88. After the Lord Mayors Show...July Shootout

Well we had the best of times at Dragstalgia 2016 just a week ago, oh how quick things can change!!! but as I keep getting told "that's drag racing"

So we made the decision to go the July Shootout at the last minute, Steve said the car was running pretty consistently so it shouldn't be a problem to run it on Saturday without him as he just couldn't get any more time off work, well and keep his job that is. So Dave and I took the car up to Shaky we set up camp Friday evening and Dave changed the oil and charged the batteries up ready for action Saturday morning.

Friday evening we sat and watched a hell of a sun set, then walked up to Kenny's bar and had a couple of small drinks and went to bed all excited about what we could run int he morning.

Well Saturday came and we were ready, we went to the line to do observed runs to get my licence signed off at the second time of asking, The burn out was good all the gears were working well I took the green floored her and instantly I spun the wheels up it was like driving a drift car it went one way then the other, I had to lift once but it was getting scary I nearly had back out of the run altogether for my own safety, we still managed to run a 9.2 at 150mph, I am going to have to say this and I know I wont make many friends but... I am afraid that the track just wasn't up to the horsepower and I know I wasn't the only one to mention that this weekend, for me and one or two others it was down right dangerous so I might have to think abut not going to the smaller events and just run at the events where the Supercharged Outlaws and Outlaw Anglia's run, as the track seems to be better prepared when they are running and of course they rubber up the strip better. I was told by my observer that I was still spinning the wheels at half track...change of underpants run.

Second run more of the same I changed lanes just to see if one lane was better than the other and the answer...no! , at the hit the wheels spun up and it just got worse till I had to back out of it. I was told this time that I was dropping cylinders hmmm. More on that in a bit.

Before anyone hangs me I love Shaky I love the atmosphere of the place and yes I agree it is the home of sportsman racing, and I do support the track but! we are now making some serious horsepower and for whatever reasons my car is having real problems with the lack of traction and at the smaller meetings it could be dangerous to my pocket and my health I run the car entirely from my own pocket, so it makes sense to not attend the smaller meetings anymore. I will of course still be at the larger meetings like the Nostalgia Nationals etc.

Concerned about the dropped cylinders Steve told us over the phone to change the oil and check to see if there is anything in it that shouldn't be there and the same for the oil filter. both were checked and nothing was found so we charged up the batteries fuelled her up then warmed her up on the stands, everything seemed fine so we went for our third run, on the burn out the engine sounded poorly so Dave shut me down on the line and we owed back to the pits, a phone call to Steve resulted in us stripping off some body panels ready for when he got to the track the following morning, so a little be it deflated we sat and watched yet another amazing sun set and then joined in on the Wild Bunch annual Fancy dress party........

photo's by Lynne Coulsell

..... where I got "Flanned" by the Phantom Flan Flinger., thank you so much Andy!

So Steve turned up early and started work on the car he checked out the flex plate first as we had been having trouble with starting, then fitted the new starter, he then checked the compression on the motor and found two cylinders were right down. So the right hand was taken off and the damage was there to be seen we had torched the head, blown a hole between the middle two cylinders.

I went to watch the rest of the "Bunch" run and when I got back to our pits Steve was a bit distraught  he apologised to me and said he had caused some damage as well, I asked him what he meant and he showed me the two back pistons and you could see they were marked, when Steve had rebuilt the motor at the beginning of the season he had put two of the pistons in the wrong way round!

Luckily it would seem that torching the heads had helped us find this other problem before too much damage was done, so what now? well the heads are already at John O'Sullivan's  engineering workshop for welding and skimming, the block will be off for checking next week just hope if it needs a re-bore it isn't more than 10 thou or we will need new pistons as well, Steve with Steve Field will be checking the crank and shells out at the same time, any engine damage is bad news but this could have been a whole lot worse.

So the thing is at Dragstalgia we could hear a squeaking noise when we turned the motor over on the starter, hence Steve checking out the flex plate, starter etc we now know what that noise was, the hole blown between the two middle cylinder so that means we ran an 8.70  using the wrong heat plugs and wrong reach plugs, two cylinders with little or no real compression and two cylinders not working properly as the valves wee hitting the tops of the pistons and obviously we were also running her far too lean still, so what the f**k will she run when we sort out these problems???well you all know what I am hoping for. I would like to thank everyone for their input over the last couple of days regarding the head and how to avoid the problem in the future we will be looking in to this very soon.

