Tag Archives: Boeing

Wings & Wheels – Dunsfold Aerodrome

Last Monday I went to Dunsfold Aerodrome for a bit of a school reunion organised by my friend David. The last time I attended an event similar to Wings & Wheels was at Biggin Hill in 1972 when as a thirteen year old I was impressed by both the motor vehicles on display and the aircraft.

While I was looking for David after arriving I stumbled across the old and new faces of the Red Arrow’s the little Folland Gnat which was used by the display team from 1965 until they were replaced by the larger BAe Hawk in 1979.

The AEC Regent double deck bus, predecessor of the much loved Routemaster, was developed in 1939. RT2775 seen here is one of three that were selected to represent the British Travel and Holidays Association and London Transport on a tour of the USA and Canada to promote travel to Britain and the purchase of British products in 1952. Because of it’s special status as an ambassador abroad it unusually kept it’s identity through out it’s working life when it returned to the streets of in 1953 where it remained in service until 1977 after which it became part of the Cobham Bus Museum which is now housed at Brooklands.

One of several pleasant surprises at Duxford was seeing this 1970 Surtees Ford TS7 designed in part by Peter Connew who regular GALPOT readers will remember went on to design and build his own eponymous Grand Prix car after his work on the TS7 was completed.

Sahab Ahmed with whom Peter worked on the design of the TS7 can be seen on the left of McLaren test driver Oliver Turvey and John Surtees, the only man to win World Championships on two and four wheels in the photo above.

As someone prone two vertigo by the time I get to the third rung on a ladder I found the Breitling Wing Walkers a genuinely mind boggling sight. A team of six pilots share the flying duties of the pair of 1940’s era Boeing Stearmans, while a team of six very brave women share the wing walking duties while traveling at 150 mph and experiencing up to 4G !

A couple of huge explosions on the ground which scared the brown stuff out of me as I had my back to the airfield at the time preempted the arrival of a pair of swing wing Panavia Tornado GR4’s and a simulated ground attack demonstration. These aircraft which have been operation for the last 20 years were deployed last year in the liberation of Libya and are currently deployed as part of the allied forces in Afghanistan. With two Rolls Royce conceived RB199 jet engines fitted with afterburners this multirole platform can reach speeds of Mach 2.

Manufactured in Buffalo New York the 1943 Curtis P40M Kittyhawk / Warhawk fighter seen above served in the Royal Canadian Airforce amassing just 732 flying hours before it was retired in 1950 when it became an instructional aircraft at Oregon State University. In the early 80’s after a long period of storage she was restored to full airworthiness in California. More recently she was flown to Prague where she stared in the film Red Tails released earlier this year.

The Napier Railton seen above not only holds the Brooklands lap record in perpetuity but after the ’39-’45 war it was fitted with heftey aircraft style Dunlop rear disc brakes and used to test experimental aircraft braking parachutes on this very same runway by the GQ Parachute Company which was based at Dunsfold Aerodrome.
Some of the backdrops in today’s photographs may also be familiar to avid fans of the Top Gear television show which operates from a studio on the site.

Among the many vehicles demonstrated on the runway was this 1961 Daimler SP250 which I post a picture of especially for one of GALPOT’s most loyal readers Ryan also known as Racer 187.

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the programme which tells me that the side car combination above is a 1972 Honda, but I am reasonably certain the person at the helm is the remarkable Neil Trundle who has spent over 40 years in motorsport working with the likes of Jack Brabham, setting up shop with Ron Dennis building the famous six wheel Tyrrell P3/4’s then joining Dennis again at Project 4 Motorsport which took over McLaren. If you know what type of combination Neil is riding please do not hesitate to chime in below.

As the day came to an the 1945 North American P51-D Mustang, above on the left and 1943 Supermarine Spitfire IXB gave us a more than welcome double dose of, respectively, Packard and Rolls Royce built Merlin music as they waltzed the sky.

Just before I said good bye to my school friends and left the last flying Avro Vulcan caressed the sky and if nothing else showed that if it had ever been used as originally intended, to deliver a nuclear payload, it would have wasted the world in mutually assured destruction with elegance and grace. As it was after the Vulcan’s nuclear defense capabilities were deemed surplus to requirements several of them were converted for low level conventional bombing roles. A single Vulcan delivered twenty one 1,000lbs on Port Stanley airport in 1981, though it is debatable how effective the worlds longest range bombing sortie was as Argentinian forces, which had invaded the Falklands Islands, were able to repair the damage to the runway. The invaders were subsequently dispatched by the yomping British ground forces. The Vulcans were eventually replaced by the Panavia Tornado’s seen at Dunsfold earlier in the day.

