I made the trip up to halifax track on bank holiday monday, it was still raining as i arrived unfortunately, but the rain soon stopped and luckily when the track dried it remained the same all day.
The main purpose of getting to the track was to pick up the long awaited new oneway/spool axle and this seasons new motor, the IDM picco based p1-r evo4 and matching pipe, i fitted the oneway and decided i would run the motor in after the meeting, when practice started the track was wet, and having no damps this was a problem, do i stay or do i leave? well my good friend martin had just had delivery of the new enneti damps from rc-direct on 220mm rims and did i want to try them! why not, i had used the old enneti damps in the past and to be honest they wernt great, but on getting them out of the box they were nothing like the old ones, so bolted them in place and went for a run, the setup had been left exactly the same as the last time i ran the car with the addition of the oneway, as i hit the track i could see 1/8th cars and the like sliding about and had my reservations, but after a couple of warm up laps i thought to my self 'actually theses tyres are pretty good' which was a nice surprise, worked very similar to microsystem aqua's that arnt the easiest to get hold of, but found i could actually push the car without it biting you back.
So i left them on for the first round, the track had a few dry parts, now the tyres didn't work, i think the track had reached the point where only rubber tyres would work! so with the track being not much used i decided to fit the idm motor and get it run in, got it all fitted then took the car to the tyre truing area, warmed the engine up with a heat gun and turned it over, it stuck up instantly and sat there idling away, idm recommend running a full tank through at idle then onto the track.
So the next heat i bolted a set of 35's on, then had 5 laps just taking it steady, then proceeded to take it alittle faster so the motor just changed gear then backed off 1/2 way down the straight, and continued to blip the throttle on the infield, and at bout half way thought the heat started giving alittle more throttle then backing off for a couple, then disaster struck i had an electrical fault and while i had my finger on the brake at the end of the straight the car went off on its own and hit the fence hard, on inspection the extension lead from receiver to the battery pack had failed, nice.
Onto the last qualifier, with the electrical problems hopefully sorted i started, i ran the car steady till the start buzzer, fueled up and away, now i started revving the motor more but still not race pace, surprisingly still managed to catch and pass the other cars in my heat, half way through i felt the motor free up and get quicker, at this pace the car handled nice and felt good, i did a 17 in 312, that's about a lap off race pace so to say i wasn't running at full pace i went away happy at that, the engine had been run with pretty much factory settings till then and still running rich, so the final it would be time to lean it out!
Unfortunately the final didn't go to plan, did my warm up and started the race only for my 2nd gear to go. it looks like the next time i will get to try the car will be the 2nd round of the nationals at Cotswold's, so fingers crossed for some good weather and i shall see everyone there!