So it was back to watching the racing well done to all the Wild Bunch for putting on such a good close show and it was good to see Nile Lane returning in Azbo and wow he hammered his personal est by running his first 8 at 8.85, that new Jeff Bull motor is a strong 'un.

The weather remained good so even though a few of us were having a wee problem or two the remaining 6 cars did well, now the race is on to get Tight Fit ready for the Hot Rod Drags, see you all at the track soon.

And if we don't get her ready in time then have a safe race guys and we will be back next year fitter faster stronger...I hope, as we continue to learn how to run one of these monsters, I think we are getting close?

87. Dragstalgia 2016 or.................. the problem with starter motors..??

I have been looking forward to this for so long, we have had so many problems with our car that I could write a book about it, after the Retro Show we knew we had found something and I couldn't wait to see how she would go given a well prepped track and some decent weather. Also I had suffered problems with my back I have had disk problems in the past and this was not what I wanted just before Dragstalgia and at one point I even contemplated pulling out of the competition as I couldn't see how I could get in and out of the car.

Thankfully with a bit of hard work I managed to control the pain so....we were set we were going come hell or high water.. The plan was to leave Thursday morning from the house and get to the truck by midday and to the Pod an hour later at the most. I was thinking about the 45 entries in the Wild Bunch alone and I knew pit space would be limited.

So Thursday morning the car was packed up ready to go,

Not too long after and after a few phone calls from Steve and Dave who were really interested in my whereabouts on numerous occasions I arrived at the truck, where all the "stuff" in the photo above was transferred to the mobile garage / home from home, 

a quick fuel stop on the A6 and I was there driving through the gates of the Santa Pod Raceway. I was amazed to see how many racers were already there, this was around 1pm. A couple of the guys Andy and Jim agreed to give me a hand to get the car out of the Truck, not an easy task at the best of times it was here that I noticed the car was sitting at a strange angle one of the rear slicks was deflated so a quick pump up and the car was out, I set up camp ready for the arrival of my brother Dave as soon as he could get out of work.

Friday morning I was up early to check the car and get ready for the arrival of the rest of the crew for the weekend, the slick appeared to be still inflated so all looked well, that was until Steve who had arrived with my other brother Andy checked the pressures, the slick was still going down even though it was slowly, so after erecting a tent for Steve and Andy I went looking for help, Jim knew John Webster so he went and asked if  he could help us, now bearing in mind John was busy getting his own car ready for racing and was very busy, he said that he had  inner tubes that would fit my slicks in his workshop and he would fetch them as soon as he had a few minutes to spare ......

click on image for link

The track opened at 12 and a couple of hours later and true to his work John turned up with two boxes and not only only did he go out of his way to go get them he fitted them for us as well, not an easy task for someone that has never done this before, so I would like to thank John Webster for all his help without which our weekend would have been over before it has begun.

So a little later than expected I was in the pairing lanes the weather was really over cast and had shed some of that wet stuff on the track a little while earlier, the good thing was we managed to get two runs in on Friday which after finding the flat slick we thought we wouldn't  make any. so tow runs which netted a 9.5 and a 9.22. This was a good start after the problems we had at the Retro Show one of those runs was against Johnny Smith who was a presenter on Fifth Gear.

Johnny drives an amazing electric car which I believe is now the world record speed holder for street legal electric car, you can find out more about this amazing machine here..

But...I was in the other lane and there was no way I was going to let an electric car beat me even if it was from another class of race vehicle..Street Eliminator...but well done Johnny on your 9 second pass that is just incredible.

I really enjoyed the race and if you ever read this Johnny!... thanks. But! even better than that my wife Lorni who also turned up at around mid afternoon was on hand to video the race on her phone, bless her.

So that was a 9.2 second run with a sort of two step launch we were heading in the right direction at last, that saw off the first day which was a RWYB day next day was for real!!! The real buzz for us was that on both runs we re-set our PB speed. On both runs the car was all over the place and I was even complimented on my driving by none other than Santa Pods own Darryl Bradford.

The first of our schedule 3 runs was against Maurice Takoor in the little Spirit slingshot, now once again Lorni videoed the run on the her phone, again not the cleanest of runs but........

