Cars and bikes I’ve come across in my travels

Paul Marx said:
Where did it break?

Paul
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The day before the auction closed I added up all the receipts over the years and the sale price was 600 usd less than the total of the kit and all expenses. I did all the work myself except for building the engine, making the driveshaft, sewing the upholstery and setting up the rear axle. In the months before the auction I built a paint booth in the garage of my rental house and painted it as well as my Laverda RGS. The fellow in the previous post photographing the car, Chuck Wyke, cleaned, painted and detailed the engine bay. In fact, he made the entire chassis look great, then photographed the car and managed the auction. It sold at auction on my birthday for $40k, two weeks later we were on Guadeloupe and haven’t looked back. That was in May of 2022.

Assembly on the patio after painting and polishing. I used a two part lacquer that allowed me to build up color and then sand and polish it to a shine. Fans, furnace filters and poly sheeting made a paint booth and I used a 3M paint gun with disposable cups and nozzles.
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This is what the car looked like in the original gel coating a few years before I did the cosmetic work.
 
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sfcpiet said:
:LOL: Now, THAT looks like fun!! Street legal (lighting equipment)?

The humble Beetle is always good for a surprise. A friend competed in Formula Vee and SuperVee way back when, his cars were awesome, despite the simple underpinnings.

piet
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Bloke built the whole thing himself, a true craftsman in his 70s. He didn't even try to register it but apparently it gets out on the road now and then anyway.
 
Alzero said:
This is what the car looked like in the original gel coating a few years before I did the cosmetic work.
Click to expand...

I gather that's a Lotus 11? I was at a historic combined bike/car meeting last year and there were two of those pitted next to one another, absolutely stunning looking cars. Yours looks amazing, must have been a very satisfying exercise.
 
The Matra has a history going back a long way.
DB, René Bonnet, Panhard
When the French made great innovative cars before the diktats of the world market took over.

stubs-auto.fr

Stubs Auto - René Bonnet, de DB à Matra

L’épopée de René Bonnet prend naissance dans les années trente. Il se prend de passion pour l’automobile et la mécanique et sympathise alors Charles Deutsch. Une entente profonde les unit et en 1936, décident de construire une automobile de course.
stubs-auto.fr stubs-auto.fr


Paul
 
Translated from Swedish wikipedia.

"The Saab Monster was an experimental car that Saab built in 1959. The project aimed to develop a more powerful engine and better performance. The car was a toreador red Saab 93 with all unnecessary weight removed. The bonnet was replaced with a plastic hood to save weight. Subsequently, two transversely mounted 748 cc two-stroke, three-cylinder engines were inserted. This gave the car about 138 horsepower and a top speed of 196 km / h (measured at Såtenäs airfield). It was a world record at the time, but it was not approved. This was due to the fact that they only drove in one direction along the test route, if a record is to be approved, it is required to drive in both directions, i.e. exactly the same distance back. The low weight and aircraft wing profile of the car meant that the rear end of the car had a tendency to lift when approaching top speed. The massive torque also made the car very understeered. The project was discontinued because it turned out to be impractical."

I believe it is in the SAAB museum in Trollhättan. They also tried 850cc Austin mini, Lancia Appia V4, Lloyd Arabella but finally decided on Ford V4 for the 96 model.

Lasse
 
Interesting project,
I knew a guy once who had a 3 Litre V6 Ford engine in his Saab 96, same bell housing pattern to the V4 so apparently was a relatively easy swap.
Don't remember how it drove though.
J
 
I might be sufffering Altszyheimers here (which I defo cannot spell)
back in the late70's I was on holiday in Lanzarote with my late wife Andrea and we had on hire a Suzuki jeep, it was definately two stroke, that I am sure of, but I think it was also a four cylinder engine, with so many three cyllinder two stroke engines about at the time is this correct.
CLEM
 
AFAIK the Suzuki 2 stroke engined Jeep had a 3 cylinder engine, very early models even 2 cylinder engines. The 4 stroke LJ has 4 cylinders.
 
Other than diesels, have there been 2-strokes with more than three cylinders? Excepting the 500gp monsters and the replicas from the ‘80s.
My boat had a pair of 12-cylinder two-strokes, turbos and superchargers!
 
I did some Googling Gerald you are right, the early Suzuki jeeps had 359cc air cooled twin cylinder 2T engines, later the same size but water cooled, the next ones 539cc three cylinder 2T, which is what we must have hired in Lanzarote, later still, but still on the first generation Jimny they had water cooled four stroke 797cc engines, which sounds a bit more like it to me since the 539cc triple was gutless, I cannot imagine what the 359cc variant was like, I mean a two seat, metal bodied, 4X4 with a 359cc engine?????? doomed from the word go, I would think.I hope they have all rotted away and are no more.
CLEM
 
I wouldn't call the 539cc triple gutless. We had a Fronte which was a small car with the same engine, On road peformance at least equal to a good Mini. On track capable of lapping the local circuit in the same times as a Lotus Cortina. Peaky, yes, gutless no. Very light and handled like a Kart once some sticky Bridgestone radials went on.
 
Paul Marx said:
The Matra has a history going back a long way.
DB, René Bonnet, Panhard
When the French made great innovative cars before the diktats of the world market took over.

stubs-auto.fr

Stubs Auto - René Bonnet, de DB à Matra

L’épopée de René Bonnet prend naissance dans les années trente. Il se prend de passion pour l’automobile et la mécanique et sympathise alors Charles Deutsch. Une entente profonde les unit et en 1936, décident de construire une automobile de course.
stubs-auto.fr stubs-auto.fr


Paul
Click to expand...
My father owned a PL17 "Tigre" when young which he always describes as his best car ever

I like the golden age of French motoring with Delahaye, Talbot Lago and later Ligier, Matra etc
 
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