23 replies to this topic

[TerryS]

I like the last two sentences:

 

"Car is not road registered. If this is a requirement for buying we may be able to get the car road registered"

 

As they say in the classics, I'd like to see that  ..........

 

1964 Brabham BT8 - Australia's Number 1 Motorsport Marketplace - my105.com

[Red Socks]

I like the last two sentences:

 

"Car is not road registered. If this is a requirement for buying we may be able to get the car road registered"

 

As they say in the classics, I'd like to see that  ..........

 

1964 Brabham BT8 - Australia's Number 1 Motorsport Marketplace - my105.com

On the basis that it was understood in period that the car should be road legal, whilst I cannot speak for the colonies in the UK it would not present a problem. That is why it has -for instance lights.

Indeed for capital gains tax purposes, there being no CGT on road cars, it would make sense to road register the car. As has been done on many occasions over the years

[Ray Bell]

Fat chance of getting it registered in Australia...

 

If it wasn't registered in more lenient times, it's unlikely it would be considered at all these days.

[Bikr7549]

What is the curved blister on the nose that extends slightly under the windscreen for? Odd that there are no pictures of the car with its clothes off.

[Bloggsworth]

Fat chance of getting it registered in Australia...

 

If it wasn't registered in more lenient times, it's unlikely it would be considered at all these days.

Someone might go hooning in it...

[TerryS]

What is the curved blister on the nose that extends slightly under the windscreen for? Odd that there are no pictures of the car with its clothes off.

 

 

Have looked long and hard and can't find any meaningful photos of a naked BT 8.

 

brabham bt8 - Google Search

 

It seems some have the blister and some don't.

[Ray Bell]

I'm sure there was a James Allington cutaway drawing when it was new...

 

Probably in Autosport.

[GreenMachine]

I'm sure there was a James Allington cutaway drawing when it was new...

 

Probably in Autosport.

I just searched in the cutaway thread, there was one posted in 2010, a cutaway by Page if that helps.  Strangely, the link is broken ...

[Ray Bell]

I reckon it's clearance for the spare wheel...

 

Like a number of cars of those times, the spare would have been over the 'passenger' legroom.

[2F-001]

There is a cutaway drawing by Theo Page from Autosport which shows, as Ray points out, the spare wheel/tyre mounted above the ‘passenger’ leg space and partly over the driver’s left leg.

 

To require just that very small blister to clear the upper edge of tyre, I was expecting to see that spare wheel sloping down leftwards into the left hand footwell at an angle, but it appears to be near horizontal in the drawing. The bodywork there is slightly concave so it might have just cleared on the left, but If the tyre didn’t need a clearance bulge at the forward edge too, I assume it must actually slope down a touch towards the front. But the clearances must be extremely tight! Difficult to see what else that bister might be for though...

 

(Other, but not all, pictures of BT8s I can see online exhibit this feature.)

[68targa]

Here is a pic of a semi-naked Team Elite BT8 from 1964 .

1964 TT Goodwood Brabham BT8 Team Elite/Denny Hulme

 

Edit:  I have corrected the image re 2F001s post below

Edited by 68targa, 07 July 2022 - 10:18.

[2F-001]

That photo is fipped, left to right, isn't it?

The lettering on the steering wheel boss, and the gauges, are backwards.

Edited by 2F-001, 07 July 2022 - 08:38.

[68targa]

Ah yes - well spotted Tony !  I have corrected this now., thanks.

 

Chris

[2F-001]

It threw me for a while, because I didn't know a left hand drive version!

[Bikr7549]

Ah yes. I had forgotten that these cars often were required to carry a spare. Thanks for the info and the picture-that is a tight fit.

[Ray Bell]

A year or two earlier it wouldn't have been so tight...

 

But they kept on making the tyres wider, didn't they?

[Bikr7549]

Part of the circumstances for the Team Lotus withdrawal from Le Mans was over the 23’s spare tire-one end of the car had 4 wheel studs, the other 6, which made choice of which spare wheel to carry a question. While a bit off track regarding the Brabham BT8, were the rules at that time specific in anyway regarding what size spare to have onboard (and were the LeMans scrutineers prejudiced)? I bring this up as that Brabham blister looks to be no simple thing to make as it affects the front body panel and the windscreen. If rules were vague or nonspecific the smallest and lightest wheel would have been best, till you got a flat of course. And that is assuming tools to change were onboard.

Edited by Bikr7549, 08 July 2022 - 21:22.

