History
MG-TC Special Chassis No 1181 Engine XPAG 7796 (B. Davis)
This car was manufactured on th2 26th July, 1946.
Owned since 2004.
Previous Owners:
Neil Roediger 1980s to 2004
Graham Caldersmith 1970s to 1980s
Muir family 1960s-70s
Richard Weston 1960s
Max Hamilton 1960s-1970s
Previous owners unknown....
Max saw the car in a car yard on the Princes Highway at Arncliffe in 1962. It was £195. He was only earning £5 a week, but somehow or other, he scraped up the money and it was his! No thought at this stage to running costs, but the TC’s tank held £1 worth of petrol, so he rarely drove it out of Sydney.
The body (steel and aluminium panels over a steel frame) was built by a bloke named Stan Barrett. It was all very professionally done and resembled a K3. It had a 1350cc engine and once he had it up to a whisker over 100 mph on the speedo on the Bundeena road. Max noted that "it was a fair bit lighter than a standard TC, of course".
In 1963, Max had Speedy Wheels make up some special wheels for the rear. They had wider rims and were offset away from the body to try and eliminate a chronic problem of the tyres rubbing on the body. Around this time, he, his brother Paul and another friend whose car is in a couple of the photos, pooled their resources and bought another TC which they cannibalised to set their cars up for racing. Each of them used bits in our own TCs. Max got the engine. He was working for Gordon Stewart at the time and from his workshop, got the top half of the exhaust system off his Wheeler Fortune TC engine (after he had fitted the BMC B-type). He also got from him a rather exotic camshaft with massive overlap - so much so that when they started the engine up, burning petrol shot out of the exhaust across the garage floor!
On the running-gear side of things, Max had become determined to get rid of the abominable TC steering box. Rob Rowe sold him a Morris Minor rack & pinion box together with brackets, column, etc. to bolt into the TC. Everything seemed OK in testing up and down his street, but he had entered the car (sans lights, mudguards and spare wheel) in the Australian Hill Climb Championships at Silverdale. As soon as Max hit the first bump, he realised his ignorance of steering geometry was made crystal clear. As the wheels went up, they toed in - the car was nigh on uncontrollable! Nevertheless he managed to record a time of 54.8 seconds. He had entered the 1100-1500cc racing car class which he would have won, however, they decided to combine the 1100-1500cc class with the 500-1100cc class which included the then Australian Hill Climb Champion, Bruce Walton.
Having to drive in the rain without a hood eventually got to Max and he traded the TC in on a Mk 1 Sprite. Richard Weston bought the car shortly thereafter and cut doors in the body. The Muir family bought the car in poor condition with the door cut-outs and had the body completely rebuilt, making it even more K3-like than when Max had it.
Graham Caldersmith took Max for a ride in the car in Canberra where it had been lumbered with bumper bars, windscreen & hood, etc. which it certainly didn’t have earlier.
