Happy Christmas!

Firstly a happy Christmas and a great New Year to you all,I hope Santa brings you what you wished for!

My Christmas present came early this year in the shape of another Spitfire! You may remember a Blog or two ago me mentioning the possibility of an 'interesting' Spitfire coming to light locally after many years in hiding. Well a week or two ago it arrived on a trailer and is now ensconced in the museum. It's none other than 'the' Richard Lloyd (team Gold Seal Racing) plastic Spitfire! Richard brought his car along personally aided by former 'works', and Gold Seal, and latterly 412 VC's mechanic Peter Clarke. What a fantastic surprise. The car itself is in need of much restoration, but with the history inbedded in this car it wil be worth the effort. For those of you who don't know Gold Seal Racing consisted of three Spitfires and drivers, Richard Lloyd, Chris Marshal, and Pete Cox. The car's were extreemly modified decendants of 412 VC (prototype Spitfire), ADU 467B (works rally car), and another. Richard still campaigns a restored 412 VC at Goodwood and other such events. The car we have aquired is pictured on the front cover of the 1970's book 'Tuning Standard Triumph's up to 1300cc' written by Richard Hudson-Evans, I got Richard (Lloyd) to autograph the front cover of my copy!

Interesting afternoon!

I spent yesterday afternoon in the company of Peter Clarke, he needs no introduction if you know anything at all about the Le Mans/Rally Spitfires and their subsequent history. If you don't then here's a very brief summary. Peter was a very active member of the experimental/racing department at Triumph throughout the Spitfire period. He helped build and maintain all of the 'works' cars but in particular his involvement was with the circuit cars. Peter went to both the '64 and '65 Le Mans, and Sebring, in fact he was working in the paddock virtually every time the circuit cars appeared, he is pictured more times in the many books on the subject than any of the drivers! After the works effort closed Peter went on to build and maintain Spitfires with firstly his old Triumph team mate Peter Cox, and then for the Richard Lloyd Gold Seal Racing effort. It didn't stop there as Peter has continued to work on Spitfires right up to the present day. This is the reason for this short piece from me, because yesterday I was helping Peter empty his lock-up of the years of racing Spitfire parts and memorabilia, as he has finally hung up his spanners and retired. Some real jems were unearthed, including the remnants of a 70X engine, a strut type rear suspension Spit chassis (as in the 1966 ADU 1B/ERW 412C Bradley racer), this was rescued by Karl who came along with me to help, and will probably end up under his race car. Another mystery was solved for me with the strange PI inlet manifold I found (pictured below). I have most of a 4 cyl PI set from the Spitfire racing days, but not the inlet manifolds, well I do now! We filled Peter's van to the roof, one of the last things to go in was a 70X tubular exhaust manufacturing jig, and we then baide our fairwell's and headed back to Canleys in Karl's Volvo and trailor combination loaded with our bit of treasure! Good luck in your retirement Pete, I'm sure the people of Wales may still hear the occasional clatter of forged pistons in a 70X on full chat yet!

Dream ticket!

As someone who has nurtured a lifelong passion for all things Triumph and more than a passing interest in Triumph's Le Mans and rallying Spitfire history I find myself more than ideally placed to talk to those that were there when it happened on a regular basis. Coventry might not be the most attractive of Cities but it's where our cars were built and developed, and still home to many of the guys who worked there. You can't pull into a petrol station in Cov without some old guy running over and wanting to share his story of working at the Standard. My wife drives a 2500 on a daily basis, this makes her a target for the stories too, I've lost count of the number of times she's used it as an excuse for being late into work!

I make no apologies for name dropping, but in the past couple of weeks we have had visits or I have spoken to Fred Nicklin (Triumph test driver, did most of the development driving on works Spitfires), Pete Clarke (put them together, and fixed them when they got broke), David Lloyd (experimental design and building), Bill Bradley (works driver, Le Mans and rally). Over the past couple of years I have been fortunate to make the aquaitance of Ray Henderson before his untimely death, he both visited us and I used to bother him on a regular basis about his recollections of things Triumph. Once the word got out locally that we had a Museum dedicated to Triumph, a steady stream of ex Triumph guys visit us and share their memories, fantastic! It's time to preserve this for the future before people forget, or worse history is re-written by those with a self interest.

Car Park Finished!

At last our car park is finished, and very nice it looks to. What was supposed to have taken 2 to 3 weeks ended up being more like 2 to 3 months. To be honest no one could have forecast what a miserable September/October, and begining of November we were end up having with virtually constant rain throughout. What a disruption to normal business its all been, its really nice to be getting tidy again. Iv'e spent all of this afternoon pressure washing the buildings down that surround the car park, of concrete splashs and general dust, mud and dirt. I don't know how they managed it but the car park guys even managed to get concrete splashs on our Vitesse 6003VC, and that's in the museum, not a happy bunny!

Another Spitfire?

After the excitement of ADU 4B it has been very difficult to motivate myself to get enthusiastic about anything else, hence no Blog for a week. That was until a chance conversation with a freind about an important Spitfire that might be available locally, here we go again! It's all a bit vague this time but from the little information I have its definitely worth pursuing. What else is happening here? Well the car park works are dragging on, not helped by the miserable October weather. We are about three quarters done now, but that last bit seems to be taking the longest. Even when complete, we will be unable to drive on it for over a week. We really would have liked to have had another one of our open days, but with the way things are and the uncertainty about the car park its just to difficult to contemplate at the moment. Something to look forward to for the near future though!

OK, so I've calmed down a little now!

As you may have guessed from my previous post we have acquired one of the most famous Spitfires ever built, 1965 Le Mans class winner ADU 4B! It's now been back home in Coventry for a couple of day's (but not at Canley's site yet) but I'm still as excited as a dog with two do-da's! Thanks to the excellent custodionship of it's previous keeper Vernon Brannon, and those that preceded him, 4B is in remarkably original condition, much, much, better than I could have ever hoped for. Bearing in mind it had a bit of a bump in its early life in Switzerland, witnessed by some repairs under the bonnet, it has survived with so much intact as it left Triumph's gates all those years ago. Large areas of the car are still in there original paint, touched up here and there admittedly, but it is 40 years old after all, no more debate now about what shade of green the Le Man car's were! It's even fitted with an original lightweight (20 guage) chassis, allthough it has lost it's quick lift brackets at some time. Vernon had raced 4B a selected historic race meets in the States, so he had replaced the long range tank with a small sealed racing variety. He had also replaced the seat and steering wheel for more modern items, but packed in the shipping container were the original seat and tank etc, wonderful. As the most original unrestored 'works' Spitfire left, it now falls to us to continue the good work of 4B's previous keepers, what a responsibility!

Guess what we did today?

Two pictures for you to ponder. The first taken at Felixstowe docks this lunchtime (courtesy of James Carruthers). The second taken at the TSSC HQ on the way back to Coventry this afternoon. Full report later.