Machine-Tech Northland Ltd

20/08/2026

25/07/2026

John Britten was dyslexic. He had someone read his exam questions and record his answers through school. He completed a four-year mechanical engineering course at night school in Christchurch, New Zealand. He designed glass lighting fixtures and property developments for a living. In his spare time, in a shed behind his house, he built the most innovative motorcycle the world had ever seen. By hand. From scratch. The engine. The frame (there was no frame). The bodywork. The suspension. The fuel injection. The data logging. Everything. The Britten V1000 was designed from first principles by a man who couldn't read a textbook the conventional way but could see engineering solutions that nobody at Honda, Ducati, Yamaha, or Suzuki had imagined.

The V1000 had no frame. The 999 cc liquid-cooled 60-degree DOHC four-valve V-twin engine was a fully stressed chassis member. The carbon-fiber subframes bolted directly to the engine cases. The rear swingarm pivoted on the engine. The front suspension was a double-wishbone system (not conventional telescopic forks, which flex under braking and compromise handling). The radiator was mounted under the seat instead of at the front, improving aerodynamics and mass centralization. The bodywork was carbon fiber. The connecting rods were titanium. The fuel injection was electronic and programmable (in the early 1990s, when most racing motorcycles still used carburetors). Engine output: approximately 166 HP at 11,800 RPM from 999 cc. Weight: 138 kg (304 lbs) wet. Every innovation was developed in a shed in Christchurch by Britten and a small group of friends working evenings and weekends.

In 1991, two Britten V1000s showed up at the Battle of the Twins at Daytona International Speedway. Nobody knew what they were. Gary Goodfellow, an expatriate New Zealander racing out of Canada, finished second and third against factory Ducatis, Hondas, and Harley-Davidsons. A factory Ducati overtook one Britten in the final yards. John watched from the pit wall and decided: you will never beat a works Ducati by building the same kind of bike. He rebuilt the V1000 from the ground up. In 1992, Andrew Stroud won the Dutch round of the Battle of the Twins at Assen, the first international victory. In 1993, rider Jon White set four FIM world speed records for sub-1000 cc motorcycles on a closed road in Canterbury, New Zealand, hitting 302.705 km/h (188 mph) on the flying mile. That record still stands, more than thirty years later. From 1994 to 1997, Stroud won four consecutive Daytona Battle of the Twins titles on the Britten. In 1995, he won the BEARS World Championship at Brands Hatch against factory-supported teams with engineering staffs of hundreds and budgets in the tens of millions.

John Britten was diagnosed with skin cancer in 1994. He continued developing the V1000 through chemotherapy. He died on September 5, 1995, at age 45. Ten Britten V1000s were built between 1991 and 1998. All ten survive in museums and private collections worldwide. One sold at auction for over $400,000. The Te Papa national museum in Wellington, New Zealand, displays one permanently. Every V1000 was hand-built in a shed in Christchurch by a dyslexic engineer who couldn't read conventionally but could design a frameless, carbon-fiber, fuel-injected, stressed-member superbike that beat every factory in the world. He built it in a shed. Beat Ducati at Daytona. Set world records that still stand. Made ten. Then died at 45. The Britten V1000.

24/07/2026

Every American PT boat in World War II carried three Packard 4M-2500 supercharged V12 engines. Three. Each one displacing 2,490 cubic inches (40.8 liters). Each one producing 1,200 HP initially, progressing to 1,500 HP in later wartime versions with higher boost levels and intercooling. Three engines per boat: 4,500 HP total. Driving three propeller shafts through Packard-built Snow-Nabstedt marine transmissions. Top speed: 41 knots (47 mph) in an 80-foot wooden-hulled boat weighing 56 tons fully loaded with torpedoes, machine guns, depth charges, and a crew of seventeen. The Japanese called PT boats "devil boats." The engines that made them devils were Packards.

The 4M-2500 was not a repurposed aircraft engine, despite the persistent myth. Jesse Vincent, Packard's chief engineer (the same man who designed the WWI Liberty V12 and the Packard Twin Six automobile V12), started with a clean sheet in the 1920s for powerboat racing. Gar Wood used Packard V12s in his Miss America speedboats to set world water speed records through the 1930s. When the Navy needed engines for the PT boat program, Vincent's marine racing V12 was the obvious candidate. The production 4M-2500: 60-degree V12. Aluminum block with steel cylinder liners. Bore: 6.04 inches. Stroke: 6.50 inches. 2,490 cubic inches. Four valves per cylinder (48 total). Dual spark plugs per cylinder (24 total). Centrifugal supercharger. Dry-sump lubrication. Holley 1685F aircraft carburetor feeding 100-octane aviation gasoline. Weight: 2,900 pounds. 6.4:1 compression ratio. An overspeed governor cut fuel between 2,500 and 3,000 RPM to prevent the engines from destroying themselves when the boat's hull bounced out of the water in rough seas.

The staggering part is the production volume. Packard built 14,000 marine V12s during the war. Three went into each of the Navy's 768 PT boats. The rest went into Army rescue boats, British motor torpedo boats, Soviet torpedo boats and sub-chasers (535 engines shipped under Lend-Lease), and various allied naval craft. Lieutenant John F. Kennedy commanded PT-109, an Elco 80-footer powered by three Packard 4M-2500s. On the night of August 2, 1943, the Japanese destroyer Amagiri rammed PT-109 in Blackett Strait, cutting the boat in half. The Packard engines went to the bottom. Kennedy and his surviving crew swam to a nearby island. The story of PT-109 made Kennedy a war hero and, seventeen years later, helped make him President of the United States. The engines that powered his boat were Packards.

