UAQ Pro-Race Jan 24

Thursday dawned bright and clear, confounding weather prophets who’d forecast more fog, and we headed out to see what Umm Al Quwain had in store for us.  The answer was a newly-established 8.5km sand track, starting inside the Motorplex compound and heading out to the wild world beyond.  It was rather more challenging than the old course, with soft sand and a number of steep drops.

  After a convoy lap for familiarization, the quads and Barracudas set off at 30 sec intervals and completed their 4 laps, and then it was the turn of the Buggies and 4x4s.

I managed to miss a turn at the end of the first lap, resulting in a significant short-cut.  Fortunately, around 90% of the field made the same mistake, so no real harm was done.  Next time round, Sheila (bless her!) was waving her arms wildly from the trackside to prevent me from erring again.  The drama continued when one of the buggies broke down at the worst possible point – right in the gateway heading back into the compound – and the red Pro-truck got bogged down on the final turn and caught fire!  Next, Monish’s buggy broke down, and someone had a puncture.  It was all happening.

Unfortunately, the black-and-red Desert Force SWB Patrol pickup with a V8 Land Cruiser engine was having no such problems, and was gaining on me every lap.  His chance came when, on the final lap, my GoPro camera mount made a bid for freedom from the dashboard and ended up wedged under the pedals. To retrieve it I had to stop, unbuckle the harness, find it and then re-do the harness – which takes more time that you’d imagine.  He came past and gained a well-deserved victory, and I had to be content with 2^nd place.

The good news is that we seem to have cured the problem of running out of steam around 5000rpm.  After some serious head-scratching, Richard Bailey and I decided that we were not getting enough air through the intake.  So I replaced the restrictor with a straight pipe (this being a non-FIA event), treated the air cleaner to a new filter, and as an afterthought, wrapped some tiewraps round the flexible elbow leading into the throttle body.  The idea was that maybe this was collapsing under vacuum, and the tiewraps might prevent that happening.  Well, we seemed to have got it right because there were no such problems this time out, and I’m pretty sure that the elbow is collapsing when the restrictor is fitted.  So Robbie at Saluki has been charged with engineering a permanent solution, which will be a rigid elbow.

Thanks to Grumpy Goat for photographic support, Sheila for lunch, photos and directing traffic, and to Richard Bailey for coming along with his family and (as usual) getting his hands dirty!  More Goat-pix are here: https://picasaweb.google.com/110895353364127218017/UAQRally24Jan2013.

Next race will be at UAQ on 8^th March – I think.  Watch this space!