History of a Lola T492 Sports 2000 chassis?

[driftwood]

welcome to forums everyday is another topic ( or not) as for mars bars & marianne that is the 60`s and they say if you remember the 60`s you where NOT there!
Doris would never have clumped me i was too young and sweet then but reckon many a mechanic or driver got the sharp end of her tongue over the years
I recall 1 race where the time keepers had Rob not on pole ( like 2nd row or something) and George went up with Doris`s times to proove them wrong

cant argue today with transponders ( thats a digital computorised timing device thing we put on cars today Clive!) and now we can have every lap timed and on line to look at later

[911thillclimber]

Ooops, got the wrong end of the stick...
My thread is all here.
Whewww.

[Clive Brown]

Just thinking about it , 911thillclimber's car would be topped off perfectly by pink Karmann Ghia bodywork with a big rear wing .... VW , Audi , Porsche - all the same , really !

[driftwood]

personally i would fit 908/3

http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/car/8...che-908-3.html

[Clive Brown]

Isn't a Transponder the Pontiac equivalent of a Z-28 Camaro , or something ? Al Weyman would know ....

[Clive Brown]

.... or one of those ice-skating robots in the Citroen advertisement ?

[911thillclimber]

[Clive Brown]

Not legal now ! I remember the b**tards making the guys with Group 6 Chevrons cover the rear tyres .

[911thillclimber]

The 908 is a true gem of a sports racer.

Getting back to the origin of the thread, and this car's history.

I am back to early 80's, a Lola T492 owned at the time by Alan Humberstone.
It gets a Pink K Ghia body with a bold black stripe and a huge rear wing.

I gather the unraced car gets stored in a large barn/attic and the body gets trashed over the years. (agree the KG body would be great on a hillclimber!)

Surely it is 'easy' to get further back to this cars history?

Tomorrow A pro welder is MIG/TIG welding the now stripped tub.

I can now see that the drivers side of the tub has been re-rivited in places compared to the 'passengers' side (pop verses solid rivits.)
The panels which are Lola are the ones that should have the chassis plate!

I still think this tub has suffered a minor off and has been reclaimed in the early 80's when it was young (T 492's are 1978 cars).

So!

Anyone's brain cells recalling anything at all?

[Clive Brown]

Two questions .

Firstly , is this a repair to the actual tub , or to an extension to the tub added to better fit it to Skoda/Karmann Ghia bodywork ?

Secondly , this might sound silly , but are the pop rivets common-or-garden Mickey Mouse Halfords-style aluminium pop rivets , or the monel pop rivets used in aircraft construction ? Easy to tell , just try drilling one out ! The former are a soft aluminium alloy , whereas the latter are as hard as your mother-in-law !

Despite The Drifter's wise words , which should not be lightly dismissed , I still think this might be an ex-Tony Dickinson car .

[911thillclimber]

If it is a repair it was a long time ago as the alloy surface finish looks like the original panels. I have correct solid rivits to fit in place of the pops, so will find out soon if they are 'mother-in-law' rivits.

The floor panels look undisturbed, just the lower bulkhead/rear floor pan rivits are pops one side, solids the other.

The mods made by Tony Harman and John Scheneider are well executed, rivited tightly and foam filled.
I am welding the rear frame tomorrow so the tub will be fully inverted so I can see exactly what the floor is like.
There are many bolt/rivit holes in the floor, esp just behind the drivers seat but that could be where the fuel system was or even a fire system.

The car has a sizable fuel tank foam filled, about 5 gallons at a guess.

The passengers side panel top was drilled for the Lola chassis plate position and those holes filled with 2 pops years ago. There is no trace of there being a plate there at all in the past.

I would love it to be the Tony D car. At least I could step closer to the chassis number and close the history off.

Can anyone recall and unique features of the T dickinson chassis/body/side pods?

On this car on the passengers side custom made side pods there is a well made side scoop to get air to something small, certainly not a radiator at all.

The rear side pod on the drivers side is blank. I wonder just where the rad was on the car, but the T 490 had the water rad in the front and this car has 2 hose-sized holes in the front just as the Lola T 490 had.

Good mystery this one!

[911thillclimber]

Some pics of the tub:






This custom seat is unique too. Came with the car.

