With apologies to William Shakespeare or whoever wrote the original words
Excerpt from an upcoming book entitled, Canadian Road Race Specials, a History of Canadian Built Race Cars
What else is there than to build your own car, if you cannot afford to do anything else? And what else is there to do but to offer a $101 to someone who has just wrecked his Volvo PV544 so you can get some parts with which to construct a race car about which you have been obsessing for oh so long?
Well that�s what Don Davy and Fraser Earle did way back in 1958 when they were mere sprigs of lads, but once Don had built his car for less money than Lance Reventlow probably spent on office supplies when he was building his Scarab racing cars, he sold his offspring to finance his apprenticeship with the Merlyn Race Car Company in England.
However, a twist of fate took Fraser Earle north to Wiarton, Ontario a few years ago where he again came into contact with the car he and Davy built, and another twist of fate resulted in Don�s participation in restoring the car he built 40 plus years ago. Therein as the bard says, lies a tale.
Like many young men growing up in Southern Ontario in the mid to late 1950s, Fraser Earle and Don Davy were car nuts, who wanted to own their own cars in the worst way. The only thing about that obsession is, as many of you know that once you have your own car, some of you want to go to the inevitable next step, modifying that car so that it will corner better, go faster and do all the other things that God meant cars to do. After acquiring his first car at age fourteen, Fraser discovered that it wasn�t enough. Don felt the same way. Thus, they modified their cars into hot rods. Still they were not satisfied. They started going to sports car races, to Canadian road race tracks like Harewood Acres, not far from where they lived in Vineland and Beamsville, then further afield to Green Acres, just north of Goderich, Ontario and then to Dunkirk, New York where local racers would try their luck on an old airport circuit. Finally, they worked their way down to the Finger Lakes area of New York to the fabled Watkins Glen raceway.
What they saw there seemed both unobtainable and unobtainable, and yet, and yet, there were examples; there was a homegrown example for them to follow, namely Bill Sadler and his Sadler race cars, Marks I through III. They saw a Canadian constructor and racer putting the boots to some of the most expensive imported machinery on the continent, and full blown there sprang a dominant idea into their heads almost simultaneously: they would build their own race car and go racing � and it could be done! Bill Sadler had proven that. So, the plan was hatched and it matured. So let it be written. So let it be done.
At a Watkins Glen race one weekend, in 1958 a young man totaled his brand new Volvo PV544 and an offer of $101 bought the remains of the car. They had a start and they started the serious work of creating their special in January of 1959. Deciding on a space frame was the next step, something Davy could manage
as he had recently completed the first year of an apprenticeship in bodywork. However, an apprenticeship is one thing. Constructing a space frame from scratch � or more likely chalk lines on a garage floor is something else. When it came time to use the Volvo parts, they discovered that the front suspension of the 544 was pretty far-gone and so the two decided to use a 1948 Studebaker independent front suspension from the local wrecker. The Studebaker was a combination of the modern and the tried and true because although it used unequal length control arms, the springing was by the traditional transverse leaf spring as I observed when I saw the car at the VARAC meet in June of 2001. As a matter of serendipity, the Volvo 2x9 brake shoes and backing plates appeared identical to the Studebaker, Fraser told me.
At the rear, the brake drums come from a Mercedes of undetermined origin, and the rear axle is a live axle from the donor Volvo. Davy and Earle specified Gabriel coil over shocks all the way around, the most expensive component in the car, Fraser said.
Like many other special builders, the two young men installed a rack and pinion steering gear from a Morris Minor, for responsive and reliable steering. If Sadler used the same set up in his Sadler Specials, how could they go wrong?
The two men had the capability to form aluminum for the center section of the body, but they decided on fiberglass sections for the front and the rear. They used burlap, chicken wire with plaster over top to create a male mold. They then applied their fiberglass and resin over top the mold to create the front and rear sections of the body. Consequently, all they had to do was to knock the burlap and plaster off the underside and �viola� as the French would say, they had their body sections. The finish might have been a bit wavy but what the heck! They now had a car and they even test drove it on the street, without plates, so strong was their desire to test their creation which they had worked so hard going and running and be darned with the straight exhaust, and be darned if the car didn�t have a license plate. What the heck any way. It was the spring of 1960, a whole new decade and new things were going to happen.
Alas, hard reality set in. They had overspent. Don Davy had $1,000 in the car and that was a lot of money for someone who wasn�t making that much money, perhaps less than $40 a week. They couldn�t afford to race it and that was that. Two years went by and Don sold his pride and joy for what he had in the car using his money to finance a trip to England in order to work for the Merlyn Race Car Company. As a sidelight, one of his first jobs at the factory was to take the engine out of an almost totally destroyed racecar. When he inquired of the circumstances of the crash, he was told that this was the car in which the Canadian race driver Peter Ryan had died in Reims, France. Meanwhile Fraser had taken on his own career and had put the thoughts of racing cars dancing in his head out of his head for the time being.
