'Suzuki SC100' Special Saloon - help with history please!!

[big andy]

hi

i bought this sc100 in july of brian davies who raced it at lydden hill does any body no the full history of the car i was told its based on a march 803 f3 car is this correct ??
http://srh-motorsport-photography.fo...p53223146.html

[Al Weyman]

Blimey Andy how are you ever gonna get in that?!!

[John Turner]

Interesting piece of kit! I'll move this to the History forum though!

[big andy]

its tight al especially in head hight not somthing you d want to roll !!

[Alan Morgan]

If you post a few pictures of the suspension and chassis it should be pretty easy to tell if it's March-based.

[delta]

Yes as Alan Morgan said lets have some pics of car without bodywork. Has it still got thr F3 tub?

[Steve Wilkinson]

Originally Posted by delta

Yes as Alan Morgan said lets have some pics of car without bodywork. Has it still got thr F3 tub?

Judging by the photo my guess would be no.

It may well have used suspension, engine/gearbox plus steerinr rack etc from the March?

[big andy]

ill take some pictures of it at w/e its only the front/rear suspension which are meant to be march 803b the chassis/tub is a home build its now powered by a hayabusa through the bike box into a hewland casing for the reverse and lsd any one no how built it

[peter thurston]

It was an ex alan humberstone car that I did some work on in the eighties but it never got finished.Finished of by john sabourin for brian a few years back . I saw it being done and it was or will be a very quick car I think.

[big andy]

thanks for that peter .so was it never raced before brian davies owned it?

[peter thurston]

As far as I know it never got raced as originally it was on a foam sandwich tub and there was problems with the angle they wanted a drive u/j to go through.Glad to see it has a new fake front as without it, it did look a bit weird.pete

[chunterer]

IIRC, did Doug or his son, Matt Manderson onw one of these for a while as well?

[rallycrosscraig]

http://srh-motorsport-photography.fo...p53223146.html

it looks like its run over a marshal and the poor chap is still stuck inside

[Steve Wilkinson]

Originally Posted by rallycrosscraig

http://srh-motorsport-photography.fo...p53223146.html

it looks like its run over a marshal and the poor chap is still stuck inside

I'll take your word for it as the link didn't work.

[driftwood]

THE CAR WAS BUILT FOR ALAN HUMBERSTONE AND IT DID RUN- WITH THE BIKE ENGINE AND GEARBOX MATED TO THE HEWLAND IT HAD 30 GEARS!
car was based on either march or ralt f3 car

later another car was raced by John Schneider with the bike engine and gearbox this car raced for 2 seasons?

the suzuki car you refer to for Manderson jnr was the car richard harris ran at lydden circa 90-91 built by clive brown vuaxhall engine ralt corners
matt later ran car with S2000 body in sports car events

[Clive Brown]

I'm aware of five , and possibly six , of them . Harry Humberstone built the first of them for Alan to drive . It had a weird wood/composite monocoque , and utilised March 803 ( I think ) suspension . Engines were either 8 or 16 valve air-cooled Suzuki bike engines . This car was responsible for the funniest incident I ever saw at a race circuit , in the padock at Thruxton .

Ben Bowlby , who I last heard of as a designer at Lola , built one with his father Richard . This was a very successful car , and used a 1 litre Kawasaki bike engine .

Finally , I drew up plans for a mid-engined Imp-powered car using Ralt RT1 corners . I built one myself for Rob Mason to drive , which I never completed for reasons I don't intend to go into in this forum . Rob built a second car for Irish racer David Hall , which used a 1220cc Carter Imp motor with a Coventry Climax FWH head . Finally , Richard Harris , for whom I built Imp motors , decided to replace his Maguire saloon Imp , and bought a home-built F4 car called a Cirrus from a monoposto racer called Ian Rowley . This had ( I think ) Chevron F3 suspension at one end , and March F3 suspension at the other . I adapted my original drawings to suit , and Richard and his right-hand man Bill constructed a third car in accordance with the cardboard templates I made for them . Later on , Richard rebodied this car as a Nissan 100SX silhouette , altered the monocoque by replacing the tubular engine frame with a full monoccoque , and fited a 2.0l 16v Vauxhall engine and Dallara F3 rear end . This was the car sold to the Mandersons .

As for the sixth car , I have a feeling that John Schneider's car was not the ex-Humberstone car , but a spaceframe car that John had made for him to his own specification . I think that confusion may have arisen because this car also used a Suzuki bike engine .

[driftwood]

1 Scneider did build his own SC100 i think he had his running before the humberstione car was racing
2 re Rob= worse kept secret in history
3 the nissan harris car has been thru my hands form Matt manderson to 2 other gus it willrun soon with XE motor and another sporst car body fitted in time it was ralt corners and gearbox at rear and either march or ralt front uprgihts fitted with horribly short wishbones

4 what car dio David Hall have?
he had a davrian floor pan car with Imp shell in top like the John Homewood car

[Mike Holmes]

Wasn't the Ben Bowlby car featured on a TV documentary? I seem to remember seeing a program on it?

