History of a Lola T492 Sports 2000 chassis?

[morninggents]

I think it needs to be used, Graham. There's a closed wheel car race at the Silverstone Walter Hayes meeting next weekend. It'll help you sort out the niggles!

[911thillclimber]

But this is a race car without niggles!
It has a pretend race driver full of niggles!!

Hoping to buy an old Honda bike tomorrow to stop me messing about.

[gt917]

Originally Posted by 911thillclimber

also notice the thread has breached the 1/3 million hit mark, unbelievable.

............ and so it should.

We should all be very grateful to you for the remarkable write ups from you, and I for one will always be indebted to you for the gearbox linkage investigations and personal delivery of drawings.

Thank you very much.

[911thillclimber]

Thanks for the kind words Graham; have you fitted and tried the new linkage on the car yet?

Bought my next project for the winter as the Lola is 'perfect' for 2016, or rather I have run out of motivation to develop it any further...

I can only think of 2 things to do to improve my lot,
1
Change the engine and box, Audi V6 and box.
Lots of work and some specialist parts too, esp the drive shafts. Not sure I would gain all that much.
2
Driver training.

Not sure this old dog has the capacity for new tricks.

Will leave all alone and simply enjoy the odd PB and the whole hillclimb scene.

New project;not the actual bike, but identical..

[Andy Clegg]

I agree with Graham, Thanks for keeping us up to speed. I always check 10tenths every day.

[gt917]

[QUOTE=911thillclimber;3585679]Thanks for the kind words Graham; have you fitted and tried the new linkage on the car yet?

No, still using the "altered" first version that you supplied drawings for. Shortly after this picture was taken I had a "nasty" and extremely expensive engine failure at Silverstone which is taking a lot of time to sort out. Six new barrels and pistons = ££££££££££££££££££££s. May go up to 3.8 ltr this time.

We will be redoing the mechanism for the new season though, after I,ve done time for robbing a bank to fund the rebuild !!!!!!!

[911thillclimber]

6?
You did a good job on that one!
3.8 is a natural for the 3.6, easy to expand, but a huge 'porsche' cost.
Anything Porsche has a huge 'tax' added...

Motorsport?
We must be mad.

[andy97]

Originally Posted by 911thillclimber

Anything Porsche has a huge 'tax' added...

Motorsport?
We must be mad.

Agree with the latter but not the former - depends which Porsche, my 924S is cheap as chips to race. Just about to consider a new (second hand) engine for it, available for about £500 plus labour! The existing g engine isn't worth refreshing at that price

[911thillclimber]

Indeed; Graham's 917 has a flat 6 aircooled 3.6 engine, big brother to my engine.
That is where the 'tax' is applied, aircooled flat 6's!

Set of pistons and barrels are about £4000 before fitting.

[gt917]

Originally Posted by 911thillclimber

6?
You did a good job on that one!
3.8 is a natural for the 3.6, easy to expand, but a huge 'porsche' cost.
Anything Porsche has a huge 'tax' added...

Motorsport?
We must be mad.

Yes, all six........... Tears streaming down face.

And that's not candy floss stuck on the back for effect ... took three weeks to completely clean down ENTIRE rear end, (bulkhead backwards), of the car. Became an instant OPEC member !!!!!!!!
At least 7litres of hot oil sprayed everywhere, and I do mean everywhere.

[911thillclimber]

Ouch!

Have you found out why that let go so comprehensively?
I lost one cylinder a few years back, split it clean in half.

[brookesy]

Slightly off topic but wondered what size dry sump tanks you guys are using as I am nearing that stage in the build of my Nike.

Sorry to hear of your woes Graham..

[911thillclimber]

Mine (Lola) is a 15 litre tank from THINK custom made to suit the (awkward) Porsche fittings.
I use 11 litres in the car and the oil level is just under the centre diaphragm hot and running.

[gt917]

My oil tank is of a squarer style and I run with about 15 ltrs of oil. I won,t put another picture of my car up as this thread is about Grahams car and his exploits, even though we have had similar issues over certain things.

Incidentally, my problems were down to the last rolling road session and the ignition settings being set all wrong and causing disastrous detonation problems. No more that rolling road !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[andy97]

Originally Posted by 911thillclimber

Mine (Lola) is a 15 litre tank from THINK custom made to suit the (awkward) Porsche fittings.
I use 11 litres in the car and the oil level is just under the centre diaphragm hot and running.