This Vulcan has been restored to airworthy condition by The Vulcan To The Sky trust thanks to over £7 million raised from public subscription, if you are interested in helping to keep it in the air please visit the Vulcan to the sky site linked here.

Thanks for joining me on this “Wings & Wheels” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow when I will be breaking from the usual Tuesday MG edition to celebrate an unusual 45th Anniversary. Don’t forget to come back now !

Gas Turbine Highboy – ’32 Ford Boeing Roadster

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One of the earliest motoring books I was given was called Cars Cars Cars Cars by SCH Davis, published by Hamlyn in 1969, from memory the concluding chapter dealt with the future of motoring with a look at some of the gas turbine passenger concept vehicles that had been unveiled over the previous 10 or 20 years.

Unfortunately the promise of the so called ‘Jet Car’ has yet to become reality and this had troubled Boeing Engineer Leonard Williams, a full ten years before I read about them, so that when he heard of the opportunity to buy a government surplus Boeing gas turbine for $500 he took the opportunity to build the very first privately owned gas turbine motor vehicle.

The story of Len’s gas turbine car began after a trip to the road races and Concours d’Elegance at Watkins Glen in 1949 where he was deeply impressed by a 1932 Highboy Roadster from Massachusetts fitted with an immaculate flat head Mercury motor, hydraulic brakes and a black lacquer paint job which stood out among the Duesenbergs, Jaguars, Ferraris, and sundry European exotica.

After returning to Willow Run Michigan where he was studying Leonard purchased a a rusty ’32 Roadster from the son of Preston Tucker, of Tucker cars, who was living with his Grandmother in Ypsilanti for $50. Len bought a ’41 Ford for a $100 and swapped over the motor, transmission, brakes and wheels over to his Roadster making a few improvement’s to the motor along with a set of Pontiac tail lights.

Upon graduating from the University of Michigan in 1950 Len moved with his wife Gladys to Seattle where he was employed Boeing and towed his not quite complete Roadster west behind his ’41 Chevrolet. Once Len had finished transforming the Roadster into a Hot Rod he used it as his daily transportation and joined the Dragons Hot Rod Club who used to run a 1250 ft drag strip at Arlington Airport for fun. Above Lens Roadster can be seen at Arlington fitted with token mud guards / fenders as required by the State of Washington.

While running at Arlington the ’41 Ford Motor in the Roadster was eventually replaced with a ’49/’50 303 inch / 4965 cc Oldsmobile motor that was machined out to 331 cui / 5425 cc and fitted with a four barrel carburetor. Len drove his Roadster to Bonneville for the Southern California Timing Association Speed trials in ’51, ’52 and ’54s and was timed at 134.12 mph. This was before the establishment of a street legal class and was no match for the trailered cars.

Len put the Roadster aside after Bonneville in ’54 while he fixed up a ’33 five window Coupé with a 283 cui / 4637 cc Chevrolet motor and Corvette cams and manifolds that was capable of 95 mph in 2nd gear. By the time he got back to the Roadster it was suffering from salt corrosion so he decided to strip the car for sand blasting and resprayed the chassis red and body white.

It was after he completed rebuilding the Olds motor for the Roadster and before he had reinstalled it that Len found out about a surplus Boeing 502-8 gas turbine, as used in the military version of a Cessna 170 the L19 reconnaissance aircraft, which he acquired from a New York government surplus lot.

Detailed records indicated that the motor Len purchased had been used to set the Class C small plane altitude record at 37,062 feet it was then put into storage until it became surplus. More surprisingly the motor fitted into the engine bay like a glove, apart manufacturing a couple of steel straps to bolt the motor to the chassis frame, splitting the radius rods, manufacturing an adaptor to connect the turbine output shaft to the Roadsters propshaft, a pair of five inch diameter tailpipes and fitting a 35 gallon fuel tank not much else had to be done, as Len said at the time “it was almost as though Henry (Ford) had the turbine in mind when he built the car (in 1932)”.

The Boeing 502 gas turbine features a combustion chamber which creates hot air that is forced by a fan through an enclosed space at the end of which a second fan attached to an output shaft gets spun before entering the exhaust pipe. Because the two fans are not directly connected there is no need for a gearbox effectively providing the motor with a built in infinitely variable transmission. In theory one could stand on the brakes and run the gas turbine at maximum 37,000 rpm without stalling the motor, though one might burn out the fan blades if one tried this.

