A new discovery

The Coromandel Car Club went for a run at the weekend, with a great lunch in Whitianga and ending up at a private, predominantly automotive museum about an hour from home which is relatively new.  I'd never heard of it until a few days ago and it's mind-blowingly good. For Kiwis, it's about 3 km south of Whitianga on SH 25 and the entry fee is $10.  The name of the place is Wheels Within Walls.

Some of the Coromandel Car Club vehicles

Here is a small selection of the photos I took, showing the variety of machinery on display.  There really is something for everyone at this museum.

Museum entranceway

There's a great mix of military and civilian vehicles and weaponry.  Down by a half track troop transporter was a long box with what appeared to be a bazooka in it!

Jennie and the ideal vehicle for cutting through rush hour traffic

Serious gas guzzlers

Seacat ship-based surface to air missile

Moving to civilian vehicles, it was an eclectic collection, including quite a few I'd never previously seen and I'd never heard of a Triumph Gloria, which was manufactured between 1933 and 1938 in various guises.

The Triumph Gloria

The Gloria radiator badge

Triumph Mayflower, two Rolls Royces and a Rover

A nice restoration project

The perfect tasteful Cadillac for Trump

V8-powered trike - ewwwww

One corner was devoted to early Land Rovers which were all in great nick.  The orange/red utility in the picture below had no i/d but was probably a locally made special body on the chassis of something else.

The offroad corner

At first glance, the car below is a stock Ford Anglia undergoing restoration.  A closer inspection reveals a Chevy 305 V8 being shoehorned into it!  I love sleepers and a mate in the UK had a standard looking Anglia with a Cosworth-prepared Cortina motor in it.  The fact that he was a senior engineer at Cosworth explains a lot!

Ford 105E Anglia

There's a sign on the screen of the Anglia which I just loved.  It's enlarged in the photo below.

Loved by mechanics everywhere

The Holden Torana enjoyed considerable success on the race tracks of Australia and NZ and have a cult following. Pristine SLR 5000 V8 models sell for astronomic prices but even the smaller engined models in original condition demand a huge price.  The black model below is allegedly a 1974 2.8 litre model.

Holden Torana and 1960 Ford Zephyr

Unknown vehicle below undergoing restoration.  The tiny engine must be a dream to work on with that great access.

Restoration underway

I don't know if the vehicle below is a commercial or home built item but it's probably a nightmare to steer with the pivot directly above the front wheel and the driver swinging about all over the place!

One of Frankensteins less successful creations

There are quite a few interesting displays devoted to things other than vehicles.  A wall with polished blowlamps and soldering irons caught my eye as an arty photo.  I guess that these early kerosene-powered blowlamps are regarded as a serious hazard these days but I remember my grandfather stripping old paint from woodwork with one.  They needed care to operate as it was possible to send out a jet of burning kerosene like a flamethrower if they weren't hot enough to vaporise the fuel.

Blowlamp and soldering iron display

There was a big area devoted to competition vehicles and here are a few examples.  The first photo is the V8 engine in a Bathurst-type Holden Commodore racing saloon car.

Holden Commodore race engine

The next photo is of a V8 stock car for speedway racing.  Easy to see where the Mad Max movie series got its inspiration from.

Absolutely brutal

This is a speedway sprint car for oval dirt racing. Still very popular in North America and the Southern Hemisphere.

Sprint car with massive wing

The bike below is a normally aspirated drag bike which used to run at the Meremere dragstrip  in NZ.  The museum owner was talking to me about the possibility of mounting it on a stand and demonstrating short engine runs for museum patrons.  Bring your ear plugs!

Kiwi drag bike 

Finally, a photo of the wonderful rustic bar at the museum - just perfect!  I hope you've enjoyed the short tour and can assure you that it's even better in the flesh and hours can be spent there.  A real asset for our region.

The museum bar

A blast from the past

Back in Covid lockdown, I set about digitizing our vast collection of photo prints, slides and negatives.  At best guess,well over 2500 images with a few still waiting to be done.  There are also 2 boxes of slides featuring the 1969 Isle of Man TT and the 1971 Transatlantic Match Race from Mallory Park.  The house elves have hidden these somewhere and I've been unable to find them which is a major irritation.  That aside, a fair number of the motorcycle digital images have appeared in this blog.  As it's a cold winter day in NZ, I thought that it was a good opportunity to showcase the story of my first "big" bike which briefly appeared in the history of bikes I've owned HERE .

Back in 1967 (58 years ago for the mathematically challenged), most readers of this blog weren't even a twinkle in their parent's eyes. I'd just seen an advert for a 1955 Triumph Tiger 100 which had been fully restored by the owner.  He worked for the Reliant car company and had access to professional paint spray facilities, chromium plating baths and so on. Although the bike was 12 years old, I thought it was worth a look.  I'm really glad I did - almost a case of serendipity.

