You will never believe what happened to the engine block in our white 4 door race car on Thursday morning. A guy built the block for me 15 years ago which we have used as a spare just in case we blew an engine. We have spent the last couple of months putting the bottom end in the car after removing a block that was cracked on the outside and letting water out. Now we have water leaking on the inside of the motor.

Yep, told you would not believe it. While I was out paying some bills, my mate Peter Stevanovic came over to check why the generator light would not go off. He started the car after fixing the electrical problem and the motor was running real rough so he turned it off. He had a look and could not believe his eyes. Water had been blowing out the exhaust. We only got 10 minutes running out of the motor before it died. Not bad for a couple of grand that I spent on it years ago. I am going to rip it out and not sure if I will sleeve it or just redo another block. No warranty available.

We had organised to take it to Lakeside to run the new motor in but it run out before we even got it out of the shed. I said to Allan we would take the blue car up for a run so we loaded it up and off we went on Saturday morning. Trevor Norris also had put a new engine in his Datsun 1600 so he took it along for a few laps.

It was a bit different watching Allan race around the track passing late model cars instead of the old cars in historic racing. He was still very competitive. We did 2 practice sessions of about 10 laps each.

Trevor only got 2 laps in on the first run and 2 laps on the second run before his motor starting missing and losing power. When he took it home it had no compression on number 4 and the spark plug was damaged. Not good. He reckons he is going to jam it in the shed and let it sit for a while. His son Troy races an XU1 Torana which has been giving a bit of trouble on the track so we nicknamed him “2 lap Troy” – so we have started to call Trevor “2 lap Trevor”.

Greg Dalliston was there with Trevor’s old EH Sports sedan doing a couple of laps.

When we got home the next door neighbour Graham Hanson brought his RED ROCKET over as he had a problem with the steering. We fix anything at the Cortina Factory. The Army Reserve came to the rescue as Major Graham Palmer was at Lakeside with us and had come back to our place to fix his Jeep and also ended up fiddling with the RED ROCKET. Peter arrived and gave him a big hug which he greatly appreciated. Have a look at his face in the pic.

That’s it for now till the next race meeting on the weekend of 22 July at Lakeside Park.

Saundo