Here are some photos from my first day racing the
ex-PeterKeegan hill climb car in March 1991.
I was only 21 at this time.

[ Edited on 13-12-2005 by dangerous ]

I was looking through some old archives
and found that I purchased this car 20 years ago today!
22/2/91.
Seems like only yesterday!

This next photo is my first run in the car.
It ran a 12.55@103mph.
Prior to this run, the fastest I had gone was a
20.95@62mph in my 40hp stocker!

This car is a 1958-1960 euro/ckd shell on a '72 superbug pan
that has had a balljoint frame head attatched.
It ran a dead stock IRS tranny.
Engine was 2180cc with 9:1 comp and roller crank.
Supercharger was a Godfrey-Marshall Rootes style,
and had a 750cfm Alcohol double pumper Holley carb.
Cam was 144b Wade with stock rockers, and the
heads were non-welded with 40x37.5 valves.

The Roller crank didn't last long, because the jets in the carb were way wrong.
The lean mixtures caused huge backfires that destroyed
the roller bearing cages.
Best was a 12.06@108.75mph with the 2180.
Next was a 1835 with 4:1 compression that ran a 12.08@117mph.
It was still lean and damaged the stock rods and cast 92s.
Rebuilt the engine with some new 90.5's and 9:1 comp.
With the main jets drilled out to about 3.5mm it ran 11.67@123 in October '91....I was 22 years old.
This photo is just before that first 11second pass.

[ Edited on 13-12-2005 by dangerous ]

[ Edited on 16-12-2005 by dangerous ]

The best time I ran with the carby and Volksy heads was 11.06@126.8mph.
With Superflow heads and mechanical injection
and lower 7:1 comp it ran 10.65@126mph(May 21st 1995),
but my first 10sec pass was march '94...a 10.86@121mph.

Good stuff . Youve made your name legendary :thumb

Vintage Vee-Dub sponsorship.

At the Valla VW weekend of '91 Richard Holzl approached
me about wearing signage in exchange for parts at cost.
There were many other things that Vintage did for me too,
like paid my entry fees at some Sydney meetings,
supplied accomodation, and they did give me some stuff
free of charge which made life alot easyer for a
young guy on 20 grand a year.
Thanks go to Richard for all the public relations, and
to Boris(Vintage's owner), for the welcome assistance and advice.

[ Edited on 13-12-2005 by dangerous ]

[ Edited on 16-12-2005 by dangerous ]

This is another mid-ninetys shot from Willowbank.
By this time I had converted to an 1800 bus box
with Berg intermediate housing and Albins 1st & 2nd.
Car 60 footed a best of 1.400 seconds with 1776cc.
It had 28psi boost, and I was shifting at 7000rpm,
with around 7000rpm in 4th gear thru the finish.
I changed from the Bug box because the R&P were
lasting only about 6 runs...the tranny novelty wore off
real fast.
The bus box would go 100 runs before servicing. and
then it was only synchros.

You certainly have bought back some good memories Dave!

The match races at the VW Jamboree with you & Gary Berg back in '95, or was it '96, were great!! That was a good day, Volksies won everything!!

Would love to here that unmistakeable Supercharged Pauter rumble again!!

But then again it's good to see you back enjoying racing Dubs again!!

Cheers mate.

[ Edited on 13-12-2005 by Craig Paton ]

Hey Dave,

Good stuff, very cool !

Were those engines on alcohol?

How much boost?

Hi Nick,
Yes, I always ran alcohol fuel. At first with a
750 double pumper, and then with mechanical injection.
The 1776 consistently ran 28psi boost, but
I always used the same 23% overdrive on all
engine combos right up to the 2918cc deal...on
that engine it had only 15psi and with 8:1 it could
have run on unleaded...that's when I upgraded
to the two Autorotors.
The camshaft and rocker setup changed boost as well.

This was a photo taken in May '95 on my 26th birthday.
The meeting was called the "Nitro Championships".
On this day I ran the 10.65 ET with the 1776cc engine.
Since this photo I had grown to 103kg, and now I am
back at 75kg (as in photo)...got down to 65kg with exercise and diet!

