Busy Week!

[Tom Fenton 1,541]

Had a busy week this week, Saturday off to Pod for Mini in the Park, Carl was trading so had the van full of wheels and other light weight goodies, so I took the DON down behind the Shogun.

Saturday afternoon we needed to get the engine warmed through and then re torque the head, this is an involved procedure requiring both cams all 16 followers and shims and the cam box off before pulling the main head botls down again.

With this done it was time for the annual haggis neeps and tatties tea courtesy of a couple of good lads Rab and Keith from Glasgow, then of course time for gallon'o'beer before bed.

Sunday morning got the trade stand set up, then with signing on sorted drag racing was the order of the day for me.

First run was a low 13 just as an easy pass to check all was well.

After that had a second run with a hard launch, not an awful lot of grip to speak of, the nature of the event means they do not go overboard with the track prep, also with a lot of new BINI's there running their air-con there was condensate water being dropped all over which did not help. 2nd run was something like a 12.8.

So for the third run decided to up the game and put on the front a pair of brand new Hoosiers and also purged and engaged the nitrous.

Monster 2nd gear rolling burnout to get the release agent off the new tyres and a good launch, however went to put the gas in 3rd and straight away massive rich missfire, looked down and the wideband was seriously rich, so backed out and cruised to the end.

4th run, changed the bottle checked the solenoids were firing and then tried nitrous again, it became clear we had a problem with the gas jets or solenoid as again it just bogged and rich misfired.

5th run, isolated the nitrous and went for a good run on petrol alone, this worked a lot better broke into the 11's with an 11.96.

6th and final run, monster smokey burnout for the crowd, seemed a good launch and away, reasonably clean run felt good, but came back round to find I'd done a 11.90. Now compared to lots of other cars this is quick, but I know the car with me in it has previously done 11.12, so we were some way off the pace, on a check over last thing we found one of the catch tanks totally full, now we normally expect a small amount due to revving the poor old A series to 9500rpm, but never as much as this, so it appears we have an engine issue developing. To be fair it has done 4 seasons now since last rebuild so its not all bad. In addition 11.90 was good enough to win the class by some margin, so a nice pot to come home.

 

 

Fast forward to Wednesday and it was Cadwell Park time for the MOP, first proper trackday for some time, I've been plagued with driveshaft issues since last trip to the Ring in 2011, even a brand new "recon" set crapped out on me in spectactular style last trip to Curborough with one too long and knocking under plunge, the other seemed OK until it sheared bang in the middle after a rather urgent start.

However after lots of measuring and selective assembly complete with Millers decent grease I had something I was happy with, the runs up Prescott at Pugfest proved they were working OK, so after an oil and filter change and general check round on Monday the car wa ready to go.

It was an evening track day so did an early half day at work, set off good and early with my buddy Adam with his orange Mk1 Fiesta.

Arrived at Cadwell in good time, got the cars swapped onto relevant tyres, did signing on etc, our very own "youth" Paul Deathbringer came along for a ride round.

Did the sighting laps, car felt pretty crap but mainly due to the used slicks having a big build up on them.

Out on a first session, great stuff going well, got about 10 laps down before old Death was looking a bit green and asked to go back in!

 

 

After that got a few more laps in, all in all an enjoyable day, its whetted my appetite now after a bit of a layoff the trackdays so am planning to be back out again soon.

 

Car stood up well, I'd put Millers CFS 10/60 Motorsport oil in which is decent gear, the engine maintains good oil pressure now even when stinking hot.

The front GTI6 brakes have done good service but are now distinctly second hand, pads getting low and the discs past their best, however I have plans afoot for this in the form of a set of the old Group A 205 Alcon 4 pots with pads, just need to sort out discs and bells.

 

[deathbringer929 49 1 Cars]

i rekon it was at least 20 laps before i crapped out youth..