History Auto racing 1894-1942

Slicedeuce, I am not trying to hijack your posting but, may I add for clarification that the Type A and the BiMotore differ in that the later had engines fore and aft not side by side. That necessitated the transfer case you show in your posting.

 

Oops, I meant 'latter' not 'later'.

 

Have you gentlemen ever heard of a set Three Speed Eaton differentials. A set of tandem drive axles for a freight truck.Basically Eaton 2 speed diffs driven a little differently than what one would expect. There are three speeds. Lo - Intermediate - Direct. In "Lo' both differentials are in low range. In "Intermediate " one diff is in "Lo" while the other is in "High". In "High" both diffs are in "Hi" range.

If you're familiar with the workings of a Ruckstell 2 speed you'l understand the Eaton truck diff.

So,just some more things to consider with the twin Alafa dilema....

 

Nope, I've not heard of a three speed rear axle. The apparent ease of use is appealing when compared to the 2 speed rear axle on the 48 Dodge fire engine I used to own.

 

Juan Manuel Fangio with Rickenbaker car... Do you hear about that car brand ??

Sent from my Mi A1 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Very interesting, thanks for the posting. This must have been during Fangio's sedan racing days before he moved to GP racing. Someone will pop up and give a dissertation on the Rickenbaker auto. All I know is that it was named after the famed aviator, Eddie.

 

Repairs after wheel collapse maybe?

 

Not a sedan, but a Rickenbacker-engined special. A Fuerza Libre race, won by a 1938 Grand Prix Alfa Romeo.

 

Thanks Banjeaux Bob.
I guess you are referring to the Eaton/Ruckstell 2-speed axle of the mid-30s, which used a planetary gear together with the usual bevels to give another speed reduction. Not difficult to understand it's working.
What I am unable to figure out is how two axles on the same truck can operate at different ratios at the same time. Seems impossible to me, at least in any condition except perhaps zero grip.
Maybe I've completely misunderstood what you said.

 

No, you understood completely. One diff runs in low range the other in high range.I don't understand it myself...but it worked for years. As for the Eaton - Ruckstell diffs.... I had always worked on the Eaton truck differentials.I also never knew Eaton made the Ruckstell.One day I was given the opportunity to open a Ruckstell up. It's just like the truck diffs only smaller.

 

The ex-Caviglia/Nasi car, surely? A 1938 308 chassis, fitted with the 3.8 litre engine from an 8C-35 (as supplied).

 

Would that apply to the Hudson and Chevrolet as well?

 

Yes, there were many weird and wonderful specials in Argentina - including a twin-engined Cadillac. Lots of Ford, Chev, Buick, Plymouth and Hudson specials too. Fangio's first self-built single-seater - La Negrita - was a Ford truck chassis fitted with a Chevrolet engine.

 

Thanks for this insight. I think that I'll spend some time trying to find some pictures of these cars.

 

Along with everyone else, I'm familiar with the Talbot-Lago unblown 4.5 litre pushrod 6 which appeared in Grand Prix racing in 1939, and even achieved some notable successes in the late 40s.
Recently heard (for the first time) about a supercharged sohc V16 engine for the same car, which was built and at least bench-tested in early 1939, with the help of some funding by the French government.
Anyone ever seen a picture of the engine, or of a car fitted with it?

 

You're overestimating the knowledge of some forum members - I'm clueless.
But learning.

 

Me too. I'm learning a little but mostly just look at the pictures.

 

