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.

64. Yanks Weekend at Shaky

I approached this weekend with very high expectations of performance and power and I guess in hindsight that I really set the bar way too high, I really wanted to come away from this meeting having run a very low 8 as a prelude to getting the car into the 7's by the end of the year, but things never go the way you plan them in drag racing.

Anyway Dave and I left for Shaky on the Friday early afternoon we went cross country to try and miss the Bank Holiday traffic we arrived at Shaky early evening and set about getting the car out and setting up camp, well we got soaked trying this so we left the car in the truck until Steve arrived we waited for the morning, Saturday arrived along with more cars....

I have to admit I did have a soft spot for this big V8 powered "Trabbie" while I was wandering around taking photo's Steve was hard at work sorting the car out.. first on the list was reset the backlash re-torque the  heads and then check the compression again...this was now sorted

..but Steve wasn't happy the car was not running right it was running far too rich and no matter what he tried nothing seemed to work, the car was dumping so much fuel in the sump we were having to change the oil every other warm up the car was also eating fuel like no tomorrow in fact we used more methanol this weekend than the whole of last year, I had bought a leakdown tester so we could check all the poppet valve operations but it turned out that we needed some adapters for this bit of kit, to the rescue comes Professor Sir Bob Hawkins and his great crew not only with the bit of kit we need but with a total mechanical fuel injection course for Steve, not long after came more advice from team Paranoia of Steve Williams and Alan Loten and even Phill James from the Rampage team at one point.

I did wonder at one point if Steve's head was going to explode with all this  input LOL so that was the end of Saturday and we hadn't run.

Along come Sunday we are all up bright an early and Steve armed with all his new knowledge set about the car..work did he work?? all dam day till he was satisfied that he had done what he could and that the tune wouldn't hurt the car this was now late afternoon sow e went down for a run and the car under load still sounded bad didn't pull at all and to be honest a Nissan Micra could have nailed us, in fact I was going so slow I ended up stranded between the finish line and the end of the track...this happened three times in all and I have now become good friends with Steve and his mate the top end marshals.  I noticed as I was getting ready to run that Lorni, my wonderful wife had turned up and was in the stands. So that was Sunday done and dusted and we were all a bit depressed and I was seriously thinking about packing up and going home. I am glad we didn't.

So Monday arrived this was the day we had to post a dial in and run four times, well the lovely Claire came round and we gave 9.20 as a dial in, could have been any number to be honest as we didn't have a clue what the car would run. Steve and Dave were now working like idiots on the car to get some sort of tune that would get me down the track Steve managed to lean the car out a bit and we towed down.

It's amazing what fly's over your head at Shaky, I was getting nervous in the driving seat it came to our turn to run and we luckily were on a solo as the car still ran poorly and sounded like s***

I still had neat fuel pouring out all over me from the headers so obviously still far too rich and we were getting worried about the size of the fuel tank or lack of it. so much fettling in the pits again at which point I went and had a word with Wild Bunch new boy Jim Tanner..

A few minutes later and we were getting called for the next run, Steve had managed to lean the mixture off a bit more and was more hopeful this time around......

This time we were up against a car that I had watched for many years right back to the 70's "Oblivion"  As soon as I started the burn out I knew the car was still not right but I staged anyway Oblivion red light and I was off again but the run was still only in the 10's

So this time Steve took drastic action he drilled the jets out on the injection system to try and lean the car out enough to get a decent run in and this time he wanted me to use the trans brake....nervous or what.. we fired the car up but the tick over was far too high since Steve leaned the car off so we were pushed  out of the back of the track while Steve hot footed it back to our pit to pick up the much needed Allen Key, adjustments made and were signalled to re-join the show.......

This time we were up against the Brown boys in their slingshot I staged waited for both cars to turn both lights on then pressed the button and hit the throttle amber amber release button but even before I did release the button it was obvious to everyone that the engine sounded lumpy. But I did become a member of the trans brake club.

So now we had run out of ideas and the required parts to continue so I went for a walk to the stands to watch my fellow "Wild Bunchers" run the last round of the day and what an impressive bunch they looked, I started to walk back to the pits when I saw my car being towed down at warp factor 7. I tried one more thing Steve shouted at me..get in...so I jumped the fence and strapped myself in the hot seat for one last time for the weekend, the start line marshals would let me run but only as a test not as part of the Wild Bunch as I had missed that slot by too much which was fair enough, I went through the burnout routine staged and hit the throttle thinking ...here we go again..but no! this time she picked up her skirts and ran...came off the line really hard but turned hard right I had to peddle and then  hit the throttle again and for  the first time that weekend she actually started to pull, still no where near what she is now capable of but it's a start, And also for the first time that weekend I managed to get to the end of the track and I had a smile on my face, even Steve when he came to pick me up had a huge grin on him, what had he done?... the complete opposite of what seemed logical he richened the mixture right up!! strange....the down side was there was no one to see that run and we didn't have anyone to video it as our camera woman..my wife.. was helping to pack the truck up.

