Tasman Days

Before the Tasman Cup was introduced in 1964, most of us were using Climax engines, 2-liter, 2.2-liter or 2.5-liter, but there were a couple of odd cars. I was also racing little Elfins but, for my Lotus 19B, I had taken my Climax engine out to 2.6-liter with pistons made by ForgeTru and conrods by Freddy Carillo, both in the U.S. I bought a Brabham for the 1964 Tasman as, while the Climax engine had been out of production for a while, I thought I would be able to put together a strong engine.

The two weaknesses of the Climax engines were the conrod bolts and pistons. You had to be very careful not to overtension the bolts or reuse them. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted a better conrod and how I found this wonderful product from Carillo. I wanted reliability and better performance.