Terry RICHARDSON & ETAM

En avant première pour le Live Show Etam 2014, Terry Richardson signe une vidéo fraîche, amusante et sexy.
A découvrir d'urgence !
Live Show Etam - 25 février 2014 - 21:00 en direct sur Etam.com

An incredible performance of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" on cellos.

Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser of the popular music duo 2CELLOS release their cover of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck". Interpreting Baroque-style musicians with a modern cello expression, they don period costumes provided by the Giostra Society of Croatia.

1973 HUSQVARNA 250 MX

This 1973 Husqvarna 250 MX is a fantastic example of an early-70s blue-smoker by Husqvarna, bikes like this from the Swedish company dominated the dust and mud throughout the ’60s and ’70s, they won 14 motocross world championships, 24 enduro world championships and 11 Baja 1000 victories across the 125cc, 250cc and 500cc classes.

The 250cc singles from Husqvarna, or Husky as the company is usually called, are remarkably adept at almost any kind of off-road racing you can name, the bike’s lightweight, punchy engine and relatively good reliability was a major contributing factor in the successes enjoyed by the company. Perhaps the most famous fan of the Husqvarna 2-strokes was Steve McQueen, a man who raced and won on the red-tanked bikes so frequently that he became an unofficial company mascot and is still closely associated with the brand 40+ years later.

The Husqvarna 250 MX you see here is due to roll across the auction block with Bonhams at the Las Vegas Motorcycle Auction on the 9th of January 2014, the estimated value is just $4,000 to $5,000 USD, making it a highly-affordable classic motorcycle that’s bound to continue increasing in value over the years.

Click here to visit Bonhams and view the listing.

An Escort With The Works

In my mind there’s only one thing better than building a classic competition car, and that’s building one with proper history – such is the case with this beautiful first generation Ford Escort. The story of how this particular Mk1 came about can be traced back to 1970, when an RS1600 rolled off the production line at Halewood to be delivered as a dealer car in London. Less than one year later however, it was snatched back by Ford’s Advanced Vehicle Operations (AVO) department in Boreham, and turned into a Works rally test mule.

The car remained with AVO through 1971 and during  that time was stolen by an employee and stripped, then recovered and pieced back together again, and tested by British rally royalty, Roger Clark. In rough condition, it was eventually purchased by New Zealand driver Mike Marshall and run in a couple of UK events in 1972, before the Kiwi was given the opportunity to rebuild the car at the AVO factory alongside the works machines of the day. The spec included an all-steel 1790cc BDA, Rocket box, and an experimental four-link rear suspension arrangement.

Beautifully prepared, Marshall ran the car on the ’72 RAC, but ended up crashing and having to strip and rebuild the car around a new Works body shell, but this time with all the latest AVO rally gear. The car competed in two more events in the UK during 1973, before being shipped to New Zealand and eventually running in the Heatway International Rally with two other Escorts under the Woolmark Ford Team banner – one driven by Hannu Mikkola. The car had the latest 2.0L alloy BDA and ZF five-speed fitted for that event, but afterwards was switched back to the 1790cc spec and sold on.

Given the nature of the motorsport, the RS1600 was continually modified, but then eventually crashed. Stripped of its running gear, it was relegated to a farm paddock in 1988, and sat that way half covered by a tarpaulin for eight years until being purchased by local rally man, Peter Bryan. Being exposed to the elements for such a long time had taken its toll on the shell and combined with the heavy accident damage, there was no way it could ever be brought back to life. Instead, over the course of more than a decade, Peter prepared a new shell to the exact same AVO specification – including full seam welding, period four-link boxes and steel bubble arch flares – and transferred over all the existing Works gear that was still intact, with the idea to revive the car to its RAC Rally specification. And the result of all that hard work is rather spectacular…

Making all the right noises under the bonnet is a 1.6L BDA that Peter pieced together from various parts he accumulated over the years. Although the DOHC 16-valve motor has plenty of good bits – such as a Holbay steel crankshaft, Weber 45DCOE carburettors and a Cosworth-based dry sump system – it’s very much a temporary measure, and eventually a mechanically injected 1790cc engine (as the car would have run in the ’72 RAC Rally) will find its way into the bay.