So we are going the right way we or should I say Steve has learned oodles more and with a few bits that need to come from Hilborn along with some more info we should be able to start tuning the car properly soon, our newly installed data logging equipment didn't work so that is something we need to sort out and we couldn't set the shift light on the rev counter another problem to sort out but a minor one. so that was the end of the weekend or so I thought. The lovely Claire came round and told us all not to go yet as there was still the prize giving to do. While waiting for that to happen I went and had a chat with another new Wild Bunch member and his charming wife Andrew and Catherine Stones then we all gathered around Claire for the trophy ceremony and to my complete surprise we won a trophy for the best Slingshot this was the commentators choice so thanks Barry and crew we  really appreciated that especially after all the work we had put in over the weekend...

I shall share this trophy with Steve and Dave over the next year they can all have turns in keeping it, now we have to look forward to the Nostalgia Nationals I am hoping we will be further along with my dream of running an 8 for the first time but then again who knows in this game anything can happen!!!

63. Road trip...!

A dam long day yesterday, 386 miles road trip in just over 10 hours I have got to get my crew chief to live closer to me LOL. So we started off here in Kent at around 10:30am yesterday and managed to get home at around 9:30pm...Lorni and I drove down to Swindon to pick the truck and car up, the only jobs left to do on the car can be done at the track or are not that big an issue that we can't do without them.

We met up with Steve at his house where he showed me what he had been up to the night before.....

At last he managed to find a union that fits the fuel tank so we now have a permanent fitting rather than a wee bit of hose as the previous attempt at a fitting to the tank leaked and stopped us filling the tank up to the top. The other problem we had was the brakes, the master cylinder was leaking and had taken the paint off all the way down the chassis, which has now been sorted but finding a master cylinder to fit the hole was a different kettle of fish, Steve had to adapt a different cylinder to fit......

We still have a bit of bleeding to do but the brakes now work properly and we have stopped the connecting bar from bending so might even be able to hold the car now on tickover without leaving an imprint of the brake handle on my palm. I then took the truck and car round to where Steve works so his boss could have a look at what Steve had been struggling with for the last six or seven weeks...!

So the car and truck are back in their home from home just outside Bedford waiting for the 17th May..

 when we can take them to the Pod and start the process of sorting out the engine...running it in...fuelling and timing. and you never know might even get a run in.

So we have a few little jobs to do like mount the Fuel/air mixture gauge I have ordered some stuff so that we can record some data..

This should help us tune the engine a bit easier but we can still get the engine running without them so they will be fitted as soon as they turn up. The magnetic breakerless ignition module for our distributor should turn up in the next 7 days which will be great. we still have to adjust the gear linkage up properly, but we are ticking the jobs off one by one, so with a bit of luck we should have everything working right on the 17th which means we should be at Shaky the following weekend at the Yanks Weekend ready to really try the car out.

So after nearly 400 miles in 10 hours of sitting on over crowded motorways and having to sit behind a truck that with a downhill section can just about manage 55mph what state was Lorni in....

Still smiling bless her, Oh and when I parked the truck up I took a photo of the fuel gauge as I am sure that some of our expensive go  go juice went missing the last time we parked up.....

..so just in case LOL at least I will now be able to compare what we left in with what's left when I go to pick her up early on the 17th......nearly there!!!!!!

62. Will it wont it? pleaaasssee!!!!!!

What a long day yesterday was 28/04/2015 armed with a borrowed distributor and a 6 man tent from my daughter I made my way back round the motorways to Swindon, while travelling down the M4 I noticed lots and lots of blue flashing lights in the other carriageway.

A cement lorry had crashed through the barrier and tipped over, the motorway was still closed last night I didn't get home till just after 3am I left Swindon at 9:30pm.

Anyway got to Swindon took the truck and car round to Mr. O'Sullivan's workshops where we unloaded her...

A little bit of work required to change the distributor and modify a set of leads to fit on the MSD cap as it is different to the Mallory one. Then we filled up her fluids connected the battery , we turned her over got the oil pressure up primed the fuel and hit the ignition and she tried to fire up straight away...timing was way out..so some fettling and we tried again..same result, this happened three times, if you go to our You-Tube channel  Slimline Racing you can find some video clips of this and of course......this one.........

She's alive at last, all the hard work was worth it I know on the video the car sounds really rough but it didn't sound that bad in reality, yeah the timing was right out and the leads didn't fit properly but she ran so now the rest takes place at the track, can't wait to get in it and drive it now, I would like to say thanks to everyone that has got us this far, especially my son Steve, his wife Kerry for putting up with not seeing him from one week till the next all the guys at the track, John O'Sullivan and Sam Feeeman for lending us a distributor, See you at a track very soon...be afraid be very afraid LOL !!