10th November: Ollie Brown Series Round 1

Well pretty much the day started out rubbish, I was rather ill and really tempted to not race but being that it was the first round of the series we decided to load the car up anyway and if I couldn't race it then at least I wouldn't have to clean it. As it turned out with only 13 cars showing up I thought I would run anyway to if nothing else get a few points towards the series total. About the only thing I did all day was to change the carburetor jets back to fix the speed problem I created the week prior. This would also help to get the car going as good as possible for the up and coming Huntly champs.

Race 1, grid 7.
The start wasn't great, had just to much pressure in the tires and struggled to get grip to keep the car tight and up to speed. Down the front straight for the first time and sitting in 8th I realised I had turned to late for the turn and was heading for the wall at a good rate of speed. Lucky for me 24h was also running wide. My only chance was to try and get up the inside of him and lean on the bumper which would hopefully slow me up and pointing in the right direction. Alas nope, I was just to far behind and caught the corner of 24h rear bumper, half spining him and throwing my rear bumper into the wall. I kept the engine going and took off down the straight. Keeping pace with the cars up ahead I was feeling good, especially counting the cars parked on the infield which meant I was in for a few points hopefully. Unfortunately with feeling unwell I had not noticed any information about having to do 15 laps. We know my car has a cooling issue now that we are trying to get more power from it, and have been planning to solve it but just haven't had time. So after a number of laps not seeing the white flag I realised that we must be doing 15 laps and I looked at the water temperature gauge coming out of the pit bend and my heart dropped seeing the needle just past 125C (about 260F) I came off to half throttle and decided to just circulate slowly, but it was to late down the front straight the engine was just to hot and the ignition cut out....Kaaboom and a big flame out of the exhausts. I coasted onto the grass with images of my all alloy engine melting into a big blob under the car while watching the water temperature climbing past 130C (275F).

Pushed back in the pits and nothing to do except let the engine cool down by itself. However my bad luck was not limited to just over heating, the diff was bleeding also. A large crack has gone almost the whole way across the main housing and as I use red oil it did look like the housing was bleeding.

Race 2, grid 2.
As I didn't score any points in race 1 I was starting on row 1. Knowing that under full speed I cannot make it to 15 laps I'd have to use some tactics. I made a good start but stayed out wide, I didn't want a whack in the back resulting in the diff breaking in half. I had decided that while the pack was around me I'd keep up a good speed but once they had past I'd limit the revs to try and reach the end. I think it took about 5 or so laps for everyone to go past and then instead of pushing the engine to 7800rpm at the end of the straights I was keeping my foot up and only going to 6500rpm, at least this gave me a good view of the race up ahead. But unfortunately I still only managed it to lap 13 before things got to hot and the ignition cut out. I guess if my tactic had been to pull off on the 2nd lap and then just finish I would have got some points but I didn't really count that as an option.

Back in the pits and if the diff was an arm it looked like someone had hacked it off, the red oil was everywhere. Between that, the huge overheating problems and my body wanting to just be home we decided to trailer the car for the last night. I had run it close enough to mass failure for one night.

I'd also like to say "Thank you" to the 85h Wade Team for letting me borrow some jumper leads, and to Stan Hickey for the chat about cooling.

So back home and washed the diff has been removed along with a few other bits to make it easier. It will be stripped tonight and sent away to be repaired which does mean I will miss the Huntly champs but we are planning to be back up and running for next weekend with a new and bigger mechanical fan to cool the engine.

Catch ya....MadPhil