As I have already covered on here 2015 wasn't a particularly good year for Slimline Racing, we learned the hard way that drag racing can really bite you in the pocket, well that was this year, we are really looking forward to next year now. the car was being modified with a new injection set-up torque converter and ignition system and two months ago this is where we got to..
And we haven't got any further as yet! now most of you know that our team is made up of family members, Crew Chief is my son Steve and team members include my brother Dave and occasionally my second youngest son Phill and my wife Lorni and electronics genius All Mellow. Steve and Phill are both mechanics by trade and Dave is an engineer, welder and fabricator, Lorni is our videographer and I pay for the food and drive. I purposely stepped away from anything to do with the mechanical side of running the car as I wanted Steve and Dave to be able to set up everything with their eyes closed without any interference from myself why? well it is no secret that Lorni and I have our hearts set on a little cottage in the Valencia region of Spain which we hope to have sorted out by the summer of 2018 when Bethany, our youngest, has finished school. That will mean the responsibility of running the car will be turned over to Steve and Dave including the driving. And yes all Wild Bunch members will be more than welcomed to come and visit us once we are sorted. And before you ask I have checked and there are no drag strips Spain!
As you can see there is still a lot to do to the car before next season so why has everything come to a halt. First of all the truck and car are a fair way from any of the team, a situation that can't be avoided its a 280 mile round trip for Steve to get to the car and return home so he depends on his own daily drive for this duty.....
He also uses this car as our tow vehicle as most of you know, but as we got nearer to the end of the season this little Diesel Astra estate was starting to become ill, it had done something like 170,000 miles and it was getting harder to start and it was using oil so Steve made the decision to strip it and sort it out, the more he took off the more he found wrong, head gasket gone, worn valves cam belt worn then worst of all the bores were so badly worn it was practically junk, So while all this was going on of course nothing was being done to the race car. So while Steve saved for parts to repair the his car he used his motorbike for work more on this in a minute.
In the mean time Steve has a health scare , he is sent up to the local hospital in Swindon to have a biopsy on some lumps found in his mouth, now I know Steve has tried to be very non-plussed about all this but I know I was scared, anyway the results came back and they want to see him again in January so I reckon it can't be anything too serious or they would have had him back immediately, but it's still a bit scary, so as you can imagine the race car suddenly becomes of no importance at all and so time passes.
Next bit of bad luck that happens to Steve is that he has a little slip on his bike not far from his home at a speed more akin to walking speed but he already has an an old injury to his knee that keeps him on pain killers till he asks for a knee replacement and this time he hurt his hip and elbow...more time passes, Steve now is fed up with his old car as the bill for all the repairs come to more than the car is worth so he goes looking for a new one, he finds a nice looking car for sale down my neck of the woods.
A diesel Astra SRi with less than half the miles on it compared to his old car going cheap because of a fault with the turbo, Steve has a spare turbo so a deal is down and he collects it, this car was advertised as being well looked after and wanting for nothing apart from the turbo fault..that was until Steve swapped the turbo and got it running and took it for an MOT, OK so it needed three new tyres all the pads replaced as they were down to the metal he found the front and rear bumpers and the bonnet had been touched up, the air bag warning light was on because the ribbon cable under the dash had been ripped out..so more work to be done and more time passes. He then finds out that the engine water system is getting very highly pressurised so thankfully with a donor car still out front the inter-cooler, radiator and thermostat are changed..no change, so heater matrix is shorted out..no change so today he took the engine apart as the only other thing it could be is head/gasket and low and behold it was fooked, both of them...
Luckily he had already taken the head of his old car cleaned it up and has a head gasket set ready but!! it gets better,,,, the problem with his elbow has gotten worse over the weeks since his accident on the bike, so off the the doctors on Friday where he was told he has either broken /cracked a bone or chipped it badly so he has to go for an x-ray on Monday which means..more time will pass.So this is the reason why not a lot has been done on the race car over the last two months, Of course Steve's health is far more important than a bloody car anyway, So fingers crossed that Steve heals up OK and that the biopsy comes to nothing and only after that will I worry about getting the car ready for next season.
Oh I did mention earlier my other son Phil well the Heaven bad luck has now extended to him as well as yesterday a spanner came flying off a car he was working on and viciously attacked his nose and broke it........
Just goes to show that here is nothing more important in this life than good health and on that note it is time to join a gym and sort my weight out oh deep joy.
