18-06-2019, 01:31 AM
The late Dale Shaw, who was a stalwart of our A7 club in Melbourne, built several specials, both A7 and otherwise. Most were for competing in both Mud Trials (your Sporting trials) and mootorkhanas and his singleseater Seven racer was one of the top two in Oz. One he built was called the Four Week Flyer ('cos that's how long he took to build it from scratch), later a Four-by-four week Flyer. The latter took four months from starting and featured a veyr hot Hillman Imp motor attached to a 4spd Austin 7 gearbox. He won just about everything in both trials and M'khanas, including Australian titles. I was lucky to passenger for him a few times in the former and even competed with it in a couple of the latter. There was always a queue to be invited for this, but I was lucky - he was my Best Man! He then built a very light wedge-shaped racer, again fitted with Imp mot and A7 g/box, which showed the box to be very strong.. Like anything else - to be worthwhile one has to work hard into making these thing a success, but Dale showed it was possible. Cheers, Bill in Oz