The team have been looking forward to this day for a long time we last raced July last year it's been a long 10 months. Dave and I picked up the trailer Friday afternoon and made our way to Shaky, The first problem we encountered was,once the trailer is hitched it is dragging the back of the truck down so I will have to go and look for some sort of spring assist system for it.We got to the track around 3.pm and set up camp.
This is the first time we had tried to use the pop up gazebo and it wasn't that difficult to get up and tight or should I say wind proof...ish. Then it was time for a quick bite to eat and over to Kenny's for a wee drink.
Up early in the morning waiting for number one son and crew chief to turn up, now what most of you wont know is that Steve had been off work as he had torn his calf muscle, in fact two days previously we weren't sure if we were gong to make this meeting at all, without Steve I wont risk running. Steve had his friend Justin with him to help him drive the car over.
So a quick bit of fettling went on, fuel and oil went in and we fired her up and she sounded awesome as ever, once warm we took her off the stands and pulled her out for our first hit at the track. Now there has been some talk about the safety of the track following an accident there at the last meeting, I have to say there have been times where I would definitely say the track has been marginal for our car, not all cars but for some reason ours does seem to be affected quite a lot by the bumps and traction or lack of it at times, but you tune and drive the car accordingly which is why you qualify first, to dial in to the track so having said that, it had rained overnight and it was still a little cold on the first run so we took things a little easy....and what did we find? the track was bloody awesome the guys have been working on it for four days we hear, and what a job they have done,if the track is in that condition all year we will be having a blast.
We have a new start procedure now so what we do is get the slicks into the water box give the car a quick blip to spin the tyres up in t he water to clean them move forward and then hit it in first change to second, the result is better burnouts and cleaner slicks. As I said the track was brilliant, we used the trans brake the result? the fastest 60 foot to date and the quickest run we have ever recorded at Shaky, I am now wishing we had leant on it on that run as it was to be our only run of the weekend.
Now I said the track was brilliant but! the shutdown area is bumpy and can rattle your fillings out, but on this run something happened that was a first, the car bounced, and when I say bounced I mean all four wheel left the track on the second bounce and yes I was a little worried when she came down and bounced again I did think she was going over at one point. quite scary.
The dragster came down so hard it ripped the diaper that hangs just under the sump luckily a check of the sump found no damage, we were lucky , then a strange thing happened on the tow back, Dave was sitting in the dragster when I noticed and aircraft approaching I did think at one point that it was either trying to race us or was going to land on top of us..
..thankfully it did veer off and land in the field next to us.
Back in the pits Steve said he wasn't happy with the way the car sounded so he took all the nozzles out and checked them and cleaned them, we found a couple that were half way blocked , one by an insect, he also wanted more power seeing that the track was so good so we put more fuel in her, little did we know that the damage had already been done. So another warm up that I didn't see or hear as went to watch a few of the cars run, Steve reckoned the car sounded so much better far crisper and on top of this he wound the rev limit up a little bit on the trans brake, We were up against Bob in Time Traveller 2, gee thanks! I pulled what must have been the longest burnout I had ever done I really wish someone had got that on video but no, when I stopped the revs came up I thought that maybe when Steve had changed the pill he hadn't re-set the tickover I put her in reverse and she shot back at 30mph I had the brake on as hard as I could I went to the line but couldn't hold her so I shut down, We got pushed back Steve checked everything over and we fired her up again quick burnout and up to the line, trans brake set and off..but she bogged and then wouldn't pick up I took my foot off the throttle but she kept going at a rate of knots so I shut her off and let her roll off the track. I waited for Steve and Dave to pick me up, Steve got out of the car and said, "Game over" We have torched the head again or something similar, That's why the revs went up it was leaning out!!!.
So back in the pits and Steve starts to take the engine down first thing he finds is the inlet manifold gasket has blown through, looks like we were sent the wrong size, well that will let air get drawn in and lean that cylinder out along with the earlier found blocked nozzles.
Low and behold there! it is a hole in the head in the same place as last time so after a complete rebuild over the Winter it looks like we will have to do it again, could have been a lot worse I suppose but that was it for us for the weekend and probably wont be out again till Dragstalgia which is a great shame after all the hard work that had already been done on the car. It kind of knocks the enthusiasm out of you, so once again we have a car with half an engine in it, a trailer that wont sit level what more could go wrong..... Oh yea! the trailer brakes packed up altogether so I had to tow the 4 ton beast all the way back to Bedford with just the trucks brakes....wasn't easy.
So we will get the head's welded up, skimmed if needed, order the correct gaskets and find another engine diaper and we will try again, Steve thinks we should go up a size on the four middle nozzles to help cool off the problem with the exhaust valves being so close to each other on the middle cylinders.
Fuzzy video of the damage and Steve taking the motor apart
I just hope that I can afford to get the parts in time for Dragstalgia and that Steve can find the time to get all back together again, We will give it our best shot.
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