In the rush to complete the car Len, like Rover who manufactured the T4 concept gas turbine car around the same time, dispensed with fitting a reverse gear, however despite the absence of reverse Len resumed driving his ’32 Roadster to work at Boeing’s Plant One.

The Roadster was now capable of 0 – 60 in 5 seconds but was conservatively geared at the rear axle for a top speed of just 75 mph, though Len later fitted a higher gear rear axle and saw an indicated top speed of between 110 mph and 115 mph, but he never ran his turbine powered roadster in competition.

Despite being able to run on a variety of fuels diesel to Jet A one of the drawbacks of the efficient producer of power compared to weight is the inefficient use of fuel, a tear jerking 5-6 mpg was the best Len got from his roadster which was prohibitive even when fuel was available at 16¢ a gallon back in the day.

Len’s gas turbine Roadster project was entirely self funded, Len estimates that by 1962 he had spent around $1500 on the car and a lot of spare time. Eagle eyed GALPOT readers may remember it was around this time that Len’s work took him to Indianapolis with the John Zink Trackburner.

Today Lens ’32 Roadster can be seen at the Le May Museum, unfortunately one of the turbine wheels was burnt out during a demonstration in 2006 and has yet to be repaired.

My thanks to Mr Leonard Williams for today’s remarkable story of private innovation, more details of which can be found on Lens website linked here.

Thanks for joining me on this Gas Turbine edition of ‘Getting’ a li’l psycho on tyres’, I hope you will join me again tomorrow.

Wishing everyone a merry festive season, I’ll be back tomorrow with a short seasonal blog to celebrate a GALPOT contributors birthday. Don’t forget to come back now !

PS Don’t forget …

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1962 DNQ – John Zink Trackburner

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The other day I caught a bit of a radio programme about interview questions asked of potential Oxbridge (Oxford & Cambridge) university students, one of which was “If you are not in California how do you know it exists ?”

This got me thinking about if one was not at a particular race how could one know what happened ?

Looking into the story behind today’s photograph by Ed Arnaudin several ‘beliefs’ I have long held were ‘corrected’, namely that after the appearance of Jack Brabham’s Cooper Coventry Climax T54 the next car with an engine in the back to appear at Indianapolis was Jim Clark’s #92 Lotus Ford 29 in 1963.

Much to my surprise I found out that there were two rear engine vehicle types at Indianapolis in 1962 !

The John Zink Trackburner, above, and Mickey Thompson’s Harvey Aluminium Special, remarkably they were both driven by Dan Gurney who invited Colin Chapman of Lotus over, all expenses paid, for the 1962 Indy 500 in an attempt to secure a deal with Lotus & Ford to have a winning shot at the race in 1963 !

The history of running turbines in Indy cars goes back to 1955 when a Kurtis Kraft 3000 chassis was fitted with a 175 hp Gas Turbine with the support of USAF General Curtis Le May. This vehicle known as the SAC Fireboid, see images at the bottom of this link, was used for testing by Firestone and for a demonstration at Indy in 1955.

In 1958 a Mr Williams of the Boeing Aircraft Company approached Frank Kurtis in 1958 to design a purpose made turbine powered vehicle, allegedly Frank drew up plans for a vehicle with the engine at the rear, primarily do deal with the 1000º F plus exhaust gas temperatures. However the powers that be at USAC were not sufficiently timely or co-operative to get the project up and running.

For 1962 the 1955 and ’56 winning owner John Zink had his Chief Mechanic Denny Moore build a rear engine chassis to take a Boeing Turbine.

Prior to the Indy 500 the car was tested and crashed by John ‘Jack’ Zink at his own private 5/8ths mile circuit which included 11º banking ! After repairs the car was taken to Indianapolis where the rookie road racer Dan Gurney tried it after passing his Rookie test in a front engine Roadster.

Gurney managed to run at 143 mph not fast enough to qualify in the gas turbine Trackburner and felt that though more speed was achievable throttle lag in traffic would present insurmountable problems during the race. Dan ended up qualifying and racing Thompson’s Buick stock block, under, powered Harvey Aluminium Special instead.

Indy veteran Duane Carter was next to run in the Gas Turbine Trackburner, Carter ran slower in the corners but faster on the straights than Gurney recording a best time of 142 mph.

Duane qualified for the ’62 Indy 500 in a conventional roadster belonging to Zink and Bill Cheesebourg, most likely the driver seen in the car here, had a shot at running in the turbine Trackburner he managed a best time of 145 mph but like Gurney fancied his chances in a Buick stock block powered Thompson, unlike Gurney he could not get up to qualifying speed before crashing.

