Pigs Progress
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Roasted pork...

Well, we finally got to do our second meeting of the year, the damage sustained at the first being far more than originally thought. I had had the heads repaired with pieces being welded into the port roofs and new guides and ten valves needing attention and a further two replacing then all springs shimmed to height and weight and other clever stuff in the aluminium sculpting line. When we went to refit them the brand new stud kit was short of eight pieces, the entire lower edge of one head, and when that was sorted it became apparent that I had miscounted and we were still short of two nuts ! Finally, with all the motor back together, we turned to the ignition. The MSD6 that we had been running was taken off and a "7" put in it's place,complete with two step limiter, an entire new loom knitted to run it and bugger all spark at the end of it. A quick look inside the unit showed smoke damage, not generally good, and further investigation turned up two crispy resistors. An e-mail to MSD resulted in first class service with circuit diagrams and component values forthcoming, but even with these replaced the spark was still in hiding. Meanwhile one of our racing buddies, Sizzlin' Sid with the world's most pretty Jag slingshot, let it be known that he could bring another "7" to the track with him on Friday night, so loaded with tools and cable and stuff we set off.
Arriving mid-afternoon it was too hot to do much other than set up our little palace and open a beer, by about eightish most of the Club were in residence and Sid had arrived with the ignition unit. A quick look proved that it was an MSD8 with nearly all the ancillaries, not at all compatable with what we had but a first class system,as he was looking for sensible money for it we added it to our ever increasing stock and had another beer. While the car sat there looking smug, I crept over to to the van and quietly got out the old "6", the crew distracted the Pig by washing bits of it and I slipped in and bolted it back on. Barely two hours of head scratching later it was wired in and we had a spark, not great but we were in the game. More beer and bed.
7.30 is no time to be getting up in a civilised world but it was already too hot not to, by nine we were scrutineered, signed on and warming the motor up. The timing was proving to be a bit of a 'mare to set but I put it down to a faulty light, I must stop laying the lead across the exhaust ! The first couple of runs were disappointing as the driver had developed stupid during the layoff and twice pushed in high gear just as the car got rolling, we had two more during the day, neither of which was inspiring, but at least we were back out. At the end of the day we cleaned the car, put it on stands, checked the critical bolts and beer? oh yes!
Sunday started much like Saturday,bloody hot. I still couldn't get the timing where I wanted it and ended up with far more static than I would have liked in order to get anything like respectable advance, obviously a problem there somewhere. Andy turned up bringing the lovely Janie and Dave ( or actually they, him) and we spent the day either on the track or sprawled in the shade trying to keep cool, or at least cooler. I wish I could remember more of it but a dash 20 fire suit is like wearing a 900TOG duvet and air temps were in the 90's most of the day with reported track surface temps in excess of 150, and thats hot. Overall I didn't think the car had performed as well as expected and was a little disappointed with the weekend but after a damm good soaking whilst packing up in the rain (where did that come from ?) had cooled us down a bit and the intelligent half of the management had looked at the timing data on the way home it seems we had run within a tenth of our best ever, so nothing like as bad as I thought, a look at the dizzy the next day showed a broken spring and a total advance of less than 20 degrees where we would normally run at least 36 and all of a sudden I want to go again. Sooooo... we are displaying the car in Hungerford carnival during Saturday and now plan to tow straight to the track from there Saturday evening and get to run Sunday at the Mini Nationals, hopefully the advance kit will have arrived for the dizzy and we'll down jet the carb again and maybe, just maybe there's a quick run waiting for us. Thanks to all who stopped in to say hello over the weekend, it would be so easy to blame it on the heat, but actually I'm just that miserable.
Besides that all I have to do is crack on with the new car, build a new truck, spec a new motor, and now....."Daffer Dave, King of all things Ossa" popped into the shed during the week and asked what I thought about maybe helping to build an historic style sprint bike for him, Jap or Wessie on dope maybe blown, in a lightweight laydown chassis and do the odd weekend meet locally, "nah, you're all right Dave, too much on now really, oh, hang on, yes!" bo****ks, so who's got a baby Shorrocks proping the shed door open, look better on a 500 single madly flailing down the quarter don't you think?

Cheers
Steve