New blog contributor - WF1010

I own a late-eighties Blakely Bernardi and have been actively maintaining and driving it in the sunny months since I bought it a couple of years back. Philippe and Carey have kindly given me the chance to document some of my adventures on their blog.

The car is red in both body and fenders, with the optional "jump seat" feature behind the driver and passenger seat. It has a white convertible roof that defines the term "rag top" in spades. (I haven't had the roof up in nearly two years - thank heavens for a dry climate!) The engine is a Ford 302 V8, with a Holley carburetor to keep the petrochemical industry fully funded.

I have been in email contact with Philippe, Carey, and the other Blakely enthusiasts since buying the car. I would like to recap in this blog some of the information and adventures that I've earlier shared by email, in the hopes it may inform or amuse the broader community. The older emails will get digested and posted first, and I'll work forward in date sequence until I reach the present happy times.

Mikes McCully's Hawk

I had these pictures for a long time but I actually forgot about them. Here is Mikes work on a rare Hawk with a V6 a beautiful car. The firs of our litle (growing) group is aware of. Noticeable difference between the HAwk and the Bantam are the front fenders, wider rear fenders, the roll bar and frame suspension design. The rear suspension is using coil overs.

Phil's latest pictures Bantam

Gentlemen here are the latest pictures of my 1974 Bantam after a lot of work this winter, new paint, widen fenders, alu fender guards, new engine mounts and suspension bushings... and redesigned oil pan to add capacity. Comments are welcomed!

But here is the bad news due to some power trip and misunderstanding of certain individuals at the Provincial DMV (Quebec) they decided to categorise this car has a 2009 self-built, this makes the car almost unsassurable basically 3000$ a year witch cost me 200 $ in the previous province of ownership in New Brunswick. So I am seriously considering selling the car. Any serious offers will be taken. Note: I paid over 7000$ for the car and put considerable time and money to make ot right, I will also assist the owner with transportation at cost since I have family in the brokage business also getting a car over the border requires very litle papper work and is easier than one might think.

Turbo boost control

This is not related to Blakely car but one day might come in usefull for others running turbos. On my Bantam boost is controlled using an Impco TC" control valve and did not wrok properlly (at all). After wititing Impco and searching the net for months I finally came up with this:



On my car the vent valve was plugged exlanning the valve did not work propelly. I will be trying this solution next weekend.

Mike's Bantam not a Bantam but a Hawk

After getting more pictures from Mike I made a discovery his car is not a Bantam but the very rare Hawk witch is belived to exist 5 to 8 according to Carey. From the picture below we notice that the front fender has a diffrent profile and the rear roll bar is different.

Mike's Bantam

Mike was kind enough to send in some pictures of his recently bought Yellow 1982 Bantam. With a litle love this car will be looking great.

This is the first Bantam with a V6 I have seen so far. I have also noticed that the frame design seemed different than my Bantam, The bottom cross member seems much beefier than on my 1974.

Bantam in one of the greatest movie of all time (not!)

Some of you requested this video from the movie "Cherry 2000" to be posted on our blog:



In the movie the image is very dark, I tried my best to adjust brightness and gamma value.

Video Bantam Chimney Rock HillClimb 1984

Carey found a set of great videos of a Bantam at the 1984 Chimney Rock Hillclimb:



The orginal files and credit goes to ageci on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTXB_wclNNk

Slide shows !

It is also possible to create slides shows for the blogs from flicker using the instructions at:

http://www.flickrslideshow.com/

Created with flickr slideshow.

Blakely Bearcat 78 LtGrn 1a FrQt 1895 cr

Blakely Bearcat 78 LtGrn 1a FrQt 1895 cr, originally uploaded by toadalfa.

This a test from the flickr interface its possible to post from flickr to blogger great news for Peter.

Present Day Pictures

Above are tw0 photos from around 2005 showing the car in its present condition. Not much has changed in 30 years except some new wheels and tires. Under the hood the 2.0L has now been built to 2.1L with a bump in compression to around 10.5 to 1. The car now has a Holley 360 CFM 4bbl carb (vacuum secondaries). It is still a lot of fun to drive.

Competition Pictures

This is a picture for an autocross (Solo II) run by the Des Moines Valley Region of the Sports Car Club of America. It was probably in May or June of 1983

Build Pictures

On the left i a picture of the car almost completed in Fall of 1979. I thing the seat were just set in and the bumper was just tentatively bolted on to provide pictures for licensing purposes.

The rolling chassis is shown on the right - probably in early spring of 1979.

I wanted to add some pictures of my 1979 Blakely Bearcat S. This car has always been in my family and I was one of the original builders. Above is a picture of us picking up the car at the factory in Davis Junction IL in spring of 1978. The building was still there as of several years ago.

