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Stroke
Association Day So on to Saturday 1st October: This was the fantastic Stroke Association Charity Day at Castle Combe. It’s fantastic fun and for a great cause. We were able to mix it with several exotic sports and race cars whilst raising money for the Stroke Association. From the local WSCC we had yours truly in my 2L Zetec SpeedSport, Chris Goodchild & Nick Cooke in their Westfield’s, and Chris Varey in his Ultima. The day whilst a little dull was completely dry. There were a large number of exotic and fast machines on offer for the fee paying public to get a ride in. These included several M3 & M5’s , TVRs, a clutch of Porsches including a CSR Tubo, a Radical and an Ultima. Some of you will know that I’d had my engine seriously tuned. With the extra power, super sticky tyres & weight reduction it flew along. Only the Radical & the Ultima were faster on the day. However, the extra power did have a cost. Whilst out on our warm up laps, the heavier braking & better corning the car can now take meant more lateral forces are being experienced. This caused the fuel pump inertia switch to cut out & the car ground to a halt. I was able to coast safely off line & wait for a tow. A few cable ties & gaffer tape over the switch meant it wouldn’t pop again. After the warm ups came the fee paying punters. After three passengers, and about 30 laps on the day, the car started to mis-shift. The odd clunk & missed gear told me something was going wrong. At the pace I’d got up to I didn’t want to take any chances and so pulled back into the pits. It was a good job I did, because just as I’d turned off the circuit and slowed down, the entire gearbox locked up solid. Even with the gear level “in neutral” & the clutch fully depressed, the gearbox was still connected to the prop. Seems the extra power and “on the limiter” track driving had wrecked the MT75. The camaraderie was superb, I had lots of help man handling it onto a trailer to take back home– big thanks to Jeff Oakley who was incredibly helpful. To add insult to injury, whilst the car was being hauled onto a trailer, the Combe “noise police” came over to tell me that on my last laps I’d been recorded at 102Db on drive by tests. I was 97Db on the static test. Later on I found that the extra heat generated by the engine power uplift had burnt away loads of the silencer packing. Also that day, Nick Cooke managed to spin not once but twice at Avon Rise, both times with a passenger on board, showering him with mud. Thankfully in all of these incidents nobody was hurt & we’ve all survived to drive another day.
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