117 replies to this topic

[enderwigginau]

Saggy at Winton

[sagman]

hi folks , thought it about time for an update ........... the 8 laps at phillip island only served to wet the appetite for more sustained driving (read speed ! )

so it was time to get a cams licence and participate at some historic events , the first being the very first winton festival of speed last august in the muscle car sprint events. well i found out a couple of things , the old girl is still a pretty quick car ! and i found the point where grip leaves you !!

coming on to the pit straight we (I ) got very sideways and made the decision to head infield rather than risk the concrete wall option , i mean after all it was a rally and rallycross car !!

so there i was spinning around in the mud , water and grass flying everywhere so just selected second gear and drove out and back on the track , after all it was my first lap ! with another 4 laps relatively trouble free it was back to the pits , saggy was of course looking more like a rally car than a circuit car with mud and grass everywhere !! and it was time for the payouts ," ok ok we know it used to be a rallycross car , you didn't have to prove it !" shit i hope somebody got some pics of that.

anyway we got a 3rd fastest in event 2 and a 4th in event 3 , now by my reckoning and confirming with the captain that was the first time since he ran the car that it has got a podium result.

i got better as i got used to the car , the track and put more trust in the tyres and brakes, after all it was my first circuit race

have been to the sandown historics as well and entered regularity 2 , qualified the old girl 9th out of 36 cars and then you nominate a time which you think can be achieved each lap ,( like DYO drag racing i guess )and it is a tough discipline to master. regularity is a speed event and not a race.

had a few little gremlins creep in over the weekend but still did all practice sessions , qualifying , and events, we had to push start from the dummy grid on sunday as the alternator gave up as did the starter motor.

so a full rewire is underway and a full check of the car inc. gearbox ( maybe a synchro ? ) will be done before phillip island , rob roy hillclimb and the F1 GP next march

most of all, it's getting used , i'm having a ball and people are getting to see and hear the old girl.

cheers for now laz

[Pop's-SS]

G'day Laz

I'm extremely GREEN with ENVY at your with Saggy, good onya mate for getting out and using the ol' girl for what it was designed for

Regards .... Barry

[enderwigginau]

If you put your 3D glasses on and re-read Rory's post it says "bring that bloody thing up here - I want a go!!"

And me too mate

[sagman]

well after the article in street machine has come out it is fair to say it could not have covered every part of saggy's history.. after all you can't put war and peace on a table napkin can you !. and let's face it the names Bond , Firth , Janson will take precedece over many when a story is written.

as has been pointed out by Wayne Reddy's son they are a part of the car's history so to be fair to all i will try to fill in the whole story post Janson.

Alan Lukins originally found saggy when looking to buy an XU1 to turn into a sports sedan ( well they were plentifull and cheap in those days ) he decided that the car he was looking at was a little to expensive and probably to good to cut up , but there in the back yard was a car Alan immediately recognised , it was saggy sarah.

he said i'll take it , the guy wondered why he wanted that clapped out piece of junk as they were basically stripping it of components and it was to be heading to torana heaven. Alan recalls this was late '74 or very early '75 , so began the work of transforming saggy into a sports sedan.

the car was re-logged in nov. 1976 as a category 2 sports sedan , colour green/ black.... now somewhere about this time Alan was offered another car , a torana that was already a sports sedan and had a big hole in the firewall for a recessed motor. a deal was made to secure the other car and in that deal saggy was moved on to Bruce Watt and Nick Burgess.transfer of ownership was done on the 3/10/78.

now Bruce Watt or 'Watty 'as he was known used to work for firth motors so he had a very strong connection to HDT and Harry. i have a pic of Bruce refuelling what could even be saggy at bathurst in '70 as part of the team . that pic came from Terry Russell who was Brock's one time brother-inlaw. i have not been able to find out much about Nick Burgess to date other than he was initially listed as a part owner and drove the car on a number of occasions.


so the old girl has it's second owners after being snatched from the jaws of oblivion by Alan Lukins. roll on to 7/11/78 and the car has it's debut at sandown. i'm not sure if the car was still in green/black or had been painted in the 'first ' blue and white scheme .

the car was not raced again till 3/3/79 at winton then 17/3/79 at calder, 27/5/79 at calder , 21/7/79 winton, 18/8/79 wintonand finally 7/10/79 at calder. this was it's last race as a naturally aspirated car and was the subject of an article by the good Capt. in auto action may '79 he says 'since i parted with the old girl she's had a chequered career but no chequered flags i'm sorry to say ' he goes on to say 'although it is still fitted with a six cylinder engine, built of course by Ian Tate , there are plans to supercharge it. just the thought brings tears and memories flooding back'.

well i call this the end of part 1 and i will do part 2 when i get some more time............. laz

[sagman]

part 2 of the post Janson history of Saggy Sarah

as can be seen in a pic of saggy at winton in the blue and white livery it had a number of names of sponsors on the car.
Superior Brake Moorabbin was run by Geoff Hall who used to do all the HDT brakes. i got to speak to him about saggy, though he could remember the car he did not have much to add other than he had helped Watty out with the brakes.
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Tate.Philip.Dew automotive auburn ( although it was written Drew on the car !) this was the business that Ian Tate , Matthew Philip and Les Dew established in the old HDT workshop at auburn.

