Other Peoples Race Cars

Just for fun the bomb factory went for a nice relaxing weekend of visiting with Team Enzed Abarth in sunny Rota-vegas - the plan - shift some stuff in the toyshed - go for a test drive in the Abarth (fresh(ish) engine for this years Targa (3 weeks away)-  apparently it feels a little *tight*.....) move the Chinese Peoples Army bmw side car combination out of the way - chuck the spare Fiat Dino on the trailer and have a bit of a general tidy up.

 

That was the plan

 

first job - after measuring some spare 600 parts cars up - start up 'Barty (Team Abarths F-Abarth 1000tc Berlina Corsa) and warm up prior to giving it a bit of a run around the lake.... starts - idles - miss - fart - miss - clunk..... dead - loud swearing noises.....

long story short - brand new oil pump drive ate itself - mangled - ripped to shreds even - but the break away shear pin did not shear - the clunk was the disturber shaft finally locking solid stoping the engine - looks like the shear pin was responsible by being a little too long - causing the gear to drag and eat itself - no wonder it felt TIGHT!

 

Targa now looking very unlikely

6 working hours later we had stripped rebuilt and reinstalled various oil pump combination 4 times - replaced two oil filters and one oil gauge (wrecked when one combination didn't do *any* oil pressure relieving at all......) used 8 litres of castol RS - and took some lengthy breaks to evaluated progress - note we are not really engine guys and are consequently suspicious - until we restored normal oil pressure service.....

 

Targa was looking more likely.

 

The only thing left to do was to find out how the car went -

noisy

fast (down hill anyway - Team Abarth just loves going down)

scary

or more succinctly -  'Barty? well him, he was back........

the last five minutes felt like being an ice cube stuck to the side of a cocktail shaker powered by DC 10 jet engine.... while playing in traffic -

Dr. Phil you have all my sympathy....

 

Targa will be happening - this will make 11 years straight - same car - same engine - same driver (and the same sponsor...)

 

oh and the side car combination went away - so that makes  two things done.....

 

The Bomb Factory also used the opportunity to up-lift the rear wing for the 128 - ah yes - if nothing else it will give us something to put the beers on.....

 

All in all a Great weekend - its always better to break in the shop with somebody around and no deadline,  than to do it - Day One - Stage One in the middle of somewhere rural - see I can be positive....