10 replies to this topic

[Bugatti bourgogne]

Hi,
I'm interested in getting as many as possible pictures of Bugatti either in racing or not.... From the 20's or contemporary pictures of the cars driven today....
I have a lot for trade.... Would consider any exchange or buy out......(Books, parts, Pictures...related items)

I wait your proposal,

Kind regards,

Julien

[Ray Bell]

Maybe this one...



Or perhaps this one, more or less a sister car...



Then, maybe the first one again, but in action this time... arriving at the pits for some service...



Or did you have something more like this in mind (pic courtesy Byron Gunther):

[dbw]

ouch!ouch!owwwww......;)

[Hans Etzrodt]

Doesn't look like a Rabag. Perhaps an Aussi licence job?

[Ray Bell]

Lower pic is Chassis Number 37209...

Top car is a Type 39, the one with the ugly grill is a Type 37A. Someone probably has the chassis numbers, I'm fairly sure John Medley does... in fact, anyone with Bob King's book would. I'm not even in possession of the engine numbers of the Ford V8 engines.

[dbw]

could these be *cough* australasian bugs???....do i smell a holden or a v8-60 lurking inside?

[Ray Bell]

Sure are... no Holdens though... but that gives me an idea...

I have the story here somewhere of how John Cummins found and bought this car in England one wintry day... how he measured the engine bay and phoned Australia to get someone to measure the length of a Holden engine... and it fitted with some minimal room to spare.

This is an ex-Brooklands car with the Bellamy front end.



Oh, no V8-60s either, those were Mercury engines in the other cars... with Edelbrock heads on the Day Special... and a pre-selector gearbox.

You heard, did you? Yeah, I know... old Ettore turning in his grave...

[dbw]

i've heard that merc flatheads were used in some bugs.....while they produced lots of cheap power rather reliably..i have lugged around 4 and 8 cyl gp bugatti lumps and they seem to be flyweights compared to the big flatty[even with all the alloy stuff you can add]..hats off to the real men that manhandled these monsters with all that extra weight in the front...and on the weight issue,i had a riley kestral with a wilson pre-selector..cool,i thought...then i took it out for service..the damn gearbox weighed nearly as much as the fully dressed 12-4 engine!!!!!yeah, i know, even a total klutz can make lightning quick shifts....but the gp bug 'box can be carried handily across the garage by an average teenager..i'm sure bug gearboxes were hard to service in far off colonies and many saloons sported "help-yourself" wilsons,ready for harvesting....but the added heft on top of the flathead must have made the gp bug chassis groan under the weight.... [a popular conversion in the us was a "b" ford four with a miller head..]

[Ray Bell]

I often wonder about the old Wilsons... and especially because they were so difficult in real terms... like servicing, ratios, adapting, that sort of thing.

Their weight was enormous, I agree... and so many other boxes were around. For instance, the Jag box out of the SS100, and there were plenty of Fiat boxes that were very popular and used in numbers by those who didn't go for the pre-selector.

I really believe it was just a slavish following of the leader... the leader in this case being some of the successful pommie cars, the MGs and ERAs that lugged these weighty things around with distorted ideas of how drivers could avoid taking their hands off the wheel...

But you have to give it to the Day Special... the alloy of that box was polished to the max and it really looks the part.

Maybe John Medley can add further to this discussion?

[smarjoram]

Here's some my Grandfather took in Germany (I can't seem to attach them for some reason)...


http://www.pbase.com/image/955672

http://www.pbase.com/image/955663

http://www.pbase.com/image/955644

[Ray Bell]

And just so you know the Day Special is still being looked after...



This is at Guyra back a couple of years ago, Mal Biddlecombe the present owner.