75. Two months have gone past so quick..!!

I haven't put much in the way of updates on here recently and there is a very good reason for that which I will explain a little later. But first of all seeing that it was the Annual Prize giving bash for the Wild Bunch last night, and I do wish I could have made it as it looked like it was a real fun do, can I say I big congratulations to not just all the winners but to everyone in the Wild Bunch for making 2015 such a big success especially in its anniversary year. And a big thank you to Claire without whose hard work and dedication the Wild Bunch just wouldn't be the same

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.

74. And so it starts again......

Bloody typical I get diagnosed as a diabetic which means I am now entitled to the flu jab which I have an appointment for in a couple of weeks time, but what happens in the meantime..yep! I have got the flu grrr!!

Anyway this weekend Steve came over to Bedfordshire to help his mate out by changing a clutch on his Audi and on Sunday he went over to the truck and started work on the engine. And as usual he managed to get a lot done but! we do have a problem or two to overcome and it is not a case of just a straight swap from one injection system to another.

First problem is, the throttle linkage is on the wrong side of the bug catcher ie. it is on the left but of course the throttle cable etc runs down the right side of the car this I am told by Mike at Alkydigger is not a problem and can be reversed easily. The second problem will take a little longer to sort out...

... the bracket and linkage that are within the red circle fouls on the rocker boxes, this is because we have the tall rocker boxes on the car so this will have to be modified/moved to accommodate our equipment.

Another problem we have is the torque converter it has to spaced accurately and it looks like we might need longer bolts to achieve this and maybe even some more shims?? we will see.

Steve also had a bit of a problem when looking at the fuel pump shut off valve, we now have a different plumbing system and it looked like our shut off valve wont fit but another quick mail to Alkydigger and they sent us a picture of the valves they use and then we could see what the difference is.

Our previous set up on the left and the picture that we got sent on the right and as you can see the only difference is an adapter and a leak off pipe so hopefully that wont be too difficult to sort out. The front timing cover will need some material shaving off to fit properly again this was expected.....

All in all a lot of work was done but! a lot more to do to get it all sorted and up and running but we do have a long winter ahead of us to do all of that and one or two other little projects?????.

I was a bit sceptical about changing the stack system over to a tunnel ram not because of the intricacies of how it all works but aesthetically, I loved the look of the stacks I think they looked period correct but tuning simplicity aside this new look is growing on me and both my brothers both said the same thing, it looks like a dragster now!!! brumm brummm...

73. A long long season, Hot Rod Drags 2015 and bits..

We have had to sit out of the last meeting of the year due tot he damage we sustained to the engine over the season thanks to fuelling problems, spectating is not what it used to be. There was a time when I could spend four days in a row sat on the banking at the Pod watching racing but not now, driving has spoiled that completely. I spent a day at he Pod during the finals and again a day at Shaky at the Hot Rod Drags and while it was great to catch up with everyone...it's no fun.

Let me tell you the saga of the fuel injection parts I have been waiting for, with a lot of help from Mike at Alkydigger we sourced and paid for a new tunnel ram system which once the new pump had arrived at their depot Mike packed up and sent it all over to me on a 24 hour express postage run. Well the package arrived in the UK on the 5th, which if things had gone according to plan we would have had time to fit everything and get the car tot he HRD's but no it sat there day after day, I kept checking on the tracking system, it eventually came up with recipient informed of customs charges..not long now then....wrong! so the day before yesterday on the 16th I tracked down a phone number and managed to speak to a human who told me that they had sent letters out to me..two in fact and that they just waiting for the duty payment. I had a sudden thought and got them to check the address....the address on the system was 25 instead of 35 so that explains why I never received the letters.

So all sorted..no!!! the dam thing still didn't turn up yesterday as promised after I stayed in all day waiting no it turned up this morning..yaaaa!!!!! The strange thing is the address on the packing label was correct it was our own Parcel Force that had screwed up the house numbers..!!

So we have a new tunnel ram system complete, new front timing cover, fuel filter, fuel pump pills and some fuel pipe and fittings,and this time...........

...we got the lot flowed first.........so finger crossed she will fire up first time, now we have all the bits I can see one or two problems LOL first the "ears"  will have to come off the timing cover or they will foul our engine mounts,

and we now have to find a blanking plate of some description for where the thermostat housing used to go and we will need some "P" clips, a lot of this will be fitted this weekend but we have time to sort out the rest. We need a new TCI solenoid for the trans brake and then some new harness's and a pair of front runner tyres then we can get the car MSA legal again Oh will need a new chute as well. Something else I would love to get done is to have the roll cage lifted up a couple of inches, this is something else to look at over the winter period,

With a bit of luck and a following wind we might even get her running well enough to take a trip just up the road to the Pod on a RWYB before we put her away for the Winter!!!!!!