..you will notice, if you put the volume up that Lorni lets go of a little scream at the end of the clip, I was sitting at the top end waiting for the crew to come and tow me back and they arrived with flashing lights we had done it after all this time we had run our first 8 second run..to say I was over the moon would be an understatement. Dave even had the number board on the screen of Steve's car set up LOL

But oh then the surprise f the meeting for me..in my first ever Dragstalgia and my first ever race against anyone I was put up against a certain German lady in her 8 ball altered powered by a BBC...Jutta Winter, she beat me that day and I ran what was up to this weekend my fastest and quickest ET 9.203

I looked to my left and there she was again, this time I wanted payback, the cars were fired we made our way round to the start-line I was really up for this, the lights ran down and I was gone, foot planted as hard as I could and at no time did I see that black car I went through the lights and gave a little scream of delight then hit the Chute, my new chute that is, for the first time, and it nearly tore my head off, I made the first turn off for the very first time! the crew came to get me with a big smile on their faces and I found out that I had just run my fastest and quickest ever at 8.72 @ 150 mph. If anyone has a video of this please let me know.

Got back to the pits and only had time to just get out have a drink change the oil and we were being called again this time we were up against Chris Manning in his gorgeous new slingshot.."The Villain" unfortunately he had problems on the start line and didn't make the run but we made another 8 second blast 8.8 at again  a little over 150mph. but! on the warm up we noticed a bit of a knock while starting up and a squeaky noise coming from the same area... Flex plate, starter area hmmm.

Sunday morning arrives along with some sunshine and heat, and my other son Phill and his better half Katie, so no pressure then with half the family watching but! on our morning warm up the starter gave up the ghost...................! Dam!

So not wanting to give up I went on the tour of the pits trying to find anyone who had a spare starter, I ended up at our friend Mike Oates pit he told us that he could get us a new one from a guy he knows that would be willing to open up his shop, Part of the Top Speed Automotive group and bring one to the Pod, but he might be an hour or so. I agreed and asked him to do this for us, then I bumped into Turbo who was not having the best meeting of his life either who said he had a spare in the trailer that we could borrow. So that was fitted in about 30 seconds and we just about made the call and there we were back in the pairing lanes again.

This time we were up against our good friend Mo Blackburn in his gorgeous "T" bucket Escape From RealiTee again I hit the throttle hard expecting to see Mo run off into the distance but I didn't see him and once again I went through the lights first and again we ran an 8 but this time even faster at 8.70 at 150.63 mph, this is beginning to feel like a dream.

Now not long after we got back to the pits the new starter arrived we took Turbo's loaned starter off when we heard that Mark Coulsell and Ballbreaker team were also having problems with shier starter after trying to make one good one out of the bits they had in their trailer. So having made our old starter work we ran round and gave Mark our new starter to use for the next run but!..are you still with me on this?  we then fired up our car again to warm her up and the starter failed!!! so we had a choice we could ask Mark for our new starter back which was already fitted to Ballbreaker and ready to run or we sat the last run out. I made the decision to let Mark run and we would sit the last run out, but then I had an idea I ran round to another of our friends pits, Mick Gleadow, who had bought his brand new slingshot to Dragstalgia but had not managed to get her down the track yet, and I managed to get him to let us take the starter off his car so we could borrow it, unfortunately it didn't fit! but thanks anyway Mick hope to see the car on the track very soon.

 so I then grabbed my camera and walked down to the start line to take some photo's. Not been there long when Phillip came running down and very out of breath told me to get ready Steve had fixed a starter up out of more bits and pieces..... I looked behind Phil and there was my car being towed down the pairing lanes at 60 mph!!. We ran last and it was a solo but on the burnout I decided to try out something I had been thinking about and I waved to the crowd as I was doing a one handed burn out...cool! again if anyone has a photo or video clip of this please let me know. I went to put her in stage but found I only had second gear so not wanting to disappoint the crew after all their hard work I went for it, She launched very hard still considering it was in second and I still ran another 8 second pass at 150mph God we have a bracket car.

We got back to the pits a very happy crew we had run a string of 8 second passes at over 150mph and we had remained undefeated all weekend with no damage! apart from starter motors that is...I was so glad that Phill had turned up to see all this as in the past everytime he came to watch us the car ran like crap.

The sons Phil and super crew chief Steve

What a weekend and what a crew Steve Dave and even Phil on Sunday worked so hard to get me down the track and to keep the car running, we now have a real dragster and a proper race crew thanks guys. Oh and I must not forget my darling wife Lorni who has been so great in supporting this project of mine over the last three years and for going without so we can go racing, thanks darling.

That wasn't the end of it we still had the Wild Bunch presentations to attend which happens at the end of every meeting.