Still, with close to 170hp on tap, it’s a lot of fun, as I found out when Peter threw me the keys. Drive is transferred through an AP Racing triple-plate clutch and ZF five-speed close-ratio gearbox out to a Gartrac/Atlas rear end with a ZF 4.63.1 limited slip diff, Group 4 axles and 3/4 floating hubs. The four-link set-up in the rear – which was modelled exactly from the AVO-spec shell – features Gartrac bars and Bilstein shocks with slipper-type leaf springs, while the front end benefits from Bilstein coilovers, adjustable rose-jointed lower arms and Gartrac tarmac-spec steering arms, among many more upgrades.

One of coolest details of the build has to be the genuine right-hand drive Works high-top dashboard complete with 150mph speedo and 12,000rpm tacho, Halda Twin Master rally meter and super-rare Heuer clock/stopwatch unit. Unbelievably, the dash was still in the car when Peter rescued it, and although it wasn’t totally complete, it was absolutely able to be restored back to its original early ’70s glory, complete with aircraft switchgear and warning lights.

Ensuring the  Escort could compete in rallies both now and in the future was a very important aspect for Peter and as such, it’s been built to FIA/MSA Historic regulations. As it sits now, the only change he needs to make to bring it up to spec is to switch out the RS1600 Contours out for FIA-spec race seats with integrated headrests.

As great as the Mk1 looks from a distance, the real beauty of this build is in the details. Many of the original period fittings and fixtures were long gone by the time the original car was abandoned in a paddock, and those that couldn’t be purchased, Peter made – sometimes only having old photos of AVO Works cars as a guide. All the blood, sweat and tears has definitely paid off though, because this has to be one of the coolest retro rally cars in New Zealand. Better still, Peter’s not shy about using it! 

Brad Lord

ROBINSONS SPEEDSHOP CB360

The BSMC’s Robinsons Speedshop have been busy again, quietly building away in Luke’s Essex workshop, but rather than the usual large capacity Cafe Racer or Brat this latest build from Robinsons is a sweet little CB360 scrambler, and the reason is simple. Luke handed over the overall creative direction to his new missus, Lauren. …It seems she has great taste (…in bikes, anyway).

The donor had been knocking around for a very long time, within sight of the British seaside, which means wet salty air and seized parts on anything mechanical that hasn’t been used for a while. But Luke was lucky, the bike came apart with no problems and when all the bits came back from being blasted, it all looked good.

The previous owner had also mentioned he thought the ignition was fried, but on further inspection it turned out the loom had been poorly repaired; full of cables twisted together and secured with tape. One new loom later and the re-assembled bike fired up without a hitch.

Once she was a runner, Luke handed the cosmetics and styling over to Lauren. “It basically came down to being chunky with a upright riding position. The wheels were stripped down blasted and powder coat, set-off with some very fat continental TKC80s, giving the bike a totally different look.”

“The front end was the next stop and the weedy stock fork just didn’t cut it. We did think about doing a front-end swap but being a smaller bike nothing really worked.  In the end we kept the front end and reworked the internals lowering and stiffening them, and with some simple machining we made covers for the upper legs just to give to look of it being a little more beefy.”

The stock bars were replaced with a set of Renthals, finished with a used look to match the controls and yoke. “As for the clocks, the jury is still out. I was thinking of putting a digital one on but I may put the original clock back on with just the speedo and no rpm.” The rear of the bike was de-tabbed and looped to fit the bench-seat. The battery is hidden away under the swing arm and the rear number plate and rear led Bates style light are mounted at the top of the right shock.

