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1984 XE Falcon.
- Thread starter Rob 18
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It's interesting that Dick has commented that if he was doing the Greens-Tuf car over again, he would probably look at the construction of Masterton's car. While it was a reasonably unlucky car, its construction was evidently top-rate.
I've got an article somewhere under the bed from 1984, detailing much of Greens-Tuf's construction and specification, and the team regarded it as being exceptionally stiff at the time. Compared to today's chassis, she's probably like a rubber mattress!
I've got an article somewhere under the bed from 1984, detailing much of Greens-Tuf's construction and specification, and the team regarded it as being exceptionally stiff at the time. Compared to today's chassis, she's probably like a rubber mattress!
The original car had huge input from the US, and Masterton had employed Carroll Smith to help sort the thing, and run the Bathurst campaign in 1982. He had overlooked the fact that Smith was more an administrator and organisor than car sorter (which is why Moffat had employed him in the first place... there weren't many better than AM at sorting cars!)and the car was a dog (Colin Bond went for a drive in it at Bathurst while they were rebuilding the 9 Camaro, and was evidently underwhelmed with the car) it was written off in a testing crash in early 1983. The second car was a much better unit, and had input from Peter Pattenden and Pat Purcell, who had worked for Bob Jane (IIRC). They had all sorts of problems with overheating, and the car broke ball joints at Bathurst in both 1983 and 1984, the last one during the race. One of Masterton's mechanics of the time currenlty owns the car
The Masterton XE was built by current owner John Skola he built the XE and fabricating many unique parts for it
Pat Purcell was in charge of developing the 351 Cleveland
This information is from AMC magazine.
John Skola said that Masterton had great hand eye co ordination but was never a champion driver. He did it more as a social thing. They tried to get Allan Grice in the car but it didn't happen. Skola said he would have liked to have seen the car with someone like Grice or Dick Johnson driving it.
Skola said the car was ahead oif its time.
Its a great read
Pat Purcell was in charge of developing the 351 Cleveland
This information is from AMC magazine.
John Skola said that Masterton had great hand eye co ordination but was never a champion driver. He did it more as a social thing. They tried to get Allan Grice in the car but it didn't happen. Skola said he would have liked to have seen the car with someone like Grice or Dick Johnson driving it.
Skola said the car was ahead oif its time.
Its a great read
Didn't the rice-burners own Amaroo - you had people like Barry Jones, Terry Shiel (another ex-DJR pilot), Terry Finnigan who gave good accounts of themselves there; Allan Grice who basically lived there; Colin Bond, who's basically won races in everything and everywhere he's even driven (except perhaps in the Isuzu Bellet he first went to Bathurst in). The Capris went well there - it seems that it brought out the best in the light cars, and penalised the heavy muthas. Another great race track lost to housing 
Gary Willmington was another Ford driver to do well at Amaroo in the Yellow XD. I think the Turbo Bluebird one a few races there also. Doug, I also remember the Flap on the front of the XE, that was Amaroo 83 & got disqualified for it. Also does anyone remember Bathurst 82 in practice when Masterton reverted back to the standard XE front(No front spoiler) as he reckoned it was quicker without the front spoiler?
Steve put the standard front panel vack on in an attempt to equalise front and back of the car. The XE drivers were having a real bad time that year with the Watts linkage rear end, and felt that the inadequate rear spoiler compounded the evil handling. Bob Morris claimed at the time that "you know it looks bad from the outside when the flaggies take a step back as you apporach a corner, but I arrived at one corner and the guy dropped his flag and ran!"
Dick felt that the problem wasn't helped by the way his rear tyres "crowned", running only on a 2" patch in the middle of the tyres, probably (IMHO) a result of running a wide bag on the narrower rims to which the Falcon was limited. He also didn't think that Masterton was on the right track by blunting the front end's handling to bring it into line with what the rear was doing, feeling that they would only finish up with a pig of a car, which was the case.
Dick spent the weekend wringing the necks of his engines to get the times, and rebuilding them at night, the car went sour during the race and burnt about 10 litres of oil, and broke a sway bar in John French's hands; the team using the Channel 7 telecast's footage to evaluate the problem and passing their findings on to Frenchy via two-way. The car came home fourth, 2 laps down, but was disqualified for cylindr head irregularities IIRC - not illegalities. A frustrating campaign, seemingly doomed from the moment the baton was passed to the new car - there had simply not been the timeavailable for reasonable development.
All the XE teams tackled the rear end individually, and ultimately DJR made it work. The Masterton and Moore cars seemed to have an incurable susceptibility to overheating, but it was really only the Greens-Tuf and Masterton cars which were any good.
Dick felt that the problem wasn't helped by the way his rear tyres "crowned", running only on a 2" patch in the middle of the tyres, probably (IMHO) a result of running a wide bag on the narrower rims to which the Falcon was limited. He also didn't think that Masterton was on the right track by blunting the front end's handling to bring it into line with what the rear was doing, feeling that they would only finish up with a pig of a car, which was the case.
Dick spent the weekend wringing the necks of his engines to get the times, and rebuilding them at night, the car went sour during the race and burnt about 10 litres of oil, and broke a sway bar in John French's hands; the team using the Channel 7 telecast's footage to evaluate the problem and passing their findings on to Frenchy via two-way. The car came home fourth, 2 laps down, but was disqualified for cylindr head irregularities IIRC - not illegalities. A frustrating campaign, seemingly doomed from the moment the baton was passed to the new car - there had simply not been the timeavailable for reasonable development.
All the XE teams tackled the rear end individually, and ultimately DJR made it work. The Masterton and Moore cars seemed to have an incurable susceptibility to overheating, but it was really only the Greens-Tuf and Masterton cars which were any good.
Yeah, that's right.
What was interesting was at the time, Dick made the comment that to get the times out of the XE, it had to be driven at a completely different level to the XD - if the driver put the same effort into the XE as the XD, the times were much the same evidently.
What was interesting was at the time, Dick made the comment that to get the times out of the XE, it had to be driven at a completely different level to the XD - if the driver put the same effort into the XE as the XD, the times were much the same evidently.
The XE "Phase VI" body kit was designed by a guy on Murray's pit crew (his name will come to me eventually), and the spoiler wasn't terribly popular... Dick at one stage was quoted as saying that "they said that it was designed in a wind tunnel, but I think they just held a balloon up and let all the air out" or something like that. The Falcon teams had lobbied CAMS all week, (Bob Morris had stormed off earlier in the week after John Keeffe had refused to consider altering the spoiler, yelling "Well, I'll just take out more life insurance!")and finally CAMS allowed them to alter the angle of attack on the spoiler blade late Friday - the first opportunity to test the alterations would be Hardies Heroes... but it didn't stop Dick, or Morris from having a real go.