{"id":26929,"date":"2023-04-20T15:45:06","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T15:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.totalkitcar.com\/?p=26929"},"modified":"2023-04-20T15:45:06","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T15:45:06","slug":"reverse-engineering-nerus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/2023\/04\/20\/reverse-engineering-nerus\/","title":{"rendered":"REVERSE ENGINEERING – NERUS"},"content":{"rendered":"

STEVE HOLE tells the story of sixties tuning company NERUS ENGINEERING COMPANY Ltd<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Pic courtesy of the excellent Imps4ever.co.uk web resource<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The area around Rye, Hastings and Bexhill-on-Sea has a rich motorsport history, with the latter even laying claim to being the birthplace of British motorsport.<\/p>\n

The heyday for the area was the sixties. We often talk about the \u2018M40 corridor\u2019 being the UK\u2019s F1 hotbed, well this corner of East Sussex was its counterpart some sixty years ago.<\/p>\n

Harry Weslake\u2019s engineering company helped put Rye on the motorsport map with his work for Bentley, Austin, Jaguar and the JWA Ford GT40 Mk1. Setting up his operation in the Cinque Port in the mid-forties, Weslake was commissioned by the Norton motorcycle company to help improve the gas flow on the Manx engine.<\/p>\n

When he worked for Weslake, Ron Valentine develop the 500cc pushed engine that dominated speedway and grass track racing for many years.<\/p>\n

Then there was their F1 involvement, initially with Vanwall, using his skill with cylinder head design and performance. The high point was his work with Dan Gurney\u2019s All American Racers Racing Team, with the Gurney Weslake V12 engine. Gurney\u2019s UK arm was also based in Rye.<\/p>\n

Another incredibly important company to the area\u2019s automotive and motorsport history, was Frank Nicholls\u2019 Elva Cars first in Pevensey, then in Bexhill and finally in Hastings.<\/p>\n

Much as Lotus spawned hundreds of artisan engineering companies set up by ex-employees in North London and latterly Norfolk, so it was that Elva had the same albeit on a slightly smaller scale, effect.<\/p>\n

Companies such as AJ Barnard Engineering, Rytune Engineering, Marchant & Cox and the subject of this feature Nerus Engineering can all trace their lineage directly back to Elva and\/or Weslake Research & Development.<\/p>\n

Another big player in this area was Rother Iron Works. Their name implies the nature of their work, but they diversified quite a lot. They could trace their origins back to 1866 with a lot of their work concerned with the marine industry unsurprising given their location.<\/p>\n

They set up their first subsidiary in 1930 when they started to produce bricks and tiles under the Nerus name. They\u2019d revisit that name again in the sixties. For interest, the origins of the name? It was simply the chairman Mr Suren\u2019s name spelt backwards!<\/p>\n

Rother Iron Works had its own foundry and an extensively equipped machine shop so decided to develop its activities, further.<\/p>\n

They recruited Lancastrian Frank Webb as technical boffin who had previously been involved with Lagonda, managed the HWM F2 team and made his name working as Harry Weslake\u2019s right-hand man for several years. He ran Nerus with\u00a0director, Conolly Tuke.<\/p>\n

He then spent three years working for Winchelsea-based Rytune, with Frank Nichols of Elva fame. It was Rytune that produced the Scorpion Formula Junior car from 1959.<\/p>\n

When Webb joined Nerus in 1961 they became a very important player in the sixties tuning market. Rother Iron Works had already re-established Nerus to produce flexible driveshafts but under Webb\u2019s leadership, they expanded into engine tuning parts, camshafts, valves, springs and engine modifications. They would sell parts in kit packages or individually and also had demonstrator vehicles to show potential customers and journalists of the day what they could do.<\/p>\n

With Webb\u2019s considerable cylinder head skills, they became very sought after for this work in particular. By 1966, they were sending out over 100 modified cylinder heads every month, while they were also big in the field of airflow hence porting and polishing.<\/p>\n