Bikes like this always work. The scrambler ergonomics on a light weight and reliable Honda CB, with reworked suspension and wide bars,can only result in the rider wearing a grin like the proverbial Cheshire cat. Luke puts it best.“For not a whole lot of effort the bike looks grand, and is a joy to buzz around town on.”

See more from Robinson’s Speedshop on their Bike Shed page and Luke’s Website.

FILLIE’S FLATTRACKER

We’re loving the influx of trackers into the Bike Shed’s inbox. They’re lightweight, punchy and ridiculously fun to ride – and they’re a lot more friendly around most cities that a stretched-out cafe racer. This one belongs to Philippe Gisgand, AKA Fillie, a friend of Bike-Shed builder Andy, and is fellow member of Belgium’s Flying Hermans.

Fillie is 40 and lives in Ninove and is working with Andy on the Fly Low event, coming up on the 18th May (mark that in your diary, if you’re anywhere in Northern Europe).

The bike is a 1979 Yamaha XS650 and is more than just a cosmetic overhaul. It’s been fully rebuilt and repurposed for it’s new stance and attitude.

Apart from the obvious Flat Tracker rear-end the bike has also had the chassis uprated with progressive springs in the forks, with the bike suspended on a pair of Exel rims laced to Talon hubs with a Brembo caliper biting down at the front disc. A Tarozzi brace keeps things from getting squirrelly under turning.

Gas mounted shocks take care of the bumps at the back, via an aluminium item made my Motolanna. The engine is fed by a pair of big fat Dellorto carbs wearing K&N air filters. The audio is sorted through a two into one LeoVince SBK exhaust. The battery has also been ditched to save weight, which meant replacing the ignition for a power dynamo. Big boots are all you need on a proper tracker. Internal mods include a improved lubricating mechanism which pumps 50% more oil than the original item.

It took Fillie almost a complete winter to build his bike and Andy tells us “now he drives it like he stole it.” Is there any other way?

Thanks to Andy for bringing the bike to our attention and to Fillie for letting us share it with all of you. Don’t forget to save the date for the Fly Low event in May (one week before the BSMC III in London) .

One Hot Rod, So Many Styles

Traditional hot rodders subscribe to a pretty rigid set of rules, and I want to challenge that notion right now.

I can understand the mantra of ‘doing it like they used to’, but personally I find it to be contradicting to hot rodding at its very core. ‘The way they used to do it’ hinged on creativity and making the most of what was right there in front of you, not ordering some obscure, high dollar part that hasn’t been made in sixty years.

I’ve never been the kind of guy who knows every turn signal by year or which cylinder heads are most desirable. I’m a hot rodder because I like it when things look right, and ordering parts from a catalog will never guarantee that your car will turn out looking good.

In short, I like hot rods that can do this – because to me a real hot rod is just an old car with an attitude, and that’s something that anyone – car enthusiast or not – will recognize.

Jared Seganti’s ’37 Dodge pickup did exactly that when I caught my first glimpse on Instagram. It was one of those double take, then squint and study moments. Fortunately it was easy to contact Jared from there, and since he’s a Speedhunters fan, he was thrilled to have Sean Klingelhoefer drive down to shoot a feature of his creation.

I suppose I should let you digest what you’re looking at, because this is just that kind of build. It all starts with a ’37 Dodge truck cab – that would be the hot rod part – wrapped in sheetmetal suited for a sandrail, a mechanical mix from various race cars, all sitting on a chassis built like a trophy truck. It’s a serious mashup of styles that are worlds apart, yet it all works.

This, my friends, is what I call hot rodding.

You see, Jared first cut his teeth at the age of seventeen sweeping floors in a fab shop. From that moment he was hooked, and he never looked back. Since then he’s worked for Predator Sand Cars, Alumicraft Racing, Racer Engineering and even had a short stint at West Coast Choppers. Obviously he’s bent plenty of metal into the silhouette of a sandrail or trophy truck, so when he set out to build a hot rod, well, this is what happened.

