4/9/2008

Update on the new car:

Over the past couple of years we have been building a second FED to run in modified. It will run the injected BBC engine that was originally in the current car. Ritchard Botica built the chassis, Alan Odgers did the body work. We are now in the process of building the rest of the car and gathering all the parts to finish it off. My brother Graham will be driving the new car once it's up and running. There could be some sneak peak pictures up in the next couple of months.

31/8/2008

Car seems in good shape after QLD.

The car has been pulled apart for checking. Everything looks fine. Our next meeting will hopefully be the bracket attack on October 19th here in Sydney. By then we will have made the mod's to prevent the oil from leaking and hopefully get some numbers back up on the board.

20/8/2008

Nostalgia Nationals been and gone

We just got back from the Nostalgia Nationals which were held on Aug 19th at Willowbank raceway QLD. A big shout out goes to John and Chrissi from the Junk Yard Dog team whose continued efforts made the weekend a great success. A great crowd was present. The atmosphere was spectacular!

Tuesday midnight. Leave Sydney and arrive on Wednesday in Ipswich.

Wednesday radio interview on SPEED FM click here to hear it. Tune into www.speedfm.com.au and listen to Steve Hellyer for all your motor sport chat and info.

Thursday. Mum, Dad, Nick, Sam and Kristy arrived by plane and headed to Ipswich to meet Graham and me who drove up with the car and transporter the day before.

Friday test. Went ok, doing a series of 60ft and half trackers.

Sunday race day. We eneded up deciding to put some more over drive in the car as it wasn't getting off the line as had hoped.... well...... let me tell you... that extra 12% of overdrive made a HUGE difference!
-The first and second run of the day we had massive trye shake.
-The third pass saw us drive through the shake to a half track time of 4.38 @ 172mph!... more than 2 tenths quicker to half track than we ran in Sydney on our 6.74 pass... However a face full of oil put an end to the run and Geoff pulled the chutes early, coasting to a 7.19 @ 127....
-The 4th pass got the blood pumping a bit as the car turned hard left at the hit of the gas and came extremely close to the wall.....
-5th pass a similar thing but nowhere near as bad, it went right this time. We got a loan of an onboard camera to try for that pass and it can be seen "here" or on the video's page.

Even though we never made a full pass we still had a great time, and we managed some time out for socialising, having dinner out a couple of times with our friends. We caught up with some old friends from Castlereagh days, drag racers from Dad's racing club, "Marigold", who now live on the Gold Coast. That's what drag racing is all about, apart from the actual racing. The friends you make along the way.

And here's a question for you. Which one of the Blake Racing crew managed to apply metal polish to his face instead of block out???

Monday. Time to drive/fly home. :(

10/8/2008

Packed and read to go!!

Since the last meeting at WSID we found the blower was chewing itself to bits (again) so we made the decision to do away with the PSI 8-71 and bought a kobelco 14-71!! This presented a bit of a problem as we only had 6 weeks before we were heading to QLD and had to make all new adaptor plates for the blower to fit to, new fuel lines, fuel system was flowed again for the new blower, and we pulled the engine down to check it. A lot of late nights and hard work was yet again put into the car and we ended up getting her fired and ready to run only 2 days before we're about to leave.

We still have a lot of testing to do as the new blower, fuel, clutch combo will have to be established again.

We hired the track in QLD on friday 15th Aug in the hope of trying to get it kind of close for race day on Sunday.

9/7/2008

Re-run Nostalgia's @ WSID

It's a couple of days after the re-run nostalgia drags here in Sydney held on 6/7/2008. We were able to make three passes on the day before yet another load of rain dropped which pulled the pin on the meeting. However we did run a PB to date with a 6.74 @ 208mph. Also on the day we ran two 6.91 passes @ 208mph.... our mph was down this time but we had a problem with a tiny tear in the burst panel which got increasingly bigger on each run.... (you learn stuff every day) However our half track time showed a slight improvement with a 4.59 @ 169 on the 6.74 pass.....

4/5/2008

6.77 @ 214mph
We finally got some good numbers up on the board!!!

