VN Production Saloon

[VNracer34G]

thats the way mate maybe tomorrow night would be worth coming to watch LOL

Thats kind of in the hands of the weather gods.

Saloon GP tomorrow night, Mondays a public holiday for half the North Island so if its rained out tomorrow theres a fair chance we'll run Sunday.

I should be rough but ready, then pull the bumper/guards off again after to tidy it up properly.

Doors open mate

[delcowizzid]

man long way to go what times racing and when are you doing the weather report LOL

[VNracer34G]

Racing starts at 7pm i gotta be through pit gate by 5pm, for details go to http://www.gisbornespeedway.com/, bit dicey for you to make the trek this weekend and might be more fun for all if i'm not so balls out on the car, Productions are stood down on 26/2 but any other weekend is cool, your call mate as i said the doors open and i bloody mean that. Streety champ of champs on 12th feb should be a good one

[delcowizzid]

my cars still n/a and boring its a long way with no boost LOL meant to be tuning a vt 304 anyway i should pull finger on that one LOL

[VNracer34G]

Got home from work Saturday lunchtime to find my mate in the shed welding up the inner guards, he had to take off to organise getting his streety and the ministock the track but he left me with a fighting chance - worked furiously with the missus helping out and managed to cobble it together near enough for scrutineering.
I made it to the track in time (pit gates close at 5pm, went through at 4.57) it raised eyebrows, front bumper hanging off and big splits in it, left guard all white(factory paint) and chunks of paint missing all over the place, got it off the trailer, whacked a couple of bolts through the trailing edge of the bumper and drove through to scrutineering where they had a real hard look at it under the bonnet with a redcap from outta town-got told where a couple of bits needed to be more fully welded up, i explained i was well aware of this i'd just done what i could with the time available and showed to there satisfaction it was strong enough to be safe and pointed out to them what was still to be done after tech - when one of them did the inspection in the boot he came out holding up a tin of paint having a chuckle, i told him "carefull mate or i'll hand you a paintbrush" - got signed off and headed back to my pit, dropped the bumper off again and stitched up the splits in it with cable ties and put it back on properly and the missus and her best mate started hand painting it while i tightened up the bonnet pins and all the other little niggles of the scrutineers.

Drivers breifing there was a warning about social media/facebook and that the directors of SNZ monitor it and one driver is on three months probation and watch out to anyone causing any dramas - missus dragged me aside and sternly told me to wipe that big grin off me face

Marble draw, 14 productions at the track and i pulled number 6 giving me grids 6, 13 & 4 happy with that

[VNracer34G]

Main 1 :Grid 6;

Track was real wet as expected (we were grooming the track for the Saloon GP) and i really struggled for any grip and i got eaten by a few front wheel drives but avoided any carnage for a change, finished 7th.


Main 2 :Grid 13;

Those big fat tyres on the Saloons were bringing the track up real good, a couple of cars were starting off the back due to tying new stuff out and wanting to avoid causing dramas for others, when we got a green light i got a hit from behind and thought "fuck here we go again" and got stuck into the throttle - i had grip everywhere and went like a bat outta hell threading the needle, some of the top running FWD's were struggling a bit and i managed to get by a few of them which was a hell of a buzz - being able do dive down low and floor it through the bends as they were pushing wide - thats how these guys usually get past me as they lean on my left doors - didn't swap paint with any and given another lap or two (we only got 8 lap races) would have done better. Finished 8th

Feature : Grid 4;

Lined up on the dummy grid surrounded by the fastest FWD's thinking this might get messy going by the looks of another couple of crews, on the formation and warmup laps i glued myself to the back bumper of the pace setting car and jostled for the midtrack groove with the car beside me - i don't think we swapped any paint, too hard to tell as theres lots of his on the left of the car already, held my ground hard and on the green light i kept right on the arse of 37G v3000 and stayed there as we gapped it on the rest of the feild and kept there for 8laps, looked at a couple of moves but was a bit dodgey so decided to settle for 2nd rather than bin the car again, got into the 17's again and acheived a milestone for myself - fastest lap in race http://www.gisbornespeedway.com/wp-cont ... 01/r16.txt well happy with that

[VNracer34G]

Drove straight onto the trailer after the feature and wandered off to watch my mate in the streetstock, got informed at the last minute we were having an extra race to fill in while the final for the Saloons was getting sorted out straight after an extra for ministocks. First in best dressed for grid positions and no points involved, saw my streety mate who has a production license also and waved him over as i was sitting strapped into the car, i leaped out and got him in pronto after clearing it with the rep. got the window net up on him as the other cars were going towards the pit gate. I rushed up to the stands to let our families freinds know what was up to puzzled looks. every body was looking at me-then my car-then me then i went up to the tower to let the announcers know who was in the car and as i was doing that saw a couple of flag marshalls leaning into the car with the cars stationary on the startline, next thing the tractor was moving itself into place behind the car - my turn for then the car went to the infeild, as i went downsatairs i got grabbed by one of the refs and taken into one of there rooms for a dressing down. turns out we'd broken the rules as his name wasn't on the entry card for the car so he got told to get off the track or 22day standdown for both of us , now i had swapped cars with the driver of 14G in a similar extra race two seasons ago and nothing was ever said, they're cracking down on breaches these days for safety - they used me as an example as every meeting they record a medical condition for me which is given to the paramedics so i don't get the wrong medicine - i said i understood that my mate would not get a shot of pennicillin but apologised and ate humble pie- my intentions were good - he is licensed for the class and had done a shitload of work on the car and has been racing for years ad i was keen on getting his feedback on the car, we got off with a jolly good telling off luckily.

