What a week(end)!!

Firstly my tow car broke down after Silverstone and I have been struggling to find someone to repair it at a sensible cost, I finally found someone and the blooming super battery had done one too many hyperdrive and was flat.  I thought not a problem, I know a few people with tow cars plus you can still hire a van with a tow bar, how wrong I was!!

Eventually, the Friday before Snetterton, one of my work colleagues, Simon Taylor, very kindly agreed to lend mey his Lexus LS400 to tow with, brilliant, thank you Simon.

Secondly, you may remember from Silverstone that my front nearside disc had warped, it wasn’t a huge problem at Silverstone but on closer inspection it has caused my front brake pads to break up because the discs were so abrasive.  This meant I needed to find some new front discs, which I thought wouldn’t be a problem but it was actually impossible!!   

I couldn’t find any discs for an FD/FE Ventora (which is what a Droop Snoot had) and I spoke to all the different club members/anoraks and no joy; apparently they do come up but not in my lifetime!! 

I ordered a new set of EBC yellowstuff pads (easy) and some EBC discs for a Vauxhall Firenza (hoping it was just the thickness that was different) and I had a long chat with Gerry J who reckoned that Brembo TR4-6 discs that he was using on a current project were the same as Ventora discs.  Of course, both sets of discs were completely wrong and nowhere near the same and therefore not even machineable, bloody old strange cars!! 

I was beginning to think that the race I was looking forward to the most all season wasn’t going to happen at all, when I then remembered a company that Colin Robbins had mentioned, they were on holiday until the 6^th August, hence why I hadn’t rung them before but I thought lets give them a go, it’s my only chance!!  I gave them a call and unbelievably they said they thought they had one pair left, but he would go check and call me back, which they did and yes they had some, great!!  They were duly dispatched and fitted

I had also bought and fitted some brand new Avo adjustable shock absorbers all round, so no excuse for the car not stopping or handling now, I couldn’t wait to try it.

Saturday morning off Vince and I set, we got there about 5 minutes late, so I left Vince to unload whilst I went and signed on.  I had the fortune to be behind all of the Formula Women ladies signing on, most attractive!!  I went back to the trailer with Vince underneath the car f’ing and blinding, the gear linkage had snapped!!  I managed to find someone with a welder (thanks Kamala Cars), welded it back up but the box was absolutely jammed.  We worked on it for about two hors and after missing my first practice I went to the clerk of the course who said as long as I make second practice I could start from the back of the grid.  We kept working but got nowhere so I had to retire without doing anything and to make it worse they used a picture of me in the car from Castle Combe as the front cover of the programme!! 

Unfortunately to strip and rebuild one of these boxes if 4-5 hours and they have about 400 roll pins in and are a nightmare to do in a workshop, let alone a field at Snetterton, so £400+ in race fees gone!!  Oh well, that's motor racing.  I've now had the box apart and it was two roll pins that jammed the box and the linkage just snapped because we were forcing it.

What can I say??  As the weather was great and the racing should be good and so many people were coming to support Vince and I decided to stay.  Many thanks to Terry Bower for helping put up my tent, Hello to Andy (Dex) Betson for finally taking my spare Avon Safety Wheel off me and thanks to the Vauxhall Viva Owners Club for coming down on the Sunday to support me, sorry!!

Uncle John and Uncle Martin still came down, I think the last time John was at Snetterton was when Grandad rolled his MG Magnette in 1959 but that's another story!!

The CTCRC also put on a great BBQ and booze on the Saturday evening, it was very well done and Vince and I thoroughly enjoyed the free alcohol until we retired to the bar and finished the evening off with some G&Ts and had a walk in the moonlight back to the tents until Vince decided to fall over and cut his head open but that's a story for another day!!