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????

67. Dragstalgia 2015

It's been a quite a year for Slimline Racing we have attended a couple of meetings and one RWYB and we were still having trouble setting the engine up, at the Nostalgia Drags we found the fuel pump was completely toast and had probably been playing up doe some time. We had dared hoped that fitting a new pump would solve all our problems, but no! this is drag racing after all and if it was that easy everyone would be doing it.....

The story of Slimline Racing's Dragstalgia 2015

I set off at my usual time when racing which is far too early for any me but I try to get across the Dartford Crossing before they start charging at 6am, I got to the truck in Bedford a couple of hours later transferred all the stuff across to the truck that I needed, then it was off up the road to the Pod.

Dragstalgia for me is the biggest event of the year, even if I was competing in MSA events it would still be the biggest event of the year for me. After finding my pit spot I set up camp as best I could on my own, couldn't get the car out as that takes at least two people maybe three sometimes....

At least I had managed to set out our boundaries, there were so many cars entered space was at a premium, I set up between our good friends the Stones's and one of our European visitors Christian Frei and team  and then waited for the rest of the crew to turn up.

We got the car out and Steve set about fitting the new fuel pump and getting all the fuel lines cleaned through and dry, and then cleaning the tank out as it been back for some welding, fill the car up with fuel and fire her up...no no no..she wouldn't? much head scratching later and Dave realised the direction of rotations was back to front so...change the face plate round and try again...she lit up straight away. A few minutes fettling with pills and springs and then tow down for a run,into the water, hit the throttle sit back and wait for the violence that comes with a methanol burning V8 on full chat....but!! nothing she just conked out on the line, re-fired and tried again but no..so we towed her back to the pits feeling a little down and bewildered.

In the meantime Lorni had set off for the Pod but she encountered two accidents on the way so she took tot he A roads and 6 and half hours later arrived hot and bothered and not in the best of moods along with a cracked windscreen, to say she wasn't happy is an understatement.

We had a bit of a fiddle but not different..time for a change and go for a drink and chill for a bit. Saturday came round far too fast, Steve decided that we were simply running out of fuel at the top end of the rev range so we put the larger nozzles in and changed the pills yet again for more fuel...fatten her up.

This time we managed to get her off the line and up the track but very slowly only 17 seconds.back to the pits and more head scratching....

Steve checked the back lash all the fuel lines timing etc etc..everything was perfect apart from...as soon as the revs hit around 6000 she died, fuel starvation..electrical we were stumped?? we had a lot of help and advice as usual from all the Wild Bunchers for which we are always very grateful. I think at this point even Steve had given up the will to live.

What Steve did find was a leaky barrel valve and he thought that maybe the leak was enough to drop the pressure and close the poppet valve shutting the fuel down so..off came the stacks and the all the fuel lines and then the barrel valve, many thanks to Sam Freeman's team for the seal and all their help and advice during the weekend.

While fitting the seal Steve realised there was something else amiss what he found..well didn't whether to laugh or dam well cry

What had happened was the valve operating arm had slipped round and the valve was now opening and closing at the wrong point. Steve rectified all the problems but to set up the barrel valve correctly we need a leak down tester, we keep borrowing Bob Hawkins gear but he was having problems of his own th is weekend and we had already borrowed it once, so we had a word with Darryl and used his but Steve was still not sure if what he was doing was right or not or if he was reading the gauges correctly,So he sat down with his phone and a wee while later had it all set up without having to use a leak down tester at all!!!!

So Sunday morning's job was put all the original pills and nozzles back as we now had a car running so rich we could empty a swimming pool in 30 seconds, this was done just in time for the first call, we fired her up first and yeeeaaa we had full revs again but the engine wasn't running right yet, we didn't have the time to get down to final set up so we towed down anyway knowing that we wont be making a decent run but! we should at least get off the line????

We were up against Mark Couslell who always runs hard so I knew we weren't going to be gving him much of a race but I willt ry..so into the water and burnout..yaaa we got a little smoke this time and she kept running albeit very rich apparently the car soaked Lorni in methanol who was standing behind trying to video the run....

