I've taken another step... last week my trailer brought this home to roost:
It's a 230 engine from a mid-fifties De Soto, as I understand it. It's from an Australian production car and is missing only the distributor, which is an easy-find deal. It uses a Lucas unit there and a Lucas starter, which means it has a ring gear to suit the Lucas starter. I can find these things.
The reason for me tracking this down is so I can make a replica of this car, the picture above having disappeared:
This is the fifth place car in the 1951 Australian Grand Prix, builder and driver was Barry Ranford and it had a Vauxhall 25hp 4-speed gearbox between the flathead six and the Ford rear axle. Another Ford axle was fitted up front, the brakes were from 1940-48 Ford, as were the wheels, the chassis was a tube fabrication.
Here's something different...
A picture of second owner Maurie Maurice and his helper, Hugo Ragosini, changing plugs. No doubt a posed photo, but it gives me some good idea of the engine bay... I am going to access the original of this photo.
It wasn't at all unusual in those days to build racing cars with quite mundane parts. 'Run what you brung' was very much the style of things in what were austere times of living. Similar cars were seen all over America in pre-war and early post-war days. Great days!
Later, unfortunately, the car was fitted with a flathead Ford V8, it still drove through the Vauxhall box as far as I know.
Here's another similar car, built on a Plymouth base:
So... I have the Vauxhall gearbox, I have my engine, I can find the shock absorbers and make the chassis and body. Now I just need to track down those Ford brakes... axles are easily found.
