tom flywheel. These were now replaced with a new block and 85mm Hepolite Power Max pistons. A solid crankshaft from an Anglia 1200 increased capacity to 1320cc. We had already been racing with a dry block, so I filled the new one’s waterways with epoxy for added strength since an 85mm bore is marginal. It’s success relies a lot on whether the particular block was cast early or late in the life of its’ factory sand mold. It worked well but as competition hotted up our opponents soon learnt that the car easily overheated and did not like to be kept waiting whilst they did their burn-outs. This resulted in one run at Santa Pod ending up with severely melted pistons.

By now, the flywheel had too many holes in the hub area so I bought a piece of steel, flame cut from a huge bar and presented myself for metalwork evening classes at the local technical school. The teacher went around the room asking everyone what they wanted to make and people replied, ‘copper ashtray’, ‘set of fire irons’, one ambitious soul even said ‘garden gate’, then he got to me. “Dragster flywheel”, says I (trying to be low key about it). His reply came, “I hope you know what you’re doing, the biggest lathe is over there”. I wasn’t sure I did but the flywheel never failed us.

Jon had settled in to the driver role and it didn’t bother him but the brake pedal was originally on the left next to the clutch (Rolling Chassis photos a & b) and separated from the accelerator by the gearbox which was bolted straight to the differential. There was a backup mechanical hand brake but I never liked having to declutch, put the gearbox in neutral and ONLY THEN apply the brakes with the LEFT foot.