21.08.10 Snetterton

A bit of a delay doing this post race report; a hefty work schedule after spending too much time fixing the race car in between each damned race this year has been eating up time.

Right. Following the Lydden race and subsequent discovery of the errant damper bolt – things should be pretty simple. Strip the motor, fit the race spec ACL Duraglide +0.030” rod bearings and re-assemble, look to see if there was any reason why the damper bolt came undone, then make sure it was re-assembled with fresh thread-lock. Simples. Yeah -right. Major problem – the flywheel would not come off the crank despite my best efforts with my 'butch' flywheel puller and a couple of tank-fulls of compressed air through my honking Snap-On air gun. Hmmm.... Out with the butane torch for a good warm up of the flywheel boss. Still no movement. Not good. A few whacks with club hammer and big drift, nothing. We are now in territory I have not been in for decades with any Mini flywheel issue. So I borrowed an oxy-acetylene set-up from the garage next door (big thanks to Derek at Derwent Garage) and gave it the 'hot blue spanner' treatment until the whole boss was cherry red. Nothing. More whacks with heavy duty equipment. Nothing. Poured another tank-full of compressed air in to it. Nothing. Re-heated to cherry red again – repeat.... Nothing. Drill three lines of holes to join together up the boss sides. Nothing. Finally had to drill radially around the boss centre close to the crankshaft. That got the outer section off. Had to use a chisel to get the remainder of the centre off the crank. Well and truly fret-welded on. From what I could see of what was left the flywheel internal taper must have been incorrect, that would explain why the flywheel was moving up the crank so far and causing problems with the starter motor. Now I had a trashed flywheel and crankshaft, so the +0.030” bearings were now literally spare parts....

The engine was re-built using yet another crankshaft - good job I'd recently had several done by MED... though I hadn't planned on working my way through them quite so quickly. A couple had been ear-marked for full-on new race engines. Ho-hum. I also decided to stay away from any of the steel flywheels currently available on the market right now, dug deep in to the coffers and lashed out on one of the superbly made KAD aluminium flywheel and back plates. Hopefully I wouldn't have to deal with stuck-on flywheels any more. All back in the car, it fired up first hit, everything fine after full warm up I set too with other maintenance which included fitting new brake pads – this time I went for the Ferodo F4R spec pads as I had heard good things about them. I had also planned on changing the gear change remote and lever to get away from the quick-shift set-up, but time was pressing on. I decided to leave it as is since I had not had any more gear change issues at Lydden.

Snetterton was going to be a busy meeting – qualifying and two races in the same day. Starting at 09:00 with qualifying, 1st race at 11:15, second race at 14:15... no time to deal with anything that should crop up. After qualifying I needed to check/re-set the ignition timing and the valve clearances with the engine 'race hot'. Qualifying was also going to be a bit lame as I had to bed the new brake pads in first, then properly scrub the new tyres in, then try for a decent time. All in 15 minutes. I'd got through my expensive buffed tyres in a few races instead of the expected full season, so I decided to forget going that route again and just stick to the one set of full treaded tyres. The set I had kept aside for wet weather had only seen a few tentative laps of Cadwell Park at the start of the year, so were barely scrubbed in. First two laps dealt with bedding the pads in, then another couple of laps carefully working the tyres up to full temperature, another very slow lap to let them cool of, then tried to set a good time – made damned near impossible because by then the bigger, faster cars were catching me up and lapping me so I was continually having to give way at inopportune (for me) moments. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find myself not on the back of the grid. Albeit by two places... but then we were suffering the poorest turn-out in Post Historic this year to date – a mere 11 cars. Tragic. Back in the paddock, bonnet removed and a good look over to make sure all was well in there. Nothing bleeding out or fallen off/come undone, I re-set the valve clearances and the ignition timing, sorted fuel and checked water and oil levels. All good to go for the race.

For some reason we were lead round on the warm up lap by a pace car. Odd. Never had that before. Anyway, back to the start line and formed up on the grid. Lights on, off, and away. Mediocre start followed by damn-near driving the Mini up the exhaust pipe of a Mk1 Lotus Cortina all but stationery in front of me! Reflex reaction took me left around him, and passed a short cue of cars stuck behind a static Jaguar XJ12. Making the dive in to the first corner somewhat interesting but less cluttered than usual. Recovering from the surprise of ending up more than half way up the small grid I got on with the business that is racing. All was going pretty well, got past a couple of cars and then found myself behind my mate Tony Crates in his Mk2 Lotus Cortina... here we go again. A couple of laps of sizing him up – and what appeared, to the spectators, as a good dice for position – I found I was faster everywhere other than that accursed long back straight. So I needed to get past him as soon as possible after that to build enough of a gap to stop him sailing past me towards the end of the straight again. And it was gong to have to be through the fast, sweeping Coram Curve leading in to the chicane leading on to the pit straight. Cued him up, got right along side him going in to the chicane... and he just turned in on me anyway! I had a hell of a time using all limbs and controls getting the car stopped, turned and avoiding driving in to him. Needless to say, coming out the other side I was well off line. Not wanting to loose too much ground on him up the pit straight I nailed it, peaked rpm in second, shift to third... except I managed to stick it in 1st instead... Damn near stood the car on it's headlights... Whipped it out of 1st and in to 3rd... and carried on.

Now, I tell all my customers that once you have over-revved the engine – stop. Immediately. It may cost you the race, but it is far cheaper than mangling the whole engine when the inevitable happens – one or more of the exhaust valve heads breaks off and gets lobbed about inside the cylinder. Ultimately trashing the piston, head, bore and feasibly con rod and crank. However, the racing Devil on my left shoulder whispered in my ear that the engine was running fine, so keep going. I could catch and take that pesky Cortina... He was whispering a good deal louder than the racing angel on my right shoulder who new what was about to happen if I persisted... 2 laps later it did. I heard the noise and instantly dipped the clutch and hit the kill switch. All too late of course... And that meant no 2nd race. Mind you, even if I had of stopped I didn't have enough time to strip the head off and change the exhaust valves anyway. No consolation for being a complete pratt though. So once again its engine out... except the re-build is going to be a lot more extensive as I could see the offending exhaust valve jammed in the crown of number 3 piston.. so that'll be a damaged head as well then.

What is more annoying is that I was to make my first foray in to the Swinging Sixties series at Mallory Park, Bank Holiday Monday, 31st August. And worse than that, I simply do not have the time to hand to do that re-build any time soon... Excuse me while I take myself outside and give myself a damn good talking to.