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by Rubce
![]() posts: 10449 Library Manager RBRR organising team member joined on Tue 31st Mar 1998 |
CSMA Autosolo and other mumblings! |
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A busy Triumph time at present. Last weekend was the first event in the Club Triumph Autosolo Mini Series, I entered using the GT6 and shared the car with James Carruthers. I started well even with the timing being well out-something I could not work out as she ran perfectly well to Bovingdon from Chertsey? I had to advance the ignition by some 8 degrees, very strange. After the first Test I was leading the Class B Historics and all the Club Triumph cars. After that it all seemed to go awry and as I sort of expected, Mike Helm started to claw back the times and eventually acheived the best Triumph times. Paul Hughes showing some demon oversteer beat me to win Class B Historics. All the Triumph drivers did very well, James Cooper, Joe Welling, Andy Martin and James Carruthers all showing that they are fast drivers and will be competitive this year in the series. I have decided that I must use the Spitfire, so will now attempt to get that ready for the forthcoming Oxford MC Bocardo Autosolo at Silverstone. At present only 5 Triumph cars are entered for that event, I hope we get a few more? Anyway, well done to Mike Helm for beating us all, he's some driver! Otherwise I have to change the Clutch on the GT6 for the June 'International Auto Ecosse' , I have ordered the parts from Canleys and hope that they will arrive tail end of next week. The car did disgrace itself at Bovingdon when the starter solenoid packed up, so I had to fit another one this week. I have stated this before, but I really enjoy driving the GT6, its such a good old thing, and after 27 years, driving her is second nature. I have now taken the head off the 2.5, I need to measure the depth from the block surface to the top of each piston at TDC, these figures will be given to Roy Burrell who is preparing the 2.5S head I bought years ago from Andy Pearce. On stripping this head I found that it has Chris Witor 'penny on a stick' stainless steel valves, bronze guides and A series oil seals. Roy is going to do a minor bit of combustion chamber work and reduce the height of the head so I can run a 9.75:1 compression ratio. He will also fit hardened exhaust valve seats to prevent valve recession. The head I have taken off is showing up to 1.5mm on some valves, still not quite up to the 2.5mm that Craig Gingell's head has shown!!! Then its back to some 10CR work for the car. I took James Cooper and Richard Brake up to The Plough the other night and they were laughing at the state of the door furniture all held in place with split pins and the like. Also the front passenger dear locking mechanism has failed, this results in the driver assuming Chauffeur duties and rushing around to open the door for the passenger!!! 10CR co-driver dave Kent has told me that he will pop over and help put the doors back together with me, he recklons I am a lazy sod, not wrong there Dave!!! Also I have started to price up the cost of fitting the Lucas pi gear back on the car. I have decided that I do not want to use a Lucas pump, so will go the way of many a PI owner and fit a Bosch pump and gubbins! By the way I love the photo at the top of this posting, James Carruthers took the photo, I like the way it is out of focus at the front and clear at the back.
posted Fri 22nd Apr 2011
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![]() posts: 30 Pendle & Pennine group joined on Thu 2nd Oct 2008 |
Essex 12 Car Rally |
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Sunday 23rd August was the day of the Club Triumph - Essex 12 car rally. I'd been looking forward to this event for a while. The day dawned bright, and turned into one of the hottest. So we had the best part of the day sat in the oven of a Herald, with a heater we couldn't turn off! We arrived at the start in Bures with plenty of time to spare, although that was the only time we were going to be early all day. After the remaining cars had arrived, the drivers briefing got underway. Among the topics were advice of a large bump along the route that was likely to remove an exhaust if taken too fast, part of the route which had recently been resurfaced in gravel leaving it extremely slippery and a possible road closure just before the finish. Once this was done the clues to the first 2 sections were handed out and the crews returned to their cars to start plotting the first section. Plotting section 1 was fairly straightforward with clues in the form of 6/8 figure grid references. A roamer is especially useful here. We worked as a team on this, with one person reading whilst the other plotted. Then we swapped over to double check the route. This undoubtedly added a few minutes to our time and may be something we can improve on. On completing the section we looked at the clue to the next section. For this we got a clear A4 sheet with some little numbered circles, the first of which had the name of a farm. OK, so we place this over the map with the first circle on the farm and the position of the other circles tells us our route. Well, not quite. We quickly worked out we'd have to rotate the sheet on the map until the circles all fell over roads. This was getting a bit fiddly now... until we spotted the BIG line drawn on the sheet with a gridline number on it! As soon as we lined that up, the rest fell into place. So, after a short time plotting we were back on the road. The on road navigation was fine, apart from one point where we turned up what we thought was the right road only to find it was the longest farm driveway ever! We now realised we were in danger of missing the closing time at the next checkpoint. With a few miles to go we traversed the recently gravelled lanes mentioned at the drivers briefing (very slippery). As I was counting down the distance and time left we could see a tractor ahead. Things were getting tight now, but it turned off just as we came up behind it, phew! Onto the final main road to the finish of the section and I could tell we would barely make it when we encountered a slow moving van (you don't often see one of those!). With hardly more than a mile to go and less than 2 minutes left we made it past the van. Now we were coming up to the final minute, but around the corner was more slow moving traffic. We had no option but to follow them to the car park that marked the finish of the stage. With only a few seconds to go we turned into the car park - made it!For the second half of the event the clues got a bit trickier, Section 3 gave us a spot height to drive to. Along this part of the route we had to get the phone number off the side of a building. This was then used to calculate the grid reference of the section finish. To navigate from the spot height to the section finish we had to find 3 spot heights that added up to 84! Unfortunately we'd not had chance to mark up the map prior to the event so finding the spot heights wasn't easy but luckily (and it was luck) we quickly found the 3 we needed. Once the route was plotted it was back on the road and onto the end of the section. There was then a short neutral stage where we had a tulip diagram to get to the start of the final section. The clues for the final section were a set of gridlines to cross, then a herringbone. Pretty straightforward, and with time moving on we dispensed with our usual cross-checking, plotted the route and set off. Time was starting to run away again and encounters with slow traffic, pedestrians and cyclists all meant taking extra care and an appropriate reduction in speed which started to add up to a significant delay. It still looked achievable though and we finally pulled into the pub at the finish to be greeted by a huge Club Triumph marquee with a couple of minutes to spare. Now we could get down to the important part of the day, lunch! We were definitely ready for it, and it was really excellent. Once the end of the event had been declared the results were announced. There were 2 classes, Novice and Expert, with us entered in the Novice class. The full results can be found on the Club Triumph website. As for our performance, we somehow managed to come first in class with 3 fails! When the overall results were announced, we'd come first overall as well. A really excellent end to the day. ![]() |
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