148. Another year slips by.....!

Well, hello again, another year has flashed past so quickly, for those that thought we had packed up....wrong!!! we have just been taking our time. OK so the last time I posted anything we had the car in bits trying to find out why the engine, transmission to axle kept stepping out of line. After stripping the car we found the motor plate was buckled rather badly. That was as far as we got till recently. The trailer sat forlornly outside Steve's place and the chassis was left floundering in John O'Sullivan's workshop, The engine and transmission sat in Steve's house.

We all know the problems faced by most people at the moment, increasing bills of all sorts, so the dragster had to take a back seat for a while. There are more important things in life than drag racing, I know there are some that will argue with that LOL. Anyway, here we go again!!.

First of all, a new motor plate was manufactured by our good friend John O´Sullivan which after a small adjustment fitted perfectly.

So, the next problem was to check the chassis to make sure it was still straight and that there were no other problems. The chassis had been sitting in John's workshop for a while, so Steve and Al went to pick it up, it was bought back in Johns works van and was put in the race trailer. It very quickly became obvious there were a problem or two, after sitting for so long there were lines of rust where there shouldn't be any......

So, the decision was made to remove all the paint from the chassis and give it a careful inspection to see if there were any more cracks and yes more were found.

So Steve spent a few days with wire brushes going over every inch on the car and removing every millimetre of paint and found four cracked welds, which was probably caused by my wheelie at the Hot Rod Drags back in 2021 when the trans brake mal functioned. The plan was for John to come and sort out the welding, but as luck would have it one of Steves friends popped round to have Steve have a look at his car as it was making some funny noises, and Jim had just come from a job that required some welding and he still had his tig welder in the car, so while Steve fixed his car Jim welded up the cracks.

So a new motor  plate and the chassis sorted what's next....some strengthening gussets, paint and start to sort out all the other bits and pieces like the cut-off switch, panel fixing etc and then put the engine and transmission back where it belongs and get the car back on the track, maybe sometime this year with a bit of luck!

Good luck to everyone competing in this year's  Nostalgia Nationals.