News - 15th July 2002 Avon Park
Testing! Testing!
First of of all I would like to say a big thank you to Clayton Round who stepped in 2 weeks ago and built us a wing (and an excellent job too) which made testing at Avon Park this weekend a reality - Clayton and brother Chris who campaign their own blown small block rail (Rebellious) with the Supercharged Outlaws were also at Avon Park trying to sort out the bugs with their new combination .
Friday
As our regular readers will know, things rarely go to plan in our camp - some may say it's adventurous - not knowing what will happen next - I have another term for it - *!*!*! frustrating.
The plan was to try and get a baseline setup for our new fuel system before our next UK Championship round at Avon Park (Aug 24/25/26). We arrived at the track early on Friday so that we could do our customary fire-up to check for leaks etc. before going out on the track the following day. As usual the unexpected happened - the car fired-up normally, sounded good - then just as everybody was starting to feel confident the engine quit - just like turning off a switch. We did all the routine checks but could find nothing - tried to start the engine again but nothing at all this time (????)
Saturday
After having a good think (over the odd beer) Tony and myself started bright and early on Saturday morning - so early I had a headache (too much thinking) - we replaced the coil and the motor fired-up - sounded good - so good I gave it a couple of strong blips of the throttle and promptly blew the awning off!
We then did a 100' check-out pass - everything was ok but the 60' time was a bit lethargic - everything in one piece though!
Sunday
Although there were a lot of street cars running on the track - Saturday's run felt ok for traction and we made some fuel and clutch adjustments to liven the car up and get a 1000' run and hopefully some useful data.
If you want to see what happened next click here - things were going ok until about the 330' mark when the car just started to go into a mild shake and drift to the left - things then started to get really exciting when without warning the car made a major move to the left, crossing the centerline and heading for the barrier! - I just managed to pull it around although at one point I (no doubt along with many others) thought it was going to roll (to see just how close click here) - maybe Uncle Bob should think about branching out and trying his hand at circle cars - this one handles ok :-)
Unfortunately, we were a bit too aggressive with the tune-up and track conditions were not perfect - all was not lost though - we returned in one piece, with no damage - and learned some things.
So we hope to see you all at Avon Park (Shakespeare County Raceway) for the 2002 UK Top Methanol Championship Finals (August 24/25/26).
Special thanks to ......
- Clayton - for doing in 2 weeks what others couldn't seem to do in 8 months!
- Graham Fish for the video footage
Links to “Old News”:-
Main Event 2000 - Santa Pod - Our Best Ever -Then…...
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