Well, where to begin? Firstly, it should be borne in mind that Monsieur Lago was known for his 'smoke and mirrors' approach to business. The plans for this V16 (and also an unblown V12) were submitted to the French Fonds de Course committee in early 1938 and he duly received 600,000 francs in order to develop them - both of which he repeatedly told the French press throughout 1938 and 1939 would be available 'shortly'. It is rumoured that he actually spent the money on a new factory to build Pratt & Whitney aero engines under licence. I've never seen any evidence that either engine existed 'in the metal', let alone being bench-tested; during the summer of 1939 it was even rumoured that the V16 plans were being dusted off and adapted as a 1.5 litre for the forthcoming 1941 Formula. Lago only finally produced his long-promised cars - two examples of the MD (Monoplace Décalée - 'offset single-seater') and one MC (Monoplace Centrale) for the 1939 French GP. The MD, like earlier designs and the similar Delahaye 145, was designed as a dual-purpose sports/racer and was likely the chassis for which the 4.5 litre V12 was originally intended, while the V16 would have been fitted to the MC - in the end they all just received stretched versions of Talbot's existing engine, which had originally been a 4-litre. The MC would not be seen again in public until 1945, when Louis Chiron drove it in the first Bois de Boulogne meeting, while the MDs next raced as sports cars at Comminges in August 1939 - they would not be seen again until 1941, when both cars were at Indianapolis as 'Talbot Specials', failing (miserably) to qualify. If you've ever seen the half-hour colour film of Indy 1941, they are featured - and still carried their race numbers from Comminges! They later took part in some match races at Langhorne and competed at both Land's End and Pike's Peak before being sold to US buyers - although both chassis would eventually return to Europe.

The post-war T26, which also used the six-cylinder engine, was a different - but similar - animal.

 

I wonder how the French - and other European countries - race cars survived the War? Hidden? Smuggled out? Just lucky?

 

Bugatti buried a lot to hide them. Bob

 

Thanks for the prompt response. No lack of enthusiasm, or of knowledge.
"Automotive Industries" of 28 Jan 1939 states clearly that one V16 was undergoing bench testing at the time; perhaps they were merely repeating what they had been told by the inventive Antonio Lago.
The article also has some pictures of the Monoplace.

 

He was so close to the Franco-German border, there could not have been much time available. But he certainly seems to have succeeded.

 

That was during the Great War, not WW2. At which time Molsheim was in Germany.

Very few European racing cars of any importance disappeared completely between 1939 and 1945. I believe one sports Gordini went AWOL but as the field at Bois de Boulogne demonstrates virtually every racing car in France was still around in 1945. Alfa Romeo lost a few - including the only completed 162 and at least one 316 - to Allied bombing, but by the time Italy entered the war they'd sold virtually everything else apart from the 158s and the never-raced 512, which had been moved to the garages at Monza and were later walled up in a disused cheese factory. They were still testing them in early 1943! Both Rafaele Cecchini's cars - a single-seater MG K3 and his Moscerino record-breaker - disappeared; fate unknown.

Mercedes distributed their GP cars around the Reich and various occupied territories and - apart from the two W165s which were delivered to Caracciola in Switzerland in April 1945 - almost all of them ended up behind the Iron Curtain in the GDR, Romania and Czechoslovakia. A third - possibly never completed - W165 chassis is missing, so may just have been scrapped. Almost all the Auto Unions ended up in the Soviet Union, having been taken as 'war reparations'; their Zwickau factory was of course in the Soviet Zone, which became the GDR.

The only 'casualties' I know of in Britain were the two Lagondas raced at Le Mans in 1939 - they were damaged when a V1 landed near the factory in 1944. Thomson & Taylor had a big warehouse in an undisclosed safe location in Surrey which was apparently full of racing and other cars that had been laid up for the duration; the Napier-Railton, MG EX135, Reggie Tongue's Maserati 4CL and lots of others. Many other racing cars passed through the hands of Reg Parnell, whose premises were on his pig farm in rural Derbyshire.

Slightly related: the two Isle of Man Tourist Trophies won by European visitors in 1939 were both 'liberated' - the main TT trophy - a solid silver 3-foot winged Mercury statue - turned up in a BMW dealership in the Russian Zone of Vienna in 1945 and the Lightweight trophy was retrieved in 1943 from under an Italian chicken coop where it had been buried by the boss of Benelli!

 

The Bugatti factory, incidentally, was appropriated by the Germans in 1941; at various times it built torpedoes for the Luftwaffe, V1s and various amphibious military vehicles designed by Hans Trippel, who was convicted of war crimes by the French in 1947, serving three years of a five-year prison term. He was later responsible for the 'gull-wing' doors on the Mercedes Benz 300SL and also created the Amphicar. Other products which emanated from what had been Bugatti’s factory included an experimental motorised sledge, towed covered sledges for use as ambulances on the Eastern Front and even snowploughs.

 

Number 26 sure looks like a Garros Bugatti, one raced in the 1914 INDY 500. Bob