Running a test and tune the week before (Sunday 27/4/2008) we made 3 half track passes. Some good numbers were showing with 1.1 sixty footers and 165mph to half track.

We brought the car out to the Snap-on Nitro Champs. Qualitying was friday 2/5/2008. Off the trailer we ran a 6.88 @ 197mph. However, the driver accidently hit the shut off while pulling the chute before the finish line. (Silly man!!)

On our next pass we drove right out the back door with a 6.77 @ 214mph.
1.17 sixty
168mph half track

Final qualify saw an even harder pass but we had to shut it off due to some small niggling problems we're having with the car still.

We took it home early and we'll be back out after a few minor mods are complete. The next meeting we hope to be at is the re-run "Shannon's Nostalgia drags" Sunday 6th july.

Click here to see footage of the pass.

25/4/2008

The car was fired up today. All sounds good.
We hope to do a half track pass and then try and get some laps in if everything is going along smooth. We'll be at the test and tune on sunday 27th April.
A video of the car is now posted on the site. Its the pass where we did some damage down the bottom end. 7.07 @ 187mph.

19/4/2008

Hi all! Sorry it’s taken so long to update the site. It’s been so busy around the Blake racing campus.

At the end of last year 4/12/07 we went to a Friday night meeting at WSID. The motor just wasn’t responding as it should. On the third pass of the night we ended up blowing out the burst panel. (a terrible sound that is).

Sam Caruana and Paul from “Proflo Performance” figured out after pulling the motor apart that the blower was actually faulty from the factory. The rotors were out of time and the Teflon was way too short… this was quite a shock and also a disappointment considering it was brand new… but we got on with it… got the blower repaired and rebuilt the motor.

The next meeting was a bracket attack on 8/3/08. First pass we had an oil pressure problem so we shut it down after the burnout. Fixed that and headed out again.
Second pass, burnout good. Launched the car and got terrible tyre shake, it actually put 2 big cracks in the diff housing!! Still…. Surprisingly we were actually all laughing about it…. The motor is making a bit of power now.

We knew we had to put a new diff in so we got Terry Cartwright to build one for us. Let me say… what an amazing job he’s done. All re-enforced diff housing, thicker walls, baulk heads internally. This one will not break! Plus new floater spindles.

This brings us to another bracket attack 4 weeks later 5/4/08.

First pass: launch and had some fuel come in my face. Just a fitting that wasn’t completely tight. 1.1 the 60 tho…. So we were happy about that.
Second pass: 1.201 the 60ft and 160mph to the half track. She was movin’!!
Third pass of the day before the staging lanes closed we ran
7.07 @ 187mph. again. 161mph @ half track. Then the car started nosing over. I got off the gas around the 1000 ft mark and by then the damage had been done. The front cylinders ran lean and we damaged a piston. Although there was damage we were still smiling as we knew there is plenty of potential for the car.

Taking the car home, we still wanted to run the nostalgia drags on the following weekend. So we decide to pull out the blown motor and put the injected BBC (old faithful) back in. this wasn’t as easy as we thought. We had to make all new wiring harness, new fuel lines, returns and main. New rocker covers with alloy bungs welded in to take the new puke tank set up.

One week later. Saturday 12/4/08 We made it to the track (just) on saturday morning. Still running the crower glide clutch and the 2 speed lenco still from the blown motor set up we rattled off:
First pass: 8.13 @ 176mph
Second pass: 8.000 @ 177mph
Third pass 7.995 @ 176mph
Sunday, Nostalgia day
First pass: 8.01 @ 177
Second pass 8.05 @ 176

Unfortunately it started to rain and the meeting was called off.
We brought the car home, started washing all the parts for the blown motor. Sam started assembling the engine, whilst Graham and I stripped the car apart. The blown motor is almost back in the car ready to go again. Graham has to put the clutch in a set it up again. We hope to be out at the test and tune on Sunday 27/4/08. If all goes well we will be at the track the following weekend for the nitro champs on May 2nd and 3rd.

Click here to see video of the 7.07 pass. Note the yucky puff of smoke at the end of the track. Ouch!