Brian Keegan
The life and times of drag racing pioneer and Humpy Holden exponent, Brian Keegan
For pioneers of Australian drag racing in the late ‘50s such as Brian Keegan, there was no how-to manual, and almost nothing in the way of an aftermarket hot-up industry to turn to. Anyone looking for serious performance improvements in those days usually had no choice but to do it themselves. But that suited Keegan just fine – for him, it was not so much about beating his opponent, but rather the challenge of making or modifying something to make the car faster.
Before there was drag racing there were hillclimbs, sprints, ying eighths, circuit events and a whole range of activities that were designed to satisfy every young man’s desire to go fast and have fun with cars. Except that at some level they missed the bullseye for some young enthusiasts, who wanted to experience the whole gamut of automotive alternatives. In the late 1950s that included a generation that was growing up on movies from Hollywood, the rst television images, and magazines aimed at a youthful passion for modifying cheap old cars of the past. The rapidly growing traditions within this generation were taking their cues from America rather than Britain, and that meant hot rods, leather jackets, V8 engines and the new motorsport of drag racing.
In central western NSW a young car-crazy kid by the name of Brian Keegan was just such a candidate. He came from a motor related family, with a father – Ted – a panel beater with an acute ability to diagnose and x a mechanical problem. He’d bring cars home to the Keegan house and say he knew this car could go faster and overnight would manufacture something like an intake manifold or some other component. By the morning or the end of a weekend it would be running sweetly.
Brian, as the eldest son, would watch and learn, taking on board the sort of cando attitude that would make a huge difference to his own future – although in his later years he would express regret that he didn’t listen enough or show his father his due respect.
In a magazine interview shortly before his death Brian would say, “I loved things that were neat and tidy and went like all hell. That’s all I can put it down to. I loved making things; that’s why I was making all those parts for people: manifolds, wheels, gearbox adaptors, gearshifts.”
That passion for going fast expressed itself in a string of rebuilt gear, all designed to help himself and others go fast. In a world where you couldn’t buy much in the way of performance equipment, he manufactured his own rack-and-pinion steering, wheels, twin-plate clutches and even
carburettors. His reputation spread rapidly and he began to attract a steady stream of customers.
The point was that this stuff all worked. The clutches ‘rattled and banged’ but they did the job when there was nothing else available. “The wheels were a big attraction to many people,” he commented. “I used to cut out my own centres, cut the rims and put a spacer in them, balanced them and had them checked for air leaks. I made 150 to 200 sets of wheels over the years and they’re still on a couple of cars running at Bathurst today. They were all steel but they looked like mag wheels.”
This was all in the days before rotary les. Every single wheel was hand led to nish.
Brian had begun exing his racing abilities in karts but recalled a major in uence as being a good friend of his father’s. George Reed was a motor racer of long standing, having begun his career in 1932. He was well known as the builder of the much respected Skate Series of cars, one of which won the 1951 Australian Grand Prix with side-valve Ford V8 power. That car became known as the SoCal Special and was a very successful vehicle for drivers Warwick Pratley and Frank Walters.
But Reed was different from many of his peers, and he had a strong belief that there was ‘no substitute for ccs.’ “There’s no easier way to tune a car than by blower pressure,” he is quoted as saying. This was a drag racer just waiting to happen.
Brian continued to maintain the contact with Reed after Ted Keegan passed away, and absorbed many of his mentor’s ideas. Soon they were dabbling in race cars together, most notably with a ‘sports car’ in 1958 that was initially just a chassis with a driveline and suspension but was later improved with the addition of steel bodywork. The car was locally successful at hillclimb events and in sprints, and at Parkes ran the quarter mile in 15.8 seconds.
Its engine was a Customline V8 which came from a burnt out 1934 Ford which Brian found in a paddock near Molong. He’d retrieved the motor after a suggestion from Reed to look for an engine that had been out in the weather and/or been in a re, as the block would have hardened up. It was, however, in pretty bad shape: the carburettor had melted, the crank was discoloured from the heat, the rings and bearings had melted. But with a bit of loving care and a lot of time the pair got it going again and after trials with a carburettor Reed imposed his theories with the application of a small Marshall Nordic supercharger.
