We met Dan on the M69 so he could experience his first road trip in the bus, which was made all the more interesting as it only has 3 proper seats at present, meaning the 4th seating position was perched on top of my tool box! I did think of sticking a few black and yellow crosses on strategic positions would help us piece him back together after an accident ;-)
After a crappy run along the A46, and numerous stops for forgotten shopping and some food, we arrived at Cadwell at about 9pm and pitched up alongside Bob in the "paddock". The rather boring journey was at least brightened up by witnessing a most bizarre act outside KFC, whilst returning to the bus after our transfat feast, we literally had to step over the legs of a Sports Direct clad chav, who had parked his car next to the pavement, opened the passenger door, and was now lying half across the pavement with his head in the car, licking his larged gold hooped earring wearing girlfriends belly button!!! This was in broad daylight, with plenty of people passing by on foot and by car. The only conclusions I can come to is that he had dropped a piece of his zinger burger, which bounced off one of the 15 Halfords interior enhancements adorning the dash board, rolled into the cropped topped midriff of his cruising partner and was attempting to remove the last trace of the spicy colonels secret receipt!! I did also consider giving them a lesson on the birds and bees as they were never going to get very far using that hole, but I suppose at least it will stop them multiplying for a while!!
After a crappy run along the A46, and numerous stops for forgotten shopping and some food, we arrived at Cadwell at about 9pm and pitched up alongside Bob in the "paddock". The rather boring journey was at least brightened up by witnessing a most bizarre act outside KFC, whilst returning to the bus after our transfat feast, we literally had to step over the legs of a Sports Direct clad chav, who had parked his car next to the pavement, opened the passenger door, and was now lying half across the pavement with his head in the car, licking his larged gold hooped earring wearing girlfriends belly button!!! This was in broad daylight, with plenty of people passing by on foot and by car. The only conclusions I can come to is that he had dropped a piece of his zinger burger, which bounced off one of the 15 Halfords interior enhancements adorning the dash board, rolled into the cropped topped midriff of his cruising partner and was attempting to remove the last trace of the spicy colonels secret receipt!! I did also consider giving them a lesson on the birds and bees as they were never going to get very far using that hole, but I suppose at least it will stop them multiplying for a while!!
After a broken nights sleep due to William talking in his sleep, Dad snoring and Dan trying to creep out of his noisy airbed, it was off to early morning scruitineering for the Allcomers race. It was a busy day, with 2 qualifying sessions and 3 races, so I had ensured the car was 100% ready to go. The Allcomers session was just a procession, I couldn't get even half a clear lap, and the dismal qualifying time of 1min 44 sec proved this, but on the Brightside, the car seemed to run fine with no spluttering or misfire. I ensured I was near the front for RGB qualifying, hoping to get some good clear laps, but alas all my plans went pear shaped after spinning at the gooseneck due to locking up the rear brakes. I checked the bias and for some reason it was wound all the way back to the stop for the rear brakes!! I must have done this messing about, but seeing that I normally have it virtually all wound to the front it made for some interesting braking!!! Note to self, check brake bias on regular basis is locking up too much, and another good entry for the crap racing drivers excuse book! But things then got much worse, a couple of laps later the spluttering engine returned! I had a brief splutter before the mountain which cleared itself, but then a lap later it came back with a vengeance, and I had to pootle round back to the pits.
A visit to Andy B diagnosed a faulty fuel pump, so that came off and the points cleaned and refitted, then the pump worked fine.
