LCR Forum

slowvic wrote:Yes, Anglebox, that is indeed Vince Woodman's car. The pic was taken at Mallory Park in about 1964. He and I lived close to Castle Combe and he was most kind and helpful when I first started racing there in 1963. The other person who helped me a lot was Angelo Farina (some relation, or so he said!) He had a small workshop in Swindon where he worked on old cars. He was a member of the 750 Motor Club and built his own Ford engined specials, so his input was most useful.There wasn't much I could do to tweak the garage-owned Lotus Cortinas, but 480 BMW and 397 RDT were a different matter. 480 got a

set of L2 Cams and decent shock absorbers, but could be driven happily on the road, whereas 397 got a 165 bhp motor and steel innards, plus a radically reworked suspension. The front suspension had greater camber and a very hefty antiroll bar, plus a special steering box. The A frame was removed from the rear and a Panard rod substituted, with trailing arms to prevent the axle twisting. I chopped off the banjo pressing behind the diff. and welded a flange onto the diff housing to match the flange on the front side, then it was a simple matter of passing bolts right through the diff and the two flanges with tubular spacers in between to nuts on the banjo side. The banjo itself was welded back onto the new rear flange. This was a very solid job and no chance of any of the dreaded oil leaks recurring. A rear antiroll bar, 6 inch rims and considerable lightening. went to make a pretty quick car, but as previously mentioned, a fire put paid to all this effort and although testing at Castle Combe produced good lap times, the car never raced.
When in May I return to Europe from Australia, I will look through my records of some of the trips I did in 480 BMW. and write a few words on them, so watch this space!
All the best, Slowvic.