5 MINUTES WITH:
Mk1 Cortina racer, Pre-Crossflow guru and scooter fanatic— Joe’s living the ’60s dream!
Joe Allenby-Byrne
“I WENT FOR A TEST DRIVE AND AS I CAME ROUND THE CORNER A WHEEL FELL OFF”
H ow did you get into cars?
It was my Dad’s fault. He had a beach buggy when he was 17, then I came along when he was 22, so he bought a Mk2 Cortina. He had plenty of other cars after that including a Mk1 Escort van, but the Cortina always stuck with me.
So was your first car a Cortina?
Yes, a Mk1 1500 four-door Deluxe. I had a few in the late ‘80s — they were cheap, classic runarounds back then. This one cost me £120.
What happened to it?
It got rear-ended by a 7.5-tonner while parked outside my house one night.The truck pushed it down the road and into a wall, stoving the front end in, too. I salvaged the engine and gearbox and a few other bits for my next one — a Mk1 two-door.
Did mucking about with Cortinas get you into building Pre-Crossflow race engines?
No, that came much later. I was more into the scooter scene and building engines for Vespas and Lambrettas back then.The race car engine building didn’t take off until I met my wife, Justine and we bought a house and built a workshop in the garden. I restored and built the Mk1 Cortina GT known as PEA for historic racing in 2003, and ended up building engines for other racers in the evenings. Then after about five years, gave up my job as a design engineer at Bedford Trucks and went full-time with Throbnozzle Engineering.
Where does the word Throbnozzle come from?
My friend and former boss, Henry knew Kevin Schwantz’s (multiple World Champion motorbike racer) mechanic, and he used to call everyone a Throbnozzle. It’s a slang term from the ‘60s for a megaphone-style exhaust found on bikes of the era.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m doing an all-steel 1500 Pre-Crossflow for a Tornado Talisman, I’ve just rebuilt another 1500 for a Mk1 Cortina rally car, and I’m hopefully off to Italy very soon to set up an Anglia-based Formula Junior engine I built for a Marcos known as the Ugly Duckling — Jackie Stewart’s first race car. I’m doing a lot more cylinder head work these days, too — I’ve just done a pair of Ford 289 V8 heads for a GT40. Because I use a flow bench and engine modelling, I know exactly how a head is behaving and can pick a camshaft accordingly. It’s very satisfying.
What about your own projects?
There’s PEA the Mk1 Cortina GT race car that I rebuilt in 2014 after an incident at Goodwood, and I managed to do a few events in it last year. We’ve also got a very early GT known as Pickled Egg, that’s been in storage for many years, as I still haven’t got around restoring it. There’s a Tornado Talisman that I’ve almost finished building. This will be another race car with a full-race 1340 Pre-Crossflow. The last one I built had 130 hp and they’ll rev to 8500 rpm if you let them. Oh, and I’ve just restored a Lambretta!
You’ve got up to £10,000 to buy and build a classic Ford, what would you do?
I’m actually just off to look a project — a Prefect 107E owned by Gordon Streeter. Justine’s wanted one for ages, so if it’s any good, I’ll recommission it, fit a four-speed synchro ‘box and build a 1300 PreCrossflow for it, using the Mk2 Cortina’s five-bearing engine. With a GT cam and twin-choke Weber it should make a great road car.
Your most-embarrassing car-related moment?
In 2000 I owned a Mk1 Cortina two-door that had a leaky brake cylinder. I changed the cylinder outside in the dark one evening, then went for a test drive. As I came round a corner the front wheel fell off — I’d forgotten to tighten the wheelnuts! I found the wheel, legged it home to get a trolley jack, and managed to get the wheel back on as fast as I could. Luckily, only one person saw what happened!