ROLL ON 2016 !!!

72. Still at it..!

Last weekend was a very busy weekend for the crew of Tight Fit, lot of "bits" that turned up had to be fitted if we were ever going to even think about making the Hot Rod Drags.....

First things first with the engine already stripped he bores needed re-honing this took a wee bit longer than expected due to a lip at the bottom of the bores but Steve managed to get it doen in the end and the result is..shiney as new bores.

Just as Steve was finishing off the honing tool decided to just disintegrate on him..good job he had finished. Steve had of course marked everything so that all went back in the same place they all came from so the next job was to fit the new sealed for life rings...

For the more savvy of you readers you will notice in the second picture that the rings are marked Cut Napier these are the top rings that are designed to cope with...."Nitro" yes drag racings special ingredient, well we have to future proof ourselves???

The thing is the rings have to be hand cut to size and fitted and then checked and adjusted as required and as you can imagine it takes some time but with the help of Dave Steve managed to do all of them.

All of this had taken a lot of time and we were now on day two so now it was time to start buttoning everything up, put the heads back on etc etc

And while Steve was adjusting everything up Dave got to work fitting the new flex plate and torque converter,

All in all a lot was accomplished but the fitting of the rings took a bit longer than expected so it was probably a bit optimistic for me to think we might make the Hot Rod Drags, this wont happen the new injection system hasn't even arrived yet? so it looks like we will be spectators instead, but it wasn't for the want for trying. so good luck to all racers we hope to be back up and running for next season stranger and faster than ever.

71. The race is on....again..again..!!!

Phew what a busy few weeks, I have never made so many phone calls in my life, it got to the point where I wasn't sure who I was asking what for anymore!!! I had to write everything down and kee a check on who I was talking to and why.

I will also admit I have spoken to some really helpful friendly people over the last week or two and without whose help we may have ended up right in the soft brown smelly stuff. It also never ceases to amaze me that anything or anyone that has anything to do with drag racing in whatever form move just as quick as the cars.

So where are we at the moment then, well Slimline Racing had?? stated that we were out for the rest of the season after assessing the engine damage as it would take some time to round up all the bits and pieces required and to get the crew together to do the job, as well as pleading with my wife Lorni, to let me spend some more money on the car and promising on my life that I will get the shower fixed and the hole in the bathroom ceiling!!!

First things first was to source a set of rings and the head gaskets so that if all else fails we can button the engine up for the winter so we got hold of the original engine builders and low and behold a phone call on last Monday will see the items in Steve's hands by Friday...this what I meant about things move fast in the drag racing world...

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To help with this I have had to find and buy a piston ring grinder a cam timing wheel and a DTI gauge.

Some of the parts arrived today

Anyway second call was to Alky digger in the States, we have discussed the need for a new injection set up for sometime so now looked like the perfect opportunity to sort out it all out, so I spent some time talking with Mike at Alky Digger and we have now bought the perfect system for our engine..

With a bit of luck this gear wont take too long to get here, I did point out to Mike the difference between the air here in the UK and what they are used to in the States so fingers crossed the injection system will be set-up ready to run when it gets here I have asked for them to stick the lot on their flow bench before they send it which I hope will help us tune the system quick.

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Next we needed a new starter motor and flex plate along with a dizzie cap and rotor arm and probably trigger unit so a call to Dave at  performance Unlimited sourced all those bits....

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..after a bit of a chat with Dave I decided not to get a new cap and rotor arm for the Mallory dizzue and instead I have bought a new MSD dizzie and a set of HT leads, I confirmed the order and paid for it yesterday and the items arrived today..now that's what I call service.

The other problem we have had is with the Torque converter it was ok for the last engine but not for this one so...on the advice of our friend Sam Freeman I gave BTE a call last night..this time difference crap can really be a pain LOL

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I spent a few minutes giving Bryan all the information that I could and within a minute he had the solution for us, there is no substitute for experience, so we now have a new converter on the way from the States.

So! if all the bits turn up in time and Steve can get the time off and put this big jigsaw back together again in the next couple of weeks, remember he has to fit the new sealed for life rings which can take some doing, then we might and I do say might make it to the Hot Rod Drags after all with the car, and as per the season up to now we will only be testing, and if we don't get it done in time then we will be there but only as spectators, what ever happens we are hoping to get the car up the track at least once before we lay everything up till next season.

Dam I have just remembered something..where do I get a sump heater from??????