However, Fraser�s son who had also become a car nut, challenged his father to take on the task of finding and restoring the old Volvo powered car. Tragically, younger Fraser�s death caused Fraser Senior to put the search for the old car on hold. Time passed and Fraser indeed did find the car in an unlikely spot: in a barn in Wiarton, Ontario in the Bruce Peninsula, an unlikely hiding place for a special.
As Fraser said to himself, � This time, I�m going to break the bank and do the body with a female mold. Arnold of G Force in Toronto did the bodywork and he did a marvelous job.� When I spoke to Arnold, he told me it was a delight to do the work on the body. �That car was a treat for me to work on. Customers came into my shop and wanted one like Fraser�s,� he said.
The original body was used as a mold for new body panels, as would be natural, as the originals were not in that good a shape even when new. Don Davy did the work on the frame, sandblasting, welding and installing a fire suppression system.
Brian Hunter reassembled the special as well as handling the driving chores, a job he shares with Steve O�Connel. Fraser said that the quality of the restoration is mainly due to Brian, and that he was thrilled with the level of restoration.
The original engine was missing � no surprise there as the car itself had been missing for something like 34 years! They installed a 1800cc Volvo engine with a competition camshaft with a compression ratio of 10:1, enabling bursts of power up to around 7200rpm. Smoothed out ports and a pair of Weber 45mm carburetors complete the induction system. The exhaust headers were fabricated by Hunter and consist of four equal length tubes, says Fraser dumping into a 2 1/2 inch collector, noisy but effective.
Fraser had new instruments fitted in a new wood dash, created by Oakwood Cabinets of Niagara Falls. Dave Koop Upholstery in Niagara Falls did up the aluminum competition seat, and. Fraser pointed out to me that it was ironic that Koop�s shop was only six doors away from the Vineland, Ontario barn, in the Niagara Peninsula where Davy and Earle originally created their special.
How does it run? That�s what most people would like to know. Well, at the June 2001 VARAC race Mosport in its debut, the Volvo powered special, driven by Brian, - while Steve O�Connel also shared some of the driving - did not turn thrilling lap time. It lapped at around 2 minutes or so, not burning its way around the course by any means. That state of affairs probably comes from the bugs, which can afflict newly minted racecars, one area of which were the brakes. They were inadequate for the job. The suspension also was a little too stiff, and the car would lift its driver�s side rear wheel on tight turns. However, the engine was a screamer, turning up to around 7200rpm, not bad for a little 1800cc engine. With the rear end ratio the team had installed in the car of 4.3:1 that engine speed translated to between 135 and 137 miles per hour on the back straight. Not shabby by any means.
I observed the car at the September 2001 Zippo Grand Prix Vintage Weekend at Watkins Glen as well, and again according to Fraser, the brakes were a concern. However, Steve O�Connel reported that the car, while a little too stiffly sprung, handled very well in the corners, as well it should because Fraser reports that the weight distribution is a near perfect 50-50, or perhaps 52 per cent of the car�s weight on the front wheels and 48 per cent on the rears. Whatever the rate, Brian reports that the car�s handling is pretty much neutral on its way around a typical track.
For this upcoming 2002 vintage season, Fraser has a little in reserve. He is going back to the original PV544 1600cc engine but this time with a Judson supercharger huffing and puffing about six pounds of boost through the intake manifold. The limited slip differential he is installing also will make a difference, locking those rear tires into place on the curves.
The team plans on making the meets at Pittsburgh, Gratton, Michigan, Mosport and Watkins Glen. Fraser says his goal is to make it to every track the Special could have run on. At this rate, the little Volvo powered race car should make its mark on the vintage racing scene, a little late perhaps, but better late than never.
The Davy Special Specifications, as raced in 2001
Wheelbase: 90 inches
Track: 54 inches front and rear
Tires: Fronts: 5.55, 15�; 6.00, 15� rears
Drive Train
Engine: B18, 1800cc, putting out around 140 to 150 horsepower at 7200rpm
Transmission:
�Torsen� positraction unit, goes into a Dana 30, Volvo rear axle to give better handling. Volvo four speed transmission. For the 2002 season, the team plans on installing a 4.1:1 rear end ratio in the special
Suspension:
100 pound springs all around also with �Strange�adjustable shock absorbers made by Strange Engineering in the USA, at all four corners. Strange shocks are frequently used by drag racers but are useful in this application.
With references to many interviews with Fraser Earle. In addition some references to a Mark Hershoren article, which appeared in Volvo Classics magazine in the January/February 2000 edition.
