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PARANOIA 3 (1981 - 1985)

Lots of options were explored for Paranoia number three.  With Paranoia number two Alan and Brian had been invited to various shows and also raced at the inaugural drag race in France, run on the main straight of the famous Le Mans racetrack.  A change to a small block was discussed as parts could be ordered off the shelf from the States instead of having to be fabricated from scratch, or at best heavily modified to fit the Jag, but Jim had only limited interest in V8’s and giving up full engine sponsorship is not something you do lightly.  Jim also said that he could get the straight six out to over 4.7 litres which sounded great, although he never managed to achieve this before ill health, and a move to Scotland, finished his involvement with the car.  The car now looked good enough and ran fast enough to have attracted quite a lot of, admittedly, small sponsors who together with the win money meant that, ignoring the time spent on the car, it was now paying for itself.  In the end it was decided that Paranoia number three would stay a big fish in a small pond and we would build the most professional looking state of the art car possible using the Jag engine and staying in the same class.

At about this time Nobby Hills had debuted a new funny car, with a gorgeous chassis fabricated by himself, so a set of chassis plans were obtained from him.  Alan and Brian had also seen the 5 window Plymouth body and decided they wanted one as well.  Up until now Paranoia always had a fixed body that meant you had to climb up, sit on the rollcage and then slide into the seat so they decided that the new body would tilt, a là Stripteaser, to allow the driver in while also being quick release to aid maintenance.

The new chassis was constructed over the winter of 1980/81 and was made from T45 tubing.  The chassis was trapezoidal in cross-section, that is, the bottom rails were closer together than the top rails, the bottom rails were the same diameter from front to back but the top rails were a smaller diameter at the front and stepped up to the same, larger diameter, at the engine plate for the back of the chassis.  As the front and rear wheels are of widely different diameters on a dragster, the chassis rails have to bend upwards at the back to accommodate this and keep the front of the chassis parallel with the ground.  In the new chassis the top and bottom rails had one gentle bend in them but with the top rails set at an angle to the bottom rails.  The two rails were closer together at the front of the chassis than they were at the engine plate.  This was done for several reasons, as the top chassis rails were higher up the very tall Jag engine it looked to be more in the chassis rather than on top of it, also they were much higher up round the driver offering more protection and a low roll cage height.  The chassis was not a direct copy of Houndog as we were using a locker clutch instead of a slider like the funny hence, the chassis was like Houndog at the front but followed the, then current, US bracket race cars at the back.  The front suspension was still controlled by a torsion bar but this was now mounted in the top rails which allowed a straight front axle with the chassis under-slung.  The original engine and B&M transmission were fitted, along with the narrowed Oldsmobile rear axle.  The new 5 window body wasn’t finished in time so the car appeared at the start of the season wearing the old T bucket solidly mounted on the chassis.  The new body wasn’t ready because, after it had had all the major surgery, and modifications, there was so much filler in it that it weighed a ton!  The decision was made that the only thing to do was to make a mould from this body and then lay up a new light weight body from the mould.  As with everything else, all the fibreglass work was carried out by Alan and Brian themselves.

The new body appeared after the first couple of meetings of 1981 and overall the car was extremely well received and achieved the ultimate accolade at the time of a centre spread in Custom Car Magazine complete with naked lady.  As a bonus the new chassis was enough to tip the performance over the edge and Paranoia became the second Jag altered into the 9’s with a run of 9.97 at 133 mph, the other being Stripteaser some years earlier, but they had always run nitro whereas Paranoia was on straight methanol.

As ever, Man plus power and speed equals . . . . desire for more power and speed, so development started on this car.  Jim was getting to the end of what he could offer engine-wise, there would be small development increases in power but no more big increases, so a change to nitro was considered, but rejected, as the car would either have to be weighted up to stay in class or move up classes.  At this time the three competition altered classes were done on a weight per cubic inch basis, so you could have a very light small engined car in the same class as a very heavy large engined car, it was a matter of some pride to Alan and Brian that none of the Paranoia cars every ran underweight.  The decision was finally made to purchase one of the new-fangled nitrous oxide kits as this didn’t attract a weight penalty at the time.  We went wild and bought a kit with a set of jets that were supposed to give a 100 hp increase and, in case we ever wanted to go totally crazy, a second set of jets to give 150 hp increase!!!