Aren't the wheels in that picture on the wrong way round? Ie the "arrow" pattern on the tread should face forward?

[911thillclimber]

Not sure now.
BMTR positioned the tyres that way round. The cross-plies are directional, but they are not like a road tyre 'orientation'.

It is an old picture, those are the 14" rims, now 10" and with uncut slicks.

The cuts made no difference on the (wet) hills, so much for that theory!

[911thillclimber]

Thank you for your Xmas message Graham! Missed it as I have not looked closely at 10/10th recently...

However, I would indeed like to wish you all following this little story a very happy Xmas, and above all a healthy and peaceful New Year, and if you drive a race car, drive it like you have just nicked it!

[Andy Clegg]

Merry Christmas to you all.

[911thillclimber]

Below is a copy of an article I was asked to write about the Lola. It tested my memory and scribbles to collate it all, hope it's right.
Thought it might be of interest.

A potted history of an old Lola race car.

This is a fair old tale about my 1978 Lola T 492 Sports Racer, now a hill climb car, and is a summary of an epic journey through the internet, phone calls, pictures and a number of surprises in my quest to find and prove the chassis number of my car.
This article is a task I’ve been putting off for a long time, it needs to be documented, but I hope you will find it interesting.

After hill climbing my Porsche 911 from 1991 to about 2003 I hill climbed my Impreza for a few years, and the car passed to Martyn Silcox, Secretary of your favourite Car Club!
Wanting something far more demanding as my last car project my thoughts turned to a real race car for the hills, but it had to be something different, something ‘Sports Libre’ and more than 2000cc.
I first saw a Lola T492 at the Racing Car show at Stoneleigh on the sports 2000 stand and was immediately totally smitten, this was just the car I wanted. After a few long weeks it became apparent they were rare, and finding one was going to be hard. I joined the sports 2000 forum and almost instantly following a Wanted plea one turned up!
The car was fitted with a Cosworth turbo engine and an FT200 box, modified suspension, new roll cage and a new body. We went to Surry to see it, fell in love but only as a rolling chassis, engine and box were far too much. A week later it was in my back garden.



I had a plan for the car. It had to have a big engine and a Rover V8 seem right, sounded right and was cheap. However, the gearbox was a real pain, the cheapest one I could find was £5000 with Roy Lane.
On the day of a decision about it all a Porsche engine and box came to my attention through the Porsche Club, an engine I knew from a man I knew so suddenly the Lola would be Porsche powered, a Lola-Porsche, sounded good!
The chassis was brilliant, neat tidy with a lot of extra holes in funny places…but no chassis number. Bit of a worry, was this a ‘hot’ car?
So the long journeys began of building the car (another very long story) and finding the chassis number.
I joined the forum, Ten-Tenths, historic section and started a thread to see if anyone knew this car. I have to marvel at the Internet, it is brilliant and without it this car would be lost to history.
Here I will tell the story and that the chase for the number became a whole ‘Life with a Hill climb Lola’ that now has over 340,000 hits and 1900+ posts. Amazing.

The first suggestion was the car belonged to Mr Toleman (as in F2/F1 fame). This T 490 was one of 10 built in 1977 and registered as HU6 and was raced by Tiff Needell amongst others at the time. The car went to Alan Humberstone who bodied it with a Skoda shell in Thunder Saloons (Wendy Wools Championship) but had a huge accident first time out with a BDG engine/FT box fitted. The damaged tub was too far gone and that car still exists in Spain.

So to my Lola. The car that Alan bought was to replace the damaged HU6 I eventually found out, but first we need to go back to the 1978 Lola build sheets!

It is a late 1978 car and a T 492 which meant it had twin side mounted radiators, and my car had the larger rectangular tube rear chassis. The chassis design was changed due to stress cracks found in the first cars around HU 47 (Lola made 100 492’s) so I knew the car was after HU47 which tinned the field down a bit.

