109. All Torque Day

Today was a special day, not just as this would be the first time we had run the car for nearly 10 months but it was also my 60th birthday which didn't go unnoticed thanks to the crew and my wife.

We go to the track nice and early did a quick bit of fettling and warmed the car up everything seemed ok, we waited for some cars to get  up the track then we towed down for our first go at the new concrete track.

First thing I noticed was I couldn't get the tyres to spin up properly the car nearly died when I shifted into second but I had a go at the track anyway but she bogged off the line and when she did pick up she slid I did this a couple of times then just let her idle through. back in the pits Steve thought she was over fuelling so changed the pill size we armed her up and tried again.

Fired her up and made my way to the start went for the burn out but again it wasn't quite right I then couldn't get reverse I tried a couple of times then noticed and smelt smoke coming up from the cockpit so I shut her down and got pushed back behind the start line where we found one of the trans-brake wires had shorted out, we fixed this in place and Steve also took a smidge of timing out this however gave me another problem after the next burnout the revs shot up on tick-over to nearly 3000 rpm I could hardly hold her on the brake I took the lights and she nosed over stuttered and again I just let her idle through the top end. Back in the pits we realised we had gone the wrong with the pill sizes and had in fact put more fuel in instead of taking it out so a quick re-calculation another warm up and we were ready for another run this time we ran side by side with the Brown boys slingshot, the car sounded a lot better even managed to get some smoke form the burn out...

Still not right but a lot better, so back in the pits a quick turn round then we went for another warm up we were going to try and get another run in before the rain hit but we couldn't start the car a quick look around found a terminal had broken on the micro switch that acted as the inhibitor switch for the gear linkage, this was fixed in double quick time thanks to the super crew working flat out and we went down for our last run.

Again not perfect I peddled a couple of times when the crew came to pick me up Steve mentioned that he had not adjust the barrel valve so we can't complain we had got the car down the track four times and we took her  home in one piece. Back in the pits Steve found the fuel we had been using had been contaminated which may have accounted for some of our problems, we had a good day and we all went home happy...now that's a first, next stop the Nostalgia Nationals.

108. A surprising update!

I really didn't expect this, so after the complete and utter disappointment of Easter comes a ray of sunshine. Santa Pod have re-arranged some meetings due tot he ongoing problems caused by the weather which has allowed some of us to run on the 15th April...my birthday, free if we didn't get on the track at Easter.

I had to phone number 1 Son and crew chief first and see if he could clear it with his family, which he could then ring crew member and Brother and then ask my wonderful wife if she fancies coming along, they all say Yes!!!!

There are three things we want to achieve on this "All Torque" day 

1. Get the car down the track nice and easy check everything is working as it should.

2. Perform at least two launches ( full run if possible) one with Trans brake  one with Hand brake launch and see what the difference is?

3. Bring car home in one piece.

If we manage to achieve all three then I will g  home a happy 60 year old (did I just say that out loud?)

I also noticed that on the Santa Pod web site under the photo entry list the photo of my car is amazing, both wheels up, so I tracked down the photographer David Beitler and asked for permission to use them, not only did he agree he mailed me the high res versions, so thank you very much David.

Love the bottom photo I don't have many photo's if any of the car with both wheels up like that and  you can see all the fuel running out underneath out of the breather before we put the catch can on.

Right back on my head for today will update this blog after the weekend in the meantime I will be praying to the weather Gods.....again!!!

107. Festival of Power? should read Festival of Power of Mother Nature!!!

After a very long lay off we were ready to race again, the team had done a huge amount of work on the car and trailer to get everything ready for Easter, bear in mind we did keep an eye on the weather and we knew it wasn't going to be great but we had hoped we could get down the track a couple of times.

So very early Thursday morning I made my way to Bedford to "The Petrol; Station" where Dave and Steve would meet up with me a quick toilet break and cuppa then off we went to collect the trailer, The guys at the park told us they would open up at 7:30 am for us they were true to their word in fact they had the gates open even earlier. We hitched up the trailer and made our way the 7 miles up the road to the "Pod", We collected our tickets from the office and set up camp for the weekend.

I don't think any of us would have expected the weather to be so atrocious for three days, but it was it rained and rained and rained!!!!!

We did however get our car, along with a few others!! up to the scrutineering bay for the compulsory safety checks. Trust me this was the furthest our car went all weekend and probably the fastest too.

The car was scrutinised but they wouldn't give us our ticket till Mark Norton the tech guy stuck the chassis tag he had for our car on one of the chassis bars, for that we had to wait for the next day where mark duly cam down to see us and applied the stickers we had waited for two years to see on our car.

And that's all that happened Friday because of the weather, so we spent most of the day...again sitting in the trailer waiting for God to turn the sprinklers off. Although we do have some home comforts in the trailer.

Saturday night was not only very wet but very very cold as well, Dave and Steve went back to Luton I stayed with the trailer, turned out to be a bad decision, I thought we were going to lose our awning at one point, it was already battered and broken before we put it up, So we used some straps out of the trailer to give it some extra security we even strapped it down to the dragster Chassis.

Sunday dawned and instead of hearing the sweet sounds of birds chirping we got the even better noise from 6am of the  track crew prepping the track. Things were looking up, Racing did commence but we had two accidents during the racing and after the second one the decision was made to not let any cars making any real power on the rack, so that was us done 4 days of sitting around and hoping then...pack it all up.

We did achieve a couple of things we managed to get the chassis tag, we got through scutineering and we ran the motor up a few times which is a dam site more than some teams managed to accomplish over this rain and accident hit weekend, Oh well on to the next one then.