Looking to find and verify information about the 3 Nedloh marque of open wheelers built in the backyard shed in Braybrook by Wally Russell and his son Jim Stumpy russell.
No 1 Sported wire wheels and the original engine came out of a Silvertop taxi with a hole in the side of the block, Rus welde a plate over it! I've seen photos of this car in this forum and noted it has had at least two, maybe 3 nose cone changes. I was not familiar with that car.
No2 Nedloh, Square nose offset engine in the style of Indy race cars...Red with a yellow nose, wearing
No 53 ? A very succesful car in the 60's. As a 12 year old , I watched this car race at Calder with Rus. I was fortunate enough to live one house away from the Russell's shed, where these cars were built.\
No 3. I have seen this car referred to as the 'anteater nosed' car.I used to help out in the shed to earn some time on the lathe and drill press. One night, Rus asked me to tidy up the shed and sweep the floor clean, because Jim was coming around to start building a car. Designed literally from the floor up.....Jim sat on the concrete floor . Russ ran a chalk around his backside and legs to get the driver dimensions. Using a length of 2x4 as a straight edge, he put in the straight lines of the chassis, then the cross members. He carried an armful of tubing over to the floor and dropped them with a clatter on the floor.The garage floor was the blue print. Rus chuckled when that years F1 car dimensions came out, and he was within an inch of both track and wheelbase. The original power plant was a Ford engine for the Formula Ford class. He ran into trouble with CAMS when he used the frame tubing to carry the radiator coolant. He used Mini Minor wheels on the front, to bring down the unsprung weight of the front end. "Hey You" the panel beater came around and fabricated the one piece fuel tank and seat from the dimensions on the shed floor. Each night, Russ built the frame up with steel tubing, and a recognizable frame appeared. All measurements were based on Jim's body. Hey You hammered the aluminium sheets to fit the frame. Jack (Mays, Maise?) or Maysie, came around and with a bucket of black sand and an arm full of piping and shaped a 'bunch of bananas' exhaust manifold, by eye, without jigs. At the end , he pulled out a piece of string with a nut tie on it and lowered it into each pipe of the header, to prove that all were identical in length. The end pipe was left at least 4 ft long and a muffler was attached so that the car could be push started out in the street by a band of willing kids, without upsetting the neighbours. That pipe was left long until the car was tested at Calder, The pipe was sawn off at the point where the metal had turned an indigo blue. At all times, Russ had a Camel unfiltered in his lips, one behind his ear, and lit one off the other. Everything was done by eye, but tolerance work was exact. Russ told me he would tell me the secret of a fast racing car. He set up the No 2 head on a bench, gave me a tin of valve grinding paste and a suction cup topped stick, and showed me how to grind, 'until it feels different' His secret of a fast motor....".Get the fuel in fast at the right time, and get the exhaust out fast" Before the 3 Nedloh cars, there was a 'slingshot dragster'.His passion for Volkswagon Beetles and Kombi's resulted in many dunebuggies sporting 15' tyres being built in the yard.
My hope is to get some sort of fact file on these cars , designed a built by Wally in the backyard shed.
