27. It's a long long road 01/06/2014

We all met up in Bedford on Saturday, full of the joys of spring as they say, we picked the truck up and filled up the tank and made our way to the Pod, Saturday was a RWYB event but Sunday was Classic Ford Day so there were a lot of Fords around, some of them very noisy indeed.

Back to our little dragster, after the strip down last week all we had to do was adjust the throttle pedal and check the oil levels in the gearbox and engine, fill up with fuel and check everything out..which we did...

..everything checked out so we took her down for a run, today's agenda was tog et her down into the 9 second bracket and on the last run really go for it and try for an 8 second run..well that was the plan... we started up ran through the water I pulled the gear stick into second ready for the burnout. I got the go-ahead from Dave so I floored it, she got up on the tyres and there was smoke pouring off the tyres, but! something didn't sound right, I couldn't put my finger on it, while I was thinking of this the front wheels decided to defy gravity and up they went, this I was not expecting, well not on a burnout anyway, I headed towards the start line marshal who had a weird look on his face...yeah fear!, the car came down with a bump I put her in neutral but she conked out before i could blip the throttle so Dave came running after me with small fuel bottle in hand with which he primed the injections system with and I hit the starter and she fired up, I backed her up to the start line, waited for the lights and hit the throttle, maybe not as hard as I was planning as I still had this feeling that something wasn't right...the shift light came on I pulled into second gear but the shift light stayed on and I could not hear a change in engine note I double checked I was in second but nothing happened so I drover her off the end of the track.

What a first gear run looks like, shame Al missed the burnout!

After a little chat about what happened the gear linkage and oil were checked, we started her up on axle stands and checked the gears out but it looked like we still only had 1st gear ratio in both gears, we made a couple of phone calls and it looks like the muck we pulled out of the gearbox when we changed the oil a couple of weeks back was what was left of the clutch plates.

So my super crew stripped the car again and I mean stripped, to get the gearbox out you have to take all the body panels off, wheels off and then the rear axle has to be removed, all this was done within an hour and the gearbox put in Steve's car to be taken to Mr. O'Sullivan for a rebuild.

Good points for the one run, it was the fastest 60 foot and 330 foot time I had managed so far, looks like we were on for a 9 second run..oh well and the throttle pedal has now been sorted as my foot didn't slip off. roll on Dragstalgia..