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| 12th March 2012 |
| Motorsport weekend, and some Volvo! |
Busy few days doing motorsport, and only a little bit of Volvo amongst the offerings!
- Tuesday
Geoffery visited with his 1929 Ford Model A Speedster, and we went off for a test run. You may remember that early last week was wet, and I duly took Geoffery up "Water Lane" - the water was up to my knee level I discovered when the engine promptly cut out after 50m. Bailing out the spark plug wells in the cylinder head sorted it, and we headed back the way we'd come, since the water was flowing very fast down the road just 100m further on! - Friday
The March Hare 12 car rally: this is the annual SCCoN vs Kings Lynn motor club match, in spite of always having done moderately well in the event, I have a phobia of the navigation which I generally find too cerebral for my liking. David's route was generally pretty straightforward for 90% of the 100 miles, but the section before the mid event regroup had me totally flumoxed; and sadly I hadn't noticed that the cautioned bridge we'd been given a signing on was just a little south of our position - this was a big give away, since the route had to go there.
Jonathan and his 205GTi were on excellent form, and he made up for my tardy plotting to give us 3rd overall, and first SCCoN car home.
The winner had 6' of penalties, then Paul Banham with 33' followed by us with 36' - you can see that the wining KL crew were seriously good that night! - Sunday
Off to Chelmsford MC's Honington gymkhana in my Volvo 142. The mist burnt off by 0900 to reveal a spectacular warm & fresh day for the organisers - always good to have when you count up how many volunteer marshals are required on one of these events. - I navigated for Richard Atherton (my London/CapeTown driver) in his Rover, running as car #5 - he was faultless on all 12 competitive runs, putting in times around 1 or 2s off the fastest.
- RA navigated for my in the 142, sadly I wasn't listening to him on test 10 and had to go back for cone J costing me over 15s after I'd finished messing about with reverse and 3rd gear...
At about midday we gained a very odd squeaking low down in the engine at the rear: not unlike a couple of starlings sitting around the main bearings! And oil started leaking liberally, otherwise the engine was predictably superb, although we can do some ignition mapping improvements yet. - So, I finished 1st in class, and squeezed into 10th overall.
- Richard finished, as ever, ahead of me in 9th position
- One of the delights for me was the huge interest shown in the 142 by many people, one of the respected marshals (a competitor frequently) stating that it was his "take home" car of the day, by a long chalk. Two other competitors expressed the same sentiment, and several others quizzed me about how to get hold of these two door rarities.
- Today, Monday
- So, our newly acquired 850 Volvo received a full new HT set last week, about £120 worth of gear from our Bosch supplier - to no avail, it sort of starts, but horribly lumpy, won't rev, craters, altogether terrible.
- Emma forced me to change the fuel filter (which possibly had never been done judging by the corroded bracket, no better.
- We checked all the vacuum lines and their connector elbows, all good, and all the attached sensors held vacuum too.
- So we kicked the tyres...
- Then Emma poked the MAF connector, saying "wozzat then?" Which meant: take that connector off and spray it WD40.
- Nope, no better. But then we disconnected and ran the engine. Guess what, absolutely perfect.
- We now have a new MAF sensor expected to arrive tomorrow, £180 which raises the total spend to a shade under £1000 for this car.
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