♣ BANGER RACING ♣

A Pastime with Fun and Danger

This is me practising for my pilots licence.

Back in the late 1980’s I was having fun racing around various race tracks in old “Bangers”. I was dragging them around on a home built trailer, converted from an old twin wheeled caravan chassis and it did the job so long as you had the 'engine-end' of the car at the front of the trailer.

It was a bit out of balance and rear-end heavy if parked the other way round, as the trailer wheels were forward of the centre of the trailer. I had a “Mark 2” Transit high roof van fitted with a Ford, 3 litre V6, to tow it all around. Without the trailer hooked up, the van went very well with ample torque to spin the wheels away from traffic lights and getting it broad-side around roundabouts on a rainy day was great fun.

This Cortina Estate didn't do very well on it's first outing. The second race saw it stuffed into the armco and the inpact was so hard, it broke the bell-housing on the gearbox.

The wife and I piled everything we needed for a days racing in the transit, plus a friend or 2 or 5 or 8 or sometimes more. It was always over-loaded, as was the trailer with a car full of this and that on a caravan chassis and some-what knackered suspension.

Back then, I really didn’t give a stuff about the law just so long as I was having fun. “Let’s just get there,” I always said. “I’ll worry about the old bill, if we get pulled.” As it was, I never did get pulled while on my way to a race, or coming home. I did get pulled and have been many times in other cars, but just for a routine check. The times I collected fines and points, was at work driving a truck, never in a car.

The car pictured above was an 'Austin Princess' and belonged to an old mate, "Mark Slaughter". That's him with the red striped, blue overals. He told us all, the shunt he got, HURT, alot.

Speeding was my biggest problem. I could never see myself slowing down and I was always trying to go faster. I could never go fast enough and the only thing that stopped me from killing myself from speed was money. I have never had enough money to spend on REAL speed, but had enough to spend to go fast.

This Nissan was my fist ever banger car and this is my first race ever. When the flag went down and the race started I couldn't believe how loud is was on the track. It's more noisy on the track than it is as a spectator.

This is how an Engine should look. This was my 'Triumph Spitfire', of which I fitted a 'Fiat 2 litre Twin Cam' with a five speed gearbox. The engine alone took me six months to build.

Click on the pic to take you to the "Spitfire" link.

So doing a bit of banger racing was a whole world away from all the spit and polish of owning a Classic Custom Car. Gone was the worry that someone was going to lean on your wing or door with the rivets from their 'Levi Jeans' scraping the paint off your pride and joy. Gone was the worry of some 'Snotty Nosed Kid' wandering aimlessly around your car with an ‘Ice Cream’ dripping all over the place and then seeing the snot and ice cream being transferred from the kids hands to body panels.

Some parents just don’t look after their kids well enough.

Why can’t we leave them at home, chained to the dog kennel, so Fido won’t starve?

“I ask ya”…… “Some parents just can’t get it right”