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=-Qo1lBDaFBwEwan 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=9564.0http://cameronracingengines.com/#homeThe 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.