The prizes were presented by Claire who won a prize herself this year "The Spirit of Dragstalgia" award present by the one and only Colin Theobald one of Santa Pods very own commentators. And guess what? we won a trophy as well for the best wheelie.....

Now this was a surprise as I had no idea that I was carrying the front wheels at all, apparently  I had them up to around 330 foot on one run,,wow! I gave this trophy to Steve as without him we would be nowhere.

I have just seen this photo of me with my arms crossed waiting for the presentations, I had no idea I was that tall,...lol

So 45 cars entered 42 of them ran which is a Wild Bunch record we will soon have enough cars to have our meeting.....Oh we already do don't we? its called Dragstalgia!!!!!!!!!!!!

86. Nearly Time.......!!!

Only a couple of more days and we will be taking the truck and race car to the Pod for what I hope will be the best meeting of my life, this meeting is very important to me for more than one reason....So who is excited then? my son and crew chief Steve has phoned me a couple of times over the last few days just to tell me how many days are left till the event I can't wait. At the beginning of the year we had a plan...and of course like all good plans it all went Pete Tong, we have worked like crazy to try and get back on track (excuse the pun), has it all worked and been worth it? we will find out at Dragstalgia 2016. You never know I may even get to try my new chute out!!! I do hope I get to see some of the action this time as there are will be some interesting and exciting cars this year..the Americans over again and of course our own Bob Hawkins in the Slingshot Shootout.

This very nearly didn't happen this year, as most of you know we have had nothing but problems with the car but thanks to a very successful Retro Show a couple of weeks back we think we might be on the right track now, as I have already said in a previous blog we found a lot wrong with the car and fixed a lot but we left the show knowing that there was still some work to do but we all had a wee smile on our faces. But!! those who were at the Retro Show will also know that I was hobbling around like an old man ( I mean a real old man) I thought I had pulled a muscle in my back but it turned out to be a lot worse than that I had slipped a disk I have spent the last couple of weeks resting, doing stretching exercises and having a tens machine constantly attached to my back 

I had to miss Scotties celebration last Friday even though I had polished up the old noisy Harley  and had her  fuelled up ready to go...

Riding wasn't the problem even with my back support on, it was stopping, every time I put my feet down I was in agony I just couldn't do it, so if you read this Gina I am sorry I did try. Two days ago I was telling Lorni that I would have to withdraw from the meeting as I couldn't see any way I could get in and out of the car, the pain was so bad but!  thankfully since then all the hard work is paying off  things are easing now and the pain has all but gone, which I am so glad about, as this year I have both my brothers crewing for me Dave and Andy, Lorni will be with us Saturday and Sunday, Steve of course and both my other sons might make an appearance on Sunday, and I have a couple of other friends who are coming to watch me make a fool of myself, so I would have let a lot of people down if I had withdrawn.

Now to the car, over the last three and bit years that I have owned her she has changed her appearance a wee bit on a couple of occasions......

The latest upgrade will probably be the last, as if we do get her running properly we will be getting close to our chassis tag or at least pushed her as much as the current chassis will handle what happens when we reach that point?? well who knows!

For the time being we are happy with what we have and we are all looking forward to this instalment of  Dragstalgia it should be a real blast with 45 cars in the Wild Bunch alone, I hope everyone has a great time and has a fast safe meeting and lets put on a great show, see you all at the track in a few days time....!

85. The Retro Show July 3rd

We had a bit of a disaster at the Nostalgia Nationals in that some of the changed we made had no impact on our performance or lack of it, but as of a lot of meetings this year we were hampered by the weather. As any drag racer knows the one thing we can never get enough of is.....Track Time. So we left that meeting scratching our heads, I said to Steve that it must be something stupid and simple that is hampering us something we have overlooked and is probably staring us in the face.

Thanks to Ray Andrews for this photo

I must point out before we go any further that we have received an enormous amount of help, support and advice from our fellow drag racing community and I can't thank everyone enough but what Steve did was to forget everything he has been told and he went back tot he books and installation instructions read through them all again as if a novice and starting all over again from scratch. At the same time we found out that the Wild Bunch had been invited to bring some cars for demo purposes to the Retro Show, it was never our intention to do any more meetings only Dragstalgia but we needed track time so I let Claire know of our interest and low and behold we got the invite, at the same time Steve rang me to let me know that he thought he has found our problems...brilliant! So Steve set off the night before and did some work on the car in the back of the truck in the lorry park.