[911thillclimber]

Chassis now fully MIG welded so tub is inverted.
The tub has not been repaired. The Lola solid rivits are all in place deep into the tub's box sections, and some of the rivits are worn down through trailer scrapes and the suchlike.

I will need to replace about 12 rivits in all.

Apart from obvious 'offs' scrapes all seems ok with the underpan, but it does look second-hand...

[Steve Wilkinson]

The two pontoons at either side definately look like they have been added well after the rest of the tub was put together.

[911thillclimber]

I know Tony Harman and John Scheneider did those mods Steve.

Just found this revealing pic of tony Dickinson's Skoda, and my Lola has not one bit resembling this car! (or is there more than one TD car?)
This car does however have exactly the same wheels os my Lola..

[Russell B.]

Here is a couple of photo's from my fathers archive taken at Lydden Hill on 14th April 1985. Alan Humberstone was a late entry for the Kent Performance Cars Special Saloons race. This is believed to be an early outing for him since acquiring the car, previously having competed a Sunbeam Stiletto Ford 1298 in the late 70s. Does this help?!

[Clive Brown]

Now that's Tony Dickinson's second car , exactly as I remember it . Hart 420R , deep dish rear wheels . Compare this with the pictures previously posted allegedly showing the second car at Oulton in 1978 ; those look like original Lola T290 wheels . If your car is not ex-Dickinson via Humberstone , just exactly where did it come from ?

Against this , Harry did have both a Hart 420R and an FG400 gearbox . It was used in a Stiletto ( based initially on an Elden S2000 - complete heap of s**t ) which Rob Mason built and raced for a season in selected Special Saloon , Donington GT , and Super Saloon races in ( ? ) 1979 . I particularly remember winning the Super Saloon round at Mondello Park that season . This car later became Alan's second 1300BDH Stiletto , BDH and Mk.9 replacing the Hart / FG400 .

[Clive Brown]

Thinking about this , whilst the T490 had a front radiator , the T492 had side radiators , and in that era , chassis upgrades were certainly commonplace . Cooling a Sports 2000 motor was fairly simple because of its low specific output , but I know from experience with David Enderby's VW Karmann Ghia , which was based on a Tiga SC79 and used a full-house Imp motor , that we struggled to cool the car on warm days using the original pair of side-mounted radiators , and I had to make some addtional deflectors for the radiator ducts to cool it properly . I doubt if the S2000 side radiators would have kept a Hart 420R cool , so even if the car was based on a T492 , there would have been good reasons to move the water radiator to the front . A Hart 420R would have needed a fairly large oil cooler , and I clearly recall that the gearbox on Tony Dickinson's car had the optional gearbox oil pump , so it might well also have had a gearbox oil cooler . Furthermore , if the car had inboard rear brakes , I would also have wanted to direct cooling air to those as well !

Finally , as it seems that the car finished its days with a Ford BDT , it would also surely have had some form of intercooler , and maybe a cold air duct to feed the compressor intake . Any of the above might explain the NACA duct in the right-hand side pod extension piece . Incidentally , if you look at the pictures of the Pink Pig in Skoda-bodied form at Lydden , it clearly has some kind of opening in the lower right rear sidepod !

[911thillclimber]

Clive! That is fantastic.

That clearly is the Pink ghia shell i know went on my car, and was delapidated on the car when Mike bought it about 6 years ago. (I bought it off Mike this year without the body, a new Lola pattern cage and a new T492 two piece body.
The drivers side pod is complete, no rad holes etc at all, and I think it is the pair fitted for the Ghia body as it has side clips and an irregular shape, about 60mm wider each side than the T 492 would have.

Mike told me it used to have 'a 500bhp' Cosworth engine which was missing when he got the car (and no box either).

The wheels I have are painted badly in 'dulux' white, and are 12'' wide and have the deep dish that describes a cone. I now have outboard brakes for the car so have another set of rims (that were spares with the car). The fromts are as the pictures and painted neatly in white.

Considering the car over the years has had so many different engines there are very very few battle scares, but plenty of pop rivit holes.

I know I want to say this, but it does all point to the second TD car based on a T 490 in 79 when that car would be 2 years old.