Pictures of a Blakely Bernardi

Here are some pictures of my 1981 Blakely Bernardi.

It is equipped with the Ford 2L engine and automatic, quite likely from the Pinto as they most of them were. At this point, it is still quite good looking for it's age, but does have several items that must be reworked. Well, all in due time. When I start working on it, I am sure that there will be some stories to tell.

Peter

Carey's engine bay

Carey was kind enought to send out recent pictures of his "White" Batam engine bay. From this picture and confirmation from Carey it is possible to instal Weber's DCOE carbs witouth moding the body work. The engine bay looks really good compared to mine.

New Blakely Owner found - 3

I recall that this Bantam was sold and shipped to Oklahoma. A couple months or so after those pictures were taken, a Bantam shows up on ebay, located in Oklahoma, with the same exterior color, but a completely different and new looking dash and upholstery. Then looking closely at the engine compartment, I began to notice too many similarities to be simple coincidences. Looking even closer and comparing the pictures I had taken with the one on the ebay site, I found markings that simply are unlikely to be coincidences. There was enough evidence to indicate that this was extremely likely to be that very same car, but nicely redone. Unfortunately I did not record any text from the ebay site, so today I have no data.
And that is where I thought the story ended, until recently.

New Blakely Owner found - 2

Indeed so. I saw this as an ebay offering, located in the San Diego area, and lost my bid. Very shortly after that I had the opportunity to go to San Diego, and asked if I could see the car before it was shipped to the winning bidder. No problem. Here are some of the pics I took.

New Blakely Owner found

A couple days ago a Blakely owner left a comment on one of the post: Peter Kunedt. Peter does not own a Batam, I will let him tell more about his car himself He was kind enough today to send a couple of great pictures of a Bantam last seen on ebay in 2005:

Camera mount

After seeing for the first time my car on Video (see previous post) I wanted to see how it would look driving in the car on video. So I made a simple camera mount for my digicam using a 1/4 bolt a piece of iron and some duc tape. Here are the results it looks good but the sound is crap:

Click To Play

Some video

Here is a video of my oldest son and me (Philippe) taking off for a Sunday afternoon ride. This was my first long ride just a week after fixing the clutch cable. YOu will notice that we speak French at home. After this ride approx 90 minutes I noticedthat the cltuch would pick up lower might be due to the new cable stretching.

Clutch cable broke

Last friday I took my oldest son to school who just started kindergarden. The car was very popular and all the kids where around asking questions what a show! Unfortunately on the way back to work at a light the clutch went soft and I could not release it! After pushing the car to the side at 8:00 AM in the morning at a very busy time (how imbaracing), I found that the cable broke. Two hours later the towing finally arrived to get the Bantam back home, the towing company actually charged me 25$ extra because they said the car was too low nonsense since I helped te fellow out puttting the car on the truck and it took no longer than 5 minutes!

After I got home here is what I found:

I took the cable out of the car, again the longest part was jacking the car off the ground to get under! I started going around town looking for a Pinto/Mustang clutch cable. Again no parts are listed for Pinto's in my local part stores and dealer. Spent almost 3 hours looking for a cable and realized I will have to make my own. I bought a mustang II clutch cable which was way too long and lacked covering on the whole cable but at least it fit my throw out bearing arm:



The mustang cable must be using a puley system to route the cable. Also notice the custom cable from the Bantam.

What I did to make my cable was to cut one of the end and slide out all the cable protective/guide coverving and reslide the two longest sections on the cable and spliced the protective covers using a 1/2 copper pipe which fit nicely on the firewall penetration fitting on the cable covering. I then crimped the copper pipe using my vise and then used electrical tape to make it look good, I wish I had shrink tubing but the stores where closed:

Clutch cable covering showing bracket/firewall fittings with copper pipe cut to length.







Cooper pipped crimped with vise on clutch cable covering. The coper pipe is used to give rigidity to the splice so the inside cable would not kinked.






Final assembly with electrical tape tightly rapped around the splice.








Here in this picture you can see the new clutch cable. Not shown is how I have attached the cable to the pedal sinced I did cut the crimped end of the cable which contained the required ferule. I used a two steel cable clamped from a hardware store and basically tore my skin off trying to get it on in the clutch cable holder on the pedal.







Final assembly/fit of cable. Testing proved out pretty well except the new spring on the cable seems a little weak and sometimes the pedal will note come back to its position. From the previous picture you will notice that the clutch pedal dose not have a return spring which is weird. Next weekend or this week when part stores are open I will try to find a spring and install one attached to the fire wall to the top of the pedal dowel pin.