Things like the rear mounted radiator with dimple-died brackets come straight from the off-road world, where you want to place the cooling system out of harm’s way. For Jared’s pickup it was more of a packaging exercise though.

The benefit being a clean face for his hot rod, free of any bodywork at all. Instead the front is pure mechanism; tube structure, suspension and engine all combining to create a form that only function could design.

The old Chevy straight-six is really the only other traditional part on the truck apart from the cab, sitting in its home parallel to the twin chromoly tubes. Notice the cooling pipes that also follow suit.

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The first thing that drew me to Jared’s ’37 Dodge was the bodywork he added to supplement the original sheetmetal. The styling and quality was such that I could tell he had an off-road fabrication background right away.

If you’ve ever spent time around sandrails or pre-runners, you’ll recognize the influence immediately too. Tight-fitting aluminum panels, Dzus fasteners, dimple dies – it’s all there.

Like the half-shrouded front clip, a chromoly structure is only partially covered at the rear.

Beyond the fact the Jared built a running vehicle from scratch, which we’ll get to soon, the styling is really an amazing accomplishment – like something a car designer might doodle while daydreaming. The most brilliant part is the way the new aluminum panels pick up the factory Dodge lines in the cab, but then quickly transform into an aggressive, angular, multi-layer shape. In transportation design, they use the term ‘attack angle’ and this thing has tons of it.

The placement of the wheels helps here too, with each tire pushed outward into a stretched track and wheelbase.

As you move around the vehicle, you start to see those layers come into play. I’ve never seen a hot rod that had so much depth and dimension in the rear quarter panel, if you can call it that.

The tin work continues inside, where Jared hand-formed nearly every panel. Check out the gas pedal taken from some sort of sprint car or a late model. This was simply a case of using a cool part that he had laying around. The origins almost don’t matter, because it has a new home now.

It seems Jared knows all the tricks to take his sheetmetal to a pro level: soft radiused compound bends, small breaks at the edges of panels, hardware and switches perfectly spaced.

Not only did he use quality stainless fasteners throughout, but he patterned them in a way that’s both aesthetically pleasing and structurally sound. This is experience working to Jared’s advantage; he knew that spacing those screws about four inches apart would be enough. Further apart and it would rattle in the wind, closer together and it would look too crowded.

Obviously you’re a talented builder if you can integrate an old truck cab with a completely hand-crafted chassis and not only make it flow visually, but end up with a mechanically-sound, running vehicle.

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So many of these grand visions turn out to just be pipe dreams – projects trapped in someone’s garage never to be completed. That’s why it makes me grin to see Jared Seganti’s little truck kicking up dust under its own power.

Everyone has their reasons for not finishing that dream project: maybe it’s lack of discretionary funds or just not enough time or motivation. I suspect the one intangible skill Jared learned working in those off-road fab shops was the ability to see a project through, and now you’re looking at the payoff. We’d be grossly oversimplifying things to think we understand what it takes simply by viewing the following images, but at least we can look at the major pieces and how they work together.

Of course Jared picked up plenty of tangible skills working in those shops too, like TIG welding and bending tube which he used to build his chromoly chassis. The plate work here is another trait from the off-road fab world.

Jared built the A-arm and coilover front suspension from scratch, which is impressive, but the part that got me was that he built all the geometry at fixed lengths and angles – with zero adjustment. The only thing that can be changed is the toe angle. Instead of threaded heim joints, his suspension pivots on brass bushings, demonstrating that he has the experience and ability to design a suspension that’s dead nuts.

For the rear suspension, he used another set of coilovers and a triangulated four link to locate the axle. The key here is the way everything works in tandem, like the crossmember that ties the sides of the chassis together, but also holds the radiator, which leaves just enough room for the upper coilover mounts to pass by.

