Our Riley 1.5, which had only ever rallied before appearing in the St Mary’s line up at the 2010 Goodwood Revival, was kindly invited to contest the full season in the HRDC ‘Touring Greats’ series, by the instigator of the HRDC and race impresario Julius Thurgood. As one of our longest-serving supporters, his vision was to see the young engineers in the OUMF student team pitting the car against some serious ‘Goodwood’ opposition on track in the Class B for which it was eligible – and particularly the very similar Wolseley 1500 of seasoned racer Max Cawthorn whose beautifully presented racer represented a real target for the team to match. Our task was to develop the car from a rally car to a racer through ‘hands on’ practical race experience gained during the season.
From the outset it was obvious - as the Riley was built as a very strong rally car - that we would need to find some major time improvements, and that couldn’t all be achieved during the course of a single season. Our budget was effectively nil so that didn’t allow for the 1860cc engine upgrade, and the regulations wouldn’t allow any of the infinite suggestions of different V8s either! So we hunkered down with the faithful (if underpowered) rally engine while starting an appeal for parts for the larger, more powerful and more appropriate one planned, and looked for simple, inexpensive improvements we could make elsewhere. These primarily revolved around reliability, lowering and lightening, and having run without fault all season, when all the cars were weighed at Snetterton, we discovered that the Riley tipped the scales at 933kgs. This was not only 32kgs more than the 901kgs of Max’s Wolseley, but was a hefty, adult-sized 64kgs shy of our permitted minimum weight of 869kgs. On that not entirely unexpected bombshell our pre-2012 season improvements began. The extensive armoured plating to the chassis that has given us such a bullet proof rally car doesn’t offer any such advantage on track – but is seam welded and almost impossible to remove. So we clearly needed to look elsewhere for weight savings. As we considered the options for what else we could do within the regulations, we hit on the idea of trying to solve three problems in one hit. When the car was rescued from its almost final resting place in a Scottish field in 2003, certain areas of corrosion had never received full attention and had been patched rather than properly cut out. Eight years on, the worst of this was centred in the bulkhead, front inner wings and the engine bay area were all the seams were coming unstitched and leaking, and panels rusting through. We decided we just couldn’t patch it up again – either from a safety or aesthetic point of view – and, regardless of the complexity involved, we just had to do a proper job on this. So, with both weight saving, access for welding and a strong desire to address the look of the engine bay (which had always let the Riley down) in mind, we began to strip the car.
First things to come off were our brilliant axle stand mounts – great for rough surfaces in the cane fields of Barbados but not necessary for a flat race paddock in the UK – so that saw the car a few kilos down already. Next we had to remove the entire dashboard as we needed to be able to get to all the corruption behind it, and when it was finally pulled clear and the extent of the damage to the seams, mounting points and frame was revealed, we knew we had our work cut out.
Behind the dashboard we discovered lots of rotting foam, mastic, extra glue, layers of patch panels, obsolescent old heater controls, extra wires and long defunct cables, and a whole host of loose screws, nuts and washers that had been dropped and never found. With the roll cage out, the dashboard was stripped and found to be completely rotten and falling apart too - necessitating an urgent search for a replacement. The next job was to remove the wiring, which was not an easy feat as many connections had been fitted after the loom had been run around the car and so involved the widening of many holes to extricate the connections. However, we finally had a clear area to get to work on the upper bulkhead and seams.
At this point, further probing revealed that many box sections in the bulkhead were rotted through – all the way from the bonnet hinges at the windscreen into the ‘A’ pillars, and down through to the shock absorber mounting points, master cylinder mountings, steering rack surround and so on, right down to the front chassis legs. Most of what was there was double, and sometimes triple skinned with frilly brown lattice repair patches. Oh dear! Those who missed a few practical sessions at this time were shocked to find on their next visit that there was no engine or gearbox, no front panel, no wings, no seams, no suspension, brakes, or anything really!…except the forward halves of the inner wings/engine bay virtually flapping in the breeze.
Shaken but undaunted, over the next few weeks many sections of new metal were carefully measured and crafted to replace all the rotten sections that were removed. This was a very scary period, as new mountings for the shock absorbers had to be entirely remade in the knowledge that even tiny inaccuracies could cause mayhem to the suspension set up later. However, as it slowly began to take shape again, and with all the front suspension off the car as well, the team set about cleaning checking and giving everything it a good repaint ready for refitting when the welding and painting is finally completed.
As it stands now, the panel work and welding is nearing completion, and we expect to be able to be able to get it back in paint in early January, fitting everything back on the car by the end of the month and getting ready to put our efforts to the test.
We plan to be at Race Retro in February, with a finished car, so we hope you’ll come and see all the work we’ve done over the winter.
