d treasured for decades. Over to you, Fuzz… ‘ Trialling hadn’t really entered my radar range until we embarked on the restoration of Dean’s 1964 Cannon Special named ‘Goldfinger’ due to its gold metallic paint and having been built at the time of the release of the eponymous James Bond film. ‘However, working on the car opened my eyes to the world of one of the most ancient of motorsport disciplines ‘ Trials cars are built to negotiate tight off-road courses, through steeply banked woods, on often muddy surfaces. They are rear-wheel drive only, with each class of car having to be built within strict guidelines, so it’s down to the crew to provide the advantage, rather than mechanical jiggery-pokery. ‘Limited-slip differentials are not permitted, but so-called ‘fiddle brakes’ – in essence, individually operable rear handbrakes, allowing power to be guided to one or other of the rear wheels, to assist in unfeasibly tight turns – provide power to whichever wheel has the best chance of traction. Their name comes from the fact that drivers constantly ‘fiddle’ with the levers.
‘Dean’s car, one of more than 100 built throughout the 1950s and 1960s by legendary Kiwi trials competitor, Mike Cannon, was, in the hands of driver Eric Jackson, a championship-winning car in the mid-1960s, but years of brutal competition punishment had seen it deteriorate to a point where it was no longer usable, with horribly worn cylinder bores within its tightly specified, 1172cc Ford side-valve engine.
‘When new, the cars featured Ford three-speed gearboxes, but this one had one from a later Anglia 105E. The rear axle looked to be of 1950s small Ford origin, modified to take coil springs, trailing arms and a Panhard rod.
‘ The front axle and suspension should originally have been of 1930s-‘50s Ford or Austin origin, but this car had been modified using a piece of box-section square tube that had been heavily clobbered at some point and was bent out of shape.
‘Our job was to get the Cannon back to trial-ready condition and to do so necessitated that virtually every mechanical assembly, barring the gearbox, receive intensive intervention.
‘ The battered outer panels were removed and used as templates for a new skin, fabricated in-house at the SOS workshop. Meanwhile, the frame was straightened and welded, where necessary, although we did keep one or two of the previous repairs visible as testament to its historic status.
‘As the car had no charging system when it arrived, we fitted an alternator and, at the rear of the vehicle, the previous ‘spare petrol can’ fuel tank was replaced with a bespoke-made item. We did though make huge efforts to ensure that we retained as much of the car’s history as possible.
‘Don’t miss the episode, where you’ll be introduced to the joys of trialling. I, for one, am certainly a convert.’
SEE THE EPISODE: National Geographic, Thursday, 7 May, 8pm