also on the car is a set of the HDT magnesium Wheels from the L34 days ( where are they now? ), so it was clearly evident of the level of ex HDT parts and involvement at that stage of the cars life.

from that last race date in '79 the car underwent the transformation to it's supercharged format , now i am pretty sure it was at this time the engine setback occured with it being done the same as the rallycross beast , the inlet manifold , blower , twin 2"su's , idler pulley and pulleys along with many other brackets and braces were fitted from the old rallycross car.

at the same time the car was lowered with most of the old flares removed from the front guards and cut out more and the rears were cut and shut as well. bigger wider group c bolt-on flares were added and molded on as were custom front fairings to the front air dam. it was also fitted with a large alloy air-scoop below the grille to feed air into the carbs.

the car recieved a set of 15 x 10 rebel wheels at this time and it was painted in the red and white livery. Joe Felice told me that Watty had asked him if it was ok to paint it red and white like the dealer team cars and Joe suggested to make it a little different as it had not raced for HDT in that livery . so the compromise was basically half XU1 and half L34 dealer team style. Joe was cool with that .

on the 21/6/81 the car ran at calder which would have been the first with the new combo. it also ran at sandown 4/7/81 , winton 18/7/81 , winton 22/8/81.

it ran in '82 at sandown 13/2/82 , calder 27/2/82 sandown 11/9/82 and sandown 2/11/82 this was the last time Watty ran the car and it was put up for sale in 1983. i am not quite sure if this was when he was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas or not. both Harry and Ian Tate related some funny stories about him.

the old girl passed on to a new owner in 1984 being John Anderson from the ACT.( i have not been able to track him down at this stage) 6/7/84 was the date in the log book for his ownership and it was entered at amaroo pk on the 7/7/84. during John's ownership the car was fitted with a 48 mm IDA weber and the colour was changed from red/white to pale blue / white in a totally different style.

John only raced the car once and sold it 8 months later to Greg Camilos in adelaide, Greg transferred ownership on the 11/3/85 had trouble firing the car up , he took it to West Torrens Dyno and Mike Stewart for some help. they got it fired up no prob until it kicked a leg out, that was the old 186 Ian Tate had built up in '80 ish. when i caught up with Mike i told him of the cars past and he said "No way , that car was a piece of crap. I felt very bad for Greg and was very worried about that being on a race track. I had concerns for his safety!"
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Greg had Mike build him a new engine which was based on a later 202 block yet still retained the old 8/72 head. Greg did some test days with the car and entered it in a sports sedan race at AIR on 5/7/86 . he did not do any more racing with the car and it was sold sometime in the earlier part of '87 ( there is no date in the log book ?) to Geoffrey Ayres.

there are no entries in the log book for the next 7 years until it was sold to Wayne Reddy 29/7/94.
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seems like a good spot to finish off part 2 laz

Edit: added the pic mate, Grant.

[Statler]

More more more

[sagman]

part 3 of history of saggy post Janson

while the log book date is 29/7/94 for Wayne's ownership transfer it was a time prior to that when the car was purchased as it is listed a racing at Mallala on the 31/7/94. and there was much to be done prior to being able to use it.

i spoke to Wayne today to refresh my thoughts of when Wayne bought the car, it was the 'barn find and was in bad shape ' , it was sitting in a shed north of adelaide covered in chook shit, broken windscreen the flares were rock smashed and the poor old thing had been a paddock basher.
Wayne told me it was really almost not worth saving but he loved the thought of that blown 6 , so a deal was done.

the windscreen was replaced , the flares were tidied up and it got a fresh coat of paint in yet another blue/ white paint scheme. the biggest problems he was having at the time is that it was tearing up the one tonner clutches like blazes, even with double the rivets it still killed them. one time even so bad it cut halfway through the bellhousing.

reliability was the major issue with the car and Wayne enlisted the help of friend Alan Nitscke , a formula 5000 racer and owner of Freeway Engineering at Mt. Barker. first order of business was the clutch, Wayne found a tilton clutch for sale in tassie and arranged with the guy to get it to adelaide, the guy said ' no prob i'll give it to a truckie mate and he will bring it over. Wayne said 'i met this truckie on the freeway about 11 pm one night , he handed over the clutch and i gave him the money', then the truckie says 'i'm not the guy but i'll make sure he gets the money ok '

Wayne had already mounted the rear wing after only a couple of sprints as it used to buzz the tyres through the kink at mallala. it helped but was not working as well as hoped when Alan said 'let's put a spiller on it ', problem solved. the wing itself is interesting as the side were folded up from 5mm alloy and the centre is from one of those old f/glass spoilers you used to see on utes in the '80's.
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the other issue due to the 400 plus ft. lbs. of torque to the banjo housing was that it started to tear up the brackets and housing , another baffled housing ( sl/r 5000 i think) was sourced from craig walkom to replace the stressed old unit.

when i spoke to Alan he told me it was a case of making the car reliable as that was the only way to make it enjoyable, Alan drove the car on one occasion and said 'we are putting a rear sway bar on this next ! ' it works a treat i might add.

