The season started with our first finals for ETA at the Stockport rally - 3rd place - but we still had engine problems: a small spacing washer inside the piston on the gudgon pin would break up and lunch the engine.

In 1961 I was running the photographic department for "Ellams Duplicating Co" and they had a very good chemical lab,I asked Patrick, a lab technician, if he could produce a diesel fuel to give us a one stop heat. Two weeks latter he produced the fuel but there was a problem it had the most awful smell like very strong onion and garlic,it was difficult to wash off, it permeated through the car and people would stand upwind of us at race meetings. As for the fuel it gave us one stop racing but the speed was erratic. Before we could develop the fuels potential Patrick left Ellams. This was maybe just as well because Shirley my girl friend who took the photograph's and organised the food refused to attend the meetings because she was taking the smell to work.

I felt there was still some mileage left in the Oliver's and Tornado props so we practised with the ETA and Oliver and entered the best model on the day. This gave us a 3rd at the Northern Gala and 1st at South Coast Gala using the Oliver model.Incidentally the extra hole in the tufnal timing disk on the ETA was put there because I wanted to turn the carb 90 degrees so the needle could be adjusted from the top of the model and of course turning the backplater through 90 degrees required us to retime the induction. I told Ken Bedford and he incorporated this mod. in all future ETA 15s.