We see it again inside, where the roll cage integrates with the old truck’s sheetmetal, but also nicely borders the bottom of the dash panel.

I’ve barely mentioned the chopped top, which is usually such an important part of a hot rod, but with everything else going on, it’s easy to miss. Peeking through the shortened rear window opening, you an see another re-purposed race part that would normally never be found in a hot rod: a suede Momo steering wheel.

This is the mashup of styles I mentioned at the start of the story. It just works, doesn’t it?

Since he built everything else out of aluminum and TIG rod, Jared went ahead and made some seats to fit too.

With all the wild fab work, I could have skipped this and I bet nobody would have noticed. Sure, those are eight lug, three piece Humvee wheels with little street tires mounted to them. But did you know that Hummer wheels came in 16.5″ diameter, and you could never find a street tire to fit? That’s where Jared shrugged his shoulders and got to work, cutting apart each wheel half, removing a couple inches from the circumference, then welding them back together to turn them into 16s. Of course a session of wheel truing ensued, using a torch, hammer, and whatever else he could think of to make the eight wheel halves round again. While he was at it, he narrowed the nine inch wide wheels to seven inches in the front and added two inches to the rears too.

That’s the kind of confidence that started hot rodding in the first place. The fearlessness to look at a hunk of metal, envision something better, and let nothing stand in the way of making it so. From talking to Jared, I think he’s a bit humbled that we wanted to shoot his car at all. He sees all the things he could have done better in his own mind, but meanwhile I’m standing here slackjawed.

As I told Jared how cool it was to see the thing rolling, it suddenly occurred to me to ask if it was finished. It turns out this little hot rod pickup is only half done, because he plans to completely blow it apart to powdercoat and paint it.  For now he’s enjoying driving it and getting a kick out of letting everyone see his work in bare metal. I’m sure it will be a showstopper with paint, but I’m glad we got to immortalize it while it’s still in bare metal and patina too.

Keith CharvoniaInstagram: SpeedhuntersKeithkeith@speedhunters.com

Photos by Sean Klingelhoefer
Instagram: seanklingelhoefersean@speedhunters.com

 

Jared Seganti’s 1937 Dodge Pickup

Engine
1968 Chevrolet inline six cylinder, 250ci, fabricated engine mounts, custom black braided fuel hoses, custom fabricated exhaust system, two Optima six volt batteries wired in series, two Spal 14″ radiator fans, remote mounted radiator, inline Meziere thermostat housing, scratch built wiring harness, small forklift alternator, marine grade battery kill switch

Driveline
Chevrolet TH350 transmission, 14 bolt eight lug rear differential from a motorhome, 4:10 gearing, custom driveshaft from Driveline Service of San Diego, B&M Quarter Stick shifter

Chassis
Full tube chassis built by Jared Seganti using 1 1/2″, 1 5/8″ and 1 3/4″ chromoly tubing

Suspension/Brakes
All front suspension links except toe are non-adjustable, front suspension bushings are brass, rear chromoly four link with 5/8″ heim joints, adjustable aluminum shocks, BRT sprint car steering box, four piston Wilwood front calipers with 13″ GT-48 slotted rotors, two piston rear calipers, CNC master cylinder, custom routed 3/16″ copper nickle brake lines, custom pedal box, scratch built black brake hoses

Wheels/Tires
Hummer H1 wheels, changed from 16.5″ to 16″ diameter, front wheels narrowed from 9″ to 7″, rear wheels widened from 9″ to 11″, cheap 205/55/16 front tires, Mickey Thompson 315/45/16 rear tires

Exterior1937 Dodge truck cab, hand formed aluminum body panels by Jared Seganti, 4 1/2″ chop, shaved door handles, LED tail lights

Interior
Hand formed aluminum interior panels by Jared Seganti, aluminum seats, chromoly roll cage integrated into chassis, Momo steering wheel with Sweet Manufacturing quick release, sprint car gas pedal, Mil-spec Honeywell switches