This review has been a few weeks coming as we have all been rather busy, but as anyone who attended the meeting will know there was not a huge amount to report on save an awful lot of rain.

Friday was largely dry and saw sportsman classes run through a huge number of qualifying cycles, which should have been good for us. However on warming the car up on Friday morning we discovered an oiling problem in one of the cylinders, which was hugely smokey, We had no option but to take the head off at this point with visions of holed pistons racing through our minds. With the head off the piston and valves were thankfully absolutely fine but it was obvious that we had head sealing problems which were traced to stripped threads in the block. It is a good thing indeed that we had the head off as running like this may have lead to torched heads.

As a precautionary measure we checked both heads and eventually fixed quite a few head studs with helicoils, checking valve seats and guides while we had the opportunity. By the time we had got the engine back together racing was done for the day, and after chasing some gremlins in the timing system the motor sounded great. We eagerly awaited Saturday to try it out.

Saturday came, and we still had a slightly oil cylinder on one sidde which we have put down to the oil control ring. We warmed the motor up and it sounded great, but on the track the performance was a bit lacklustre. Back in the pits we fired the motor and it sounded awful - checking the timing showed it was now severely retarded. We re-timed the mag and tried again, it was a bit better but not much. Back in the pits again it was obvious the mag is moving at the hit of the throttle - possibly even in the burnout - and throwing the timing out. Unfortunately this was the last run of the weekend, Sunday saw us do nothing ore than eat Roast Beef and watch Hot Rod in the back of the lorry and come Monday morning we packed up and went home, despite having qualified on the ladder. This turned out to be good call as the meeting was later called off.

We sat out the Summer Nationals as we had not received the parts required, and the motor is now being freshened for the Nostalgia Nationals with new rings and a beefier mag clamp. this should hopefully see Iron Dan perform to his full potential.

Videos from the Main Event are now online: Qualifier 1, Qualifier 2.