VSCDA Racer and occasional Chicane contributor Eric Dean is no stranger to stunning Formula Ford and Formula Vee restorations. For his most recent project, Eric has virtually opened up his garage and cracked a few Stroh’s so we can build a 1969 Merlyn Mk11A Formula Ford along with him.
You can really see the level of effort that goes in to making even a simple racing car this well prepared. Whenever I see these time lapse videos, I’m pulled in two directions at once. Part of me looks at these, and thinks, “There. That doesn’t look impossible. This guy is practically doing it by himself.” But time lapse is deceptive. If we slowed this video down and watched even a single afternoon of restoration in real-time, we would start to realize the hundreds of hours of meticulous work that is really behind these restorations.
Television audiences have come to expect that gorgeous automotive restorations can get done in 5 days. I think that devalues the real artistry, engineering, and skill that goes into shaving decades off a car’s age. Making a car as good as it was the day it left the workshop—or better—is no small task. It’s almost an insult to think that anything of this level of quality can be carelessly rushed.
That racers like Eric take on these projects is admirable. That they can then get in the pilot’s seat and put thoughts of the hundreds or thousands of hours of effort out of their minds while they squeeze a few more tenths out of a lap in high traffic… Well, that’s something else. I must be foolish to think that it’s not the risk to life and limb, but the risk of sacrificing all this effort that is some additional bravery.
Fast forward to today. I’ve had the vee apart and back together 20 times since Garrett helped me rebuild it in 2004 but usually just long enough to fix or freshen between seasons. The list of things I would do to the car if I ever completely restored it was just getting longer so I decided now was the time to address everything.
After years of racing the the old girl and my more recent love affair with Formula Fords I have become a far better mechanic and I’ve learned many guarded speed secrets from Garret, my good friend Frank Newton and others. So this time around I wanted to give the 3 time Mexican national champ the love it deserved. I wanted to take the car back to as original as possible. After 40 some years a lot of terrible things can happen to a racecar and the ASP was no exception. The body was pretty hacked up, and was far heavier than it needed to be due to too many layers of fiberglass and paint. The chassis was riddled with holes from multiple floor pans and mounting this and that. And countless other problems that I’ve corrected along the way.
I started with the most miserable thankless job… fiberglass. I wanted to make sure the body was perfect and fit perfectly before disassembling the car…. a lesson I learned the hard way when restoring my Merlyn MK20A Formula Ford. For 8 weeks I spent nearly every night and most weekend days endlessly sanding and laying up glass. I started by grinding on the back side of the fiberglass and shed over 30 lbs from the body! Considering that 20 lbs is good for about 1 HP in a vee that is significant. I’d stand in my garage on a bathroom scale holding the part and record the weight. Then I would take as much material off as I dared or and weigh us again. I was able to take 13 lbs out of the tail section alone.
I then looked at original photos I have of the car and began to recreate the missing sections of body work. It had a lot of wear and tear, had been cracked up from minor shunts, cut for different seatbelt configurations, etc. Next, I sanded through the 6 layers of paint to get down to the gel coat so i could see all of the cracks. I carved out every crack in the gel coat with a Dremel and filled with glass filler so the cracks wouldn’t come back through the paint. Where the tie rods went through the body it was so bad i just laid in all new glass and cut new holes because there was just not enough material to work with. Then I did a lot of work making sure the body panels all lined up and came up with a better way to fasten everything together and minimize gaps. Once I was happy with how everything fit I took the body over to my good friend Brian Spieza’s shop to talk paint.
I don’t know why. Probably because I’m a designer by trade but paint color is something I agonize over. I love keeping cars original but the original paint scheme of navy blue and yellow was simply not an option in my mind. When I restored the car the first time I painted it Dutch racing orange and I liked it but it was too tempting to switch it up yet again. I finally settled on a color similar to the British Racing Partnership green found on the beautiful BRMs and Ferraris Innes Ireland drove. When it came to the graphics I wanted to keep it simple and somehow pay homage to the car’s winning history. I hand designed the numbers based on some old photos I had of BRP Formula Juniors. When Brian saw all of the reference I put together he loved it too, which was all the further convincing I needed. BRP Green it is. Brian then did the final sanding and we went to the paint shop to mix up the color.
While Brian was working on the body I began the rest of the disassembly and chassis restoration. The bottom frame rails had at least 3 sets of holes from different floor pans that I welded shut and ground down. There were about 50 miscellaneous holes drilled for brake line clamps and whatever else was mounted to the frame over the years. Some the original brazing had cracked and need to be re-brazed. I also sleeved and welded in some new tubes that had suffered the consequences of sitting outside nose down in the ground for a number of years. I did the final metal finishing and then dropped off all of the frame components for powder coat. I painted and refinished all of the rest of the bits myself.
Once Brian had all of the color down on the body panels it was time for graphics. I wanted the numbers and graphics painted on rather than vinyl. I know they used decals in the 60s and it’s extra work but looks far better and more correct to me. I cut out numbers in various sizes and placed them on the car until we found what we thought worked proportionally. When graphics are that simple, they have to be perfectly sized and placed or you just know something is wrong.
