29. Help is always at hand...in the drag racing world

It's not often that I get surprised in this money obsessed world of ours, but every now and again something happens that restores my faith in the Human Race. Ok so I am looking at a dragster that without a gearbox is about as useful as motorbike with a missing wheel, suddenly my idea of doing a form of Motorsport that I have always loved and at the same time getting my family involved looks like it is dead before it has even started.

The gearbox internals are toast, destroyed. I looked at replacement gearboxes and even spare parts and to be honest not only were they very expensive but I don't have the know-how to replace them. Steve took the box down to John  O'Sullivan's engineering shop in Swindon...

Mow for those that don't know not only is John a really nice guy and a brilliant engineer but he is also a drag racer himself, even though he hasn't been on the track for a little while, this may well soon be rectified..shhh!. this is Johns last run in his awesome pop before he took a rest from the sport.

And as  you can see it takes some sort of driver to get behind the wheel of car like this...fearless.

Anyway with John's help it looks like we will be at the track for Dragstalgia after all, the guy has gone out of his way to help us get back on the track at about the point I was going to give up, I can't thank John enough. He has sourced some good second-hand parts from Andy Frost of Penn Auto's...owner of the worlds fastest street cart..yes it is a Vauxhall!!

.. and a rebuild kit and this time the parts will all be uprated modified parts so should last a lot longer and work better and he is going to put it all back together again for us, OK it's still not cheap, nothing is when you have no money LOL! but by God he has saved us a small fortune.


So we will have an engine that is running properly now and a gearbox that wont be slipping it looks like I will have no excuse now but hunt for the 8 second run, all this because of the unselfish help we have had....thank god it is drag racing that I entered and not another type of motor-sport as I doubt if you would get this type of help in other form of motor-sport.! God I love Drag racing. Roll on Dragstalgia...............