My 10/10th quest was suddenly popular and I had contributions coming to me from everywhere, the UK, USA and others, but 2 gents, Clive Brown and ‘Driftwood’ really came to help me. A lot of spurious suggestions led to dead-ends, but something was in Clive’s head, and one day filling up with petrol he bumped into another old motorsport friend and the car came up in conversation and opened the door…
This chat led to Alan Humberstone’s crashed car and a pair of lads who were given the job of ‘re-shelling’ the Humberstone’s broken HU6 ready to race again, Tony Harman (linked to Haggispeed) and John Schnieder in a small lock-up down Essex way (home area for Humberstones business of transporting Fords all over the UK).

Clive found Tony and John’s phone numbers. Yes, indeed they had built the new car, Tony had a lot of pictures of the build and would I like a copy of them? Oh yes!. John couldn’t remember much (at all) but remembered removing the chassis plate. He might still have it somewhere…that came to zero!
Tony’s pictures are amazing, every detail is there and still on my car inc all the holes for various panels and things used to adapt the car for an RS200 turbo/500bhp rally engine and box and a sleek fibreglass/Kevlar body based on a Karman Ghia coupe taken off the moulds of the Dr Enderby Imp silhouette car. This body was painted a lurid Pink. Alan raced the car once! The chassis had AP racing brakes and the engine installed by a Mr Lee, a friend of Alans. I was sent on 10/10th a picture of it racing at Brands, and it looked fantastic.



The car was damaged, but not badly. Alan went to Spain to live. I was getting now where fast until Alan called me up. He told me I had the history all wrong ‘pre Alan Humberstone’ but his memory was a bit sketchy. His daughters had found my thread on google!
Alan remembered buying the car from two gents who had bought it from a farmer who had bought it damaged from someone else who raced it in the Carribean airlines race in the early 80’s at Brands. This was magic for Clive and Driftwood, some facts to work on as both were very involved in silhouette racing back then.

I (we) managed to get some early names from the early 80’s, Bernie Garwood drove it for the owner, name unknown but the trial again dried-up. I kept searching almost obsessively on the ‘net for info, found pictures of the HU6 Skoda car and lots more, but then Clive suggested a break-through idea.

I needed to find the dealer who was based in Essex, and why not try a small article in the local paper to see if that might jog some memories. The names I had were Dennis Humphries and Len Merchant.
The editor thought this a good local interest article so with a picture it went to press. Silence.
After 2 weeks I had a phone call from Spain. “Hello, I understand you are looking for me?”
That sounded a bit ominous, but it was Dennis! Len had seen the article (Len sell garage equipment now) and had found long lost friend Dennis’ phone number. Dennis was really pleased, mainly because a load of his old friends were coming out to see him in Spain, and indeed he remembered the car.
He and Len had bought two cars from a Farmer, both restored. One was a red Lola T492 which he has bought slightly damaged from a forgotten named driver. Two days after getting them (the Lola had a Pinto engine on twin webbers etc) he sold the Lola to a Mr Harry Humberstone, Alan’s father to rebuild a race car….
With things falling now into place it so happens that Clive Brown built that twin webber’d engine!!
We found the phone number for the Farmer with the amazing memory of Driftwood who still drives past the farm to his race car warehouse business. He thought this was the farmer. He always seemed to remember a farmer in his area with a Lola T492 who never raced it. So, I eagerly called the farmer, Paul Wilkins.
Yes, he did have an old Lola once, bought after a Carribean Airlines race from someone. Would I like the 2 photo’s he had….Paul had restored the car with a new body as the original (red) body was too far gone.
He sold the pair of cars to 2 blokes, Dennis and Len. Bingo!
“Oh, and I still have the original front section of the car in the barn, would I like that too?”
I nearly wetted myself. I agreed to come to Essex to the farm and take the front away for 2 bottles of Wine.
Along-side all this excitement (3 years have now passed) my search for the car reached to Hass racing in the USA, Chicago Sports 2000 racers and red herrings galore, but the old body was the clincher. Lola have a Heritage Site with masses of info and a register of known T492 cars, about ½ of the 100 are known. I wanted to secure the right chassis number on that register! To do this I needed a lot of proof before they would agree the car and number matched.

The front clam was covered in farm barn dirt, a dull red, #26 on the front and a Caribbean airways sticker on the side. It was quite shattered and the red paint peeling off. Under that red paint was a lurid green gell coat of the original body moulding.
Back to the sales ledger for the T492 from the Lola factory and there were just 2 Kelly Girl Green cars made!
One was a T490 converted to 492 spec belonging to Bob in Canada who had been following the thread from the start. His car HU4 is the earliest known car of the series, and the other Green car was T 492 HU 62, a late ‘large tube’ chassis car.
This car of mine must be that car! Lola Heritage agreed 100% and allocated HU62. Never before had they seen such research into a car’s past (esp as it is not worth much!)