Then in 1959 the Orange Light Car Club announced plans for a standing quarter mile sprint at the Gnoo Blas circuit in August. In midJuly the pair was perusing a copy of American
magazine when the decision was reached to build a dragster and take on this standing quarter mile activity seriously.
There was little available time, but by working around the clock and lots of looking at pictures in magazines they had their car nished at 5am on race morning. The chassis was formed from two cut up Model A frames. The front end was a lightweight affair with a beam axle and transverse spring and Prefect wheels drilled out for lightness. A Morris 8/40 steering box gave it direction and with a front track of 56 inches and rear track of 38 inches it looked pretty good.
The rear wheels were 16-inch Ford rims, widened to six inches and tted with Dunlop R5 racing tyres, which cost a hefty £48 each (the equivalent of $750 each today) and which it was found were good for ‘only’ 40 runs. Brakes were off a 1939 Ford.
The engine was the Ford V8 from the sports car, with its Nordic blower battling with twin carburettors. Over the years it all varied greatly. The twin carbs were replaced with four dualthroat Strombergs and a 6-71 supercharger, providing 22 pounds of boost, just like the Americans used, and ultimately it ran with eight carbs and a Vertex magneto. At times the blower sat on top of the motor and was driven by dual chains off a front mounted pair of cogs, and at other times it was in front, driven directly off the crankshaft.
All the manifolding was made by Brian. They tried using the standard Ford fuel pump but when it proved not up to the task
they tted two Austin A90 fuel pumps blowing air into the fuel tank to pressurise it and force fuel up to the carburettors.
At its debut the car ran a full radiator but it became obvious that this wasn’t needed and a length of copper tube was substituted to join the water jackets on the heads.
It was estimated that the engine initially made 250 horsepower, pushing along the ‘13cwt’ (655kg) vehicle.
In reality it was way more power than the car could rightly use on the rough and unprepared racing surfaces of the day.
Yet despite a power output that was well short of what you might expect from even many manufactured vehicles today, and the car’s relatively light weight and the poor traction available, the driveline remained the car’s weak point. The clutch was cobbled together from an International truck pressure plate and a Cadillac clutch plate (gearbox was a 1939 Cadillac three-speed) with imported linings. The clutch struggled to last more than a meeting at any time and cost £38 to rebuild each time.
And if the clutch lived that meant that the rear axles probably didn’t. They found early on that a broken axle usually meant the car shed a rear wheel, so they converted it to fully oating hubs. At one Orange sprint meet the car sheered one axle about 40 metres off the start line, throwing the drive to the other axle which then sheered. Brian let it coast to the nish line and it still scored quickest time of the day.
The whole car was an example of adaptation. The car was notable for its use of large hubcaps which covered the whole outer face of each wheel. These were created from copper lids. For those under the age of, oh, 70, it should be explained that before 1960 a copper was a large tub in which water was boiled for washing.
Brian was poking around the scrap section behind the local Email (not the digital communications!) factory at Orange when he found a lid. He took it home as a water bowl for the dog, but the pup found it too big to use. It kicked around the yard until one day Brian decided it would make a perfect hubcap, so he went back and swiped three more.
At that rst meeting at Gnoo Blas the dragster – the third to be built in the nation and just a couple of months behind the rst two – made quite a hit. A magazine report from the time said:
… the strange looking car aroused great interest.The crowd fell silent as Keegan edged it up to the starting line. He got the ‘course clear’ signal and, with the car in second gear, let in the clutch.The monster took off with a scream of tortured rubber, leaving behind a cloud of blue smoke from the tyres.
Just 13.5 seconds later the car was crossing the nishing line a quarter of a mile away at more than 100mph. But as Keegan eased his foot from the accelerator a steering arm shook loose.The car veered across the track, almost hit a police sergeant in charge of safety arrangements, and skidded sideways before Keegan could stop it.
