I was hoping to do a race report for the Gunnedah drags which would run along the lines of, "trifecta of trophies" seeing as this was the third weekend in a row of racing for me. You know that bloke Murphy and his shitty law, well he struck. Saturday had me up at 4.00am for the drive to Gunnedah, about a 4 hour drive. The crew chief was in Sydney with the daughter for a previous engagement so I was flying solo. Do to the large number of entrants starting time was delayed a bit. Racing is supposed to start at 10 but my first run was 12.30. Did I mention the weather was bloody woeful, with winds gusting to 60 kph which was alright if you were sailing but crap for racing, especially an open car. I don't have enough horsepower to waste on those sort of headwinds. First run was a leisurely 9.4 which given the strong wind probably wasn't too bad. Second run was about the same but by then the wind was blowing dust clouds around and I don't run air filters at all so the engine was getting a gutfull of dust. When I went out for the third run the wind had picked up even more and I was battling to keep the old girl running because of the dust. I ran a slow 9.7 so I knew it was suffering. As I changed into second gear there was a strange clunk from the gearbox. Everything worked right for the return run but as I put it into reverse to straighten up for the ramps on the trailer it wouldn't come out of reverse. I took the linkages off and used a spanner on the selectors and still it was stuck in reverse. The only way for me to get it into the trailer was to do a huge 360 backwards till I was lined up. I got it into the trailer eventually and got off the airstrip but after a bit more stuffing around with the linkages and even finally getting out of reverse, I realised that after 4 years of thrashing the shit out of that gearbox, it had quit. I headed home and pulled the 'box . Surprisingly it wasn't as bad as I thought with just the sliding pins and circlip for first/reverse gear stuffed. I put a spare 'box in and hopefully it's good to go for the Six Bangers at Warwick 7th-8th September. I'll rebuild the damaged one and carry it as a spare. I found out that the next day, Sunday, the temperature had plummeted and the wind was worse again. Apparently an altered that was running came to grief when the wind got under it and ended up being wrecked when it barrel rolled 3 times. The driver was okay but the car is a mess. I'm not scared to have a go but maybe the racing should of been canned. I know that the club tries to do the right thing by everyone but how bad does it have to get before the pin is pulled at other tracks?
You might get an idea of the wind and dust from this video. This is the only race video I've got as I usually don't film the Saturday test 'n tune. You can tell the little beast is running bad. See you all later.
The Jalopy Journal