He'd done a flawless job of restoring it but wasn't asking the earth.  I was more interested in sport-oriented bikes at that time but he had gone down the Marlon Brando "Wild One" route with US style raised bars, tall mirrors, crashbars and a white vinyl covered seat to complement the royal blue and white paintwork.  He had also chrome plated the engine mounting plates.  The engine had also received some attention with 10.5:1 pistons, E3134 performance cams, a gas-flowed cylinder head and a tuned exhaust.  I wasn't so keen on the US style treatment but it was such a lovely bike that the deal was done. Incidentally, I still have the Triumph service manual and official Triumph tuning sheet somewhere.  Maybe the house elves are looking after these too. Here we are in 1967, a slimmer and fitter version of me with a full head of hair.

Wearing the approved safety gear of that era

The Tiger was a lot of fun to ride and at that time, was more than a match for most cars on the road, particularly on twisty UK roads.  The major downside was the upright riding position which caused substantial drag at higher speeds and above 70mph or thereabouts, the long stalk mirrors would fold back and trap me between them!  I think that the photo below was taken in early 1968.  The mirrors have clearly been removed and I'm wearing a Belstaff waxed cotton jacket, much favoured today by the chinless horsey set.  Mine was undoubtedly a health hazard thanks to accumulated road dirt, dead insects and god knows what else sticking to the greasy outer layer but it kept the rain out. It didn't smell particularly fragrant either.  It also appears that I'd grown more hair, styled in the "rocker" mode of that era.  A near-neighbour was a "mod" who owned a Lambretta scooter festooned with lights and a fur-trimmed parka for weather protection and a Beatles haircut.  Mickey-taking was good-natured in both directions as we got on really well, unlike the brawls which broke out between the two factions at coastal locations, particularly Brighton.  

The "rocker" image of the 60's (yeah, right....)

I still wasn't happy with the upright riding position and acquired an aftermarket sport fairing. I also fitted dropped "Ace" handlebars to give a forward lean.  These two items made a considerable improvement to rider comfort with the reduced wind blast.  Given that the Tiger 100 only produced about 34 bhp or so, it gave a bit more performance at the top end too.  However, the big drawback was that the fairing was just a fibreglass shell with no infill panels. It magnified engine noise considerably to the point of distraction so it was dispensed with after a few months.  The photo below shows me negotiating a tricky bend near home in Northamptonshire.  There was a humpback stream bridge immediately followed by a 90 degree left-handed corner where it was easy for the incautious motorist or rider to come to grief. Glad to report that I was never a casualty at that spot.

The Tiger with its full fairing

From 1968 onwards, the Tiger was getting less use as I was building a supercharged drag bike and had a Wolseley 6/110 car to tow it when I started competing. However, during a maintenance strip-down of the Tiger, I noticed that one of the cylinder liners had a crack propagating from a conrod cut-out.  I didn't know how long it had been there but decided to replace both liners. Without going into tedious detail, the person who did the job made a hash of fitting them and over a period of a few weeks, they rotated slightly in the alloy barrel.  The first thing I knew about it was on the open road when the engine started misfiring and when I looked behind, there was a wall of white smoke.  The liners have cutouts to provide clearance for the conrods when they are halfway up and down the stroke.  With them rotating, they neatly machined grooves in the conrods as can be seen from the photo below. All that fine aluminium powder has to go somewhere, the "somewhere" in this case being all the oil galleries which starved the engine of oil, wrecking the pistons too. Bugger......

A ruined Triumph engine

Rebuilding the engine was considered very briefly but with all the expensive performance parts, plus the extreme difficulty in getting all the aluminium swarf out of the oil galleries, the decision was made to scrap it.  However, the good luck fairy must have been looking over my shoulder as a chap at work had just written off his Tiger 100 and I was able to buy the engine at a very reasonable price. The engine was in really good nick and ran reliably until I finally sold it to a mate in 1971.  Although it didn't get a lot of use in the 2 years leading up to its sale, I had some great adventures on it with my best mate Rick and his 650 Triumph Trophy. The most memorable one was attending the 1969 Isle of Man TT.  Numerous trips round the 37.73 mile circuit were made, including one at dawn with just Rick and I on the course. I'll leave that ride to your imagination but it will never be forgotten.  The young lady, Anne McGregor whom I met there was from Scotland and arrived on holiday with a mate, not knowing that the TT was being held!  I still have the 80-odd page programme for the princely sum of 3 shillings and sixpence which also helps with the memories. 

At Braddan Bridge on a non-race day, 1969 IOM TT.  Rick's Trophy on the right

I guess this tale goes to show that it's not just the bike, but the memories which go with it which ensures that it's permanently locked inside the skull.

1969 IOM TT race programme