As with all things, this move turned out to be a double-edged sword in that we started to hole pistons at the top end.  This was cured by a change to forged pistons with a lower compression ratio, on straight methanol Jim had the compression ratio set somewhere around 15 to 1 but dropped this to about 12 to 1 to solve the problem, more accurate figures can’t be given because Jim was always a little vague as to the exact specification of his engines!!   A second, more serious, problem also arose.  Paranoia had up until this time very successfully used a lock-up clutch that Jim had a large hand in developing, it was virtually bullet proof and when released at the start of a run only did one thing, it locked up solid with a bang.  With the large reciprocating mass of the engine this led to some demon launches from the car, how good we never knew as at that time there was no measurement of the 60 foot times, all you got was an elapsed time for the quarter plus the speed at the finish line.  With the nitrous on, at the hit, Paranoia would start to launch but then the whole back end of the car would be flung violently up into the air, high enough to see anything up to 12” of daylight under both rear slicks.  Switching the nitrous off for the launch cured the problem but this was not the ideal solution and negatively affected the ET’s.  After much head scratching, and careful observation, it was found that at the hit the rear slicks were being wound up, like a top fuel car when big wrinkles appear in the sidewalls, but unlike a top fuel car we didn’t have enough power to carry this forward and the windup was being violently released throwing the back of the car into the air.  The solution was simple, we needed a slider clutch, the problem was that, as with all things to do with the Jaguar engine, nobody made one commercially so we would have to make our own.  With Jim’s help a twin plate slider clutch was constructed and fitted to the car, this cured the problems and the nitrous could now be used off the line.

Paranoia now marched fairly smartly into the mid 9’s and so it was time for the last major upgrade.  The chassis went back into the workshop and the front suspension was removed, not because there was anything wrong with it but Alan and Brian had never been happy with the look of the original torsion bar setup, and replaced it with solid A-frames welded to the chassis.  The back axle was also replaced with a narrowed 9” Ford item.  Up till this time the engine had been fitted with the standard E Type induction setup of three 2” SU carbs, each mounted on its own manifold feeding 2 cylinders, modified to run methanol.  With Jim’s help a fuel injection system was constructed and fitted to the engine along with two collector exhausts to replace the six pipes that it used to run (see picture above).  This was enough to push Paranoia into the low 9’s and it was probably, at that time, the fastest Jag-powered dragster in the world.  Paranoia set its best elapsed time of 9.41 seconds at 140 mph in 1984 using a 3.8 litre ( 231 ci ) engine, straight methanol and 100 hp of nitrous in a car weighing around 1,800 pounds.  (The 150 hp jets were still in the bottom of the toolbox!!)

At the end of 1984, Alan and Brian had won several national championships and loads of trophies for best engineering, best car and so on.  They had successfully raced Paranoia in Europe in the fledgling scene developing over there, racing and winning at events held at Le Mans and Circuit Paul Ricard, attended drag racing demonstrations at Leddon in the south of France, and Bologna in Italy.  They had been invited to and attended static shows in Germany and Italy as well as in England.  By the end of 1984, Alan had three small children and his wife’s business trimming dogs had really taken off, so they were both desperately short of time and Alan, reluctantly, decided that he needed to retire and might as well go out at the top.  I think that, initially, this was to be a temporary thing but it subsequently turned out to be permanent.

Brian bought Alan’s share of the car and continued to race, and develop, the car over the next ten years, running in the high 8's on methanol and nitrous, winning more championships, being featured in Custom Car Magazine again and running nitro to lower the best time to 8.77 at 156 mph.  In 1995, with his own fabrication business taking more and more of his time, he decided to retire and the car was sold to its present owner Martin Holgate.

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