Keegan got out shaking, as white as a sheet. “It scared the heck out of me,”he said later.“I was trembling for a week after. But we xed the steering arm and I was coaxed back into the cockpit for another run.The car behaved better the second time and I realised what enormous potential it had.”
The dragster’s best at that maiden outing was a 14.43, not too far short of the outright
Australian record of 13.56, held by Len Lukey and matched at that same meeting by Jack Myers in his WM Cooper Special. Myers predicted after that meeting that soon the Keegan and Reed car would ‘only be beaten by a miracle.’
That adrenalin pumping moment at Gnoo Blas was to set a pattern for this car over the next six years, as its power and performance potential continued to climb but the race venues remained pretty rough around the edges. Brian and Reed were pushing through boundaries that nobody had even known existed a few years before.
Many of the venues were simply sections of closed public road, that weren’t necessarily well closed, at places like Wellington, Parkes, Orange, Dubbo and Cowra. At a sprint event at Parkes one weekend a spectator who left early tootled out onto the shut-down end of the straight just as Brian came barreling down. He had to slam the brakes on so hard that it locked up the clutch and damaged the blower; the unwitting fan just drove off.
On another occasion an errant cow being herded by a farmer along this same Parkes road got Brian’s heart really pumping. The road was narrow enough to just allow both front wheels to remain on the asphalt, there were bushes
growing right up to the edges and there was little room to maneuver. Somehow Brian managed to get around them.
At Mount Panorama sprint events were frequently held on Conrod Straight. Going over the hump at 120mph was bad enough as the prevailing winds tended to push the dragster to the right (to assist here, previous runners would park their cars along the left side of the track to create a wind barrier). However, one day things got much worse when an elderly gent drove around the barriers and onto the circuit just as Brian came over the top of the hump at full throttle.
“He was parked half on and half off the roadway,” Brian stated in a magazine article soon after, “with just a narrow space between his car and the competitors. As soon as I saw him I braked but I didn’t stand a chance on Earth of stopping in time. The car skidded but I managed to get it back on an even keel. I pointed those wide front wheels at the gap between the cars and prayed they’d fit. They just did. I stopped further down the track and came back to the old gent, who was sitting in his car with his face as white as a sheet. I wanted to really bawl him out, but when I opened my mouth I was so angry the words just wouldn’t come.
“I went back and sat on the front wheel of the dragster for 10 minutes before I could move.”
Understandably, event organisers began making special preparations whenever they saw Brian’s and Reed’s names on the entry list. At one NSW Sprint Championships held at the Castlereagh track they cleared a special path through the scrub at the end of the track to provide extra stopping room for the dragster. But on one run the car veered off course and hit a drain, the blow from the roll cage hitting Brian’s helmet knocked him out long enough for the car to knock down two trees and become wedged between two others.
Despite these obstacles the car’s elapsed times soon started to come down. Three months after its debut the dragster went to a 13.27 second time at Gnoo Blas for an unofficial Australian quarter mile record, and in May 1960, at the second drag race staged at the Castlereagh track by the ARDC it made it all
official with a knockout 12.56.
At the 1960 Sprint Championships Brian and Reed lost out on averages (times were averaged over two runs in opposite directions) to Ray Walmsley’s Corvette-engined dragster. Walmsley had a best two-way average of 12.18 to Brian’s 12.20, but Walmsley’s one-way best was 11.86 and Brian’s was 11.81, giving him the drag racing credentials.
In 1961 Brian ran times of 11.68 and 11.84 for a two-way figure of 11.75, a new record and 1.75 seconds quicker than the nearest competitor.
The car continued to evolve. Brian went from sitting on top of the diff to sitting behind it, and then in 1962 to a brief version with the engine behind him. Its appearance garnered it the label of ‘The Monster.’ In this guise
it proved to be almost undriveable and after four events they pulled the pin on the idea and went back to a completely rebuilt front-engined dragster with a full body. In this format it ran its best ever at 11.48 seconds, not long before they sold the car in mid-1965.
