NSCC Rounds 3 and 4

NSCC Rounds 3 and 4

May 4^th 5^th

Well, seeing as we've just run Round Five I thought I might get the report for the previous two rounds written up. Unfortunately, as I suffer from CRS, I've almost entirely forgotten what happened, so some of what you read here is complete fiction and fabrication. Or possibly it isn't. I don't know – I can't remember. Now what am I doing here again? Yes! Round write-ups.

Right, so back to the 4^th of May; May The Fourth Be With You and all that shite. After a couple of tins and a good night's kip the previous night, there was much pluviosity afoot on the Sunday morning which didn't bode well. Still, it dried up fairly quickly, I think, though I may have imagined it. Anyway, there were some heavy hitters out for qualifying. Top of the pile was Andy Hadfield in the recently re-motored Twister T-bucket, and he set the benchmark high with an 8.95 at 154mph. Next was HRG15, and I can't remember who that was so I'll just look on www.nscc.info, and while I'm at it I'll just check Facebook …

… ah, yes, it's Ian Walley with a 10.3 at 129mph showing more to come, followed by HRG11, now who's that again? I'll look on www.nscc.info again and I must just check that eBay auction I've been watching...

… of course, it's Simon Boot with a 10.88 at 127mph. I wish some of you cockshites would fill in your announcer's info slips at York so I don't keep having to do this. Quick was the word, though, as 13.0 was only good enough for eighth spot – Paul Hughes in the blown Fox was there – then there was a two-second jump to Shaun Cockcroft in the hot Crossflow-powered Escort on 15.0, then Shaun struggling to control the boost on the Syclone in 10^th. Mark Butterworth with the old Y-block F100 was revelling in the delights of a three-speed manual on the column but surprised himself with a 17.9, while Lee Ward was struggling to get the El Camino hooked up and was tailing the pack in 19^th with a 19.8. Bad luck award for the day went to newcomer Robert 'Knobby' Colquhoun in the lairy Focus ST, who managed to bust his halfshafts in the burnout before his first qualifying attempt.

The sun was scorching in between the snow showers, and as soon as it melted the ice cap at the top end of the track we got into round one. Though that might have been a dream I had. Any road up, in round one, the midfielders faced off first with Andy Errington's TVR sneaking past Shaun's struggling Syclone 15.2 to 15.3, followed by Shaun Cockcroft beating Dec Hughes' Golf with a quicker reaction. Paul Hughes ran 13.8 to see off Nigel's smart little Zetec Anglia, while Fadster took it easy on his bye with a 9.5, still managing to card a 162mph terminal... Jamie Hughes was clearly sandbagging with a 12.8 in qualifying, as he managed to whip a 10.4 out of the hat to put Dave Smith out, then Simon waited 2.7 seconds on the line before taking off to run 12.9 against Rick Swaine's 19.3. Russ Pursley comprehensively hammered Scott Presland, then Lee Ward picked up two seconds but would have needed another seven and a half to stop Ian Walley. James Murray ran a 13.8 against Mark Presland's 18.6, then Keith Freeman polished off the round by pulling a 12.0 out of his bottom to beat an ever-improving Mark Butterworth in the classic Ford hauler.

Between rounds one and two, the capacity crowd in the grandstand was treated to a spot of culture in the shape of the entire Murty family performing their Kabuki Japanese theatre-style interpretation of that Chuckle Brothers episode where Barry and Paul have to paint a battleship. Again, I may have dreamed this. Definitely the bit about the capacity crowd, anyway.

We started round two with something of an upset in the race between Jamie's Land Rover and Russ's Dutton. Both guys red-lit, and although Jamie ran a whopping 10.0 to Russ's 11.0, Russ got the win under the 'first or worst' rule. Next up, Simon's Camaro ended Paul Hughes's run, the Camaro carding a 12.30, then Keith Freeman plopped an 11.7 on the table to end James's day. Andy Errington red-lit trying to get the drop on Andy Hadfield, but he'd have had to have a drop like the Enola Gay to have beaten Fadster's 8.69 at 162mph. Talking of an atomic meltdown, Ian Walley managed a 10.8 against Shaun Cockcroft's little Escort, but went over the line in a cloud of smoke that even woke the fire engine driver. Ian won the race, but that was his weekend over as having your pistons in a puddle in the sump is considered bad from an engineering perspective.

