4th December - Huntly Speedway

Second night out and ready for action....well to be perfectly honest the week or so since our one race at Waikaraka I've been busy waking up the corvette from its winter hibernation which of course comes with the standard "Dad, what should we do with this?". That kept us entertained on something different for a short time. So anyway one of the jobs that I was meant to get completed was getting some paint and finishing off a new wing, why a new wing? Well thats a long story that involves a 1440kg car, a steel door, a chain and hook that just didn't want to do its job properly. The result of which is a wing whole heap smaller than it use to be with a dent roughly about the size of a bumper...but I think you get the picture.

Even though the car was pretty much ready because of our short night weeks earlier, there are still a raft of jobs that need to be done before a meeting and preparation starts quite early on a Saturday. Check the engine/suspension mounts, the seat, the belts, tires, chassis setup, change the diff gears. Then load the truck, check the fuel levels, and then there are 3 cars (normally).

All loaded up and heading off, the exciting news of the night was the new body and paint on the 73a machine. After Bryce's big roll over the end of last season the decision was made to run with a white body. We have had a couple of seasons with the purplish colour, so time for a change. At least with a white body we can get some colour into the signwriting, and colour there is. Wayne has had the vinyl cutter going flat out the couple of days leading up to saturday and has done a great job in decking the car out.

I had even remembered to pack the incar camera so we could get some good racing videos. Alas the batteries weren't charged properly as all that we recorded was 5 minutes of sitting on the dummy grid. I must remember to add charging of batteries to the list right under charging the transponder.

So on with the meeting. First up was grid draws, as Trish came around with the marbles Dad reached in, thinking he was pulling out a number for Bryce, but in fact he pulled out #2 for me. So as a joke I said "I'd better pull out #1 for Bryce then", sure enough Bryce's first race in about 7 months was going to be right off the front. Fingers crossed he didn't have to many spare parts after rebuilding the car.

To be honest the first race was terrible, the 53a car had a huge push half way through the turn driving me straight through the ruts and scrubbing off all the speed. About half way throught the race I got a massive amount of air through a rut in the pit bend thumping the ground hard and smashing the watts link on the diff. From that point the handling went from bad to completely terrible. For its first time back on the track 73a didn't have great run ending the race early with a blown outside rear tyre.

Back in the pits, repaired the watts link and Bryce changed his rear wheel. We then proceeded to make various changes to the setup on both cars, the next race we would be starting from 11 and 12. The second race for 73a was again short lived with another blown outside rear tyre, however 53a was handling much better and definately moving faster. That was until lap 10 when I noticed the alternator light was on and the temperature reading was right off the clock. Never a good thing with an alloy engine, so I had to head straight for the infield with just 1 and half laps to go.

Back in the pits the radiator was screaming like a kettle and we decided to pack it in for the night and let it cool down slowly by itself. There is such a risk that the engine will seize solid but we kept our fingers crossed and thankfully the engine turned over later on as it started and I drove it into the trailer. Bryce also had to pack up as he didn't have any more spare right rear wheels. As it turns out the changes made to the rear suspension were the cause of the tyre blow outs.

There is now quite a bit of work to do on the cars so I don't think we will be racing anywhere this coming weekend. We have one more night out this year as we are listed on the WP calendar to run on the 18th. None of our cars will be attending the NZ Champs, they are just too close to christmas this season.

Catch ya...MadPhil