I for one think that a 40 year old racecar should look like it was painted 40 years ago. Some people think I’m crazy and some people really appreciate it. I work with Brian because he is a master of making brand new paint look old. He is known for painting guitars to give them an authentic vintage paint quality and broken-in look. When I was restoring my last car I asked him if he’d be willing to try the same technique on a larger scale. So many people look at that car and can’t put their finger on why it looks so period authentic…. It has a lot to do with the paint. It takes a lot of restraint to achieve this without overdoing it. Brian is truly an artist of a bygone era.
Within 2 weeks time I had all of the bodywork and frame bits back from paint and powder. Now for final assembly. I mentioned before I’ve had this car apart and back together many times but it came as a shock to me how quickly everything came back together this time around. I picked up the frame at 5:00 on Friday and by 2:30 Saturday morning the basic assembly was done. These are brilliantly simple cars. Saturday and Sunday I spent tidying up wiring and plumbing brake lines and by Monday I had all of the body work fastened on the car. Mind you it was pretty non-stop. Once I start seeing a project like this come together, I tend to forget things like sleeping and eating and life outside of the garage.
The engine is off to F Newton Motorsports for a freshening and as soon as I get it back I’ll drop it in. I plan to shake it down at Gingerman Raceway as soon as the weather breaks. In the meantime, I’ve already started in on winter project number two, a 1969 Merlyn MK 11A (the white frame you can see in several of these shots). Stay tuned.
Some photos and video from my racing experience with my 1968 ASP Formula Vee MK. III. This orange livery that you see was the result of my earlier 2004 restoration that I wrote about here. The ASP is currently undergoing restoration a second time, taking her back to the glory she deserves.
Eric Dean—who’s magnificent Merlyn Formula Ford restoration remains one of the most popular posts here on The Chicane—is nearly finished with the restoration of his first racing car: A 1968 ASP MKIII Formula Vee. It must have him feeling nostalgic because he’s finally relented in my frequent pleas that he start writing about his racing in Formulas Ford and Vee, and his restorations. This is the first part of a series he’s begun on his relationship with this racing car and her subsequent restoration. I’ll see the car in person at the end of the month and while I’ve spent a great deal of time around this car, both when Eric first picked it up and helping him in the pits over the past several racing seasons, I’m a bit giddy to see how it turns out. Ok that’s enough from me, let me hand it over to Eric. — Harlo.
It was tired, worn and I was starting to feel like my car was the roach among all the beautifully prepared vees I race with in the VSCDA. The car is a 1968 ASP MK III, originally built by Wayne Purdy, a former Beach FV employee. The ASP was 1 of 6 or so vees Wayne built before moving on to other racing ventures. This car was raced by a gentleman named Robert Samm very successfully in the southwestern United States and Mexico, claiming at least 3 national titles in Mexico in the MKIII.
I acquired the ASP in the winter of 2004 sight unseen. I knew I wanted to go vintage vee racing but admittedly didn’t do as much research as I should have prior to making the purchase. I was taken by the story and esthetics of the little known ASP rather than the proven race worthiness. A more rational man may have sought out a Lynx or a Zink, brands that dominated FV in the late 60s. I discovered the ASP on a racing classifieds website and the price was right… or so I thought. As it turns out it was just further proof that you get what you pay for.
Despite that, I remember feeling just like a kid on Christmas when it arrived by truck that day late in January. With the help of the driver, I rolled it off the truck through the fresh snow into the garage. I was elated. I couldn’t believe I now owned a vintage open-wheeled racecar. I had wanted to race cars like these since I was a kid. At this point I had only been to track days and autocross events in a street car but I had the racing bug and I had it bad.
I contacted the race director at my local track to see if he could put me in touch with any of the vintage vee drivers in the area. As luck would have it, his former neighbor Garret Van Camp was recently back in vintage vee racing, a former SCCA national champion and he lived 20 minutes from me. Garrett won the 1970 FV championship, raced Porsche speedsters and went on to race super vees as the factory driver for Lynx. Eventually he took a long hiatus from racing to raise his family. In 1994 he decided to once again get behind the wheel. He tracked down his original Lynx, restored it back to the configuration he won with in 1970 and he keeps on winning nearly every race he enters… At 74! Truly inspiring.
I called Garrett and that same day after work he met me at my house to have a look at my car. I’ll never forget what he said upon laying his eyes on the ASP. He said “I wish we would’ve met 3 weeks ago… I never would have let you buy this piece of shit”. We joked about the whole car being held together with cabinet fasteners and zip ties. He was right and I knew it but I was still optimistic. He immediately started educating me on the car and made an impossible list of what needed to be done before the driver’s school began in April. And without his help it would have been impossible.
Garrett would stop by once a week to check on my progress. He encouraged me, taught me and provided endless motivation. Besides that he re-engineered and re-fabricated parts to make the car stronger, safer and the car more competitive. All things that at the time were well beyond my knowledge and ability. I had some background in motorcycle restoration but when it came to racecars I was about as green as they come. Garrett would constantly remind me “if it doesn’t make you go faster, don’t waste your time kid”. Come spring, the car was done but it was a tremendous amount of work… especially for a car that was advertised as “race ready”. Garret was my instructor, is still my mentor and a constant source of inspiration. I consider he and his wife Maggie as 2nd parents and lifelong friends. I completed the school that spring and went on to my first race. There are few things in life I’ve experienced that are as satisfying as finishing a race in a car that you’ve built… Except maybe winning—but that came much later.