70. The day I have been dreading..!!

On Sunday just gone I spent the day with my wife on the Isle of Sheppey at one of my wife's friends birthday bash, I did this in the vain hope that I could forget the fact that at the same time Steve and Dave would be taking the dragsters engine apart to see how much damage there really is.

So where to start? well I got reports through the day from Bedford, the first from Steve was to tell me that he had sent Dave to go buy some milk so they could have a cuppa, the engine was slowly stripped......

The valve train, rockers, lifters etc were checked and found to be ok, unfortunately so were the head gaskets, so there goes my hope of an easy cheap fix!!!!.

Then it was time to remove the heads, this is where we found stuck rings Steve rang me to tell me that when he looked down the bores it looked like the pistons were all over to one side..hence stuck rings well that explains why we were burning oil but! at the same time there is evidence of bore wash so it looks like we had both extremes happening at the same time, running far too rich at lower revs and far too lean at the top end..

So a new set of rings required and a new set of head gaskets and a light hone is on the books, but we also need a new flex plate as it appears that our old one has ended up like me and lost a couple of teeth and the rest have been worn down..

Tomorrow I have to phone Alky Digger in the states and sort out our new tunnel ram injection system and BTE and try and get a replacement torque converter...bloody hell does it ever end???

Oh and when the flex plate and torque converter had been taken of we  found this damage on the rear engine plate...

So was this caused by the missing teeth from the flex plate or parts of the starter motor when it expired or.....was it from the 8mm spanner we found that had been rattling around down there for a wee while..that would explain the strange noise I could hear on the last couple of runs LOL....

To Be Continued......................honest!

69. Work to be done..!!!

OK so I when I started this little venture I had visions of fun days out with the family , meeting lots of great people and maybe even winning the odd race! I had no idea it was going to frustrate the hell out of me, cost me a dam fortune and make me want to give up the will to live. This is the second time in 18 months when I have had to sit down with the wife and seriously consider giving up on the whole thing.

But first we had to assess the damage / situation, to do this we once again needed a leak down tester as we had cannibalised ours a little, so a big thank you goes to Sam Freeman for the loan of his tester and three hours of engine tuning tips to my son and crew chief Steve. It was three hours because I got stuck in London on my motorbike on the way to Sam's place because of a dam peddle bike race which shut off so many roads I ended up going round in bloody circles for hours on end thank you TFL for all the diversion road signs....not!!!

So in the end instead of meeting up with the crew at Sam's I went straight to the truck just outside Bedford, first things first, move truck out a little, let the tailgate down and get the genny out and running and plug compressor in, remove spark plugs and rocker boxes......

I must point out at this stage we are doing a leak down test on a cold engine, it should be a warm engine giving the rings etc time to expand and seal properly so if the results were okish then the chances are the rings are OK too, the results we got were quite low which was a good sign till we realised we reading the gauge the wrong way which meant the results were actually rather bad, under advisement we squirted some oil into each pot and started the test again..the oil sealing the rings and the results shot up sooo!!!..it looks like we will need another set of of total seal rings... 

...the problem is there are two reasons why this could have happened..1. bore wash..this where the engine has been running too fat (rich) for too long and the oil has been cleaned out of the bores completely by the fuel..methanol therefore no lubricant in the bores so the the rings wear out quick, or 2. Running too lean for too long and having the rings "shocked" which would also wear them out, the problem is we don't which our engine succumbed too!!

And of course we will have to check the bores and hopefully we will get away with a quick hone?? So that is the first problem dealt with.Next is the injection system, it is old but we don't' know how old ?we have had a lot of trouble setting it up and huge amount of problems with the barrel valve which looks like it is starting to corrode, as most of you know we have had nothing but trouble with getting the fuelling right and maybe we it is time to change the injection system..well not maybe we will have to change the injection system.....

It looks like we will have to put a tunnel ram system on our car something very similar to what Mark Coulsell runs on his slingshot. Next problem is our Torque converter our 60 foot times show it is not man enough for the job it was ok on the last engine but that was around half the horsepower our 60foot times have slowed up considerably, so I have now got to get in touch with BTE or similar and get one made to fit out engine.

 Oh!  and did I mention we need a new flex plate as ours now has a few teeth missing and probably a new mini high torque starter.

So we have an awful lot of hard work in front of us if we decide to continue and a lot of money needs to be spent,,as I was told a day ago I have probably spent enough money that would have bought me a complete brand new rear engine 4 link super pro car?? oh well. And while we were tinkering with the engine on Sunday we found another problem.....