So I let Mark go (OK I was so busy watching him I forgot to watch the lights) I hit the throttle and she pulled..covered me in fuel but she pulled I short shifted. not wanting to do any damage and just let her go through the lights at around 120mph in 11 seconds..not brilliant but a 5 second improvement on the day before, so must be going in the right direction.

 So back to the pits and more fettling Steve spent a few hours..we had this time due to the weather, it had decided to rain rather heavily for an hour. I jumped back in the car on jacks and after a lot of tweaking and swearing as Steve managed to snap a throttle turn buckle. I would like to thank Wayne Colliver and team..

 for helping us out with that problem.. so back in the car again and this time it sounded absolutely bloody awesome..evil even we had full revs the fuelling looked to be dead on......

...we were so looking forward tot he next run but! we then noticed that some of the teams weren't just packing but were leaving, while we had been very busy we had't heard a tannoy message informing everyone that the powers to be had called the meeting to a close because of the weather..god I was angry and I have to admit so were a few other racers it was early and I am dam sure if it was an MSA event or FIA event they would have cleared and dried the track but there you go what can we do...this years Dragstalgia didn't turn out to be the successful event for us that we wanted it to be but at least we sorted out a lot of issues so now it is down to tuning only..I hope. So we packed up and went home ready at lest for the next run at Shaky the following weekend....bring it on!!!!

Congratulations to all the racers that managed yet again a hat-full of personal bests and Andy Stones..well just you wait pal I will get you next time LOL..well done mate that was an awesome run. And to anyone whose photo's I have used thank you very much..Ingrid Chesworth, and my son Phill who turned up with his new better half..it was about time I met her..next time I hope we will have more time to chat.

66. Nostalgia Nationals 2015

God where do I start with this one, we had high hopes for this weekend, we had all the new bits from Hilborn complete with a base tune up for us to try, Both Steve and I really wanted to wear some rubber down but like all good plans sometimes things just don't go the way you would like them to...

Life started to go astray even before we set off for Shaky, on the Thursday Dave, my brother and crew member got home form work to find some low life gutter tramps had stolen his motorbike, Now Dave would be the first to tell you it wasn't no multi thousand pound super bike but, it was his pride and joy....

..much work had been done to this machine ready for a long trip to Barcelona in Spain a week today...but this is how it was found on Friday..

..both Dave and I would love to get our hands on the little scrotes that did this, our trip is now in jeopardy so you can imagine the frame of mind we had setting off  to the Nationals..

Anyway the sun was shining, we picked the truck and car up early  in the morning and off we went, we got to Shaky before lunchtime and we were surprised to see so many people already there. Dave and I got the car out and set up camp awaiting the arrival of number 1 son and crew chief Steve who was brining Al with him to help us sort out our data logger.

Much hard work was completed in the afternoon sun, data logger now worked thanks Al, the new parts were installed but we found the leak down tester I had bought wasn't good enough and our compressor was struggling to hold 100psi so once again I would like to thank our own resident Mr 6 Bob Hawkins for all his help and loan of equipment and tools and tons of good advice.

Because of the noise curfews we couldn't start out engine up till Saturday morning, on this note I would like to say something, Friday was gorgeous it is a shame weren't allowed to run only cars with treaded tyres and silencers were allowed but! some of these cars are far noisier than some of our (Wild Bunch) cars I think this needs to be looked at again, and maybe the use of a decibel metre to determine who can and who can't run????

I have to say there was a great turnout of Wild Bunch cars this weekend and once again many PB's set and of course..that record!!!!!!!! it's a shame we still seem to be treated like we are in the way at times....maybe this will change when we start putting up some more good numbers?

Steven East managed to get the wheels up on Ellie

We do have some really fine pieces of machinery in the Wild Bunch

So Saturday arrived and so did the rain, it was a gloomy start to proceedings that never really went away. We got ready to tow down three times and three times we were sent back due to rain, we did half expect it though so we retired back to camp and waited for the better weather to arrive on Sunday.

We did of course nip over the bar for a quick drink then toodle over to the marquee to watch the Straight Aces who were brilliant, I wont mention the late arriving band from the night before!! but I did notice when we were leaving that their broken down van had been moved to the entrance of the airfield.

