Right after work at the printshop, the team met up at the garage to get all things together. The Grenler brothers and Böna gave the Transit a new set of tyres during the week. That made the travel to the track really pleasant. What could possible go wrong now? We arrived to the track abround 22:00 and after stopping at the gates the starter on the Transit jammed...
...so we had to tow the towtruck to the pit before we could start unloading.
We were informed that the track had only some 350-400 meters from the finnishline to to the return. For faster cars that couldnt make the 90 degrees turn safely after braking 350-400m were allowed to continue to the 600m point and wait. A fireman would collect all faster cars and when apropriate let all cars do a U-turn and drive back to the normal return.
The qualifying should start at 10:00 and no pertiqular order were anounced. All cars tryed to reach the start at the same time wich obviously jammed the pits completely. After an hour or so the crew made things clearer and the rest of the wekend were jam free.
Jam or no jam, we managed to run our first qualifying round just before 11:00. 10,07-239kmh@402m. 6,60-175kmh@201m. 1,55s@60ft. Right off the trailer!
in the morning tiredness I forgot to activate the automatic boost-per-shift system, so I ran the whole run with 36psi. A verry large difference compared to Sundsvall with broken conectors to the boost selenoids. I had to wait some fife minutes at the end of the track until I got clearance to go back. Just enough time to put the shout in the car, stop and save the log and also to take a couple of nice pics with my cellphone for bakgruond.
Right after our first qualifying round, there was an additional drivers meeting. The track had water creeping up thrue the surface after 300m. The crew decided to only alow 201m race for the rest of the day. We took the rest of the day as a test n tune to set up our cluch.
At first I tryed to warmen up the cluch a bit too much. That only resulted in that the engine bogged.
In the third round, yet only 201m I played a bit easier on the cluch and at once the results were clearly better.
6,45s - 180khm@201m. 60ft: 1,53s.
We all knew that if that run had ben a 402m run, it would have ben sensational...
...so we werent too happy about it.
We saved the fuel and engine for sundays eliminations and tight up the barbaque instead.
Sunday morning:
The weather was absolutely perfect. No water in the track meant 402m racing!
All we had to concentrate on doing now was to repeat saturdays last run, but all the way.
Unfortunally the timing system failed, and I didnt even get a timeslip!
Not only did we not get a time slip. The oil cooler gave up too. It started to leak as I was standing at the end of the track waiting for permission to go back. In fact I had to wait for almost 20 minutes. Far beyond what ever can be consedered reasonable. Anyway, as soon as I got back to the pit the cooler and its components were quickly removed and we were good to go.
Just as it was our turn, the crew decided to take a lunch brake and then start the eliminations afterwards. We persuaded the crew to let us re run before their brake.
This time we put our trust to left lane, since right lanes timing seemed to be troublesome. When I left the line averything fealt pretty good, but just as I put in second gear I lost all action. I was 100% confident it was the synchros that were broken. I rolled off the track and we got help by the audience to push the car back to the pit. I threw my drivers suit in to the truck and we all started taking down the gearbox like mad. Elmer checked the cluch while I shifted gear set. 40 minutes later everything was back in place with the new set of gears and all.
Unfortunally the wengine wouldnt start. Infact, it had no compression what so ever.
The thought never even slipped my mind. Not until then anyway. I didnt thought the gears looked all that bad, and of course there were no problems with them. The reason I lost all action was not even related to them. It was the engine that stopped...
...or at least the cams stopped, due to rocker arms split into various sized peices locking it.
The crank obviously didnt care much about that since the timing chain snapped.
I went to the truck to check my phone for messages...
...but as destroying the engine wasnt enough, some cock sucker had gone into my truck and stolen my phone!
A two months old Nokia 5310 Xpress with a photo of the Wok in the end of the track as background.
What a brilliant way to end the weekend.
When we came back to the garage we lifted the head to check for damages.
It seems as all valves has made contact with the pistons.
Anything less would be considered a miracle when snaping the timing chain at 9300rpm.
The valves had bent so easily that the rest of the engine had survived fairly well. A set of new valves, a new timing chain, timing chain guides, new lower timing gear and we were good to go.
The cylinder head gasket were actually OK this time. Has to be the first.
The plan is to go to Pite Dragway 850km north of Stockholm next weekend.
We need to leave Stockholm 06:00 friday morning to make it.
It is not an impossible task, but having a regular 08-17 work at an office doesnt exactly help...
Since this text is translated quite a long time after it all happened, I might just write it here.
I did not manage to get the engine and car ready for Pite. Everything was in place 18:00 friday evening, some 12 hours late. We went to a local car show and did some burnout show instead.
Foto: woken.se, Elmer and K Lindström.