This would not have helped with the running of the engine either and once all this work is done we still have the worry that the final drive ratios are correct or not? we will worry about that once all the other work has been done.

So are we going to do this work and get the car back out on the track ?

..of course we are, I was hoping to get everything done for the Hot Rod Drags in September but it does seem that we have more to do than I previously thought so that might not happen now, in fact it may be next year before the car sees the track again but when it does!!!! maybe it will fly like we hoped she would!!!

68. July shoot our/ Fancy dress party

When I say we have been having a tough year I wasn't joking! and the bad luck followed us to Shakespeare County Raceway this weekend as well. I set off from home at around 12:30 on the Friday I went straight to Luton to pick Dave up then up to Bedford to pick the truck up then head for Shaky, a trip that can be done in under four hours but not on Friday, 6 and half hours later we turned into the airfield gates I was shattered before I had even got there, we got the car out and set up camp as fast as we could. While getting from the  cab of the truck tot he back I stepped on one of the big plastic storage boxes that we keep our plates and stuff in..it collapsed I slipped and kicked the car..not on purpose, I caught he drop arm on the steering I was wearing sandals!!! I heard the crunch first..ouch. I had broken my toes what a start tot he weekend?

 

We were a little disappointing to find the catering bars were not even open when there were so many people there so it was a good job we had bought some food with us so out with BBQ and after a couple of burgers we felt good..

Steve turned up early the next morning and went straight to work, serviced the car, fuel pump on wait for 9am and fire her up, we were really looking forward tot his weekend and seeing what the car could really do!!!! first run out of the block and we only ran a !).2 at 126 mph she was going really flat after half track. so Steve took some timing out and changed the pills, the next run was very strange after the burnout I staged the lights ran I hit the throttle and....nothing!!! the engine was still running but wasn't revving and the car didn't move??? so I hit the throttle again..same thing..I was about tot make the decision to shut down and get pushed away form the start when the car just took off ..when we got back we found a wire had come off the trans brake switch and was shorting against the steering wheel adn therefore activating the brake..no wonder the gearbox smelt a bit hot. Two more runs that day netted us a10.1 and a 9.9 still not brilliant but at least we were going the right way.

There were rumours of some serious weather hitting overnight so we covered the car up, we didn't want anymore problems to deal with.

This meeting was our (The Wild Bunch) party meeting and of course it had to be fancy dress, now we, that is our team didn't dress up as first of we really had only made the decision to go at the last minute and we had all been so busy we just didn't have the time to sort out anything. But it didn't stop a lot of the other members....

 

A good time was had by all and yes the weather did turn bad for a wee while in the night as we woke up to a damp and soggy Shaky, but luckily it didn't last too long and we were ready to go not long after ten.

We ran twice more and each time we got a little quicker we got down to 9.7 in the end but at a cost, we managed to fry our starter motor which Steve changed for the spare in record time, we have stripped a tooth or two from the flex plate and the car was still flat at around 800-900 feet hence we never got much over 130mph and now we were seeing little puffs of smoke coming from one bank of the engine which usually is an indicator that something is wrong,

 Steve was convinced we had cracked a head but this wasn't the case after a chat with the ever helpful Mr. 6 Bob Hawkins we have concluded that the car has been running far too rich for far to long and we have suffered from what is known as "Bore Wash" too much fuel taking away the oil has damaged the rings letting more oil come up from the sump ..the cure??? new set of rings and hone the bores not a difficult job or too expensive thank god but it will be time consuming because of the distance we all live from each other..So at that point I called it for the team not just for the meet but for the rest of the season.

 

We were a little down as you can imagine, we were just getting the car to perform from the lights, the 60 foot times were starting to come down, but not as fast as the last engine so Steve is going to do some homework on torque convertors, we have no idea what one is in our car, and we were hitting the rev limiter at around 800feet which explains why we were so slow through the traps so maybe a new set of gears for the axle???? lots to do and think about.

The drive home was not a happy one..we did had Tom follow us for the first part of the journey and then

Keith for the last part of the trip into Bedford, not a lot was aid on that trip till after we had dropped the truck off and I was heading back to Luton to drop Dave off, when I got a call from Steve.."Dad just order the rings and I will fit them and sort it all out lets get the car ready for the Hot Rod Drags"...That's better!! Steve reckons he can get the fueling sorted and then we can worry about the torque convertor and axle ratios...right so back to the internet then, and fingers crossed we may make it out again this year........

Once again a big thanks to everyone that helped us out over the weekend and well done to everyone for putting on such a good show and again look at all those PB's and what can we say about the ever happy Claire,,wouldn't be the Wild Bunch without her????