Around 1994 I started making a billet crankshaft from a
solid lump of 4340. I finished it at the end of '95 after 90 hours of machining.
I fitted all this with 90mm stroke into a WBX case using
5.5" Porsche journal Carrillos and a billet cam which I made to clear the rods.
After numerous rear main bearing failures related to the
bronze material I was using, I bit the bullet for one of the new Pauter cases.
Engine was 2398cc using 92 bore, and the same Superflow heads, blower,cam, etc...but 10:1 comp.
It only had 18psi boost with the same overdrive as it had on the 1776.
Best ET with this combo was 10.22 @ 132mph.

By June '97 the car was running consistent 10.20s to
10.30s, and an upgrade to a 28" tyre slowed the car
down a little.
In this photo I had just popped the rocker cover after a
big over rev, and a valve spring fell in the dirt!
Since then I fitted a rev limiter.
With rodney Penrose now on the scene, I thought a step
up to something with more power was worth looking into.....

More hours in the workshop, and lots of dollars saw this
monstrosity.
2918cc with two AutoRotor blowers. 42 psi and 10:1 compression. KABOOOM!
Then with 2827cc (smaller pistons to replace the dead ones)
I ran the 9.76@147mph weighing 1870lbs( about 850kg).
This project was madness and I never got a full throttle run!

Did you ever race Jeff Watson in that FJ20 Sprite he used to run?? That thing and your car always used to get plenty of support at Willowbank in the nineties. I used to come down from Toowoomba to watch you race, and remember writing to Vintage to thank them for sponsoring you. Next week, got a letter back from Boris thanking me for the support. So went out and bought a couple of thouisand bucks worth of Aero gaurds becaue I figured they were good people. Well done Dave, bringing back some good memories.

I still have a photocopy of that letter in my scrap book.
Good to know that I helped them get some extra sales.
Goes to show that sponsorship and advertising dollars are always best spent where the results are.
Thanks for your kind words...then and now!

No, thank you Dave. So did you ever race Watson and Bray - I forget the class it was they used to race back then - an awesome mix of cars. Bray used to run his HQ framed chev and it was just out of control, Watson had that Sprite running about 50 pounds of boost on a stock bottom end in the FJ20, and you running that weapon you had. Yours sounded best by a long shot!!!!

Beautiful stuff Dave.....Certainly does bring back memories...I had a look for those pics I mentioned before...No go...sorry!

Great to see you back into it....One day maybe we'll see that tube car of your running again!

I never raced against Jeff Watson, but he was a great help with tuning advice, and we often catch up.

I found some old photos of the fab work to set up the two blowers.

More views.

Other side..

Finished job with air cleaners and pulley system.

Thats an incredibly compact intake run and very smooth to boot...
Was there any kind of velocity stake arrangement in the plenums?
And are those 'blow off' plates on top of the plenums?
What was the deciding factor that led you to twin chargers over a single?
A more complex belt system was, obviously needed here, but your intake seems to be very direct...
But did this set-up present any balancing issues...
I did notice the 'balance' pipe of the crank case....
Also, the plenum sizing seems to be very small.... Maybe a little over a litre total volume?
Are supercharged engines not largely effected by plenum volume?

I was just wondering, the pipe across the top of the crankcase whch looks to be joining both plenums, is that the 'Balance' Pipe you speak of Humpty? If so is that there to equalise boost pressures?

Hi Simon,
Yes inside the plenum I blended it into the runner
with a radius.
Yes those are burst panels in the plenum .
The volume of the plenum was nothing scientific, just what would fit and what I needed to adapt the 3"
tubes to the runners. Although I DID want the entry to come in from the end like that.
There were some balance issues, but only related to fuel distrobution as it dribbled through the blower.
These were solved with nozzle sizes adjusted in the ports and blower intake.
I went for two blowers because there was no single unit large enough....but I think there is now.

[ Edited on 26-12-2005 by dangerous ]

Yes, balance pipe, but probably over sized to requirement.
Seemed to be ok though.

How's this for a little old school supercharging?
A little 'low-fi' compared to your stuff Dave...But cool none the less!