Brian had always been a keen hillclimb participant, and decided to get back to that activity to satisfy his taste for speed. He took to it with his street-driven FJ Holden. It was lowered two inches, had the standard custom features such as moulded guards, lost its external chrome trim, extended and lowered bonnet and customised grille. But having dipped his toe in quarter mile competition Brian was only away from it for six months after deciding to give the Humpy a shot at sprints and ying eighth-mile events.
Initially the grunt came from a George Reedprepared Grey Holden six, backed up by a Riley four-speed gearbox. This had been enough to push the car around quite satisfactorily on the street and provided plenty of fun on the local hillclimb venues but was a bit short on legs for the quarter mile. Organised drag racing was now well underway, with a permanent home at Castlereagh, on Sydney’s far western fringe.
On the quarter mile success is not just measured by the win light, but also by elapsed times and speeds, measured down to hundredths of a second and mile per hour. Even when losing a race an improved ET can be a personal win, and every gram of weight, every fraction of a horsepower can be a step to personal satisfaction.
The body was stripped of anything deemed super uous. The door skins and boot lid were fashioned from aluminium, the bonnet and front guards from berglass. The grille was a imsy alloy mesh and only one door – the driver’s – retained a handle, and that was drilled out to reduce weight. All windows and the windscreen were replaced by Perspex. Inside the only furniture was the lightweight driver’s seat, with a simple aluminium dash holding just a tacho and an oil pressure gauge.
The Grey six was swapped for a 179 Red motor, set back in the chassis by eight inches and lowered by two inches, which necessitated cutting the rewall. The block was bored out and the crank had a quarter-inch stroke, boosting capacity to 208 cubic inches (3.4-litres). The radical 12-port cylinder head came from
Ken Waggott’s workshop, as did the cam, and Brian built the extractors and the intake manifold for the triple 45mm
Webers. The cooling system remained standard, though the fan had every second blade removed. The ignition was highly modi ed Holden gear, with 28 degrees advance. It redlined at 8200rpm on methanol. The output was estimated at 220hp, almost as much as the blown V8 in
Brian’s dragster.
The ywheel was lightened for more rapid throttle response and the 179 three-speed gearbox used in rst (to 7000rpm and 85mph) and second gears (8000rpm and 125mph) with the 3.36 Holden limited slip diff. Top gear was retained for events such as ying eighths, where it was later clocked at 128mph.
The rubber hit the road with a set of 13x10inch Keegan rims with Firestone, Avon or Dunlop racing tyres, though Brian continued to experiment with different compounds and pressures. These were the days when track preparation involved a sweep with a broom before the meeting started – traction was never in bulk supply. Without slicks Brian was often giving away up to six car lengths off the start but the power and lightweight soon proved their worth.
As a race ready machine the car, tagged ‘Keegan’s Kustom,’ weighed 790kg with a 60/40 percent front/rear distribution.
It didn’t take long before Brian was back on top, and in July 1968 the FJ became the rst Holden in the nation to run a 13-second time
with a string of runs at 13.99, 13.97 and 13.90 seconds and a best speed of 104mph at that year’s Mr Holden tournaments. Brian didn’t win any trophies, but he still went home smiling, driving the 254km in the same car he’d raced with a $50 cheque in his pocket.
Brian also used to lay claim to the rst 15- and rst 14-second Holden times, but nobody kept those sorts of records in those days so we are unable to verify it.
Then the FJ was sold – minus engine and driveline – and replaced an even lighter 48215 shell. With the oor and rewall done in aluminium, the new ‘Kustom’ Humpy weighed a mere 650kg.
The new car, nished in a bright green metal ake paint scheme, charged to a 12.91s pass at its rst outing in November, 1968, adding the scalp of the rst Holden into the 12-second zone to Brian’s credentials, still on the road racing rubber.
In 1969 it all seemed to come together for Brian. The fruits of success dangled before him and, in some ways, overwhelmed him.