Nerus also got the job to do BMW\u2019s engine mods for Vosper powerboats and also Frank Nichols\u2019 Bavarian-powered racers.<\/p>\n

Parent company Rother Iron Works utilised their foundry by casting scavenge pumps for Nerus\u2019 BMW engines, while they also put their home-made airflow machine to work regularly, too.<\/p>\n

They also became very prominent within the A-series tuning world \u2013 a very competitive market in the sixties – although would also turn their attention to other engines like the Hillman Imp. For example, they tuned the engine in Vic Phillips\u2019 and Mike Pierce\u2019s homemade motorcycle combination called \u2018Impetus\u2019.<\/p>\n

Then there were the engines for Imp engine maestro, Alan Fraser\u2019s Fraser Imp and Fraser GT. Their catalogue also covered engines from Ford, Fiat and the BMC\/Austin 1800.<\/p>\n

I recall reading a lovely old feature on Nerus from the mid-sixties where Frank Webb explained some of his thoughts on the art of engine tuning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the widest bore that gets the best flow of air. If a pipe ends in a sawn-off-type break, it is usually less efficient at conducting air. A narrower piper that has been smoothed out and rounded, is best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Webb would first create his work in Plasticine before scaling it up and having Rother Iron produce a sand mould. He really was a master of making engines breathe easier and was one of the UK\u2019s most prominent experts on solving top-end breathing problems.<\/p>\n

Nerus typically offered three stages of tune for the engines they catered for, much like their rival engine tuners of the day. They liked to offer what their adverts called \u2018package deals\u2019.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, they always had demonstrators to show off their prowess, with their Mini demo car, in particular, regularly appearing in magazine articles of the day.<\/p>\n

One of their mechanics, invented \u2013 and Rother produced it in-house \u2013 the pull-out door handle for the Mini.<\/p>\n

Another famous speedshop of the sixties, Team Checkpoint (branches in Manchester and London\u2019s Euston!) also became a large player on the South Coast\u2019s tuning scene.<\/p>\n

They invested in and ultimately bought out the Camber GT project (I bet they wished they hadn\u2019t pretty sharpish!) and along the way also acquired a couple of other companies in the area, like Rytune.<\/p>\n

In the Manchester area, Checkpoint acted as Nerus agents and had their own \u2018Nerus- Ford Cortina demo car. Its engine was balanced, it had a mild racing camshaft, stage 2 Nerus cylinder heads and double-valve springs. Another Nerus agent was Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill-based RJV Ltd. Indeed, Checkpoint vacuumed up a few other companies that they dealt with including, Mogram Engineering and ironically, Nerus Engineering. They moved the Nerus operation from their Rye home to Mogram’s HQ just along the coast in St Leonard’s-on-Sea.<\/p>\n

I was reading some blurb recently on Nerus\u2019 Imp stage 4 conversion was called the JC Conversion, which gave a whopping 42 per cent, increase in power. That sounds like a dramatic increase and perhaps it was an over-ambitious claim, but Nerus was always regarded as being one of the more conservative when it came to power claims.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Nerus Imp\u2019 – a fully built Imp with their various menu of mods fitted to it, was priced at \u00a3623 (about \u00a39200 allowing for inflation in today\u2019s money). This was a bit pricey, as it cost \u00a355 more than a brand-new Mini Cooper.<\/p>\n

It was the same with all their various parts. They never claimed to be the cheapest, but they did have a great reputation for quality.<\/p>\n

When Nerus closed its doors, Frank Webb would later turn up working for Cosworth Engineering as works foreman. That may sound like a little bit of a come-down but when you think of the calibre of Cosworth as a company and the work they did \u2013 and still do \u2013 being Keith Duckworth\u2019s right-hand man who turned the ideas into reality was a pretty important job.<\/p>\n

Webb would have had direct involvement and input on some of Cosworth\u2019s classic engines and developments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STEVE HOLE tells the story of sixties tuning company NERUS ENGINEERING COMPANY Ltd The area around Rye, Hastings and Bexhill-on-Sea has a rich motorsport history, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkc.grainwork.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}