Wayne ran the car at mallala starting from the 31/7/94, 6/8/94, 7/10/95 , 29/10/95 , 28/4/96 , 9/6/96 , 1/9/96 , 23/11/96 , 27/7/97 , 8/5/98 ,14/6/98, 9/9/98 , 27/6/99 , 26/9/99, 6/11/99, 1/7/01, 10/3/02,5/5/02,8/8/04, 27/11/04, and collingrove hillclimb on 16/5/99. Wayne's son Aaron also drove the car during this period as well as helping out with the project along the way i'm sure.

after the new motor was built mallala on 1/5/05 , 19/6/05, 24/7/05 and 18/9/05 . the new engine was as a result of number 5 piston buggering up which resulted in a new block.

during Wayne's ownership of the car he was approached by one of the previous owners who actually thought it was the rallycross car. that started Wayne thinking and thus began his search for the history on the car. he contacted Alan lukins, Greg Camilos and Ian Tate. Ian quickly dashed the thought of it being the rallycross car as he knew it was long gone so Wayne sent a folder of pics to Ian who had then asked Harry about the blower and parts from the rallycross car, Harry's response was "no cock , got all that stuff in my shed that cars not on of ours' .that put a severe dent in the search but in the meantime a reply from Brockie came through in the form of a letter. it said that while the idler pulley looked like the one off KLD-158 the blower was certainly different to what he remembered as the one on the beast had finer ribs on the housing. but to contact Ian Tate as he would know. well Wayne had already done that and had become frustrated with the dead ends and no result.

one thing that happened during Wayne's ownership nearly resulted in the demise of the car and would ultimately lead him to make the decision to sell the car as deep down he knew it had to be something special and did not want to be the one who killed it off !

there's a great pic of the car with Wayne driving at mallala coming in to a turn off throttle with flames belching out the exhaust. Wayne had rigged up a pipe to scavenge excess fuel from the manifold and burn it off with great effect i might add.
however when combined with a fuel leak in the boot the result was ..yep a boot fire !, Wayne caught it in time a luckily enough managed to put it out with the extinguisher carried in the car. that proved to be too close a call for Wayne and after 12 years of ownership it was time to find a new home for it.

laz

[sagman]

part 4 of the history of saggy post Janson

Wayne having reached his decision to sell the torana had put the word out and about , i heard about it through a friend of a friend who knew i missed out on a XW GT and was still looking for a car . i then spoke to the friend for some more details and was told of this XU1 which was supposed to be an ex HDT rally car but was now a sports sedan.

i thought about it for a couple of days and came to the conclusion i should at least have a look at it so i made the call at around 10 am sa time. a polite man answered the phone and the conversation began , with by now a lot of enthusiasm i asked if were possible to view the car later that day. and what a fatefull day it was , around 12.30 pm on the radio came a news flash....Peter Brock had been killed in an accident in WA.

at about 4 pm i arrived at Wayne's house as agreed to look at the car, it was a surreal feeling standing there with a log book in one hand with BJD-440 in it and a letter from PB in the other and the idler pulley off the beast on the table on the bloody day PB died.

back to the car.... when i looked at the car i thought you poor old thing aren't you in a bad way , but i bet you could tell some stories. the body was rough and there were repairs from the boot fire still visible on the c pillars but i knew that i would finish up owning it, just a gut feeling really.

we talked about the car mechanically and it seemed everything was top notch in that regard, Wayne started it up and wow how good did that sound... and that smell of avgas hmm ! so i had a lot to think about and a few questions to be asked interstate through some contacts. they drew the same response as Wayne got no it was nothing special but i felt it had to be involved with HDT not withstanding the components but also the log book and that rego number.

i had a second look at the car with a mate(a racer) who was initially interested in a half share but thought it was way to rough for him but thought it would be awesome on the track, so more pondering to be done. in reality the car was scrutineered regularly so was ok from a saftey point and Wayne was not the kind of guy who would risk his son's life or his in an unsafe car so it only meant researching it's past to prove what it was fixing the body .

the upshot is i bought the car for what Wayne wanted for it and set about proving what the car was and is. the car is an absolute pleasure to drive and is a credit to Wayne , Alan Nitschke and Aaron for the reliability and handling and brilliant stopping power and not forgetting it's awesome speed


cheers for now laz

[enderwigginau]

Doesn't matter how many times I hear this, it's still amazing.

Larry and I were on the phone talking about this before and every bloody time we come up with something else to chase up or check.

This is gonna be awesome when we plug some pics into it.

Grant..

[enderwigginau]

Added some pics where I knew they should go.

The other raft of pics.........I might just have to whack em up hahaha so you can tell me where to put em Laz!!
Who was N0's 22 and 14?


Grant..

[glenn stanley]

Here is one of the old HDT XU1 Sports Sedan at Oran Park 1983. Thats Mal Rose in the blue one behind

Here is one of the old HDT XU1 Sports Sedan at Oran Park 1983. Thats Mal Rose in the blue one behind

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