Up-comming weekend I’m going to Assen, the Netherlands. During the Formido midzomerraces (midsummerraces)(Formido is a DIY store) the Ford Mustang GT-4 will race and the historic cars that Tachyon Motorsport supports.
A sunny Saturday in July is the perfect time to start learning more about the dragster engine. Today I worked with the engine specialist of Lex Joon Racing on the assembly of one of the engines. Arjan (engine specialist) already prepared the engine block last week. He cleaned everything and mounted the cylinder sleeves already in the block.
Monday night I went to Tachyon Motorsport to help with the preparations for the third race of the NK-htgt season. This race will be held at Dijon-Prenois a beautiful track with a lot of history. Unfortunately the crew leaves already on Wednesday because the free practice will start on Thursday. I wanted to go with Tachyon but this event consumes a little bit to much days off from CPM. I’m trying to finish my final project in time and I need these days off to go to the GT4 events and the drag race with Lex Joon Racing at Mantorp Sweden.
I worked on Michiel’s new car the Corvette Grand Sport. At the end of the evening I helped Maarten to start up the TVR Griffith and the Grand Sport. Both engines started up perfect and the cars are almost ready to go into the truck to leave Tuesday night. Maybe Tuesday evening I will assist with the last stuff that needs to be done.
Today I went to the workshop of Lex Joon Racing. After some experience Friday night I could improve my lathe skills again. I had to shorten some bolt and my late night practical experience came in really handy.
Today Lex Joon explained me more about all the tasks that need to be done on the cylinder heads. He explains everything really clear and shows me how he does the preparation of the heads. Besides the mechanical aspects administration is also really important. The parts inside the cylinder head that have an affect on the tuning of the engine are measured carefully and administrated in a log book just like the pistons and rods. Up to next Saturday to see what the next subject is.
After a week of working on my final project at CPM Europe I went to Tachyon Motorsport to set-up a car of a friend. He has been working on this Seat Ibiza for a few years and it is finally done. We went to Tachyon to use there scales to weight the car and to adjust the ride height in the right order. By putting the car on the scales u can see how the weight is distributed over the 4 wheels. In order to give the car maximum braking power and acceleration it is important to have the same load on the 2 front wheels. Without the driver the car was already 50-50 between left and right but with a driver inside it needed some small adjustments. When we where done with this I asked Maarten of Tachyon if I could help him with something. He was still working on a Ford V8 engine to rebuild in for the Dijon NK htgt race.
Today I went to the workshop of Lex Joon Racing. I worked with Arjan van Bemmel he is the engine and bottom end specialist. He showed me how he inspects all the pistons and rods that where used during the races. Every run the car makes all the pistons and rods are removed and inspected for damage, length, play, etc. He explained which criteria he uses before he calls a piston or a rod scrap. These parts that are called scrap can be bought as a souvenir because they can’t be used anymore in an engine. We checked all the pistons and rods and documented this in the engine log. This log contains a lot of historic information from the engine. It was a interesting Saturday and I learned a lot about these parts of the engine. There is still much to learn so lets see what the next Saturday will teach me.
Maybe the loyal visitors where already looking for the post after the Pinksterraces and finally it is here. Last week I was busy with my final project at CPM and didn’t gave myself the time to write something.
The Pinksterraces started good but ended wit ha disappoint third race. Qualifying went pretty well for both of the drivers. Michiel Campagne managed to driver faster then he did before and Allard Kalff just missed the pole by a small mistake. The top 13 cars are all in the same second so a small mistake puts u on the 5th place on the grid.
This weekend the second race of the dutch-GT4 championship will be at the track of Zandvoort.
After the last race the car had to be changed to comply with all the rules. The roll cage was not FIA approved and was made to comply with the American racing standards.
Sunday was also completely covered with sun. After a nice dinner the night before there was enough time to rest/wait for all the mechanics. The NK-htgt only drove 1 race this day that was going to start at 11.40.
Sunshine all over the place here in Zandvoort, The Netherlands. Tachyon brought 2 cars to this event and both are running fine. Both the drivers keep improving there lap-times over and over again.