[Ray Bell]

If it helps...

 

The Bentleys at Le Mans in 1930 had a spare which fitted both front and rear.

 

But in 'modern' times I only recollect seeing front wheels used as spares.

[doc knutsen]

Part of the circumstances for the Team Lotus withdrawal from Le Mans was over the 23’s spare tire-one end of the car had 4 wheel studs, the other 6, which made choice of which spare wheel to carry a question. While a bit off track regarding the Brabham BT8, were the rules at that time specific in anyway regarding what size spare to have onboard (and were the LeMans scrutineers prejudiced)? I bring this up as that Brabham blister looks to be no simple thing to make as it affects the front body panel and the windscreen. If rules were vague or nonspecific the smallest and lightest wheel would have been best, till you got a flat of course. And that is assuming tools to change were onboard.

I seem to remember the Lotus at Le Mans debacle a bit differently, in that the scrutineers would not approve of four-stud wheels one end, and six-stud the other, so Team Lotus modified the hubs to four-stud fixings both front and rear. But the scrutineers threw them out anyway, claiming that if six studs were necessary before, then a four-stud set-up would be unsafe...and of course, it all had very little to do with the speed of the Type 23 in relation to the little French cars competing for the Index of Performance. Was not one of the Lotus 23s entered with a 750cc engine, or is my memory playing tricks (again)?

Edited by doc knutsen, 09 July 2022 - 14:26.

[Collombin]

Was not one of the Lotus 23s entered with a 750cc engine?

Indeed it was.

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by doc knutsen
I seem to remember the Lotus at Le Mans debacle a bit differently, in that the scrutineers would not approve of four-stud wheels one end, and six-stud the other, so Team Lotus modified the hubs to four-stud fixings both front and rear. But the scrutineers threw them out anyway, claiming that if six studs were necessary before, then a four-stud set-up would be unsafe...and of course, it all had very little to do with the speed of the Type 23 in relation to the little French cars competing for the Index of Performance. Was not one of the Lotus 23s entered with a 750cc engine, or is my memory playing tricks (again)?

Yes, I think you'll find that the 750cc engine had been used to win one of the 'Index' classes a few years earlier...

I'm sure your detail about the reason for exclusion is correct, the scrutineers claiming that 'if it needed six before it would be unsafe with four now' story. But it's also very much the case that this entry would romp away from the French cars in the Index again. It might have had an 1100cc engine, I think.

[arttidesco]

Apologies for persuing the spare wheel tangent ....

 

 If rules were vague or nonspecific the smallest and lightest wheel would have been best, till you got a flat of course. And that is assuming tools to change were onboard.

 

 

 

 

But in 'modern' times I only recollect seeing front wheels used as spares.

 

 

In slightly more modern times I remember when building my Airfix model of the 917K that the spare wheel appeared a completely different, smaller, size, diameter and width and compeltely different profile tyre to either the front or rear wheels, infact if it fitted and served any purpose at all it might just have passed muster as a space saver. Sorry I do not have a better photo.

[Tim Murray]

When spare wheels are discussed, I’m always reminded of poor Chris Amon’s experience driving a Ferrari P4 at Le Mans in 1967:

As night fell his car sustained a puncture. He tried to get back to the pits, but the tyre disintegrated, leaving him running on the wheel rim with the rear upright scraping along the track. He therefore decided to stop to change the wheel, on the Mulsanne straight. His car was provided with a spare wheel, jack, wheel hammer and torch, but when he tried the torch he found that its battery was flat. So, using the lights of passing cars for illumination, he took a swing at the knock-off hub nut with the wheel hammer, whereupon the head of the hammer flew off and vanished into the undergrowth, never to be seen again.

He therefore gave up trying to change the wheel, got back in the car and tried to drive it back to the pits. However, the rear end dragging along the track damaged a fuel line. The leaking fuel ignited, and the car went up in flames. Chris baled out with the car still travelling at around 50 mph and ended up in the ditch with cuts and bruises. The burning car travelled on for a hundred metres or so before coming to rest, whereupon the marshals descended upon it and extinguished the fire, but were puzzled to find no sign of the driver, until he staggered along the ditch and tapped one of them on the shoulder, nearly giving the poor man a heart attack.

[Bikr7549]

I had never looked at the Team Lotus problems at LeMans, till now. It is a very interesting story from what I found on this website, full of shenanigans, commitment to competing and politics.

https://web.archive....m.com/id105.htm