As some of you know, my older brother, Steve, campaigns a drag car, "The Black Pig", a competition altered, Plymouth bodied, 600BHP small block Chevy. Lots of piccies of both it & him in the coverage of the Nostalgia Drags & HotRod Drags in Rally/Show Photos.
I've been nudging him for some time now to send in a write-up on the car & a few of his team mates in The Wild Bunch, plus photos, race reports etc. He writes well, (proper punctuation & everything!), so with luck he'll start contributing soon. As a taster, I hope he won't mind me reproducing part of the email he sent me concerning a broken steering linkage this weekend:
..."Linkage broke on track, just past mid point. I felt it go, decided that it was a rod end failure, (I have a set for the front end sitting on the bench at home so that would've been about right), & knowing that they were trapped by safety washers I decided to drive on thinking that I would just have loose steering at the end. We put in our quickest pass of the weekend & I let it scrub off as much as I dared before braking, but when I did it still bounced, the wheels got out of line & the left finally wrapped right round & we ploughed to a halt. It wasn't till I got out & looked that I realised that I had run the second half of the track with nothing holding the wheels aligned or any way of changing direction. Offered a short prayer to the Gods of excessive caster angle when we worked out it was about 200 feet per second through the lights & gracefully retired for the day.
Good job it was York & not a fast track! It's probably cost us two top three finishes in this years' championships as we can't catch up with the points left to collect & given me another unplanned job to fit in before the next meet".
I watch this guy in awe as he launches his car from the line. There's no way I'd have the bottle to do what he does so I'm very proud of him! Look out for regular race reports soon. There. Now he's GOT to write something!
