The only F! champion to ever win with a car of his own manufacture. The engine was built from an aluminum V8 engine block from a 215 Oldsmobile. Only one BT19 Brabham car was built. The engine was developed and built by an Australian aftermarket auto parts firm called Repco.

Brabham had the championship sealed with 3 races left to go, and only could have been beaten if two of his competitors had won the final races.


His engine only had 310 BHP, but beat V12s with being light and reliable. Here is an article on engine development:

https://primotipo.com/2014/08/...llections-episode-2/

This article cover the car and the 1966 season:
https://primotipo.com/2014/11/...llections-episode-3/

F1 cars of that era are some of the most beautiful ever built IMHO.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:
F1 cars of that era are some of the most beautiful ever built IMHO.

You took the words right out of my mouth.



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Going from a 1.5 liter displacement to 3.0 for naturally aspirated engines in 1966 really stirred things up. Brabham had a stock block based V-8, BRM had an H-16, Maserati, Ferrari, and eventually Weslake had V-12s.

In that era the often discussed benchmark brake horsepower(bhp) yield per cubic unit of displacement of naturally aspirated IC engines was 150 bhp per liter, primarily noted as so in F1, but evident elsewhere also.

Thus Jack Brabham's engine, if the quoted bhp was truthful, was delivering a peak of 155 bhp/l from the modified 3 liter Olds V-8. I.e., very competitive with the big names.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Orthogonal,

Loved those days, two of my favorites were the Ferrari shark mouth and Gurneys Eagle..

TTIWWOP

The cars were beautiful because simple and functional. Also there was no regard for the driver’s safety, and drivers died in numbers so great they finally rebelled. There’s a great documentary on Amazon Prime about that.

The Grand Tour did a bit on Jim Clark, and one of his last seasons, something like >100 drivers died across a few series in that year alone

Compare that to now & we've had 3 since 1994.
RIP: Ratzenberger, Senna & Bianchi

Smiling Jack ...




Primotipo wrote an article on the engine build. Resurrected and reproduced at this link:

Building the RB620 V8

It covers some interesting background on the relationship between Brabham and Repco, footage of Jack at home in the UK, the Brabham factory in New Haw, some on circuit footage at Goodwood and then some sensational coverage of the 1965 Tasman Series in both NZ and Oz. The latter segues nicely into footage of the first ‘RB620’ 2.5 Tasman V8 engine ‘E1’ on the dyno at the Repco Engine Laboratory, at Russell Manufacturing, Richmond in ’65…

Extract:
Brabham identified an alloy, linerless V8 GM Oldsmobile engine, a project abandoned by them due to production costs. Jack pitched the notion of racing engines of 2.5 litre and 3 litre displacements using simple chain driven SOHC heads to Repco’s CEO Charles McGrath.

GM developed a family of engines, the F85 Oldsmobile and Buick 215, almost identical except that the F85 variant had 6 head studs per cylinder rather than the 5 of the 215 and was therefore Brabham’s preferred competition option.

Note: a lot of text and images, to lengthy to post here.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
The Grand Tour did a bit on Jim Clark, and one of his last seasons, something like >100 drivers died across a few series in that year alone

Compare that to now & we've had 3 since 1994.
RIP: Ratzenberger, Senna & Bianchi

There's absolutely no doubt that today's cars are orders of magnitude safer. Much of that technology has bled over into the cars we drive as well.

As horny as I get over, say, a '65 GTO, I wouldn't want one as my only transportation.

FWIW 1967 was the last year in F1 without wings and sponsor branding. Yep, no comparison to safety today but more respectful pure racing then with the consequences of recklessness being so significant.

I had a BT-33 stored in my shop for about 8 years. 1970 was the last year JB raced and he drove this car.
The car came within 1 turn of winning the Monaco GP but did win that year. He was about 40 by then. They were running a three litre DFV and had an aluminum monocoque instead of a tube frame.
The earlier cars were just a scaled up tube frame car with a bigger engine and gearbox. Very simple compared to today's cars. They could and were built and run by just a few mechanics, not the 500-1000 employees as they have today.

These cars always remind me of the movie Grand Prix. I still love to watch that movie.

Those cars are absolutely beautiful, they have soul!

The next year his teammate Denis Hulme won the championship with the same Repco Brabham setup.

I have so many fond memories of those cars and drivers. Talk about "large attachments",those drivers had them!!

I just watched that episode of the GT, and the tribute to Jim Clark is must-see TV. Incredible driver, so sad he died at 32.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
The cars were beautiful because simple and functional. Also there was no regard for the driver’s safety, and drivers died in numbers so great they finally rebelled. There’s a great documentary on Amazon Prime about that.

Sir Jackie Stewart led the drivers in reform. My screen name is his nickname. That documentary is fantastic and I echo the recommendation.

quote:

Originally posted by FlyingScot:
Sir Jackie Stewart led the drivers in reform. My screen name is his nickname...

He was also called "The Wee Scot" for his diminutive stature, I'm sure you know.

I told the story here a few months back of meeting him briefly at Elkhart Lake when he was driving the Lola Can-Am car. I used to walk very fast, but he was even faster despite his size. I nearly had to run to keep up, and I'm 6-feet tall.

After that I referred to him as "The Wee Scoot."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: newtoSig765,

Ever seen 15 Ferrari GTOs in one place? https://www.goodwood.com/grrc/...i-250-gtos-together/