Summernationals Test & Tune - Feb 10 2007
The Summernationals Test & Tune was predicted to be a massive testing day with over 200 cars. Leading up to the test we didn’t have high expectations we just wanted to work out why the car is not going straight and hopefully get some full passes down the track.
For the test day our entire crew was unavailable. The night before we had a mad scramble to find some one to help out. Gary Watterson who lives at the end of our street. (who is also building a drag car) and his mate Pete agreed to come to our aid, at 9pm Friday night. Same with Phil a friend of a friend of a friend who we had never met!!!
We arrived early (probably too early)at around 5:45am to ensure we get an easy park with the semi. and get a head start on all the work to be done including training our new crew.
First run, smoked the tyres off the line.
Second run was a little better; we got off the line fairly easily but the car as usual went to the left.
Ed Urcis from JE Pistons, offered some suggestions to improve things, he was out on holidays but was keen to help.
We had 4 runs in total, the last two were a lot better but times were not competitive.
Our last run saw a 7.50 or something with a half track shut off and a pedal before 60ft. The half track equalled our best to date.
We think we have a better handle on our suspension, and have a fair bit of work to do before the Summernationals next week. Most satisfying result of the day was that our engine had no problems and didn’t need too much servicing.
Boxing day
Doorslammer Invitational at WSID’s Boxing Day Event
The past three months we have been building our second engine and preparing to race at the Doorslammer Invitational at WSID’s Boxing Day Event ( 26th & 27th December 2006). Dad, Katie and I have spent many weekends and late nights in the shed getting the car ready for the race. We first fired the engine up about a week before the race and had a big oil leak. The rear main needed resealing. The next day we started it up again. There were some minor leaks around the cylinder heads but nothing alarming, we sealed it with silicon. The Saturday before the race we noticed that the silicon hadn’t stopped the leaks so we decided that we needed to get the gaskets re heat treated. This put us back a lot of hours we were hoping to have the trailer packed ready to go that day, the blower and cylinder heads were off the car after some quick thinking and some help from Sainty’s workshop we were ready to reassemble, fire it up one last time and put it on the trailer. We finished late Saturday night and dropped the trailer at the track Sunday morning (Xmas Eve) so we could relax before race day. Christmas day we had lunch with my wife’s family at Wayne Newby’s house and then Xmas night at my folks house. Gary Phillips and family were down from QLD (to race his Top Alcohol dragster) and they joined my family for Xmas. There were three rounds of qualifying on the first day with racing on day 2. To start the day we had to get the car both tech inspected and scrutineered. It passed! Track officials let me have a solo in qual 1, there was alot of new stuff for me, and I didn’t need the extra pressure of someone beside me!
My first pass was in the left lane. I couldn’t see the tree (it’s left hand drive and the blower is in the way)” lucky I had that solo, it gave me the time to move around and get a glance. The car launched hard and shook just after 60ft, (first time for me!) I got off it, the car settled down, got on it again the car turned left, again then coasted through. Unfortunately there was some oil on the track. The tyre shake caused a leak in the dry sump.
We cleaned up the mess and prepared the car for the qual 2. We took a heap of clutch out to try and settle the car. I cut a fairly good reaction time .084. The car launched a bit better but headed towards the centre line. I backed off about 1/2 track, straightened up and got back on it to the finish line. It wasn’t a fantastic time but it was better than the last run 7.39 sec at 200.65mph. it felt lazy but was surprised with the 200mph.
When we got back we realised that a fitting snapped off the sump and it had a crack in it. We wouldn’t make it back out for the final qualifier but we had made the show for tomorrow’s racing.
Mick’s Metal Craft fixed the sump the next morning. When we checked the bearings in the crank we discovered a spun bearing and a damaged a rod. Unfortunately for us it meant no more runs. A little disappointing as it was a good meeting for me to get experience with the small number of Doorslammer entries (it wasn’t a championship points meeting).
I would like to thank all my crew, family and friends for being there to help out and support me. A big thanks to my crew; Dad, Katie, Chad, Michael, Matthew, Haig, Craig, Sarah and my supporters Mum, Tracey, Daniel, Brodie and Natasha.
It’s back to the workshop for now and preparing for the next run hopefully on February 10, 2007 a test and tune.
My first doorslammer experience
TOP DOORSLAMMER LICENSING
Since we started drag racing about 15 years ago my dream was to one day get to drive dads doorslammer. Recently this dream became reality.
