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Photo courtesy of Dave Riswick, John Woolfe Racing
(This article was first published in the February 1972 edition of Custom Car magazine)
G-W Racing Enterprises - competition alias for the Gleadow Brothers and Steve Warner - own one of the quickest upright Populars in the country. Motor Psycho, a purple people eater with green shades and big boots that covers the quarter in a crazy 12.14 seconds at 111mph. A big Oldsmobile motor is half the secret, but it's taken something like two years' work and £800 cash to get the rest of the car's mechanicals in a position to put power on the ground.
First outings with the beast at the tail end of the '70 season produced times in the 15-second bracket due to hang-ups with the four-speed Hydro auto trans set-up. Motor Psycho was more splutter than torque. Then last winter the boys set about dropping in a '54 four-speed manual Jag box with an 11in Schiefer Rev-Loc clutch - and things started to work.
The car's 1953 Olds mill is a 303-cuber bored out to a little over 5.3 litres - putting Motor Psycho in the B class - and equipped with ported '58 heads, Jahns flat-top pistons, Grant rings, Vandervell bearings, a Moon 320-degree cam and, it is rumoured, six Solex twin-chokes. Compression ratio is 10.75-to-1.
Fuel is methanol, delivered by a Titan aircraft pump and ignited via a Vertex mag by a bunch of A32 Autolites. Fram sponsor the team with filters for the 40-weight Valvoline lube.
With the current transmission set-up, power goes through a Jag propshaft and winds up cranking a 4.3 Poncho rear-end, widened Austin wheels and a set of boots with a history. Motor Psycho is the proud wearer of a set of 9.00 by 15in Firestone smoker slicks that once belonged on Dean Moon's Mooneyes machine, which came a-draggin' to this country way back in '63.
Allan Herridge, who together with John Harrison, Brian Gleadow, Phil Riley and Paul Ross, spent long hours working on the car, was responsible for the tube front axle - chromed by North Herts Plating Co. Front hubs are '56 Popular mated with E93A spindles from an Anglia, while the '51 Vauxhall Velox wheels carry Pirelli 155 by 15 rubber.
Front suspension is a combination of E93A cart springs, and Mini dampers (what else can you do with Minis but jump up and down on them?). Unlike orthodox competition altereds the car incorporates rear suspension - '70 Vauxhall Viva style. Brakes (rear only) are stock Pontiac, backed up with an 8ft cross-form Irvin chute.
Motor Psycho's steering arrangements employ an E93A box and - to counter wheel-wobble problems - a Vee-Dub steering damper. Tiller is a 10in Moto-Lita.
The original '56 Popular chassis was retained and fitted with a NASCAR-type roll-cage. Many of the body panels are glass fibre - the front-end home-made and door and boot lid panels coming from Jerry Jackson. Unity Paint & Panel of Stotfield, Beds, carefully applied the Ford aubergine paint (plus lacquer) and a friend called John Collier freaked out the body lettering. Just about the last items to go on board were the green plastic windows.
G-W Racing seem to have gotten most of the power bugs out of the car now and only loss of traction - like wheelspin all through second - is hurting ETs. What's the betting there's a new set of wrinkle-walls and wheelie-bars coming up?
Mike Lintern
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