[Holden202T]

spewin about the extra race but good to see the car came home in one piece and you got some reasonable results!

We had similar fun saturday night with my mate racing, first late model heat he went out and just smashed them, car was just perfect got 1st in that heat. Few little panel issues, my brother and i pull the wheel off to start working on re-riveting and such, me mate and his dad working on some spring/shock changes, halfway through that and we get the call that they have changed the program and we are out in 10 minutes!!!!

patched it up, out they went, wasn't happy, just not getting the power down like everyone else, settled for 3rd, and we were a bit worried cause on one corner as he was tipping it in we were seeing wisps of oil smoke and he had slowed a bit .... in the end the slowness was just wrong setup, but as he came into the pits, MASSIVE trail of oil and we are thinking the worst! luckily all it was, T piece on the bottom of the dry sump catch can, should have had an oil temp sender in it, that was no where to be found!
Thankfully its all suction in the bottom of the catch can so it wasn't draining the oil too bad, so we fucked that off an put a bung in it, fixed some other panel issues and changed some rim offsets and springs again.

went out in the feature race, was corning perfect in the gutter but then was too low in the revs out of the corner, got up high and its tailly as .... so had to settle for making the best of it, in the end a few stopages shafted as (went back to previous lap positions) but then a second one helped us catch the leaders and we settled for a 3rd.

Dave was pretty happy, second meeting with the late model and on the podium so shes got the goods. bit more dialing in of the suspension and some different diff gears on hand and he should be on the money!

Sunday washed the car as the whole ass end was covered in oil, did the usual washing of the engine and such ... now it wont start! no spark - so we need to do some tests, its got an MSD in it so hopefully that not torched! Atleast it died after the race not during!

sorry for hi-jacking your thread, got a bit carried away there hahaha

[VNracer34G]

Last week i cleared off the loom, overflow bottle etc off the left inner guard and took the dis/coil pack assy & leads ouy of harms way and finished off welding the overlap of the inner guard. I also had the wheels off gave the tyres a bit of a groom and rotated them, then i got it outside and the young helper and the wife gave it a wash and we all got to the track in plenty of time for a change.

Main 1: Grid 9.

First race of the programme and as i expected with it being the streetstock champ of champs we were going to be used as a 'grooming class' and the track was wet as when we wen't thrrough the pit gate, we had thirteen cars and had a clean but slow start with a lot of cars struggling to get any sort of grip - i had heaps of it and started working my way through some traffic - i gave it a bit much a couple of times and got too high and gave the wall a bit of a slap with my right rear quarter coming out of turn two and four, got to about fourth spot with three laps to go and the track coming up awesome when hammering it down the back straight rapidly gaining on a car my motor started farting around then just died, had to hang up high and let a few cars slip by on the inside before i got a gap to drop down to the infeild. Got pushed to my pit by the tractor after the race and started hunting for the cause, didn't take long - when i put it all back together in my haste i neglected to tie off the cables to the starter and they managed to move into the way of the exhaust where the insulation melted then caused a dead short -bloody ameteur- i pulled it out of harms way and sent the helper off to bludge some tape which i was without for once and went and watched some racing while it all cooled off, wrapped it up and tied it off with cable ties and she fired straight up - sorted.

[VNracer34G]

Main2: Grid 3.

Lined up on the dummy grid with the two Beemers which have found some pace lately and the top couple of preludes around me and a Cortina thats basically a mobile chicane setting the pace on grid two, this was going to be interesting with the potential for carnage HUGE. Out on the track the pace set by the old courtney once the pace car headed infeild wasn't too shabby (probably flat chat lol) and when we got a green light coming out of turn four i gunned it for the gap left by the car on pole accelerating away and headed for the high line - it all quickly became a bit of a blur all the shuffling going on but i settled into third for a couple of laps till the 11G BMW took a wild lunge inside me through four as i pushed wide a bit as the old VN is want to do - as it wagged its weaving tail in front of me it got a couple of wee 'rubs', i stayed on his tail and had several looks high and low only for it to wag its tail each time to block/steal more red paint off my bumper, at one point going through turn one moving into two where everybody is getting on the gas this guy hit the brakes HARD- i can think of NO GOOD reason for this - there was nothing in front of him, i had no way of avoiding the back of this idiot trying to get me in the poo so i headed down a bit before punching it in the arse then when he gathered it up i stayed on his tail till the flag dropped, finished fourth.
Back in the pits the rep came over and told us drivers of 9G, 11G & 34G to the tower. All three of us were hauled into the box together which struck me as unusual, the head referee pulled out a peice of paper and said he had reports of 9G into 34G, 34G retaliating, 11g into 34G, 34G into 11G and so on- i said to the young driver of 9G who has caused a hell of a lot of damage to my car this season and last "you didn't touch me did you? must be the first night all year you haven't" which started a couple of light hearted exchanges between the two of us- we got shot down HARD by the ref and we all got a warning to behave or get a holiday. We did the old no sir sorry sir and got out unscathed and smiling