[col rooney]

Yes David Hall had a suzuki with imp engine but it never done any good as it use to swap ends for no reason so he sold it i think he only used it for 1 season


col

[Dan Rear]

Originally Posted by driftwood

1 Scneider did build his own SC100 i think he had his running before the humberstione car was racing
2 re Rob= worse kept secret in history
3 the nissan harris car has been thru my hands form Matt manderson to 2 other gus it willrun soon with XE motor and another sporst car body fitted in time it was ralt corners and gearbox at rear and either march or ralt front uprgihts fitted with horribly short wishbones

4 what car dio David Hall have?
he had a davrian floor pan car with Imp shell in top like the John Homewood car

DW,and Clive, the Cirrus F4 car was built by Alan Morgan, who posts on here and TNF as 'Cirrus'. His mate is Iain Rowley or 'Delta', both great blokes. Alan worked for Ralt around this time, so I suspect there was a lot of Ralt influence in the Cirrus

[Clive Brown]

I travelled to Ireland to assist David in finishing the car for its debut , which was at Phoenix Park . I drove the car into scrutineering , and well recall people's looks of amazement . The car did not have a rear low-visibility red warning light ; it wouldn't have needed one at the time in the the UK .

" Where's your red light ? " , said the scrutineer . " It's a racing car , not a f**king knocking shop ! " , came my witty response . Nevertheless , we got the ticket ....

It ****ed with rain all weekend , everyone got very drunk , and I spent the Saturday night sleeping with the car in a beer tent in the Phoenix Park paddock . If Stiletto driver Richard Baird is still out there , for a suitable sum of money I promise not to disclose why he didn't take part in the first GT race on the Sunday !

The car did swap ends very quickly , but certainly not " for no reason " . Although the car was basically a copy of my design to the rear of the half-monocoque , it was largely built by a stupid little mutant who used to work for Rob Mason at the time . Whereas my car was built from 18g L72 , using solid rivets wherever possible , David's car was built from 16g NS4 , pop rivetted together . Crucially , whereas the engine frame on my car was carefully designed to provide a rigid frame using the RT1 engine bearers only as a basis , but with the Imp engine as a completely unstressed component , the car built for David Hall was totally deficient in this respect . The rear suspension must have moved about like a wet copy of the ' Sporting Life ' in a high wind .

I remember being called by a Welshman called Owen Jones , who had previously raced raced a 1 litre Special Saloon Anglia , who was considering buying the car , but I don't know what happened to it thereafter .

Clive

P.S. : I think the donor RT1 might have been ex-Trevor Templeton . Mine was ex-Arie Lyenduyk .

[Clive Brown]

Originally Posted by Dan Rear

DW,and Clive, the Cirrus F4 car was built by Alan Morgan, who posts on here and TNF as 'Cirrus'. His mate is Iain Rowley or 'Delta', both great blokes. Alan worked for Ralt around this time, so I suspect there was a lot of Ralt influence in the Cirrus

I honestly can't remember the car using Ralt suspension at either end ; what puzzles me is that I should be able to remember if it did , having used RT1 suspension all round on my own car . I know that one end , probably the front , had four stud fixing wheels , whereas the other had centre fixings . All Ralts had centre fixing wheels ; the trademark of Derek Bennett's Chevrons was their parallelogram twin link lower rear suspension wishbone , which he used to obviate the possibility of rear-end bump steer .

Incidentally , the last time I heard of my own car , it was in the possession of John Woods , proprietor of Gemini Engineering , esteemed engine man , Lydden racer , and twin brother of the late and much-lamented Ginetta G15 racer Ronnie Woods . John intended at that time to rebody the car as a silhouette G15 .

The Woods twins were no relation of Ernie Woods , self-confessed retired bank robber , and one-time Special Saloon racer , who bought David Leaver's home-built spaceframe Stiletto , which Rob Mason drove after Woody broke his wrist falling of a Honda Monkey .... whatever became of Woody ?

Clive

[Slartibartfast]

I realise we are getting away from the original thread here, but I think this is the David Hall Imp after he had sold it on. By this stage (1978?) it was driven by Vivian Candy (and I don't actually know if this was his real name) because one of the mechanics lived quite close to me for a while. I used to see it in the lockup garage attached to his house, and if memory serves he may have taken it for a spin around the local housing scheme to test the engine/transmission once or twice.... By this time it was well sorted, and at least a match for anything in the local 1300cc mod saloon class. I might be wrong, but in the 80's the regulations changed to 2 valve 1600cc, and it was given a new lease of life with a Lotus/Ford twin cam.

[Clive Brown]

Surely he couldn't have taken it around on a public road ; bejasus , that would have been illegal , and whatever would the Garda have made of that ?

It appeared in various colours ( Captain America , Marlboro Ireland ) , and was a Davrian fibreglass car . It followed on from the original John Homewood car , but used a Hewland gearbox .

The Irish GT rules did indeed change to 1600 cc eight valve motors , which at a stroke wiped out many of the existing competitors . A guy called George Crozier had a mid-engined Metro ( chassis by John Maguire ? ) with a 1600 Ford twin cam . They didn't suss it , but the obvious motor to use was the contempory water-cooled SuperVee motor ; lighter than the Ford , and more readily available even then .

If this particular car did ever use a Lotus TC , it must surely have been turned around and made mid-engined . Certainly , David Hall retained his 1220 cc Carter engine and Hewland 'box for use in his Suzuki .

Regards

Clive

[Slartibartfast]

I spent some time re-shelling an Escort RS2000 road car. One Sunday morning I decided I needed to check the loom and engine wiring/timing/carburaton etc. But there was no interior fitted (or the replacement Janspeed exhaust system). So, I sat on an upturned milk crate and held onto the steering wheel, and took it for a test drive. I can't imagine what the cops would have done if they had caught me - and it was in the same area as the Imp test, so I assume they were more interested in breathalising old biddies for church wine after mass. It's one of those crazy things we sometimes do - just for the hell of it. :>) There were witnesses, and I still have photos of the car after it was finished, parked in Mondello.
And I still have the milk crate.