Like all good race cars his Holdens never remained static. Every race meeting was an excuse to try a new idea. Every long drive from Orange to Castlereagh or wherever he raced was a time to mull over new ideas to squeeze an extra jot of power, a mite of traction. Though the car was still basically new, Brian removed the hefty Holden front crossmember and replaced it with a transverse leaf spring and the beam axle from his hillclimber.
Then, out of the blue came on offer to compete at the National Hot Rod Association’s gigantic US Nationals at Indianapolis, in the USA. The NHRA had contacted a local magazine, which nominated Brian. The Americans offered to pay a third of the costs and he had to come up with the balance. He didn’t have access to that sort if cash, but rounded up sponsors to cover the gap. The dosh was handed over to a local agent, who pocketed the money and did a runner. When Brian got to the wharf he found there was no booking for him and no money to pay for it. The whole deal fell through.
Track promoters, ever on the lookout for headliners to draw in the spectators, began to offer match race opportunities. In March the opponent was Bert Needham at the wheel of his 426 cubic Plymouth Ramcharger, and Brian won two out of three in the heads-up contest.
In October of that year, readers of Rodsports magazine voted Brian as one half of the match race they most wanted to see, asking to see him pitted against young up and comer Ron Harrop from Victoria.
The fans got what they asked for, but the ‘Kustom’s’ traction shortfall cost it plenty and Brian went home from two race events with lots of broken parts.
Through until mid-1970 Brian’s FX was a feature runner, but after younger brother Peter put it in the shade with his supercharged VW (which Brian helped build), and with breakages mounting, it became plain that the car was at its limit.
Brian had taken his car to a Sydney dyno shop which had promised him an extra 25hp, but after picking it up he found the car would barely get off the line. What had been a smoothly running screamer was now banging and coughing. Back in the pits a young guy began talking to Brian, leaning on the front guards and staring at his creation in frustration. Brian told him, “If someone came along now with $500 I’d sell it.” When the guy reappeared later with $500 cash Brian handed it over, minus engine and gearbox, and walked away from drag racing.
Brian decided to go back to hillclimbs. He built an open wheeler with a Holden six and gearbox and Datsun 1600 rear end, known colloquially as ‘The Tractor’ because of its agricultural rollcage. This was replaced with two more sophisticated monocoque open wheelers, with blown Ford twolitre and blown and unblown 302 V8 power.
These cars brought Brian state and national hillclimb titles and lots of pleasure up until he gave it away at age 78. He’d attended a handful of nostalgia drag racing events but found they just didn’t match with his memory of the ‘old days.’
So what happened to those old cars that Brian built and raced? The dragster was sold on to racer Paul Graham who ran it with a Studebaker engine for a while. It turned up a few years ago in the hands of speedway collector Brian Linnigan. From there it was purchased by a trio of old time racers in Orange who are in the process of a full restoration.
A Holden-powered dragster which Brian had also irted with for three months in 1969, using the motor from his FX, was rediscovered by
Brian on a sheep property not far from his home. It had been used for rounding up sheep until a front wheel had been knocked off and was hanging on the wall in a shed. Plainly the owner didn’t want it, but when Brian expressed an interest in buying it back, and the owner discovered a new-found enthusiasm for restoring it that could only be paci ed by a very large sum of money, Brian suggested where the owner might like to put the car.
That famous FX eventually found its way to two Sydney racers who slowly went through
the process of rebuilding it to make it into a more modern race car. But when Castlereagh closed in 1984 (and with no replacement on the horizon), they sold off what they could and took the rest to the tip.
Brian was, over the years, involved in some way with just about every form of motor racing except rallying – which he disliked because he saw it as just a way to beat up a car. Hillclimbs and drag racing were his rst loves and in them he found his true love of making or modifying something and seeing it go faster. For him it wasn’t so much a game of competing with another racer as it was competing with himself, being handed an improved lap time, a faster speed, a direct re ection of his ability to make a car go faster.
Brian Keegan passed away in August 2015, aged 82 years.