My first ever drive came on the 6th August at a WSID bracket meet. With new crew, new driver and a relatively new engine/chassis combination we didn’t expect much.
The first hurdle was to get the burnout out of the way, as i found out this isn’t as easy as it appears I liken it to running in marshmallow shoes along a log floating in water.
On my first launch things went pretty quick but to my relief the blower belt came off cause I wasn’t ready for anything more than a 60ft shut off. The belt smashed the rpm pickup, but we fixed it. I think we got 4 runs in total and the furthest I drove was 330ft. The best news of the day was that I did a 0.999 60ft which is pretty quick, don’t care whoyare, however all day I didn’t get anywhere near doing a burn out “right”.
I had my second chance at licensing on 27th August at a WSID test & tune. We had problems getting the car to go straight at the launch. It picked the front wheels up hard and turned left around 60ft again. We spent the whole day trying to counteract this problem with no reward other than some more quick 60’s. On 30th August two days before the east coast nat’s I was invited by Robin Judd to attend a private test. This was my last chance to get my license to run in the nat’s which I had entered. The weather wasn’t good, it rained until lunchtime. Luckily the afternoon cleared up and we got 2 good passes in, to tame the car down, I left in 2nd gear. slow but you can steer when the wheels are on the ground. First run I was suppose to shut off at half track. I pedalled at half track but since it was going pretty good I decided to get back on it again. Ran a 7.55sec @ 185mph and I finally got my burn out sorted. 2nd run was great. Huge smoky burnout saw me get crossed up and gave me a little scare. Rule 1, when your out of control you really have zero control. I was just lucky I didn’t hit the fence. That run I ran a 6.77sec @ 208mph. It felt really good but a little out of my comfort zone, I used half throttle for 75% of the run. The team was stoked and I was surprised it was that quick. They told me 1 more like that and ill get my licence. We got one more run, in the night, and I thought it ran hard. Just after half track the car stepped over to the wall, I got off it straight away and coasted through to a 7.35sec @ 165mph or something like that. There was oil everywhere, it must have got under my tyres. Anyway I was given my license on that final pass. When we got back to the pits we were pretty happy with our achievement and were all in high spirits until we jacked up the car. Oil was leaking out of the sump. I figured someone didn’t do up the sump plug. If only it was that…we broke a rod. We decided it was too much work to fix the engine before the race. There was a fair bit of damage. We spent the weekend as spectators. I’ll take this opportunity to thank the team for all their help, they did a good job.
We are currently now building our second motor and hope to be racing soon.
Top Doorslammer Debut
Sunday 9th July 2006, was our Top Doorslammer Debut and Robert Broadbent (my father) had his final drive (I think). The decision to test at the bracket meeting/testing session at WSID (Western Sydney International Dragway) was last minute, and there was a lot of hard work endured the week leading up to the Sunday test just to get there. We were very happy with the results in general although on the day the engine wasn’t running hot enough (lacking power). We had three runs and each run was better then the last.
- 300 ft under power ran ET - 8.80 sec (approx)Â
- 330 ft – 3.1 sec (3 to 4 tenths off pace)
- 60 ft – 1.13 sec
The car showed heaps of potential and we are looking forward to testing a lot more in the future.
Check out the photos from the day.
Stay tuned, on the 6th August I will be having my first ever drive in the Top Doorslammer drag car. I am both nervous and excited about the opportunity and have a lot to learn before I get my license and race. These cars have so much power and speed and I have waited and dreamed of this day all my life.
$h!t happens
Mark (Davo) Davidson, checking out some damage incurred from a spin, busted crash bar and a bent steering drop arm.
Davo again assessing the damage from an unfortunate roll over.
All in all I had a relatively damage free season compared to some!
Season Finale
The 2005/2006 Parramatta City Raceway season is now over. Peter completed 14 rounds out of 22 which placed him 40th in the official point score. (There were 117 contenders.) The next season will commence around October 2006, so in the meantime we will be stripping the car, servicing the engine and getting prepared to race again. I am sure Peter will tell you more soon. Oh and hopefully we will have some time to relax in between.
Thank you to all our family and friends for helping throughout the season and we look forward to catching up over the break.
Finally Happy Easter and we hope the Easter bunny is good to you all.
Katie (Peter’s wife)
Photos from home during service
After each race the car comes apart and is cleaned and checked over.
The trailer is washed inside and we prepare for the next race, usually the following weekend…there goes Saturday and Sunday.
