Well the Bellett Nationals are over again for another year and I thought it was high-time I put
some photos up. Truth be known, I didn't take that many, but Antus took about 250,000 so I'm sure he'll put a few up soon!
I borrowed Antus's trailer that he recently acquired and asked him about a spare, of which there wasn't one! Oh well... it SHOULD be ok!
The trip up was highly uneventful thankfully. High drama occurred when a Toyota Mark II pulled out in front of Ross in his Bellett and proceeded to dribble down the main highway at walking pace. Fortunately the hulking power of Ross's 1969-model Bellett Deluxe made mincemeat of the Mark II and this photo was taken as proof:
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Bellett Nationals 06 - Ross overtaking a very slow Corona Mark II.JPG [ 56.06 KiB | Viewed 5891 times ]
Once we got to Corowa, we settled in and had a monster-sized meal at the RSL (a running theme for the weekend). The next day heralded a cruise to Beechworth. Not everyone took their cars (why Brett didn't drive his locked-diff, be-winged and angry Bellett race car I will never know...)
but someone stupid decided to take their under-braked, under-sized, over-geared Wasp ute. And that person was me! My wife refused to ride in it and went with Ross so Antus was stuck with me. And took some good shots (see other forum thread - "First Pics").
We re-grouped on the way in a little town whos name eludes me...
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Bellett Nationals 13 - Bellett cruise.JPG [ 111.64 KiB | Viewed 5894 times ]
When we got to Beechworth, some guy told us that we could park in the park. Sure thing dude, happy to! So we lined them up. Ironic that the SLOWEST car (my Wasp) and the FASTEST CAR (George and Tony's Wasp - well, I'd imagine...) were next to each other!
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Bellett Nationals 22 - Belletts in a park.JPG [ 113.27 KiB | Viewed 5892 times ]
Many thanks to all the people on the cruise who put up with my 80km/h (sometimes less...) top speed. The brakes are mal-adjusted on the Wasp and the thing rides as hard as a rock, plus there are no seat belts, and it's geared to drag a tonne up a hill in 2nd gear, but not much else... so many thanks again!
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Bellett Nationals 25 - Belletts in a park.JPG [ 137.96 KiB | Viewed 5889 times ]
We had a good spread of cars; an early sedan, a couple of 1967.5 sedans and two 1969-model Deluxe sedans (up from zero last year!) on the cruise, plus a few 1967 Bellett GT coupes, although Gricey and Cheryl's has a later front on it. No PR90's this year tho
At the show and shine we had the Wasps lined up by themselves because apparently they're NOT Belletts.... OK, that's fair enough. I mean, they're Bellett-shaped, but almost every part is non-transferable... Gricey's Gemini race car was in this category as well, but is not in this photo.
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Bellett Nationals 29 - Wasps.JPG [ 130.51 KiB | Viewed 5887 times ]
Here are most of the cars lined up for the show and shine - unlike the park in Beechworth, you couldn't get far enough away from the cars to fit them all in one photo! Apologies to Steve as
his poofta-peach (sorry, AFTERBURN) Bellett has only snuck into the corner of this photo...
Craig's early sedan rally car is there too.
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Bellett Nationals 58 - Bellett's in a row from the rear.JPG [ 132.21 KiB | Viewed 5885 times ]
On the way home, things were a bit more of a problem....
About 30k's out of Echuca I noticed that a tyre had deflated on the trailer. As the axles are
quite close together, the tyre didn't deform too much and the thing still towed OK, so we cruise
into Echuca at about 80km/h and bought a new tyre for the trailer.
Things got pretty messy about 7k's OUT of Echuca on the way home. The rear tyre that had been taking all the weight de-laminated completely!!! Ross was behind us for the FIRST TIME during the entire trip and had to take evasive action to avoid being hit by great strips of rubber!
The trailer's rear tail light was taken out by the flailing rubber as well as the dashlight and tail light fuse on my VY Sandman, although I didn't discover this until much later when it got dark.
So we did a u-turn and cruised back to Echuca, however the bits of flying rubber got more intense and Sarah and I pulled over and ripped the wheel off completely using the tyre iron that was supplied with my VY. The Sandman spare is 15" and I reckon it wouldn't fit under the trailer's wheelarches, so we just cruised on three wheels at about 20km/h. This is how we looked when we rolled into the tyre joint in Echuca for the second time!
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Bellett Nationals 76 - three wheels on trailer.JPG [ 68.41 KiB | Viewed 5883 times ]
The cops scoped me out but they must have thought that I wasn't doing this for fun... and left me alone.
After a nice pub meal at the Shamrock Hotel in Echuca, we were on the road again! Only about 4-5 more hours to Tailem Bend where we had a Subway and fixed the fuse on the VY. I rang Brett to say that we'd almost made it home and that after all the dramas nothing else could go wrong from here.... but then outside of Murray Bridge we were pulled over for the missing trailer tail light. Fortunately he believed my story (which was TRUE for a change) and let us off.
And that, my friends, was our story!