Ran a vintage race this past weekend, it was Datsun Porsche Challenge weekend. I had a lot fun right until lap 5 of the Datsun Porsche race on Sunday.

On Saturday I had an issue with the master kill switch that worked in both the on and off position, read no power at all. Got it sort of working for practice, we bump started the car and I made 1/2 a lap.

Sooooo starting dead last in the qualifying race, no biggie I'd just pass like a fiend. I got past a good number of cars and within 3 laps was up behind a Turner, which was really well driven, at this point I started driving my arse off and went from 8200 to 8400 to 8600 RPM's (the springs are good to 9K+). When that didn't work I started over driving it for about half a lap, by that time the water temp was creeping past 225 so I backed off. This of course allowed a couple of cars to start reeling me back in. The one amusing bit was, the race before ours a Formula Vee lubed the course, so entering the fastest turn on the track at about 90 mph I was trying to keep an MGB at bay and just got onto the speedy dry, just before the apex the car snapped sideways, I went form 90 degrees of steering right to about 120 degrees left and back to 90 right in a split second, I didn't think it to huge a moment until I noticed the MGB drvier went from 3 car lengths back to about 9. At the end of the race I managed to get to 10th place from 19th, not to bad.

Sunday morning I new the Datsun Porsche race would not be pretty, a couple of the 914's had issues and the 2 low prep 240Z's had issues as well. On the start I out braked a 911S for turn one..............he then promptly blasted past on the next straight, so I decided to use the rest of the race to try things for the final. On lap 5 coming down the main straight the motor went slightly off song, then between 1 and 2 it started missing, I went up the escape road after turn two and shut it off. With only 30 minutes between events it was game over

When I got home I popped the valve cover and it was obvious what the problem was. The valve adjuster screw had backed out on the #1 intake and it reeked havoc. The spring retainer broke in half and the the valve is stuck about 5mm down. Could be I need to cinch the locknuts down more or check them more often or not run as many revs. Either way I knew I was flogging the motor hard.

On the plus side I have my A15 on the engine stand so over the winter I'll put that in along with the upgraded rear axle.

Tom

On the