Bloody hell had a pretty mental couple of weeks. As a few of you knew I had been asked to enter a competition called GT Battle on the 25th June (www.gtbattle.com). There were three classes of cars FWD, RWD and 4WD. They had made a 1.5 ish mile circuit on the infield of Rockingham and the top 12 overall qualified for the finals.
The weather was really bad, very heavy rain, but I gave it my best shot and at half way I was 2nd overall!!! I couldn’t believe it. There were some mental powerful cars there and i thought the 4x4’s with the weather would rule, but there I was behind a 550BHP Escort Cossie with a professional driver at the wheel. Unfortunatly it started to dry out and the long straight to the 1st corner was helping out the poweful boys. In the end I qualified 5th over all and 1st out of all the RWD’s which included 4 modified 911 GT3 RS’s. I was well chuffed.
Unfortunatly for the final they changed the track to include two of the straights of the main oval and the banked bend and my little 200BHP couldn’t compete with me ending up 12th overall on a bone dry track.
One of the monster power Skylines was actually clocked at 198MPH down the back straight. Every car in the final had at least twice the power of me and most had about three times the power and twice the amount of wheels doing the driving. Was an all round top day though and the car ran perfectly!!!
The following weekend was an RS track day at Croft. Again the car ran faultlessly and showed up ALL the big power boys. There was a 580BHP RS200EVO there doing charity passanger laps and two of the people that went out with him, later came out with me and both said I was faster. I really do love that track now, you can attack it so bloody hard, I was going round there like a mad man by the end of the day. Big thanks to the Plans boys for revising the setup on my car it handles SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO well now, i have supreme confidence in it, it’s awesome!!!
Then last weekend there was another RS track day at Castle Combe. I thought I might struggle here as Combe is very much a power circuit, but I found I could carry that much more corner speed that I was just as fast down the straights.
Unfortunatly the car did not run faultlessly.
I lost the clutch after the 2nd lap on my first session. It wasnt a problem on track as I have got into not using the clutch at all now with the Quaife box, so I finished the session with the clutch pedal on the floor and my heel and toeing technique much improved. (thank god for dog boxes!!!). After the session I found that the splayed tip on the end of the 90 degree hard pipe on the end of the braided hose that enters the slave cylinder had broke off. The fitting was still tight in the slave cylinder, with just the tip of the pipe itself having broke off. Anyway a quick blast with a brake pipe flaring tool saw a new flair on the end of the hard pipe and normal clutching action was resumed!!
Then on the 2nd session about half way through while braking for Quarry I heard a bit of a knock at the back. I had just thought something had bounced up and hit the floor pan or something and the car carried on perfectly so I just kept my foot in. Another half a dozen laps and the seeing off of a slick shod 380BHP scooby saw the end of the session. On my drive back to the paddock, I pulled up to let the guy in front reverse into his parking space. I then selected first to pull away and the engine just died. Thinking I had just stalled, I turned the key, only to hear that high speed, no compression whirring.
Yep sure enough, the clonk I had heard was infact my bottom pulley falling off and the rest of the laps I guess the cam belt just worked its way off until off it came. Luckly it hapened at vertually idle speed, so fingers crossed it will just be bent valves. At worst I guess I may have broke a few guides.
Anyway I am working in LA this week and next so a mate of mine will be ripping the head off if he has time to survey the damage.
So after a dozen or so full hammer track days with zero problems, I had a bit of a mare at Combe!!
Moral of the storey is to check that bottom pulley bolt as part of your pre track day inspection I guess. I had never taken mine off, so never really thought about it.
Will be all repaired and ready for a two day double header at Donno in August!!!
Ho Hum!!!
Sean…