If someone can post detail photos of Mr Pittaway's beast, showing particularly the chassis frame he has used, and someone else can access images of a Tipo 5 without bodywork, for instance from FIAT archive; then we mightbe able to nail down the probabilities in this.Keep it coming, John and Ivan...
Brilliant stuff! So much we don't know about cars in Australia early in the 20th century.
Now I definitely never saw or knew of Stuart Middlehurst having a chain-drive CAR chassis, and though it could be remotely possible that it was stored most of the time in one of his safe spots around central Warragul such as the backyard of his mother's house, which was on a normal width block that was very long between Victoria Street and the very minor Trinca Lane at the back. He kept the Tipo 510 FIAT there which he only got for the Rudge Whitworth 62 mm wire wheels which he figured might have been adaptable at a pinch to the Alfonso Hispano Suiza. He wasn't initially very interested in the FIAT itself at the time. There was also a Summit there cut into a ute. As Mrs Middlehurst became less active vandals smashed the instruments of the Summit, and the yard became unsuitable storeage for anything breakable.
(The Summit was a strange car of the early 1920's built in Australia of American proprietry parts. The springing was by three inter-connected seml-elliptic springs each side. The engine was a 4 clyinder Lycoming engine as used by Auburn and Gardiner, and the car probably had about the performance of a Dodge 4. We paid twelve pounds ten shillings for it at a farm in the hills, in running order but I never saw it run.) Now Stuart had the interest to gather odd and interesting remains because he didn't want to see them destroyed, even though there might be no prospect or plan of resurecting an authentic entity. Now if you bring up a Google Earth map of this district, and imagine a straight line between Longwarry where the 9 litre sidevalve engine of General Grimwade's car powered a sawmill, past or through Drouin and Warragul to the site of Shady Creek rural primary School, that line runs through Balharrie's farm where I got that axle, about a mile from Shady Creek School. There were the two towns and a lot of 80 to 100 acre dairy farms between those two endpoints. If Stuart did in fact have a chassis frame of a chain drive FIAT car, it is overwhelming probability that it, the Tipo 5 engine that went to Paul Freehill in Ft Wayne Indiana, and the front axle I still have were all from the same car, wich was the largest FIAT passenger car but not a racing car.
Now Mr Evans from San Diego has said in this thread that he has two of the other racing FIATs from that era, and that chassis details match with Duncan Pittaway's re-creation. It makes sense that those racing cars and the chain drive Tipo 5 and Tipo 6 passenger cars could easily have had the same chassis frame, apart from differences in wheelbase. I suppose it would make sense to enquire whether the Grimwade family might have photos of the General's car.
I need to explain a post from my computer a couple of years ago with a photo of several Rudge Whitworth items. I did not write this. Ray Bell visited here, and took a number of photos and saw more things that anyone could completely remember in the time. I was explaining differences in early Rudge wheels, and that Stuart definitely would not have gathered that chassis to get wheels for the Alfonso Hispano Suiza. The Hispano used short spline 62 mm hubs. Photos of the S76 cars show wheels as large or larger than the green Napier wheel in Ray's photo. The big wheel centre is Rudge 100 from a cuff-valve Peugeot, and the third item is what was used on such cars as the Hispano and T-head Austins, and this one is for my 1911 Lancia Delta. Those long spline Rudge 62 centres and hubs wore badly over the years on 3 litre Bentleys: No engineer would put the same size on an S76, FIAT, even if suffering a brain-fade. (The story about Stuart wanting wire wheels from the FIAT for the Alfonso has been crossed up with the Lion Peugeot remains; and I could not say for sure that there were any wheels with that. And he gathered the Lion Peugeot remains when he had been running the Alfonso on correct rebuilt wheels for at least 15 years. Also the front axle I have had wood wheels., but only the hubs remain.) Ray seemed to want to teach me in a few minutes how to manipulate and post photos, but I will have to achieve that in my own way in due course, because Microsoft program logic does not make sense to me even though Mr Gates and I are both Asperger's . Ray wrote those words in that post that is ascribed to me, but it is not my post and not what I would say. Ray was trying to be helpful. I hope that explains the incongruous post.
Ivan Saxton
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