Big Bang Report

Big Bang at Santa Pod was an awesome weekend and the sun even shone! SRW club camping was a bit of a squeeze for the many that arrived but that just made the camp vibe better. Five of us managed to get some strip action in, two Bugs - mine and John Walkletts, and the three buses of Kev Donlon, Steve Turnbull and Mike Reilly.

After a hard morning on mine with a very bad misfire and a best ET in the low 16's I ripped out the Mallory dissy which had a cracked cap and installed a new 009 c/w pertronix & new coil. Et dropped straight down into the 14's with a best run of the day being a 14.2 @ 93 mph.

Johns 64 only managed one run up the strip with John trying to take it easy - he ran a 13.004 @101 mph but had to leave it at that due to a gearbox problem (thought to be a diff bearing failure). John managed to pick up two of the three awards netted by SRW at the weekend, 'RWYB Type 1' and the 'Show & Go' classes.

Kev Donlon's new motor did the business for him, running a 15.2 second quarter. I don't need to say how awesome that is for a full weight VW Bay camper and even more impressive when you bear in mind that this engine is still being tested & tuned. Kev was also trying to take it easy because of the newness of the motor and also he has been experiencing a bit of oil down from his breather system.Look out for a 14 second quarter mile from this in the not too distant future.

Steve Turnbull got his bus down into the 16's with a few rapid passes down the quarter mile. Again this is in a fully weight van that Steve and his family camped in over the weekend.

Last, but by no means last, we come to Mike Reilly and his wicked Samba. Mike was up against me on my first run of the day, and he did quite an impressive burnout in the box and came into stage in the left hand lane. The lights went and I was gone. Half way up the strip I looked in the rear view mirror to see Mike still sat on the line. At first I thought I had dreamt seeing the green light and thought I had run the biggest red light in drag racing history, however it turns out that Mike had actually left the line, but only got about 6 inches down the qtr. Everyone from SRW would like to offer their condolences on sad the loss of your gearbox Mike, he will be missed by us all (but I suspect by you the most). Mike was last seen heading into the garage muttering something about a Porsche box...

the rest of the racing was awesome as always with some great times posted by a lot of racers - see this link http://www.volkszone.com/VZi/showthread.php?t=448981 to the VZi forum for a 'post your time' thread. Congratulations to all who ran and commiserations to those who managed to break their cars!!!