After the National Finals we found the engine wouldn’t turn over, this turned out to be because the rear main and centre bearings were damaged. We pulled Freddy apart and found the block to be oval on the rear main and centre bearing housing, so we sent the block to Andy Mapes for some surgery to make it round again back to factory spec. Our gearbox was looked at kindly by Martyn Hannis who changes one of the gear ratios and set the clutch pack clearances, we wanted to change this to make sure our lowest gear wasn’t too low. Over the winter we also installed a data logger and carried out emergency repairs to the trailer stub axle after our breakdown on the way home from the finals.
We left for the Festival of Power on the Thursday afternoon later than hoped as usual, and all was going well until 2 hours down one of the rear wheels on the trailer suddenly started smoking. We pulled over and found one of the ball bearings had gone on the same axle which we repaired over the winter period after our National Finals breakdown! An hour later, after hammering the fused bearing off and replacing with a thankful new one which we had in stock, we were on the road again. We arrived at the Pod still in daylight thanks to the summer clocks change then got ourselves unloaded, fed and beds made.
We woke up Friday morning to hear rain on the roof. We prepared the car and got her scrutineered, however the misty rain and heavy showers kept coming and Friday was called off. After a long day of doing nothing we retired to bed at a reasonable hour, much to Robbie’s dismay as a young bachelor going to bed at 10pm on a Friday night.
Saturday we were due out in the afternoon, so the rain water was cleared and the racing started around 11am. We got ourselves warmed up and ready to go having had chance to watch the first round of Pro Mods and Fuel cars. We were running against Apache, which for all of us is quite special as we’ve all got quite a thing for that beautiful nostalgic funny car, and the side by side burnouts looked great! This was Dave’s first burnout back in the car for over 18 months and he’s sure still got it. Unfortunately we were shut down on the start line for an oil leak, however we are so grateful to the guys on the start line for their input and safety precautions as running with that leak could have ended the same as the Lucky Devil crash that morning (we hope you get it fixed and to see you back the track soon!) or even worse.
We got back to the pit and started pulling Freddy apart. The leak was found to be the rear sump oil seal, after hours or thrashing to get this repaired we fired up to test for the late afternoon slot only to find the timing cover oil seal to be leaking now. We missed the second slot and got the sump off to replace the seal and fix the leak. We were finished doing this well beyond curfew so we’d have to wait until the morning to see if all was good.
Sunday morning we were up and at ‘em so we could fire up as soon as the noise curfew finished at 9am, a quick fire up gave us the answer we hoped for and we were ready to race again. This time we were to run a bye while Chaos and Apache ran side by side 6.2’s – amazing. Another great burnout from Dave, no leaks shutting us down on the start line today and off he went. Freddy hooked up and Dave stuck with it until around the 1000ft mark, both ‘chutes out at the line to run a 7.67 at 160mph. That’ll do us nicely! It wasn’t quick enough to get through to the final so we packed up and headed home, all pleased with the outcome of the weekend even if it was only one run.
This event commenced Dave’s 30th year of drag racing, and with the help of many other races we presented him with a book full of messages of congratulations and love (well, one or two) which he was surprised and really pleased with. 2014 had been Robbie’s year to licence and get to grips with the car so for the first weekend back in the car Dave was pleased, as were the rest of us, and is right back in the saddle looking forward to our next appearance demonstrating at the Brands Hatch Speedfest on June 6th-7th http://www.speedfest.co.uk/ .
Congratulations go to Nick Davies and the Chaos team for setting a new European record! Fantastic stuff and that 5 can’t be far away now.
We had many visitors to the pit over the weekend, meeting some long time drag racing fans and some who were at their first event. We genuinely love meeting people and talking to them about our car and their cars too so thank you for your interest and we hope that being able to talk to the crews and see the cars up close makes drag racing that extra bit special for you. Please do keep popping over to say hi and have your picture taken with the car, as long as we’re not busy getting ready for or after a run we’re more than happy to help you with that wonderful one-time shot of your child stood next to a dragster!
Great idea opening a website for your freinds & fans alike I shall be following the trails n thrills of your team on it