A couple of events and plans for 2014

Since I last wrote, we have taken the Imp to Wiscombe Park again, and to Manor Farm at Charmouth which some people consider a 'mickey mouse' course but we quite like.  It is very different to Wiscombe, being open apart from going through a bridge under the A35, which provides the threat of concrete contact!   This year it was a damp weekend so we spent it experimenting with how the car behaved in the wet, while still keeping it on the black stuff. At least spinning off at Charmouth you're not likely to hit anything too hard.

The car is going well with the 930cc engine in, but we have our sights set on going faster and have just ordered a 998cc engine to be built for us, by the chap who built the 930cc and is ex-Hartwell.  It's a bit of an investment but once we have that we won't need to tinker with engines any more, at least that is the idea!    There are loads of ways we could make the car lighter to be more competitive, but firstly we want to stay in the production road car class, and more importantly we like the car as it is.   We don't want to strip out stuff to the limit of the class because we get a kick out of competing in a car in genuine road-going standard condition; and we think other people appreciate that too.

Photo www.simonrawling.com

We are making more and more friends as we go along on the hill climb circuit, whether it be ladies who have been competing for 26 years, or other newcomers to the sport, and everyone in between.  I was discussing the welcoming spirit of hill climbing with the aforementioned lady and we were comparing it with other sports and hobbies that we had done, most of which seem to have a hierarchy, snobbery and bitchiness which hill climbing just doesn't have.  We could chat away to a chap by the burger wagon and find out that he had won fastest time of the day, while we were slowest, and it doesn't matter! It's really good to feel part of it, I can't imagine anyone feeling like an outsider in this sport.

 

Photo www.simonrawling.com

Our next event will be at Wiscombe on 27/28 July, a National A Championship event as well as National B, so all the fast boys will be there (and girls, but usually there are only 2 or 3 of us at events).   The week after that we are venturing down to Cornwall to a circuit we haven't been to before, at Castle Hill which is near Lostwithiel.  We then have the rest of August off before a full programme in September, and that is the end of the season!  

The 998cc will go in for 2014, we'll run the rest of this year with the 930cc, firstly for consistency and secondly to save stress mid-season trying to get a new engine set up and running properly.

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.

Countdown to Wiscombe

Well, our little Imp has had a transplant and is now a 930cc.  Isn't it funny how your brain can so easily switch from thinking a 1 litre engine is small, to thinking 'wow! 930cc, feisty!' - it's all relative.

Having started the winter engine change project back in October, our collection of engines has grown from one (the original) to four.  We bought a second hand 875cc Sport engine + spare, but couldn't get it running very well, and spent some time choking on exhaust fumes even with all the garage doors open.   

We then bought a 930cc engine which was supposedly built for hill climbing and had only been bench run.  "Perfect," we thought, "it's tricked up and can go straight in."    We toyed with the idea of trying to get the Sport engine going properly before changing them over, but then decided to just put the 930 in so we had more time to drive it around before our first event at the end of April.

Well... it turned out to not be quite so ready as we thought.  We knew it needed an alternator, since we'd be using for every day driving and not just competition, so we got a second hand one sold as 'working ok'.  The plug leads looked a bit iffy and didn't fit very well, and we discovered that the distributor cap had a massive crack in it so had to be replaced. 

Having got the engine fitted we spectacularly failed to get it started, and with about 5 weeks to go until Wiscombe Hill Climb we decided to give it to our local mechanic to have a look at, as we were running out of time.  Just to frustrate this plan, having put on a new brake master cylinder we then had trouble with the brake bleeding, and it took us at least 2 evenings of pedal pumping to get the brakes in a fit state to be able to tow the car down to his workshops.

The alternator turned out not to work ok so we got a new one, along with new plug leads.  Our mechanic managed to get the engine started but it was running extremely rich, so the next thing was to get the correct jets etc. for the carbs.  Our bank balance was rapidly shrinking and our stress levels rising, but the good news was that it passed the MOT! 

The car now ran and had been fiddled with, and after two and a half weeks without it we went and picked the car up. We then discovered that both carbs were leaking fuel when the engine wasn't running.  Adjustment of the fuel pressure seemed to fix that (fingers crossed), but the car was a complete b*** to start, although once it did start, it ran like a dream!

Head-scratching ensued. Plugs were cleaned, and a new battery has just arrived that should cope better with the higher compression. The next job is to adjust the timing to stop it pinking. Oh and the head gasket is weeping a bit of oil so we've ordered a gasket set.  What did I say about the bank balance?  It's currently on the downhill stretch of the roller coaster.

So, it's now two and a half weeks until Wiscombe and every day involves either working on the Imp or spending money on it, or both.

It's worth it for the huge grin on our faces when we drive it!

The next step

Well, the Imp is currently engine-less!

The 875cc standard has been taken out, and the 875cc Sport is about to go in.  A parcel of Weber jets and springs and things arrived today, so that will keep Alex busy!

 

The next deadline is the MOT which is due in March, plenty of time, right.....?

Plans for 2013!

Happy New Year! 

Over the Christmas break we sat down with diaries and event calendars and worked out the events we want to do in 2013, it's looking pretty full on. There are a couple of championships we can do - the Assoc of Central Southern Motor Clubs and the Assoc of South Western Motor Clubs.  They overlap a lot although the ASWMC championship has more events and includes some way down in Cornwall of course, which is 4+ hours for us.  

We plan to do most of the events at Wiscombe Park but also want to try some different venues so will be doing as many as we can; though we will probably use a trailer for the ones a long way away, for peace of mind apart from anything else! 

I have renewed my MSA licence and the next thing is to get Alex sorted out with his licence, and suit, helmet etc. - for those we are going to Race Retro in February which is anyway a fantastic show and we haven't been for a few years.  As an added bonus the Imp Club and the British Women Racing Drivers' Club both have stands at the show so we will be able to go and see them.

At the moment the Imp is in our garage having some work done on the engine, and things like an electric fuel pump fitted.  It seems a long time until April and the first event, but I'm sure that it will come around quicker than we think!