Life started to go astray even before we set off for Shaky, on the Thursday Dave, my brother and crew member got home form work to find some low life gutter tramps had stolen his motorbike, Now Dave would be the first to tell you it wasn't no multi thousand pound super bike but, it was his pride and joy....
..much work had been done to this machine ready for a long trip to Barcelona in Spain a week today...but this is how it was found on Friday..
..both Dave and I would love to get our hands on the little scrotes that did this, our trip is now in jeopardy so you can imagine the frame of mind we had setting off to the Nationals..
Anyway the sun was shining, we picked the truck and car up early in the morning and off we went, we got to Shaky before lunchtime and we were surprised to see so many people already there. Dave and I got the car out and set up camp awaiting the arrival of number 1 son and crew chief Steve who was brining Al with him to help us sort out our data logger.
Much hard work was completed in the afternoon sun, data logger now worked thanks Al, the new parts were installed but we found the leak down tester I had bought wasn't good enough and our compressor was struggling to hold 100psi so once again I would like to thank our own resident Mr 6 Bob Hawkins for all his help and loan of equipment and tools and tons of good advice.
Because of the noise curfews we couldn't start out engine up till Saturday morning, on this note I would like to say something, Friday was gorgeous it is a shame weren't allowed to run only cars with treaded tyres and silencers were allowed but! some of these cars are far noisier than some of our (Wild Bunch) cars I think this needs to be looked at again, and maybe the use of a decibel metre to determine who can and who can't run????
I have to say there was a great turnout of Wild Bunch cars this weekend and once again many PB's set and of course..that record!!!!!!!! it's a shame we still seem to be treated like we are in the way at times....maybe this will change when we start putting up some more good numbers?
Steven East managed to get the wheels up on Ellie
We do have some really fine pieces of machinery in the Wild Bunch
So Saturday arrived and so did the rain, it was a gloomy start to proceedings that never really went away. We got ready to tow down three times and three times we were sent back due to rain, we did half expect it though so we retired back to camp and waited for the better weather to arrive on Sunday.
We did of course nip over the bar for a quick drink then toodle over to the marquee to watch the Straight Aces who were brilliant, I wont mention the late arriving band from the night before!! but I did notice when we were leaving that their broken down van had been moved to the entrance of the airfield.
So Sunday arrived and so did the weather at last, we were up early checked everything over...again!! towed down to the start with our new temporary crew member Mr John O'Sullivan, we started up turned the data logger on..yes it did work now, Steve turned the go pro on and I pulled round to the start line...hit the throttle for the burnout and.....engine stopped...oops we restarted and it happened again and again so I just took the light and ambled down the strip trying to keep the engine running while it farted and smoked and rattled. hmmm a problem then!!
Steve thought he had maybe put a too weak spring in the high speed lean off poppet valve causing the the engine to lean out too quick so this was replaced toot sweet we then went to start her up but there was another problem, starter didn't seem to be working we took the side panel off to discover the starter was in two halves, the front mounting panel and starter dog were still on the engine but the rest of the starter body was sitting on the floor..the threads had stripped. So a quick run round the pits saw us with another motor body and mounting plate courtesy of Mark Coulsell and then a loan of a heli-coil set from Steve Cassisi, in record breaking time and just in time for the second run Steve managed to get all this back together and..she turned over yaaaa!!! hmm too early for cheering she just wouldn't fire up, so after much tinkering and testing we found the fuel pump had packed up so that's it for us for the weekend one grotty run and that was it.
But we did get to witness something special yea I left his near the end of this blog for a reason, Myself and Dave started off watching drag racing as kids waiting to see that first 6 second run by Priddle and when it happened it was something special, and again this weekend we waited to see something special, we wandered down to the start line to watch the incredible run by Bob Hawkins and his team and I reckon Dave and I cheered louder than the rest of the spectators put together because it felt like it did in 1973? and isn't that what the Wild Bunch is all about? bringing back that atmosphere of the early days of drag racing where something special was always about to happen..
Congratulations to Bob and the team you did it mate......we went home disappointed with the performance of our car yet elated to have seen some incredible performances again this weekend well done to the whole of the Wild Bunch.
Oh just a quick foot note to complete our weekend of of utter frustration when Dave and I got back to Bedford and started unloading our gear we found that one of the large powder fire extinguisher had gone off covering everything, it took hours to clean up and we haven't finished yet..oh well roll on Dragstalgia.
oh and one other small thing, I was interviewed by our friends from Zeon TV but I was introduced as Shirley Muldowney's love child by John O'Sullivan..if this ever appears in the final DVD I will retire to the outer Hebrides...thanks John.
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