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Old Lincolnshire school-mates Mick Sharpe and Paul Hayes bumped into each other three or four years after leaving school and immediately decided to build a dragster - as you do! With a budget of virtually zero the project took from 1969 to 1973. Mick worked for a large engineering company and understood things like stresses in metals, so he led on the design and construction of the chassis and running gear. Paul majored on the building of the engine and transmission. The tube chassis carried just the outer skin of a VW Beetle body - purely cosmetic - it could run just as well without it. The motive force was a 3.8 litre E-Type Jaguar motor, bored to a shaving under 4 litres and 'breathed on' using ingenuity rather than over-the-counter tuning parts (because we couldn't afford them!). By its second meeting it was fourth fastest competition altered in its class - a position it maintained throughout the season. It was consistently beating cars with the same engine but with loads of fancy tuning bits imported from America at great expense. This kept us in the prize money - JUST - at every meeting which was enough to pay the running expenses. For a variety of reasons, we only ran the car for the one season and sold it in early 1974. I can't remember the times or speeds but it would be very slow by modern standards. Weight -
13 cwt fuelled up and ready to go. Paul Hayes
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