> Time to introduce myself. My name is Duncan Charlton and I live in central
Texas. I asked to join the list because we're buying a TR-engined vintage
Morgan racer in early December and it's been a long time since I did any
serious work on a TR engine.
>
> I have owned four Triumphs -- a Mk II Spitfire, a 1960 TR3, a 1957 TR3, and
a 1956 TR3 which I restored in the mid-1980s. TS-9848-L-0 was one of the few
TR3s with 4-wheel drum brakes -- you had to be careful backing up due to the
lack of servo action from the brake shoe geometry when moving in that
direction. There were a few other British cars in there during those years --
a couple of Mk II Jag sedans and a 1966 Mini Cooper S.
>
> At some point I got tired of working on rusty cars so I got involved in
flying, eventually building two of my own aircraft, first a wood and fabric
2-stroke powered ultralight and then a high-wing 2-seat Experimental category
design. I came to find that my family and friends were not really interested
in flying, and I eventually got bored with flying alone most of the time, so I
got re-involved with English sports cars about ten years ago.
>
> After a short affair with a Sunbeam Tiger I bought a Morgan 4/4 with a 1600
crossflow Ford engine (a.k.a. the Formula Ford engine). It was a lightweight
car (1330 lbs due to the aluminum body panels) and I was collecting
performance parts for it when a one-owner 1971 Morgan Plus 8 came along to
scratch my itch for more power. We also acquired a very nicely restored 1936
Morgan Super Sports 3-wheeler at about that time.
> I started giving thought to vintage racing about six years ago. My son and
I attended the Skip Barber 3 day course at Laguna Seca (don't you hate it when
you find out that your kid is better at something than you are?) and I started
attending vintage races -- Road America, Coronado Island, Goodwood, College
Station...
> To the present -- I was chatting with a friend in SC a few weeks ago and he
casually mentioned that he was selling his 1952 Morgan racer. He had
freshened up the car in 2009 after it had sat unused for 13 years because he
wanted to participate in the Morgan centennial celebrations. He did well with
it in a few races, but now he had decided that his racing days are done.
Looks like I was in the right place at the right time.
> Some of the car's history can be guessed at. It was delivered with a
Standard Vanguard engine, but it may not have been raced initially. It could
have raced in D/P, but Morgans were not very successful there. When Morgans
got the TR2 engine in 1954 and raced in E/P, the cars started winning. I
can't yet be sure of this car's race beginnings (the frame was destroyed in a
race accident and I'm still searching the car's chassis number, which the
owner thinks he has among its records) but an acquaintance says he saw it
parked after the wreck around 1960 or so, having run off the course at an
airport race in Spartanburg, SC and hit a concrete abutment (if it was an SCCA
race I can find no record of it). I am told the driver's name was Jeff
Harrell, but SCCA records show a person by that name raced an MGA in 1963. I
would like to find Jeff -- anybody ever heard of him?
> The car sat in this wrecked condition until the current owner began to
rebuild it in the early 1990s with parts he'd collected over the previous
decade. As his mechanic removed paint from the body panels, the letters "E/P"
was clearly visible, so clearly it had been an SCCA racer sometime before it
was wrecked. The original racing engine was long gone so a supercharged TR
engine was installed and it was campaigned on the east coast and in the
northeast from 1991 through 1993. It is no longer supercharged but is
reportedly sorted out and ready to run.
>
> Perhaps I'll meet more of you in February at the CVAR driver school/races at
TWS. A picture of the car is here: http://tinyurl.com/2ece3c4
_______________________________________________
fot@autox.team.net
http://www.fot-racing.com
Donate: http://www.team.net/donate.html
Archive: http://www.team.net/archive
Forums: http://www.team.net/forums
|