Slimline Racing had a mix bag of a year in 2016 we sustained engine damage at the end of 2015 so at the beginning of this year we had to put it right which meant Steve taking the motor to little bitty pieces and learning to hand hone the bores luckily we have some decent head gaskets which can be reused so the team only had to purchase a new set of rings. We headed for our first MSA event where I was hoping to licence, we only fired the car up the night before in the back of the trailer the first proper fire up happened at the track, now that's you can call cutting it fine...
We then found other things wrong like the fuel tank breather wasn't large enough,,the tank was expanding, we couldn't get the revs we needed to run properly etc etc so never finished my licensing ever though we ran 9.2 equalling our best ever run to date. At a later date we found a problem with the ignition system which gave us our rev range back so we attended the Retro Show just to prove to ourselves that we had "fixed her" which proved to be the case so next came Dragstalgia the one we were waiting for the team had worked hard to get the car ready and what a meeting we broke our personal bests 8 times I believe, at the next meeting we found we had more problems torched head broken valves two pistons the wrong way round no compression on one of the cylinders on the other bank wrong plugs and on top of this we found out the timing mark on the front cover was 10 degrees out and we ran all those PB's at Dragstalgia with this damage so that was the end of our short season which can be seen on this video I put together...
So once again Steve had to take the motor out and strip it his shed this time the team had to fork out for new rings again and a set of bearings and gaskets and the block had to be professionally re-honed thankfully again not costing too much, we desperately tried to get everything back together again in time for the last RWYB of the year but we missed it by one weekend, but at least we had her running again and boy did she sound better....Thanks to Steve Field for letting us use his property in the middle of no-where to fire her up.
Now we had some decision to make as a team owning and running the truck was getting too expensive even though she has been a home and a garage for us for nearly three years now so after a talk with the team it was decided it's time to let her go and go get a trailer instead which would be far less restrictive..
So a deal was done with another racer and we purchased a second hand trailer which will make getting the car in and out a lot easier and of course there is no restriction on Low Emission Zones for a trailer and of course no tax , Mot or Insurance, the next thing is for me to get rid of my Berlingo and buy a van with a tow bar again to reduce the running expense eventually the van will be bought from me by the team.
After this was done Steve took the axle out of the car and sent it down to Zane Llewellyn to change the ratios for us so can hopefully get more speed out of her.
So what's left to do before the new season starts well the axle got to be put back in then we need to clean out the truck and put her up for sale swap the race car from the truck to the trailer, I would like to clean the race car up a wee bit as well, some paint on the chassis wont go amiss. Once we have a tow vehicle we need to get her to the track to put some heat cycles through the engine then complete a few low rev runs to run everything in properly, could really do with a cooler for the trans brake and a catch tank for the fuel but we can live without them for the time being.
Then hopefully with the engine running right and the new ratios in the axle it would be really good to hit the 7's and top 170mph, well we can all dream can't we...roll on the new season.
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