Pigs Progress
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Part 1. Hotrods.

Well, there it is, gone. A whole season filled with highs and lows, some pretty good runs, some really fun meets and the odd problem or two. Looking back over it , it seemed to be the longest one we have ever done, at least a full century has passed since we dropped a handful of valves and broke our lovely heads at the start of the year, and as for regular updates , hmmm.

We came away from the Truck Meet with a few bits of maintenance to do, so putting it off 'till the last moment found me working on the car at the track during the next outing, The Hot Rod Drags. This is one of the meets I look forward to all year and then spend all weekend complaining, it really is so busy that the queue's can reach right round the pits, not so bad if you are sat in an upholstered seat with your lap belt loosened, but a proper bas***d if you are fully suited and bolted into your race car sitting on a bare ally pan. I know no one likes a moaner but it really does take the edge off it, still always some cracking cars about to look at.
We had done a bit of maintenance work on the little hot rod since arriving and raised the jet sizes in both primary and secondary circuits of the carb in an effort to see if we could find a bit of the performance that we have lost over the season. We finally got a run in just after lunch time and whilst the track seemed to be holding up, as evidenced by "Smoking" Joe's first foray into the 8's and finally passing 150mph in his Back in Black altered, we seemed to struggle a bit with another off form (or not so much recently) 10.5 , although the driver was having fun for the first 60 foot that level of wheel spin doesn’t help ET's. Back in the pits and a quick look over it , a splash of fuel and back onto the end of the queue. Quite a lot of the Club's teams were using the weekend to play, and many had alternative drivers. Our Welsh buddies having swapped with Dave, the crew chief, driving. He was

Steve
having a good weekend eventually turning in all his runs in the 11.7's, well consistent. Worthy of note was Phil stepping out of the office of his little

Driver displays high levels of excitement at driving into the nines

slingshot to let girlfriend Abby have a go, never having sat in the car before, She put up a best of 17.5 , great stuff. We shuffled with the traffic down to the line for a couple of more runs finally running a slightly better 9.9 at 134, not quite what we were looking for but at least nothing broke. Sunday morning was what Sunday mornings are after Saturday nights and we finally got organised at about 11'ish, car warmed up and sounding quite crisp, a little more timing in it to see if that might help, and down to the line we went. The first reports of the track from those that had run before us suggested that it was in fair shape and we were looking forward to trying it. Through the water and floor it, up on the tyres and let it run out to the blue line before getting off the throttle and easing the brakes on, an horrendous shuddering from the front end suggested that, once again, all was not well and an attempt to move the car off of the racing line showed a distinct lack of directional control. Bugger, shut it down and get out. There always seems to be capacity grandstands when these things happen. We park the car against the Armco in the return road and watch the rest of the class go through before Welsh Tone takes the van to go and collect his car and crew whilst we walk back to our pit. When he gets back Tony takes the van back down to the start line, and thinking he's helping, leaves it in front of the race car, earning us the wrath of photographers and track staff alike while we sit, quite oblivious to it all ,at the far end of the pits where the tannoys don't reach. Later, after racing is called due to a massive oil down, we take the trailer and quietly load the car and slip away. Investigation at home shows that we have sheared the end right off of the output shaft of the steering box, another little job to do.

Steve.