All of the pictures on these pages were taken by readers of
The Acceleration Archive who have kindly agreed to share them with us.
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Click on any image to get the bigger picture |
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The
first five pictures were contributed by Clive Rooms who is no stranger to these
pages. |
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Ray Hoare driving his Saxon rear engined
dragster. |
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'Flying' Phil Elson at the helm of his Sneaky T supercharged Fuel Altered. |
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The last
two of Clive's pictures on this page feature Freddie Whittle's blown Fuel
Altered Shutdown. The picture on the left was taken at Blackbushe, the
one below (appropriately enough) in the shutdown area at Santa Pod. Freddie
must have been going a bit when Clive took this because one rear wheel is
definitely off the ground, and the other one looks like it is too. |
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The next five pictures were taken by Mike Dawson who was an old school friend of mine so no favouritism here obviously. This is a fine pit shot of Freddie Whittle's Shutdown taken at Santa Pod. The gent bending down is obviously intrigued by the method of mounting the engine which was very high up in order to aid weight transfer to the rear tyres. |
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Mike had a Turner sports car in which we used to go to the Pod in the early 1970s. They were pretty few and far between even back then so we were quite surprised to see this example being raced in the street altered class. |
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This is the famous (and very mad) Metronome Fuel Altered built by Mark Stratton and driven by Ed Shaver. It was a Bond Bug fitted with an engine transplanted from the Firefly Top Fuel Dragster. |
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Colin Mullan's Invader with the original one-piece Vauxhall Viva HB body. It was powered by a small block Chevy as I recall. |
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The last of Mike's shots (for the time being at least) features the Alleycat Fordson panel van competition altered of which more below. |
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Mike's picture of Alleycat leads nicely
into these pictures of the car which were submitted by Malcolm Beakhust who
built the car with Steve Gillian, Chris Wilson and Malcolm Watts around 1970-1971.
The captions are all by Malcolm. |
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The second picture was taken at a car show in Stockholm in February 1971. The journey there could fill a book! (see below - Ed.) |
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On the way to the car show in Sweden when about 50 miles
from Gothenberg, one of the wheel bearings on the trailer seized up. We tried desperately to get some assistance
from the AA 5 Star cover that we had but to no avail. We discovered that the HQ of SKF bearings was
back in Gothenberg, so we determined to go back and get one the next
morning. We were, we thought, nowhere
near any accommodation so we stayed in the car overnight to look after
Alleycat. Big mistake! The temperature went down
to -20C, we
thought we would lose our toes! |
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We ran the car for a season, but on one run, a con-rod went
through the side of the block (oil down -sorry). An engine re-build followed
which had us spending what then was a fortune on a Weslake
head. |
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The
final four pictures on this page were submitted by Dudley Wilson and were taken
at the Dragfest held in 1964 at RAF Church Fenton. |
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This shot is not terribly clear but I have no hesitation whatsoever in including it, it shows George on Super Nero approaching the line obviously about to make a run. |
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Dudley thinks this is the legendary TV
Tommy Ivo's car in the pits. However, fellow Readers' Gallery contributor Clive
Rooms thinks that this is the Dos Palmos dragster because Ivo's car was full
bodied. |
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And to finish this page off in real style, how about Don Garlits and Tommy Ivo blasting off the line with their slicks blazing? |
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All material on this site is copyright and should not be reproduced without permission |
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