General maintainance on the engine is critical. We clean the fuel system weekly (methanol is very corrosive), wash the air filter, change the oil and filter, and check the water. We also do a leakdown each week to make sure the cylinders still seal properly, and check the tappets - these can give a good indication if there has been a failure in the engine. Finally we wash the cylinders with light oil and petrol, just incase some water got in during the wash or from the compressed air in the leak down.
All this takes me and my beautiful wife about 4 to 6 hours of our sunday and there is still plenty more to do (that is if nothing got damaged)!
372 4 sale
My car from last year is up for sale.
It’s a 372 maxim 2002 model. It has new wings and a bunch of spares, including shocks, bars, wheels, wings etc. Also a titanium bolt kit plus all light weight components. The engine is 8 races since refresh and sports new JE pistons, titanium valves, bearings and a port job with new resin and flow test.
Car is complete and ready to race. It was competitive for me even against the 410’s at Parramatta Cuty Raceway.
2 flat tyres in 2 races
The 4th March was the NSW 410 State Title. I timed well for me with a 12.7sec - good enough for 19th. I was placed in 2nd position for my heat. But due to a bad start I finished in 4th position. Luckily I had done a pretty good time trial, so I made the dash, my second ever! Starting out of 7th, I was a little bit slow and finished in 8th. That put me in 16th for the feature race. Some where along the way I got lapped by the 2 leaders and after a yellow, I was in third on the restart (a lap down) and with that I pushed harder than I ever have before. The leaders got the jump, but I matched them for speed and it turned out that I started to drive away from the cars behind (this is a huge confidence boost, to know that I have what it takes to run with the big guns) after 4 or 5 laps of that I had a spin. I was happy to be off the rear again where I can make some positions. Unfortunately I bounced over the berm and got a couple of foot of air. I came this close to rolling the thing. When I had stopped bouncing I discovered the left rear was off the rim!!!! Why??? I was hoping that it was on it’s way down and that’s why I spun (makes me look better when I can blame something else). There was no damage to the rim or tyre. A bent drag link in the steering and some busted front wing posts was all the damage we had.
The following race was an interesting one, round 19, 11th March. Team owner Robert Broadbent thought it was a good idea to change the diff ratio before the race to try and get some get up and go on the starts and restarts. My confidence was high coming into this race, but the change of gear gave me a whole new car to deal with. I didn’t time well, 13.4sec in position 32. The track was tricky with berms mid corner real rough and greasy, one car even rolled over in time trials. Out of 8th in my heat, but lost 1 position on the start (my excuse is a face full of mud into turn 1) held that position and got 10th in the B. I was racing well for the first 10 laps or so of the B main, then started I to slow up. On a red light with 2 laps to go I found there was only about 2lb of air in my right rear. When we all got rolling again I decided it was too dangerous to race and made my way to the pits and was given a meat ball (defect) flag on my way. When I got to my pit, there was only zero lb of air in the tyre.
Turns out I had a bleeder stick open (basically a pressure relief valve, when the tyre gets hot from friction the air pressure inside increases and we use bleeders to maintain the right air pressure).
PHOTOS BY WENDY
Team Peter Blake racing.
We have a two car team based in Kurrajong NSW. The team consists of a Top Doorslammer Drag car and 2 dirt Sprintcars. These are delivered to and from the track in our transporter. The transporter is a 410 hp Volvo truck pulling our trailer which holds up to 4 complete sedan type cars. It also has a kitchen, lounge, shower and sleeping for 5. There is also a workshop area, complete with spares, tools and tool boxes and some basic machinery, drill, grinder etc. This parks inside our workshop along side the race cars so we can work on them at home, same as we do at the track. To complement our team we also have in the workshop a milling machine, lathe, welders, grinders, oxy, plasma cutters and a complete range of diagnostic tools, including a state of the art, computerised fuel pump dyno (knowing our fuel systems is most important to us.) Almost all our work, maintenance and improvements are done in house, we also build our own engines there.
When we are at the speedway, as we are on dirt, the cars tend to get dirty (go figure), and between rounds it takes quiet some man (and woman) power to clean things up and make the necessary changes to set up in order to look good and go fast. To help with these tasks I have a great team who are always there for me, they include: Katie (my wife), Robert & Carol (dad & mum) Craig & Tracey (brother & sister), Rowan Walker (designer of this web site), Jason & Marie Newby, Mark & Donna Davidson (who have never missed a race yet), Warren Ferguson, and Rowan Williams. (Thanks guys for all your help!!!!)