WANTED: Bellett GT

[cosmoman]

Hi Duane

Forget the the Mazda R-100, or any early Rotary model.
Unless you get a Barnyard find you are going to be up for big dollars.
If you do find one then you are up for big dollars for a good quality resto.

All the best

Chris

[degruch]

Hi Chris,

Yes, I've noticed R100 prices spiralling into the cosmos (sorry, couldn't help myself) over the last 18 months in particular. I was a regular on the AusRotary forum for a while and see them popping up occasionally. However, a nice original R100 (with 10A) seemingly sold on eBay in the mid-teens this year, which gave me hope. Additionally, R130 prices are still good in Japan, without being silly (like Clayton's $20k project car in WA, if you know it)...I live in hope there too.

I'll keep my eye's peeled, the longer I'm here, the better my chances.

Cheers, and welcome!

Duane

[gt orphanage]

There was a original r100 at the jap nats the other day this thing was show room condition the wiper motor still in the bag ect, This car did not have a thing out of place. At least you can buy new parts for them.
It won best original 60/69 and out right out of 200 cars. As a group of bellett owners we had a show of hands who thought it looked better than a bellett gt .no hands were raised and it was official that bellett gt's are much nicer .

[1968GT]

AGREED, WHO WOULD DOUBT THAT COMMENT!!!

[PR91]

greg, i'm surprised that thought of an R100 being even considered superior to a GT ever happened, let alone having the need to vote apon it!!


and ur exactly right mate.... a beautiful car the R100 may be, but it's made all the world easier when new parts are still available with 1 phone call.
good luck to them tho!

[gt orphanage]

THE BLOODY THING GOT MY TROPHY I HAD TO SETTLE BEST RESTORED NOT BEST OVER ALL . I SHOULD HAVE TORCHED IT .
(this comment is meant as a joke i would not wish the above on anyone)

[P.R.90]

Be thankfull for what you got some people got nothing , not bad Greg 2 shows 2 trophy's that's 100% who needs better

[gt orphanage]

The ol mans car i had to blow his engine on the 11th hour, It may have been a threat who knows time will tell.

1968gt,pr90,isabella and a few others come to mind make sure you are well insured before coona or anybody else for that matter .
(waiver/ the above also ment as a joke)moderator may delete i am just spicing things up

[rod]

did you get a pick of the r 100 to put on web ,would like to see it ,not many round bit like gt belletts

[PR91]

1968gt,pr90,isabella and a few others come to mind make sure you are well insured before coona or anybody else for that matter .
(waiver/ the above also ment as a joke)moderator may delete i am just spicing things up

nah, ur safe greg. all in fun, and admitting that saves any arguements over silly things.

anyway, i'll be leaving my GT at home, as i dont want to show u all up and it's only fair to give others a chance....
coz after all, it is the reining champ!

[1968GT]

All in fun, it will be a ball just to be part of the weekend for the first time with my car!
I was in Adelaide, BUT I had my caravan on the back of our tow car, GT might not have towed a 2 tonne Caravan
See you there Guys!!!

[Stickman]