Today, only one operational PT boat exists: PT-658, a Higgins 78-footer restored by the Save the PT Boat Inc. organization and based in Portland, Oregon. It runs on three Packard 5M-2500 V12s (the final wartime variant). You can hear them run. The sound is unlike anything else in the marine world: three supercharged 2,490-cubic-inch V12s turning simultaneously at idle, each one displacing more than four Chevy 632 big-blocks combined. The Packard 4M-2500. 2,490 cubic inches. Supercharged. Four valves per cylinder. Designed by the same engineer who built V12 luxury cars and WWI aircraft engines. Fourteen thousand built. Three per boat. The engine that powered the devil boats.

17/07/2026

In 1972, the fastest-accelerating production car in Australia was not powered by a V8. It was powered by an inline-six. With triple Weber carburetors bolted to the side of the engine. Chrysler Australia called it the Hemi 265. It made 302 HP at 5,600 RPM and 320 lb-ft at 4,400 RPM from 265 cubic inches. It was faster to 100 mph than Ford's 351-cubic-inch V8 Falcon GTHO, which had 86 more cubic inches and two more cylinders. The engine went into a two-door fastback coupe called the VH Valiant Charger R/T E49. Only 149 were built. It was a homologation special designed for the Bathurst 1000, and it was the most audacious inline-six ever put into a production car.

The Hemi 265 started as Chrysler USA's abandoned D-engine program, a clean-sheet inline-six designed in the late 1960s to replace the Slant Six in American trucks. Chrysler USA shelved it. Chrysler Australia's engineers took the prototype, spent $33 million and over a million test miles developing it, and created three displacement variants: 215 CID (3.5L), 245 CID (4.0L), and 265 CID (4.3L). The block was cast iron with seven main bearings (diesel-level overbuild), upright cylinder configuration (not slanted like the Slant Six), and 4.4-inch bore centers. The heads used canted valves at 18 degrees in wedge-style combustion chambers that Chrysler marketed as "Hemi" for the chamber shape, though they were not true hemispheres like the American 426. The E49 version got the full treatment: 10.0:1 compression, aggressive camshaft with 306 degrees of duration, shot-peened crankshaft, upgraded pistons and connecting rods, and the triple Weber 45 DCOE side-draft carburetor system that Chrysler engineers developed at Weber's factory in Italy.

The triple Webers were the engine's defining feature. Three 45mm dual-throat carburetors mounted on the intake side of the engine, fed through tuned-length runners, producing the most distinctive induction sound of any production six-cylinder of the era. The system provided razor-sharp throttle response and enough airflow to support 302 HP naturally aspirated from 265 cubic inches, exceeding one horsepower per cubic inch, a benchmark that was considered the holy grail of engine development at the time. Quarter-mile: 14.4 seconds at 99 mph. Zero to 100 km/h: 6.2 seconds. Top speed: 133 mph with 3.23:1 gears. The factory rev limit was 5,500 RPM, but the engine revved to 6,500 with ease. At racing speeds, the E49 returned roughly 10 mpg while the competing V8 Falcons consumed fuel at 5 to 6 mpg.

The Charger E49 dominated on every Australian circuit except Bathurst, where the mountain climb (Conrod Straight and the steep ascent) favored the V8 Falcon's superior torque at low RPM and higher top speed. Leo Geoghegan, recruited by Chrysler to campaign the Charger, achieved podium finishes and class victories against V8 opposition throughout the 1971-1973 touring car seasons. The Doug Chivas/Damon Beck E49 finished third outright at the 1972 Hardie-Ferodo 500 in wet conditions. Chrysler Australia produced the Hemi 265 in various forms until 1981, when the company ceased manufacturing operations. Today, original E49 Chargers are among Australia's most valuable muscle cars. Triple Webers. 302 HP. Inline-six. Outran V8s. 149 built. The most powerful naturally aspirated production inline-six in the world until Porsche's turbocharged 930 arrived three years later.

30/06/2026

The longest serving tool in my kit died today. My 1/2” drive impact driver.
Bought at Deans 4 Square in Awanui in 1976-77 to assist striping my motorbike engines as a teenager, it has been relied on for the toughest of jobs for 50years. Let’s see if its replacement can stay the distance. RIP ol mate. 🪦

13/05/2026

Before Toyota became one of Australia’s most trusted vehicle brands, it arrived through mining and construction, not suburban showrooms.

Sir Leslie Thiess, the Queensland contractor behind major earthmoving projects, is credited with bringing the first Toyota LandCruisers into Australia in 1958. He needed tough, reliable vehicles for the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, where roads were rough, weather changed fast and ordinary work vehicles struggled.

Thiess imported 13 LandCruisers and put them straight to work. Their performance in the Snowy mountains proved the Japanese 4WD could handle Australian conditions, from construction tracks to remote bush access.

That decision opened the door for Toyota in Australia. By 1959, Thiess Toyota was handling official imports, and the LandCruiser quickly moved from project sites to farms, mines, stations and government fleets.

What began as a practical contractor’s choice helped create one of the strongest 4WD reputations in Australian motoring history for decades to come.

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