Harold Clisby designs and builds Australia's only F1 engine at his small factory in 1961-65 at Prospect, Adelaide
The 1.5 litre V6 Fornula One engine designed by Harold Clisby (at right, top left, and bottom right) from 1961-65, backed by Kevin Drage (top right, centre) as project engineer and the complex machining by Alec Bailey (top right, at right). The engine was built at Clisby's factory in a converted mansion on Prospect Road, Prospect, in Adelaide.
The wildly inventive Harold Clisby decided to build his own 1.5-litre DOHC (double overhead camshaft), two-valve, 120-degree, twin-carb V6 Formula One car racing engine in October 1960 while aboard a ship on the way home to Adelaide from Europe where he’d been excited by visits to the Coventry Climax, BRM and Ferrari plants.
Formula One technology was already moving beyond to V8s by 1961 when Clisby started his project. This didn’t matter to Clisby or that he only ran a small factory in a converted mansion in the Adelaide suburb of Prospect. With a staff of 17, the factory produced 100 air compressors a week – but also was diverted to whatever side project took Clisby’s fancy: from a hovercraft to the miniature steam engine for the train track at his home in the Adelaide Hills, and other half-completed projects.
Without formal education, the self-taught Clisby was a brilliant intuitive engineer and great draughtman who drew his 1.5 litre V6 engine design. Clisby did have the valuable support of Alec Bailey, who did most of the complex machining, and Kevin Drage as project engineer.
Clisby’s V6 engine wouldn’t make it to track until 1965 because designing and building them in-house was what mattered most to him, along with a element of savings costs. An example was the engine’s steel crankshaft that de Havilland in Sydney could have nitrided much sooner. Instead, Clisby built a nitriding furnace at his factory and increased its foundry capacity to cast internally instead.
Clisby’s wide engine design precluded the use of tripledowndraft Webers but a pair of Weber triples made for Ferrari’s 120-degree V6 would be sufficient. When they ordered them from Weber, a letter was received from Ferrari’s lawyers claiming proprietary rights to the carburettors and the 120-degree V6 layout. Clisby was unfazed by Ferrari's threat and designed and cast carburettors to use Weber jets and airbleeds. But that exercise also took extra time.
Press interest in Clisby’s project started in in April 1961 issue of Australian MotorSports and Automobiles, followed by Sports Car Graphic in the United States of America and Britain’s Motor Racing. In Motor Sport in 1963, Denis Jenkinson suggested Jack Brabham “might be patriotically inspired to try a Clisby V6”. Drage discounted the link to Bradman or with Tom Hawkes using the engine in his proposed Ausper F1 car.
Instead, Clisby’s engine would became an all-Adelaide effort in producing Australia’s only F1 sports car by teaming it with a body built by driver/manufacturer Garrie Cooper and his Elfin Sports Car business, established in 1957 with his father Cliff Cooper, at a small factory in Conmurra Avenue at the Adelaide suburb of Edwardstown. Mallala was Elfin’s home circuit where Cooper had raced and would deliver 19 of his T100 Monos, named for their monocoque design.
Kevin Drage discussed with four-time Australian Grand Prix winner Lex Davison about funding an Elfin Mono car for Clisby’s engine but simultaneously Andy Brown spoke to Clisby, leaving Drage with the embarrassing task of “telling Lex we could not proceed with him”.
At Elfin, Cooper had to find a way to modify his monocoque and rear suspension to accept the Clisby’s engine. Clisby was losing interest in the V6 engine, distracted by other projects such as his miniature steam train (he also bought Australia's largest privately-owned telescopre: an ex-Eldred Norman 14 inch Cassegrainian) but he did come up with the idea for a two-stroke 3-litre F1 engine.
But, with Drage wanting to see the four-year V6 engine project through to completion, he came up with a way with Cooper for the Elfin T100 Mono to take the Clisby engine. The Elfin Clisby was ready for its first outing at the Easter Mallala race meeting on April 18-19, 1965.
