As our regular readers will know, the bulk of the team are stuck here in the UK whilst the car and our equipment is in California.
This does not mean that nothing is happening, our engine builder and tuner in America Bruce has been sorting out some of the minor issues we had with the car.
We had a small oil leak from the crankshaft front oil seal after our last few runs.
Whilst the radiator and some of the turbo piping was removed a few minor leaks and defects were repaired. Once again we are indebted to our friends in the USA.
During the work a couple of systems checks were carried out and lucky they were.
Our throttle pedal and cable were completely siezed. The mixture of Bonneville salt, El Mirage dust and an unusually wet and humid Californian winter have played their part on this most simple of systems.
As far as we are aware this was the original throttle cable so considering it is now 58 years old and has far exceeded any design criteria of the manufacturers we can forgive it this once.
Fortunately a new cable has already been located and that particular issue is sorted.
As part of the procedure to allow us to run at El Mirage in 2023 we were proud to join the San Diego Roadster Club, one of the oldest hot rod clubs in America. This allowed us to run in the desert in an official capacity and not purely as guests.
As is common for these organisations they have a banquet during the off season and hand out awards, most of which have been awarded since the clubs inception in 1941.
We received notice via our fellow SDRC member and friendly tech inspector Ken Coe (The Gearhead Guru) that we had actually won an award.
The Nolan White award is presented to the club member that achieves the fastest top speed in a car at Bonneville throughout the year.
We can only assume that due to the inclement weather at last years event the majority of SDRC members chose not to run that year.
This of course leaves the door open to an under performing UK based team!
And what an award!
The award itself is ‘huge’!
To put this in perspective the lower one is a car number plate!
We will be eternally grateful to the club and it’s members for this honour.
Our first top speed award, with higher numbers hopefully this year.