The tub now has the HU 62 chassis plate. What a marathon and in all that there was a nice twist at the end…
I had an email via 10/10th from a lady who had found some pictures of her father and his Lola T492, red, prepared for the Carribean Airlines race. The family had lots of great memories racing the car. He father had recently died and she had found the pictures, did a search on the internet and found my thread and the story of this car. She was so happy that the car was alive and well and bought back fond memories of her father Perter Newman, the name nobody could remember.

The original owner from the build sheet was Peter Sadler who made ornamental tea pots!

So, after Alan had it and crashed it with the Ghia body on, the car disappeared into Essex, passing though the hands of several people, Brian at Autoquip added the big Brembo brakes and the Cosworth engine but it languished until Mike Ingles bought it in 2006.
Mike wanted to build a car to run at the Brighton Speed Trials, and alongside the GT40 and the real RS Escort.
When Mike got it the Ghia body had been smashed beyond repair, so he bought the new red Lola Sports 2000 body and had installed a new roll cage to the original Lola pattern, but the car needed a lot more doing to it to run as a race car. Looking to retire to France, Mike saw my ad in the Sports 2000 web site and the car came to me.
It now has another T 492 body, 20Kg lighter than the red one.






What an adventure this was and continues today as the thread has become a ‘blog’ of the car, the engineering and the hill climbing seasons, all the technical ups-n-downs, all the blood sweat and tears since it has been in my life.
I hope this little story has been interesting to you all.

Graham.

[Andy Clegg]

A good read. This brings back memories. I noticed a thread on 10/10's about the passing of John Schneider RIP recently.

[oneofapair]

Yes a very addictive mystery story, with some good detective work.
Noticed a comment on the imp club forum that Clive Brown has had a fall at home and suffered a neurologic trauma?
Wishing Clive a full recovery

John Woods

[911thillclimber]

Sad about John.
He sounded frail when I discussed the work he did with Tony on the car all those years ago.

Hope Clive recovers, he was pivotal to the success of this stories outcome.
His memory was matched by Driftwood's too, invaluable to me.

[911thillclimber]

I feel like I have just come out of hibernation.

We are entered in the Loton Park Practice weekend in 10 days time in the Lola, so thought I should get my finger and spanner out to 'prepare' it for the start of 2016 season.

The car went under a cover in October 2015 and has not stirred at all since.

Changed the oil which came out golden colour and nothing on the sump plug magnet. New filter and poured in 11 litres as a starting point into the dry sump tank.

That was the very easy bit..

I have had to replace my perfectly good custom belts for new ones as some hillclimb cars HAVE to have belts within FIA dates. Mine were 1 year out of date.

Had new ones made by Prima motorsport custom made lengths in 13 days and £126 in my garage, great company and service.

Had to make some sleeves for the belt anchor points but all in now and just need adjusting.

Cleaned and cleaned the whole car and found the engine breather rubber pipe to the d/s tank has collapsed and one rubber mounting on the oil cooler has broken, everything else looks good. WD40'd all the rose joints, cleaned and oiled for good measure.

Poured in a gallon of Vmax and churned the engine over for 15 secs to get the oil into the engine, pumped the fuel o the carb, two good prods of the throttle and kaboom, instant engine running of all 6 as sweet as a nut!!

Chuffed and slightly smug as I had tuned the engine myself last year, topped up the oil so there is about 14 litres flowing now.

So, need to do those repairs, set the belts, wax the body and we are good to go.

Any news on Clive?

[ogits]

Good to see you carrying on!
Are you planning to go to Barbon this year?

[911thillclimber]

After starting hill climbing in 1991 it is a bit hard to shake off!

Barbon? Doubt I can get the wife to agree to re-visit the hill though it is a great run but the paddock is simply evil if the weather turns.

got flooded last visit and the Lola was full, well 2" deep, with hail by the time we got the car on the trailer.
Did one aquaplane run up the hill at 20 mph on slicks and gave up, just lethal.

No, doubt we will return.