My youngest brother had an R100 as his first car(in 96). He drove it with a 12a as purchased for the first 4 years then we started rebuilding it back to a more original form in apperance. It was a White with red interior 69 with factory 14" rims and caps, rear venetions and whitewall tyres. It was the only rotory to frequent Harry's Diner in Brisbane on a Friday nights that didn't get slaged on or abused and heckled at by the V8, chev, hotrod and muscle car owners.
We spent painstaking months trying to find housings, end plates, rotors and seals to put a 10a back into it as they seem to be considered landfill in comparison to 12a & 13b engines. As Rod had bit of a HP bug at the time and being young and stupid we built the little 10a with periphial ports the size of those you'd see in a 13b, put on a 48IDA weber, big fuel pump and 1/4" fuel lines and a blast of methanol that kicked in at 8,700 RPM. It was good for 182RWHP at 11,740 RPM with the methanol, 167HP without and scared the hell out of me at full noise. The fact that it was running stock brakes and suspention, gearbox and diff on 135 tyres up front and 195 at back did nothing to instill any confidence in the ability to pull it back up again. The size of the PP made it a notoriously difficult car to start as it had to be flooded to boost the compression enough to get it going, fuel pump on and 60 pumps of the pedal before turning the key then triple peddle pumps as it half fired then hope and pray that started other wise you had to pull the sparkplugs out and pour a cap of oil into each housing to increase the seal then do the same thing over. Smoked like a B-arch for the following 10 mins once running though.
Sadly though Rod's new family obligations forced sale of the car in '05 and even though it was as an unregoed, unroadworthy car that needed the motor rebuilt (after its 37,000Km life span) and needing a lot of body work done it still sold for $10.5K. The new owner has since rebuilt the engine and fixed half the body and recently sold it on again for $27K at auction. Good luck finding one cheap!
Dispite what people may think of me saying so, if I'd managed to get out to Lakeside when the question was possed between R100 and Bellett GT, purely based on memorys of good times with my brother and the flood of adrenelin ascociated with riding shotgun at 11,000RPM I believe my hand would hve been held high for the R100. Sorry for the offence that WILL cause but I have never riden in anything that compares to that car.


Stickman

[degruch]

When I was in my early uni days, I had a Fiat 850 Sport Coupe. I'd spot an R100 (with nice period Rebel mags) almost daily, and used to have a crack at roaring past it at every attempt...never got within 500 meters of that thing, it went like a scalded cat. Unfortunately, after years of looking for it, I found the car had been stoved into a tree, and that was the end of it. Another 100% stock original in the area belonged to an old lady. When I finally caught up with her, she wanted $1,500 for it...ah, the good ol' days when rotaries were dirt cheap!

I gave up chasing R100's in my Fiat and set my sights on a local Subaru GSR, which gave me a similar spanking...as did a Cooper S, and a KE20 Corolla SL, and just about anything else I tried to race. The only thing I could beat was an MG Midget, and any bogan in a hot HR Holden (plenty of them around Blackwood in the early 90's, that was for sure).

My current Fiat 850 Berlina will be a different story...should show a clean pair of heals to anything under 1600cc, not that I yearn to be a teenage road racer. But, it's yet another project, the idea is to buy something that doesn't need any work. Unfortunately, everything I've been offered has required further work.

[Farmer]

I have to add my only experience of an R 100, while we're on the topic. A mate in my martial arts class (in the early '80s) offered me a lift from East Sydney to North Sydney, so I left the Crown behind. I asked "How do these little critters go?" A few seconds later we were doing 10,000 revs in third. From memory that was about 80 mph.
We were on the Harbour Bridge.
I still remember that 'just getting wound up' Whiiiizz.
A unique little car.
They're out there Duane.
Cheers.

[cosmoman]

I pulled into a servo one night and the guy next to me was wrapped to see my Bellett.
After about 5 mins of looking over the car he then tells me of the Bellett GT he had,full track car with a 13b Bridgeport Engine.
Then he pulled out the photo's.
He rolled the car at the end of Oran Parks straight,not one panel was salvageable.
Very sad to see.

[P.R.90]

was it a black gt with cut rear wheel arches that went like the clappers & was the blokes name george

[PR91]

i think the black one was in melbourne ken, where as the mentioned one was sydney.
melb one was one half of the "turbo brothers", with the other half being the green sedan with the 'puffed' GT engine.

oh, and remember the other PR90 down here that was silver grey that was turbo'd, twin cam from memory, that had a real hard life??
if so, it still lives, and the resto will begin soon-ish.

cheers.

[P.R.90]

black gt mentioned by me was raced in NSW by George Steeden had a very quick rotor in it maybe some body can shed extra light as i cant get my video footage to convert to still shots
Has Geoff Pearce got any stills?
ken

[pearcesnr]

This i think is the only photo i have. This car was written off at Amaroo Park and was 13B pheriphal ported. I am not aware of any other gts with rotarys in NSW so if we could trace the other that would be interesting.

[pearcesnr]

Found these Waldo scanned in Bellets in action