I headed out for the Allcomers race, but as I pulled out of the holding area the car spluttered like mad and I had to come back to the paddock on the green flag lap. So we fitted another 2nd hand pump, still spluttered, fitted a brand new pump, still spluttered!! We (myself, Dan, dad , Andy + lots of helpful RGBers) then set off on a hunt the splutter cause, changing and checking everything on the car. Over the next 10 hours and Sunday morning the following things were changed/checked/investigated:-
- Coils and HT lead,
- CDI
- Entire Carbs changed
- Earth points
- Spark plugs (numerous times)
- Carb float bowls cleaned
- battery connectors
- FIA master switch
- rectifier
- Carb balance pipes
- Carb rubbers
- Cams
- Crank position sensor
- Fuel tank vacuum
- Compression test
I'm sure there was more, and we checked some of these things 2 or 3 times! At one stage after changing to the spare set of Carbs its started working again (and attempted to get into the holding area for the RGB race on Saturday but arrived 2 minutes too late), but once it had been jetted correctly (it was on the wrong jets for a car install) the problem returned!!! The car was now so bad you could hear the splutter just blipping the throttle in the paddock!! While hunting for the problem we discovered a few other problems that could have been the cause, but turned out not to be, including a positive battery terminal that fell off in dads hand, a half broken ECU earth and a leaking float chamber! None of these were the culprit and fixing them got us no where other than a car that had less potential reasons to fail in the future!!! In a last ditch attempt while dad was starting to remove the exhaust to check if it was blocked I decided to check the carbs again, this time finding a blocked jet in cylinder 3!!!! We had checked the jets when we swapped them over from the other sets of carbs, so wither this happened while refitting them or we missed it some how!!! Just glad to have found something we refitted everything and the car seemed to be running OK again, although it did seem to have a small amount of hesitancy low down.
With 20mins to spare was ready for the Sunday RGB race, I'd already missed 3 races so was just glad to be getting out there, although I was knackered and oily!! Cadwell is not the easiest of tracks to make any places up from the start, its very narrow and very little room for heroics going into the first corner. I was near the back of the grid, and in my worse grid position all season, but there were plenty of cars around me I could have a good race with so was looking forward to those red lights going out!! Thanks to Tim stalling on the left hand side of the circuit, the right hand side (where I was) got a far better start and I moved up a few positions and had fun alongside Ben all around coppice, Charlie's 1 and Charlie's 2!! There was a good group of us for the first few laps, and after locking up behind Ben going into the mountain Neil P managed to dive up my inside, I was hoping to slip stream him down the start finish straight, but sitting behind him I couldn't gain enough to get passed, but later on coming into the goose neck he either made a mistake or I managed to carry more speed and got up his inside going into Mansfield, which felt very satisfying!! The race continued with a pack of 7 of us, lead by Bob, closely followed by Phil, but as Phil came into the goose neck he span, causing cars to dive everywhere and fluid being sprayed around the track! Ben took to the grass to avoid the sideways Pulsar and I was up behind Bob. I'm not sure what was going on behind but I was aware of James gaining quickly on the straights so had to try and make the corners count to keep the gap. After some defending lines coming into Coppice and Park I missed gear through the hall bends or Barn and he managed to get me coming into Coppice. By this time we had caught up Doug who was obviously suffering some handling problems (turned out to be suspension damage) and the 4 of us lapped tightly together, I would lose them on the straights, which was now worse than before as the car would not rev out to 6th down park straight so there was obviously something not right with the fuelling or breathing, but catch them up again on the corners. I could not see a way past as it was impossible to outbrake them coming into any of the usual passing places as they powered away from me too far down the straights. This is where my red mist descended, and convinced myself I could get my nose along side them coming into the hairpin, causing 3 fairly hairy moments! Looking back it was a very silly idea, which luckily didn't end in tears, although I do apologise to Bob and James for even thinking about it, let alone trying it!!! So that’s the way it stayed, well until the final time through Barn where Neil over took me under yellows (naughty naughty) on the final lap to nip another place off me. Although not the same kind of race I've been having so far this season, I really enjoyed it, and the fact that I got out after all the problems has ended in a weekend that I actually just about enjoyed. The car isn't right, but its 90% there so at least I can plan for Pembrey. Andy has my other set of carbs to strip and clean, so once there done I slap them back on and get them set up correctly and hope the vavoooom returns!!!
Video will be uploaded once i have sorted it, i have a new Flip HD, so quality should be a lot better now :D
Video will be uploaded once i have sorted it, i have a new Flip HD, so quality should be a lot better now :D
Just a quick mention than on Saturday night there was the RGB Marshals BBQ, I managed to attend for some of the latter part of the evening, but usual it was a great affair, well organised with plenty of grub and beer to go round.