So we get to the Pod service the car and set up camp, the sun is shining we are in a good mood, I then sat Steve down and asked him what he had found....

...first of all the barrel valve this controls idle and the point where the main jet takes over and has to be set right or..well nothing works right! because ours is on the other side of the hat from normal?? the valve is effectively the wrong way round so has to be adjusted backwards so to speak and the leak down tester we are using to set the valve is basically a compression tester so has to be read differently, So we put all this right went out for our first run and netted a low 10 at 127mph this speed is getting annoying as it seems to be the brick wall we can't get through. So a change of pill a large change done on purpose to see if it just the fuelling that is causing our problem so out for another run and again a low 10 at 127mph this time I took not of the rev counter we were still not getting anything over around  5 -5500 rpm we were missing 2000rpm. more head scratching. At this point I went and enlisted the help of Mike Oates driver and tuner of the Comp Eliminator slingshot Fiddle Head, lovely guy who will go out of his way to help other racers, he went through some basics with Steve and the thing they found out was we wee running too lean on the main pill, where we thought we too fat and was trying to lean it out we should have been richening her up..

So more work was done on the car and at this point after some more reading Steve found out that when we changed form the Mallory dizzie to the MDS dizzie there was a green loop wire that needed to be cut /disconnected as this could cause ignition problems, so having now put all this right we fired the car up....not a chance she wouldn't start so checked for a spark..none re-connected the green wire still nothing, more head scratching...then Steve noticed the HT lead had fallen of the coil pack..ok so this was a bit funny but also this would come back to haunt us later. so fired her up she sounded brutal all was good we warmed her up ready for next run all excited but...yep the weather changed and we had the most incredible downpour and thunder storm that I had seen in many years so that was it for the day as far as racing was concerned.

So Sunday arrived and so did summer at long last, we got the covers off the car and warmed her up we were scheduled for four runs today, but the really cool thing was we were towed down the old fire up road..bloody brilliant, now the track was very marginal in fact the pit side lane was slippery this was due to the number of street cars running treaded tyres we were told so the first run we were up against Terry Clifford and his Ratcatcher team we took the better lane for this run and then we swap for the next run, so burnout completed and...no gears well no reverse so was shut down and towed back but not before I watched Terry snake and drift his way up the track. What we thought had happened was the on board battery wasn't charged up enough to hold the trans brake solenoid in hence no reverse. so back in the pits, big charger connected to the on board battery, trickle charger put in the cupboard.

Next run again against Terry this time we got the slippery lane..so burnout, she actually felt like she was trying to pull and we got lots of smoke hmm good. Launch..yesterday we did two second gear launches today we hit it in first no trans brake just a foot brake launch and the wheels came up immediately and she rode the wheelie bar but I had to peddle three times ass we were all over the place I changed into top and then floored her again at around the 330 foot mark and she pulled like a train, took me by surprise to be honest but I did remember to have a quick look at the rev counter 6500rpm through the lights..that's a bit better. 

Terry's team came to the top of the track first and they were cheering and shouting but..it was for me apparently I had done an amazing driving job and still carded a 9 second run at over 144 mph, my team turned up big grins on their faces and a shout of " about f****** time" it has taken nearly two years to get the car to run faster than 140mph well done guys what a team, never give up never surrender!!!!!

We even had time to fit the new chute, so looking forward tot he next run again a strong burn out this time up against Andy Stones in his Kawasaki powered dragster,stopped after the burn out and found I had no neutral no reverse only second gear i tried to shake her loose but no go so I took the decision to driver her off the end of the track and get out of the way, what we found out was the problem had nothing to do with the battery we had a dodgy connection on the trans brake relay, so we sort of fixed that for the next run (bodged until we had time to do a decent fix) went out for our last run full of hope and expectation, again up against Andy, a stonking burn out from yours truly had to be pulled back as the dodgy relay fix hadn't worked too well, staged and I was going for it this time read the lights well left Andy for dead front wheels came straight up and then....she died, cut out lost power, I pulled over tot he side of the track just in case I was leaking anything at around the 330 foot mark I stopped and had to be rescued by the Pods quad, got back to the pits and found the HT leas on the coil had fallen off again (yeah that one again)

We had a great time at the Retro Show made some new friends had a laugh and some fun and most importantly we have now got the car doing what we want not what it wants, we have found our tuning window..we hope!!!! now looking forward to Dragstalgia to do it all over again.."bring it on"