South West adventures at Werrington

Last weekend was the wonderful Werrington Park hillclimb organised by the Plymouth Motor Club, and held near Launceston which according to Googlemaps is about a 3 hour drive from us.  We were planning to have our new trailer ready, in fact this was the first event that we really wanted it for, but irritatingly it still hadn't materialised.  We couldn't borrow the one from Alex's work because they were using it (most inconsiderate) and we refused to pay to hire one for a weekend.  So there was nothing for it, we were going to drive the Imp and the van down to Devon/Cornwall on Friday afternoon.

We both got home from work early and after some final preparations (which included buying some get-you-out-of-the-mud grippy things for the van) we set off at 1.45pm with Alex in the Imp and me driving the Transporter with camping gear and dog.  All went well and we swapped over roughly halfway in the middle of Dorset somewhere.  I had the dull half which was mostly dual carriageway and a bit of motorway, so amused myself by singing loudly while bowling along at what I thought was 65 mph ish and we arrived without mishap at the venue.   At which point Alex said 'Why were you driving so slowly?' - it turns out that the speedo is reading about 7mph fast and hence it took us about 4 hours to get there.

We found ourselves a good camping spot at the top of the paddock in lush green grass, pitched the tent and fell into bed pretty early. Unfortunately our neighbours decided to party... but we managed to fall asleep about 11.30.

Saturday dawned wet, oh great.  The paddock announcement was 'there is a lot of mud on the road, please take care!' Werrington Park is an estate with a big house and cottages, and it turned out that somebody had driven a tractor through the estate on Friday morning, after it had been meticulously cleaned!

We both therefore took it easy on the first practices especially as it was our first time there, so put in un-amazing times but that was fine. It had stopped actually raining and rapidly dried out so all our runs from then on were on dry tarmac and got steadily faster with Alex ending the day on around 59 seconds and me on 60.   After a social barbeque on Saturday evening, we went to bed and slept very soundly, awaking raring to go on Sunday which was warm and dry. 

Somehow, after lunch on Sunday, we both managed to knock 1.5 seconds off each of our times. In my case it was because I had trouble selecting 2nd gear going into the 90 degree left so changed down later. A-ha! Now to try that intentionally.  In the final timed runs we ended up even faster with final best times of 57.83 for Alex and 57.66 for me, we were enjoying having our own private Hillman Imp championship!  With 1380 Minis etc in our class there was no way we were troubling the prize-winners, but we had a blast.

Alex drove the Imp all the way home since I said we'd get home quicker than if I drove it!  There had been a bit of rattling and knocking over the weekend and when Alex investigated on Monday, he found that the bolt holding the alternator on had sheared off and the alternator was working loose. Thank goodness it didn't come off completely or things could have got nasty.  We still need to take a look at the track rod ends and the suspension in general to check things over before the next event.

All in all it was a great weekend and we'll be back for more next year (it's a shame there is only one hillclimb a year at Werrington, it's a good, challenging course).  In the meantime we're off to Wiscombe again in a couple of weeks so looking forward to that.



Wiscombe Park 27/28 April 2013

After all the stresses of the previous blog post, we were glad to be on the road to Wiscombe Park, with the Imp ensconced in a rather posh trailer borrowed from Alex's work.  The trip is a couple of hours and we arrived early, only to almost get the van stuck in the camping field, with the trailer on the back.   Luckily we managed to recruit some help from a fellow hillclimber and were soon parked in a better place and pointing downhill (always good). 

After walking the hill, we settled down for the night and woke bright and early the next day to find that the car wouldn't start.  Oh brilliant. A slight panic set in as we jump started it from the van - we thought we'd solved this non-starting problem? it had been fine for the previous 4 days.  Thankfully it was fine for the rest of the day but we made sure that we kept her pointing downhill!

 

This was Alex's very first hillclimb, and he was the first of the day to run. With double driving, the 'A' driver goes up in the first batch and then there is a quick changeover for the second driver who goes in the next batch.  Unsurprisingly, Alex loved it and got a time already down near 60 seconds for the run, something I had distantly dreamed of when I ran the car with the 875cc engine last September.  His best time of the weekend was 59.4 which he was very pleased with.

 

I was loads faster than last year and managed 64.5 secs on the Saturday, improving it to 61.64 on Sunday. There weren't many classic cars at the event, which made the paddock a bit less interesting to look around, although there was a Gilbern Invader which was interesting as we have a Gilbern GT which is next on the list for restoration (and hillclimbing!).

 

The weekend stayed dry, and as at the two events last year we got chatting to lots of new people, and some we had met at previous events.  Hillclimbing is such a friendly sport, everyone has time for a chat. The Imp got loads of attention and we discovered that lots of people started out their hilllclimb careers in them, so it sounds as though we are starting in the right place! 

  

We came home on a high, although exhausted! We're looking forward to Werrington in Devon, which is our next event, although we are going to have to drive the car down there, 3.5 hours, as we don't have a trailer available.  We think the engine will like it though, it could do with a decent run.

 

We are both definitely hooked!

 

 

Pre event stresses!

We had a bit of a stressful couple of weeks with the Imp.   With the date for Wiscombe Park hillclimb looming, we had some work done including overhauling the twin Stromberg carburettors and fitting correct K&N paper air filters. We are rapidly discovering that some of the parts of our 930cc engine were apparently done 'on a budget'.

Next we changed the oil from fancy stuff to bog standard engine oil, and after discovering an oil leak apparently from the head gasket, decided to change that.  We'd never done a head gasket before, but how hard could it be?  It took an entire Sunday, with Alex meticulously dismantling the engine.  We sweated over getting the valve caps and shims off without dropping them everywhere, and I made a specially designed cardboard tray that wedged in under the cam cover ready to catch everything.  While I popped out to mow my parents grass, Alex cleaned up everything and applied the new head gasket, and measured the thickness of all the shims and made a note of them.

We eventually got it all back together only to discover - no compression. None. Zero. Zilch. In any of the cylinders.  I think we both wanted to just sit down and cry - what had we done??  

Much internet research ensued, after which we had come to the conclusion that the shims must not be seating properly on the valves, and basically we had to take the cam off and the shims/caps, and put them all on again. This time, we cleaned all the oil off, and glued the shims on with grease, and the caps into the cam so nothing was slithering about all over the place.

Cylinders 1, 2, 3 all ok.  Cylinder 4 - no compression.  ****

We decided to double check the list of shim thicknesses, and came to the conclusion (after converting everything to 64ths) that the two shims in cylinder 4 had accidently been swapped over.

So, it all came off again, cleaned up, greased, back together.   Everything else back on and the key turned. And she started!! better than she had in the last 3 weeks. 

By now it was 9.30pm on Tuesday night, so with 4 days until our first hillclimb, the relief was palpable!  

The irony was, that there was still an oil leak.... and it wasn't from the head gasket after all. It was seeping out around a tapered screw in the head, which wasn't tapered.  Some PTFE tape seems to have fixed that, for now anyway.