What made it worse is that Ian should have been on a bye into the semis in the following round, but the car was too sick to even break the beams. Gutted. It also meant that there were two pairs in the quarter finals, which confused everyone else even more. In the first pairing, Russ ran a strong 11.0 to put Simon out, while Keith Freeman ran a valiant 11.8 against on-a-mission Andy's 8.47 at 169mph.

This meant that the semi finals comprised of just Russ and Andy, both on solos, so both just broke the beams then backed up again for the final. It was a magnificent sight looking down the strip in the late evening sunset, the heat haze shimmering off the desert sand on either side of the track while multi-hued tropical birds swooped around the oasis on the return road and the mournful song of the Bedouin … hold on, never mind that last bit, I may possibly be over-elaborating. Either way, these two scruffy herberts lined up and were away, Russ having the slightly better reaction but his 10.9 was nowhere near enough to cover a blistering 8.24 at 170mph from the flying Fadster.

Another corking day's racing, but with some casualties along the way. Gasket still hadn't solved his over-boosting problems, and these were later accompanied by gears going hidey in the transmission. Dave Smith had a similar problem, except it was just reverse that had disappeared from his. Ian's Cortina was definitely out for the count but that didn't stop him helping patch up Knobby's driveshafts so he could at least get to the Barnes Wallis for the cruise. Yes, the Barnes was the place to be for a full nosebag with live music from Motley Crue on the final date of their farewell tour. Tremendous. Or I may have just listened to them on my iPod on the way back. But I don't have an iPod.

Anyway, you're confusing me now so, after a good night's sleep and a very welcome sauna and massage at the Seaton Ross Hilton, there was just time for a swift 18 holes before qualifying opened on bank holiday Monday morning. Despite the handful that were whores du combat from the previous day, another handful of brave souls had stepped into the breach to give us another 19-car field. Andy Hadfield topped the bill again with an 8.8, followed by Jamie on a 10.1 and Russ on 11.0. Simon Boot was closer to form with an 11.4 followed by Keith's 11.9, while in at number eight was Paul Everitt in a smart Rover-powered Pop running 14.9. Lee Openshaw was in the house with his blown Punto to re-engage in the war with his mate Dec, Lee Ward was closer to where he should be in the small-block El Camino with a 16.3 in 14^th place, while Gasket had dropped to the bottom of the heap in the sickly Syclone, his 19.02 at 72.47 just sneaking in behind Rick's 19.00 at 72.45mph.

We all lined up in the staging lanes, watching a herd of majestic Wildebeest sweep across the East Riding veldt on their way to wallow and frolic in the vast lake of slurry and pig shit at the top of the return road, and it certainly made us all feel grateful that we weren't hamsters. Waking us from our reverie was Andy Fadster, chasing the title of fastest doorslammer at York (despite the goalposts constantly moving – I blame that continental drift, myself) and opening the bidding with an 8.26 at 173mph on his first-round bye. Paul Hughes was gifted the win by a red-lighting Lee Ward, followed by an old skool Ford showdown with Paul Everitt's Pop besting Nigel's 105E. Russ Pursley put Rick Swain eight seconds to the deficit, while Keith Freeman pulled a similar trick on Scott Presland's Pop. Scott's cloned twin, Mark Presland, however, fared better when Simon Boot threw away a seven second advantage by red-lighting, followed by James Murray pulling a similar trick and giving Mark Butterworth a free trip to the second round. Shaun Wilson recovered some form to card a 15.8, but Jamie Hughes had him covered in the next lane with a mighty 9.93 at 137mph. Lee Openshaw scored a result in his ongoing grudge-match with Dec Hughes as Andy Errington's red-light put Lee through to the next round while Dave Smith just squeaked ahead of Dec to put him out for the day.

It had been a tense first round, not helped by the discovery just before lunch of the exceptionally rare – thought to be extinct – Trackbite Newt living in the grass at the side of the strip and occasionally jumping out to nibble away at the track prep. The local Environmental dudes slapped a preservation order and a cease and desist writ on the whole gaff, but after James Murray and Gasket headed off to petition the appeal court, the whole thing was overturned when it was discovered that the newt sighting was nothing more than a half-chewed Haribo that Al Perkins had lost during a sneezing fit at the previous meeting. Thank God for that, we could get on with the second heat.

