Has anyone ever run a four valve head on a Comet?
Vincent Grey Flash Patrick Godet
- Thread starter davidd
- Start date
Yes a guy that I have spoken to in the UK Tommos, raced a Vincent single in a sidecar outfit for a few years he is now building a Vincent twin with 4 Valve heads to race, from drawings done by Phil Irving in the late 1950s
Davidd you are on the ball, That's the man, Phil draw the heads when he was working on the Jack Brabham Repco Brabham formula 1 project.
The Horners have just given their four valve twin racer a good shake down to, this is the 1600 that puts out about 186 HP. I have no idea what category they would race it in here in Australia, time will tell I guess.
I can confirm that the 4 valve Comet with sidecar was very quick when I saw it race at Lydden a few years back and won if I recall correctly, beating machines that 'should' have been faster.
In the dry at Devil's Elbow, a sharp left hand bend, with the sidecar wheel high in the air, the rider instead of easing off on the throttle, or widening his line, to give the passenger more of a chance to get the wheel back down, would open the throttle more, which made the rear wheel step out in a power slide and thus bring the sidecar wheel back to earth. To me this was quite impressive.
In the dry at Devil's Elbow, a sharp left hand bend, with the sidecar wheel high in the air, the rider instead of easing off on the throttle, or widening his line, to give the passenger more of a chance to get the wheel back down, would open the throttle more, which made the rear wheel step out in a power slide and thus bring the sidecar wheel back to earth. To me this was quite impressive.
The 4 valve comet outfit was very impressive, Piloted by Dave Aungier, for the few races it was allowed to run in, keeping much larger capacity machines including the Morgans at bay, but it was never allowed to score championship points (in BHR/VMCC racing) as it was deemed not eligible. I guess thats why we dont see it out anymore. For whatever reason, they have decided that the 4 valve Manx is eligible and the 4 valve Vincent is not, which is a shame after the effort Tommo has gone to to build the bikes, it would have been nice for people to see, and its not as if the grids are full of original bikes, people wont enter their original bikes so much now as the replicas are literally like something from another century.
Hi there Ben, Yes sadly I think you are spot on....what I find also is the guys who own these high end "Contemporary" racers also put well seasoned "A" grade riders on them, which makes it near impossible to beat them. So if I pull the original engine out of my twin racer, and install one of the Irving Vincent 1300 cc engines, which the scrutineers here would quite likely accept, and then offer some young "A" grader a ride....I might be in with a chance..........
Let me know if you manage to get hold of one of those Irving Vincent engines wont you!