First time out in my Midget: not even enough time to paint it!
Lyydon, circa 1971? TEAC meeting.
Me in paddock conversing with pit crew (AKA wife!).
As an entrant (Felspeed Racing) I ran three Midgets, included Peter Beech.
Noting the reference to Roger never earlier in this thread, Peter's car was in fact one of the original Enever cars, which had been run by Robin Widdows and held production sports class car record at Nurembergring.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this car was that Roger (apparently using Dad Sid's inside influence) managed to access the plant on a shutdown period and with an accomplice, they passed loads of aircraft quality NS4 alluminium alloy through the press tools and pressed out virtually a complete MG Midget in NS4!
The cars (two of I gather) were built using aircraft type rivets (same as single seater monocogues and something like Avdal Cherrylock rivets) and some form of metal bonding resin like Loctite.
Understandably, they were amazingly light!
When the regs changed in 1970 (??) and Modsports cars had to be original material within the wheelbase - measure from axle centre to axle centre, this left Peter with a problem: his car was scrap.
However not to be beaten, we took it into the bodyshop and opened up the rear wheelarches and inserted some 18 gauge mild steel sheet beneath the ally exterior skin!
Scrutineers in those days merely employed a magnet to test if the composition was ferrous.
Poor old senior RAC scrute Fred Mathews was pulling his hair out!
His magnet would slide off from the top bead (where the rear wing joined the boot closing panel) and slide down until it hit the bit immediately above the wheelarch and would then screech to a halt!
I convinced him this was caused by the loss of friction from the new highly glossy silicon-based body polish we were testing, aimed at cutting wind resistance!
Peter's car used a highly tweaked dry sump XSP F3 and although outclassed in size (as he was giving away 300 c.c.) it made up in power and aceleration!