It started with Russ Pursley laying down a 10.8 at 124 to bring Paul Everitt's day to an end. Keith Freeman ended Mark Butterworth's good fortune, 11.4 to 17.4, while Paul Hughes did likewise for Mark Presland, 13.7 to 18.6 and Jamie did for Lee 9.9 to 16.1. Jamie sat for four seconds, spooling up on the line, just to unleash bloody hell on Lee. In a similar fashion, the only way Dave could have topped Andy's 8.8 would have included an eighth-mile of bungee rope between the two cars.

The quarters went according to the form book, Russ's 10.8 putting Paul Hughes out, and Jamie rattling off a 10.2 on his bye. The two old Ford rods were quite a match-up, Keith's 11.7 not standing up against Andy's 8.55 at 169mph though.

There was a small drama in the semi finals, as Russ's opponent Mike Bye had a bit of an emotional meltdown and announced that he was abandoning the soul-crushing daily grind of being a circus performer and was running off to join a troupe of travelling chartered accountants, leaving Russ to run 11.6 unopposed. Immediately afterwards, though, it was all high-speed fun as Jamie clocked off a storming 9.70 at 143mph, but that still couldn't come close to Fadster's 8.25 at 168mph.

And so the scene was set for the final. Russ in the featherweight small-block Dutton; Fadster in the brain-scramblingly hard-hitting wheelbarrow-dodging T-strainer. The short odds were on the T, but upsets have been known to happen and … as should happen in any good narrative, that's exactly what happened here, albeit in a rather disappointing fashion. As the two proponents headed for the line, the excitement caused the T-bucket to turn into a wee-bucket and have a trousers-accident in the fire-up lane. It was only a small radiator leak, but rather than hold up proceedings trying to patch up a car that had already suffered enough of a pasting that weekend, Andy gallantly bowed out leaving Russ to run a solo 11.1 to take the trophy and maximum points for the day.

Another superb double-header, only slightly marred by Vladimir Putin walking onto the startline and proclaiming “Right, I'm having zis, too” before being dragged off by his missus. Although I can't remember exactly what happened, I'm sure I managed to blend the fact and the fiction together seamlessly enough to convey that it was a terrific weekend of fun, on and off the track, and even those pesky alligators couldn't spoil it for us. Cheeky buggers, walking around like they own the place when they're nothing more than some rather camp cowboy boots waiting to happen. Anyway, see you next time.

Eugene  

The Annoying Orange

Some things have been happening to the metalflake orange Fox convertible. Not as many things as need doing, and nowhere near as quickly as I'd like, but they're happening. First, the silver rolling shell that I bought in for spares arrived looking like this:

It's now looking like this:

A bundle of bits have been sold; the rest have been stashed in the unit, mostly on top of the rust-free Fox shell that's in there so it now looks like Mount Foxshite. 

On the annoying orange front, I dropped the fuel tank and the original 8.8" back axle - the latter needs returning to the previous owner.

I decanted the fuel into the daily driver, and removed the in-tank electric fuel pump. The new motor won't take 45psi from the electric pump, so I just replaced it with a length of rubber pipe and some cable ties. Hurrah for cable ties!

I cut a notch in the bottom of the pipe so that, should it touch the bottom of the tank it won't seal itself off. I also replaced the fuel filter The one that came off was a Motorcraft one, which means that either a previous owner was very fastidious about using OE-spec parts, or, more likely, it was the one it left the factory with 22 years and 92,000 miles previously. I know that after I emptied the residual fuel out of it, I tried to blow through it and nearly shat myself with the force required to get the tiniest breath of air through it. I replaced it with a UFI pattern filter made in Tunisia, that well-known industrial centre of excellence, which was so easy to blow through that I almost expected a party streamer to come out of the other end accompanied by a feeble "parp" noise. It also has to be said that if you want to change the fuel filter on a fuel-injected Fox, removing the axle first makes the job a shed-load easier.

