DIRTY STUFF

IN A moment of uncontrolled insanity some years back, I bought the remains of an old racing car. Neville, my old mate from Brisbane, had rung to say he had pieces of an interesting car, and did I want to have a look? So I had a look, and what was there had once been part of a quality Australian ‘special’, although there wasn’t much left – the front- and rear-end sections, custom fourpipe radiator, a Jaguar four-slot gearbox with custom tailshaft, rack-and-pinion steering, and a fuel tank from a tractor.

The twin-tube centre section of the chassis had been chopped out and dumped into the Brisbane River, along with the body, but I knew where the triple-spoke wire wheels and knock-off hubs were. Months before this, I had been involved in the purchase of a gearbox from a guy who restored MGS, and I saw these wheels. They’d been clumsily grafted onto one of his TCS, still wearing old Dunlop R4 racing tyres. He told me he’d come across these two guys cutting up an old race car and had bought the wheels and hubs on the spot. I was sure that this stuff belonged to the remains that Nev had dug up, but the MG guy wouldn’t sell the wheels and hubs to me, so I went back to base and began to research who built this unusual race car, and when.

I keep old race car yearbooks, and one day I got lucky. In one age-battered paperback from the early 1950s, there were words and pictures of a wire-wheeled, Ford flatheadpowered monoposto built by Dennis Curren from Victoria. As an engineering apprentice, Dennis designed the car in 1945, beginning with twin three-inch (75mm) steel tubes and fabricating his own front crossmember. Opting for a pre-selector gearbox to sling behind the flathead, he then made a transfer box to bolt to the rear of that to offset the tailshaft drive to the left, so the shaft went straight back to a wartime Jeep rear axle. The aim of this was to run the shaft past the left hip of the driver, so he could sit lower, and the Jeep final drive came offset as well. The rear suspension for the live rear axle was by leaf springs and shock absorbers, while up front Dennis built his own solid steel lower wishbones, the top links using lever-action shocks from a Dodge sedan. Somehow, he found the huge alloy brake drums and wheel hubs off a pre-war Minerva, converted them to hydraulic with Jeep wheel cylinders, and had new 16-inch wire wheels made in Melbourne.

It took Dennis four years to finish the car and he first raced it in 1949, but he had built in a problem. The pre-selector gearbox, forerunner to the later automatic transmission, used only coil-spring pressure to lock the bands and single clutch pack. The ’box couldn’t handle the torque from the flathead V8 and simply slipped in protest. So Dennis sold the car, which went through a succession of owners, until Harry Mclaughlin bought it and did a major rebuild. He threw out the pre-selector ’box and Jeep rear axle, and fitted a Jag gearbox to drive back to a cut-and-shut Lancia rear axle so he could have independent rear suspension. It raced and retired in the 1956 Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park, then a guy called Moriarty finished up with it and put in two more years to try and make it competitive. And that was its final form.

I finally managed to buy the wheels and hubs belonging to the car and got stuck into the rebuild. Welding the chassis back together with new ERW tubing wasn’t difficult. I had the front and rear ends, and spacing them to the correct dimension was easy, as I already had the tailshaft, gearbox and a donor flathead. I made all the upper tubing body support superstructure, an alloy fuel tank and dashboard, pedal assemblies, and fitted a brake master cylinder. A machinist mate revived the chopped-out rear hubs, I rebuilt the motor with four Holley twin-throat carbs and made free-flowing exhausts. Didn’t have to do anything with the radiator.

My wife named it the Crumpet Car, as the Dennis-made front crossmember was full of drilled holes, and I raced it in naked chassis form at Lakeside. The old nail went really well, and I won a trophy, but I didn’t have the $25K needed to have a copy of the original Moriarty alloy body built, so the car was sold to Tony Osborne of Melbourne. He had a body built and ran old Crumpet briefly before selling it again, which is really the story of this old race car’s life. Out of the six Australian Grands Prix it started, it finished only one: the 1955 AGP at Port Wakefield.

MY WIFE NAMED IT THE CRUMPET CAR, AS THE DENNIS-MADE FRONT CROSSMEMBER WAS FULL OF DRILLED HOLES, AND I RACED IT IN NAKED CHASSIS FORM AT LAKESIDE