Manky Monkey Motors

Spent Sunday trying to get a Cooper v twin to behave itself on the hill - it was a modest failure. Carbs flooding, plugs fouling, running on one cylinder and apparently cutting onto two when it felt like it made it interesting to drive.
Better luck next time.

Erm, what's a Cooper v twin?

Cooper 1100, 1940's single seater. Fitted with one of Ewan Cameron's v twin jap engines. Proper historical racer, like this but twice the power:-

https://m.classic-trader.com/uk/cars/search?make=265&model=1815&sorting%5Bsorting%5D=datePublished_desc&pagination%5BentriesPerPage%5D=60&pagination%5Bpage%5D=1&_locale=en_GB

Cool!

Pretty minimal cars.

Ahhhh.... Shelsley Walsh, one of the world’s oldest motorsport events..........
Was fortunate to have competed there on a vintage two-wheeler back in the late 90’s, great track with soooo much history.

The Cooper with a JAP V-twin you mentioned sounds like a real blast.
A friend has a Hagon (rep) sprint bike with JAP two-of-everything V twin, sounds great, when it behaves properley.


Coopers and Shelsey -

Here’s a video from this month’s Goodwood Revival's “Earl of March Trophy” race for Formula 3 cars of the type raced between 1948 and 1959.
A total of 30 cars were entered, of which 9 were Coopers.
None were powered by the V-twin JAP (typically 1000cc) as the rules for Formula 3 meant the engines were 500cc (singles), mainly Norton and JAPs, but folk used to take these little F3s, Coopers and the like, and use them for hillclimbing, often fitting bigger motorcycle engines such as the V-twin JAP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qo1lBDaFBw

Ewan Cameron has raced at Goodwood’s Revival on a JAP before, as well as competing at many Sprints, and the inaugural Pendine bike event in 2013

http://www.mankymonkeymotors.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=9564.0

http://cameronracingengines.com/#home


The Cooper Car Company Ltd – In the 1940’s, Charles Cooper and his son John started building 500cc Formula 3 cars in their workshops in Surbiton, Surrey. Little did they know their designs would change motorsport forever as it played a vital role in popularising fitting the car’s engine behind the driver, as by taking a motorcycle engine and its separate gearbox and transplanting it so the gearbox drove a car’s axle (as opposed to a motorcycle’s rear wheel), the rear engine geometry was pretty much self-dertermined. What was also ‘new’ was the weight distribution.
The first Formula 1 victory for a rear engine car came in 1958 when Stirling Moss won the Argentine GP in a privately entered Copper T43. 1959 saw Brabham and the Cooper works team win the F1 title.

From down under – a Cooper V-twin JAP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHgfVxVz9jQ

Yeh that's the one, except it had iron heads and wasn't as shiny. Amazing what those things are worth. Good stuff there Tony.

When my brother passed away and I was notifying people from his address book one was a car club he belonged to.  I had a lovely reply from the secretary saying that he hadn't been a member for some time but a number of members remembered him taking his Austin 7 Special up the hill at Shelsley in rather impressive style!

The car with my nephew who inherited it, and his dad who between them finished the restoration and got it back on the road.  I don't think there are any plans to take it back to Shelsley though.

Hah, the cooper race mag has a report on the last Shellsley meeting. Write up, and pic of me helping to solve the issues with the v twin. The funny thing is the have captioned the pic as Alastair and John Dent, and Ewan Cameron! Lol. We've been discussing a rolling road for setting these things up - it takes so much guesswork doing it on raceday...