So Sunday arrived and so did the weather at last, we were up early checked everything over...again!! towed down to the start with our new temporary crew member Mr John O'Sullivan, we started up turned the data logger on..yes it did work now, Steve turned the go pro on and I pulled round to the start line...hit the throttle for the burnout and.....engine stopped...oops we restarted and it happened again and again so I just took the light and ambled down the strip trying to keep the engine running while it farted and smoked and rattled. hmmm a problem then!!

Steve thought he had maybe put a too weak spring in the high speed lean off poppet valve causing the the engine to lean out too quick so this was replaced toot sweet we then went to start her up but there was another problem, starter didn't seem to be working  we took the side panel off to discover the starter was in two halves, the front mounting panel and starter dog were still on the engine but the rest of the starter body was sitting on the floor..the threads had stripped. So a quick run round the pits saw us with another motor body and mounting plate courtesy of Mark Coulsell and then a loan of a heli-coil set from Steve Cassisi, in record breaking time and just in time for the second run Steve managed to get all this back together and..she turned over yaaaa!!! hmm too early for cheering she just wouldn't fire up, so after much tinkering and testing we found the fuel pump had packed up so that's it for us for the weekend one grotty run and that was it.

But we did get to witness something special yea I left his near the end of this blog for a reason, Myself and Dave started off watching drag racing as kids waiting to see that first 6 second run by Priddle and when it happened it was something special, and again this weekend we waited to see something special, we wandered down to the start line to watch the incredible run by Bob Hawkins and his team and I reckon Dave and I cheered louder than the rest of the spectators put together because it felt like it did in 1973? and isn't that what the Wild Bunch is all about? bringing back that atmosphere of the early days of drag racing where something special was always about to happen..

Congratulations to Bob and the team you did it mate......we went home disappointed with the performance of our car yet elated to have seen some incredible performances again this weekend well done to the whole of the Wild Bunch.

Oh just a quick foot note to complete our weekend of of utter frustration when Dave and I got back to Bedford and started unloading our gear we found that one of the large powder fire extinguisher had gone off covering everything, it took hours to clean up and we haven't finished yet..oh well roll on Dragstalgia.

oh and one other small thing, I was interviewed by our friends from Zeon TV but I was introduced as Shirley Muldowney's love child by John O'Sullivan..if this ever appears in the final DVD I will retire to the outer Hebrides...thanks John.

65. The race is on for the Nostalgia Nationals

After the Yanks weekend we know w have some work still do with the car, the fuel system is giving us dome serious grief and we have to sort out to enable us to run properly and perform tot he standard that we know the car is now capable of and to protect an expensive engine. The problem is we are fast running out of time...how many times have I heard that sentence in the last 18 months...

The Nostalgia Nationals will be upon us over the weekend of the 19th -21st June that is just over two weeks so there is a case that we may miss it unless the parts we need turn up before that, we don't know what pats we need yet as we have still yet to talk to Don at Hilborn he is a busy guy and the time difference doesn't help..

We really need to sort this fuel system out, it worked fine on the old engine but not on this one we have had so much advice and good advice at that but...this system refuse to work properly so the race is on now to get it sorted before the next meeting even if the bits turn up the day before I will take them to Shaky with me and fit them there.

Talking of bits??? Steve has just bought a sheet of ally, this is to make the new bigger fuel tank so that is under way, our data logging equipment isn't working which we need sorting out, now it isn't the sort of stuff they use on the big cars but any info will help us tune the car better. And... we managed to break the rev counter / rev limit shift light setting gear so......  

...a new one of these is on the way this time in red to suit the car..hope I will be able to see it ok, the new tank when completed and when we get time will be painted in red and black not green and the injector stacks will be going back to have the same treatment as we are going to stick tot he red and black colour scheme for now as everyone seems to like it.

SO with a bit of luck and a following wind we might just make it to the Nostalgia Nationals and if we do the team will continue their quest to get the car down in the 7's...9's will do to start with LOL...please!!!

A small update will follow once we have managed to h ave a chat with Don and the good people at Hilborn injection.