Is TD still around I wonder? Can't find him on Google except a race record of him racing a Skoda in 79 based on the T 470.

Thank you very much for this big step forward. Graham.

[911thillclimber]

Just looked harder at the pics.

From what I've been told, in 85 ish Humberstone had a Karmann Ghia body made from the Dr Enderby moulds by fibresport (confirmed by them) It was pink, black stripe and a huge wing.

In the pics that pink body is a Skoda!

So: maybe the Skoda shell was replaced by the Ghia shell when Humberstone bought the car off TD.
I know Tony Harman and John Scheneider worked on Humberstones car for Peter H doing most (all?) the alloy mods you see in the pics of the Lola above.

I am also told Humberstones (Harry or Peter) did not race the car when done.

[driftwood]

when yu lot kep waffling about the 2nd tony d skoda are we talking of the 2nd lola based car or teh 2nd car fulstop
the 1st TD skoda was ex alec poole/chris meek fvc car from 1974
the 2nd TD skoda was lola T290 based with hart- the B&W foto shows the
T290 style gearbox V frame to roll hoop this car ran in 79 onwards

I have spoken about 2 years ago to Td about his current T290 and the skoda car hence why i know what car he bought from Cloud engineering at le Mans 1978 race and all spares blah blah blah Pilbeam building spare tub ( cut down) to make the skoda as well as having seen the stripped out tub
however i need to locate his tel no to clarify if he ever had t490 based car after the T290 car

[911thillclimber]

That would be great if you could as it would clear this up once and for all.
There is a full description found of the 2 TD cars (will copy here when I find it again) that says the second car was T 492 based and he raced it in 79.

Of course the Internet can be wrong!

That article says he had just 2 Skodas, and the Lola T 490 was the second one.

[Steve Wilkinson]

Originally Posted by Clive Brown

Now that's Tony Dickinson's second car , exactly as I remember it . Hart 420R , deep dish rear wheels . Compare this with the pictures previously posted allegedly showing the second car at Oulton in 1978 ; those look like original Lola T290 wheels . If your car is not ex-Dickinson via Humberstone , just exactly where did it come from ?

Against this , Harry did have both a Hart 420R and an FG400 gearbox . It was used in a Stiletto ( based initially on an Elden S2000 - complete heap of s**t ) which Rob Mason built and raced for a season in selected Special Saloon , Donington GT , and Super Saloon races in ( ? ) 1979 . I particularly remember winning the Super Saloon round at Mondello Park that season . This car later became Alan's second 1300BDH Stiletto , BDH and Mk.9 replacing the Hart / FG400 .

CLIVE, I assume you are refering to the photo below in your post above. Firstly the photo IS of Tony Dickinson, secondly it was taken in 1978 at Oulton Park, thirdly at no point did I stipulate it was his "second car".

SO there is no ALLEGEDLY about it.

[Clive Brown]

The car shown at Lydden is indeed a Skoda , at that time fitted with a Hart 420R ; that's Harry's son Alan driving it . Harry had that car rebodied to make the Karmann Ghia . Not too difficult , because the wheelbase of the two standard road cars is virtually identical . To me , those deep cone rear wheels are a dead give-away that your chassis is indeed the final Tony Dickinson Skoda .

Steve W. , I wasn't casting nasturtions ; the "allegedly" refers to the second car thing , because I'm getting very confused about Tony Dickinson's Skodas , how many there were of them , when they ran , what powered them , and just what chassis they were based on ! Other than that , the whole thing is crystal clear to me !

[Clive Brown]

Just a thought ; is it possible that there were two iterations of Tony Dickinson's second Skoda , the Hart-powered car ? What I have to date been calling ' the second car ' I first saw at the opening round of the Wendy Wools Special Sal;oon championship one season ; could it be that over the winter , Tony and his team had rebuilt the car , changing it from the ex-Cloud Engineering T290 chassis to the T492 chassis that 911thillclimber now owns ? It would certainly have been lighter , and would have had ( amongst other things ) a much smaller fuel cell than a long-distance Group 6 two litre sports car .

This is purely a hypothesis , but it would explain the presence of a discarded T290 tub with Skoda roll cage , lurking in a yard somewhere !