You may well be forgiven for thinking that my inactivity in the blogosphere was indicative of inactivity on the vehicular front. And, dear reader, you would not be far wrong.
Immediately post-DC, (April) the dead Beast was dumped outside Saluki Motorsports with the promise that they’d have a look at the engine when they got a Round Tuit. Apparently, Round Tuits have been in short supply lately, and Saluki didn’t get one till the end of July. Having taken the engine apart, it was immediately clear that this was indeed an ex-engine. It had well and truly expired, shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to meet its maker.
According to Rick at Saluki (not Rick Carless, you understand) the engine had overheated. This was rather surprising as the water temperature had not been excessive. There was no evidence of lubrication failure, but one aluminium piston skirt had melted, releasing the gudgeon pin and wreaking comprehensive mayhem in the bowels of the motor. The piston tops had survived, being forged, but the unforged skirt gave way. This, Rick says, is exactly the same failure they had with the Honda V6 engine in the old Saluki buggy, which was finally traced to an overly-lean fuel/air mixture, and rectified by having the engine professionally re-mapped on the dyno.
So the plan was, buy a new short block (the cylinder heads being undamaged), nail it in, and get Mark Addams (the ECU-wizard) to come and do the mapping. So I sent a huge chunk of wonga in the direction of my mate Kolby at Turnkey Engines in sunny California, and waited for a large box to arrive.
At this point two things went wrong. First, the Man from the Municipality threatened to tow away the Beast, because it had been parked outside Saluki Motorsport for nearly 5 months by this time, and was apparently responsible for despoiling the view of Al Quoz Industrial Area. Now, Al Quoz has never won any major plaudits as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and it is my contention that having a few race cars lying around actually improves the landscape. But you know what these bureaucrats are like. So I had the hot and sweaty task of loading the dead Beast onto the trailer (in the middle of summer) to drag it back to the office, about which I was less than pleased. Second, I gave TNT the simple task of picking up the engine and delivering to Dubai, a task which should have taken any self-respecting airfreight forwarder a few days. TNT were either another victim of the great Round Tuit shortage, or they have the world’s slowest aircraft, because it took them a full month to get it here. ‘Yes, we can!’ boasts their tag-line these days. Actually, no, they can’t.
It arrived yesterday, and hopefully, it can be fitted next week – but not by Rick, because he’s now left Saluki! And then, we just have to persuade Mr Addams to grace us with his presence and all will be well……inshallah.
As far as the new season is concerned – the only info I have is a tentative schedule for the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, which is 5th-12th April 2013.
And that, dear reader, concludes this Summer Omnibus Edition and brings you up to date with the doings of Newtrix Racing. Watch this space for the next nail-biting episode!
Immediately post-DC, (April) the dead Beast was dumped outside Saluki Motorsports with the promise that they’d have a look at the engine when they got a Round Tuit. Apparently, Round Tuits have been in short supply lately, and Saluki didn’t get one till the end of July. Having taken the engine apart, it was immediately clear that this was indeed an ex-engine. It had well and truly expired, shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to meet its maker.
According to Rick at Saluki (not Rick Carless, you understand) the engine had overheated. This was rather surprising as the water temperature had not been excessive. There was no evidence of lubrication failure, but one aluminium piston skirt had melted, releasing the gudgeon pin and wreaking comprehensive mayhem in the bowels of the motor. The piston tops had survived, being forged, but the unforged skirt gave way. This, Rick says, is exactly the same failure they had with the Honda V6 engine in the old Saluki buggy, which was finally traced to an overly-lean fuel/air mixture, and rectified by having the engine professionally re-mapped on the dyno.
So the plan was, buy a new short block (the cylinder heads being undamaged), nail it in, and get Mark Addams (the ECU-wizard) to come and do the mapping. So I sent a huge chunk of wonga in the direction of my mate Kolby at Turnkey Engines in sunny California, and waited for a large box to arrive.
At this point two things went wrong. First, the Man from the Municipality threatened to tow away the Beast, because it had been parked outside Saluki Motorsport for nearly 5 months by this time, and was apparently responsible for despoiling the view of Al Quoz Industrial Area. Now, Al Quoz has never won any major plaudits as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and it is my contention that having a few race cars lying around actually improves the landscape. But you know what these bureaucrats are like. So I had the hot and sweaty task of loading the dead Beast onto the trailer (in the middle of summer) to drag it back to the office, about which I was less than pleased. Second, I gave TNT the simple task of picking up the engine and delivering to Dubai, a task which should have taken any self-respecting airfreight forwarder a few days. TNT were either another victim of the great Round Tuit shortage, or they have the world’s slowest aircraft, because it took them a full month to get it here. ‘Yes, we can!’ boasts their tag-line these days. Actually, no, they can’t.
It arrived yesterday, and hopefully, it can be fitted next week – but not by Rick, because he’s now left Saluki! And then, we just have to persuade Mr Addams to grace us with his presence and all will be well……inshallah.
As far as the new season is concerned – the only info I have is a tentative schedule for the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, which is 5th-12th April 2013.
And that, dear reader, concludes this Summer Omnibus Edition and brings you up to date with the doings of Newtrix Racing. Watch this space for the next nail-biting episode!