With the 8.8" out, I got the 7.5" axle ready to go in. I'd already replaced the wheel cylinders, so I took the brake pipes and flexi off the 8.8 and fitted them to the 7.5". The original arrangement from the 7.5 wouldn't link up with the car's brake lines - they're routed differently to clear the dual exhausts - hence using the 8.8 gear, but with the car up on stands and the axle hanging down, the 8.8 flexi was being stretched tighter than Susan Boyle's knicker elastic. It must just be the fact that the axle casing is so much smaller than the 8.8's. 

While I was under there, I noticed that one of the upper arms had a rather baggy bush.

It's never pleasant finding a baggy bush. Oddly, the axle end bush had been changed recently, but at the body end, the rubber was halfway out of the housing. I dropped the arm out, and the bush was truly buggered.

The system on the fox is very similar to the old MkIV Cortina, and while I've seen plenty of ruined void bushes on those, I've never seen one where the rubber bush has got scared of the dark and is making a break for it. 

The advantage of having several tons of Fox spares (there had to be ONE advantage) is that a replacement arm with reasonable bushes is merely a trip to the shelves full of shite away. Anyway, the axle is now on, the brakes have been fully rebuilt - after a brief recap on the process when I discovered that I'd fitted both trailing shoes to the same drum...), the prop's back on and the exhaust - the original 4-pot one - has been fitted. I think it'll take a bit of tweaking to not rattle against the rear lower GT skirt, but it's all coming together...

... and just as well, because at the last round of racing, reverse gear has disappeared from the daily's transmission. It's looking less like it'll make it to the expiry of its MoT in July, and it has the Power Tour to do at the end of this month.

NSCC 2014 Round 2

Monday would be another day of racing into a headwind. I wouldn't say the wind was strong, but I watched a pigeon lay the same egg four times. With the threat of rain heading in mid-afternoon, the qualifiers were done with a degree of alacrity rarely seen in NSCC circles, with Ian Walley back on top with 10.6 at 127mph, and Russ snapping at his heels with a 10.8 at 121mph. The rest of the qualifying tree was much the same as Sunday's (cue Fluff Freeman's “At The Sign Of The Swinging Cymbals” theme tune) but up two places to number five was Paul Hughes, getting a handle on the blown Fox for a 13.3. Dec and Kevin had swapped places, Dec now ahead by four thousandths, and everybody else below that having shaved a few tenths off their Sunday times. In all, after Sunday's drop-outs, we had 16 qualifiers which made for a lovely, neat ladder.

With that rain getting ever closer, we couldn't afford to fart about, which is a shame, as it's what we do best. In fact, some of us have spent years honing our skills, and the only thing that's prevented us turning professional in the high-pressure public sector world of politics is the hope of being selected to fart about for Team GB in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Mark Presland was the first victim, falling to Russ's 10.8, shortly followed by his twin brother Scott falling to Ian's 10.55. The battle of the Foxes saw Paul's white one trounce Dave's red/black/brown one, after which Shaun bested a struggling Andy in the TVR – clearly he has fallen from favour with the almighty. Nigel put paid to Dec's hopes, James ended Nad's progress, then things started to go a bit runny – Kev beat Billy and Mark beat Nigel Henderson, both on apparent red-lights in the left-hand lane caused by the competitors rolling out of stage. It was all rather questionable, the start line marshals claiming that the wind was blowing the cars out of the staging beams, but Billy and Nigel were far too British and sportsmanlike to ask for a rematch. Stiff upper lips, gents!

In round two, Shaun lost out to Ian, while another battle of the Foxes saw Mark take the win over Paul, Paul's 13.0 promising more to come. Kev's good luck in the first round evaporated in the second with a red light against James, whose 12.2 pointed the way back to previous form, while Russ took another win to set up the semis.

The semis went according to the form book, with the yellow perils setting up another ten second final, but with dark clouds all around there was no time to waste. In fact, as Ian and Russ made their way to the line the rain was beginning to make its presence felt, and with spots starting to appear on windscreens, the final may have been a case of who was the bravest/daftest and who would keep it in a straight line the longest. That would be Ian, who managed an 11.2 against Russ's 11.4, and hats off to the pair of them for having the conkers to give it that much on a dampening track.

Two days of maximum points and a big welcome back for Ian Walley, runner-up and a gauntlet down for Russ, and a mighty fine weekend of racing for everyone concerned. We're back at York just a scant fortnight later for rounds three and four, and things are already starting to heat up. See you there.