Finally Duane Carter in danger of being bumped off the grid had one more shot at qualifying in the turbine Trackburner but he could not record a time faster than 143 mph. It was concluded that despite running nearly a full race distance during qualification for the 500 the combination of throttle lag, high track side temperatures, and inconsistencies born out of the three different drivers who spent time in the cockpit led to the cars failure to qualify.

My thanks to Steve Arnadin for scanning his Dad’s photograph, to Tom, E.B, Michael, Tim, at The Nostalgia Forum, for filling a large gap in my knowledge.

Hope you have enjoyed today’s belief changing edition of ‘Gettin’ a lil’ psycho on tyres’ and that you’ll join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

Carroll’s Cat faster than a 250 F – Lister Jaguar BHL 128

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Moving on 20 years from yesterdays blog but staying with the Lister Jaguar cars of the late 50’s, this one has a proud boast thanks Bobby Bell who is seen here standing in the fire suit, behind the car, at the British Grand Prix meeting where he was competing in the Lloyds & Scottish championship.

Bobby Bell, who kindly shared the details about today’s story is one half of Bell & Covill purveyors of fine, approximately 25,000 at last count, motor cars which have been sold to customers from Twickenham to Tobago.

One might imagine from the BRG and yellow paint job that this vehicle had been raced by Archie Scott Brown to some of the many Lister Jaguar victories, however it transpires that nothing could be further from the truth.

According to Doug Nye’s 2nd edition, reasonably priced, ‘Powered by Jaguar‘ the 1959 Lister Jaguar BHL 128 was originally supplied to Carroll Shelby Sports Cars Inc, Dallas Texas as a rolling chassis built to accept an American made body and Chevrolet V8 engine.

BHL 128 also known as ‘the Boeing Car’ is said to have been part of a Land Speed Record project with input from Boeing and master minded by John Fitch, Doug’s research categorically states John Fitch the former Mercedes Driver and Safety Engineer had absolutely no involvement in such a project.

What ever the outcome of the Boeing project the vehicle has no identifiable ‘in period’ racing history and was recovered to England around 1969 and acquired by Peter Sargent around 1970. Between 1970 and the mid 70’s BHL 128 was fitted with both a 3.8 / 231 cui XK Jaguar motor and a, retrospective, 1958 low frontal area ‘Knobbly’ body in preference to the historically more accurate, but less successful, 1959 Costin body.

Bobby tells me that he acquired BHL 128 in the mid 70’s and raced it to many historic race victories and a Lloyds & Scottish Championship.

However one of his favourite memories was the day he put BHL 128 on pole for the 1978 historic race at Le Mans, with a time that would easily have qualified for the 24 hours race proper, ahead of Stirling Moss and Willie Green one of the best if not the best historic racer of all time.

Bobby tells me that on that day BHL 128 was fitted with a 2.9 high ratio back axle which allowed him to hit approximately 175 mph on the 4 mile Mulsanne straight at 6000 rpm.

Both Willie Green in his D-type Jaguar and Moss driving a far superior handling open wheel Grand Prix Maserati 250 F made up ground on the Lister in the corners but could not keep pace with the Lister on La Sarthe’s long straights.

Unfortunately on the third lap of the race, the crankshaft broke and as Bobby says, ‘that was that’. Stirling might have added “Better to lose honorably in a British car than win in a foreign one”, though if he did, it was not recorded on this particular occasion.

Bobby sold the car in the mid ’80’s and it has since undergone restoration and now belongs to a lucky Steven Gibbs.

My thanks to Bobby Bell for sharing today’s story and to Doug Nye, David Mckinney, Belmondo, Dutchy, Julian Bronson, and Robert Barker at The Nostalgia Forum for additional comments going back to May last year.

Thanks for joining me for a week of Big Cat history, I hope you’ll join me again tomorrow for everyone’s favourite ‘Ferrari Friday’ when I’ll be looking at one of a series of 387 Ferrari’s none of which were sold as new in the United States. Don’t forget to come back now !

Gettin' A Li'l Psycho On Tyres

Art Tidesco blogs on all things motoring

Tag Archives: Boeing

Wings & Wheels – Dunsfold Aerodrome

Gas Turbine Highboy – ’32 Ford Boeing Roadster

1962 DNQ – John Zink Trackburner

Carroll’s Cat faster than a 250 F – Lister Jaguar BHL 128