This Month's VW Ultra has a cover story on 'Herbielizer', my Drag Racing VW Beetle.
As it's now in print, i guess it won't harm to share with you the story as i told it to Keith Seume of VW Ultra
On the 12th of May 2007 I was more worried about my Football Club being relegated than about Drag Racing, My Blue '63 that had been brought as a rolling shell from Max of the Greenhearts was mostly finished, including a 2165 (78x94mm) Motor breathing through 48mm Jenvey IDF pattern throttle bodies talking to an Omex ECU and running a lumpy FK89 cam that the Fuel Injection made more tollerable for the Street. It was my dream car, the big Engined classic Cal-Looker, one piece windows, T-Bars and Centreline 'Big-Rivet' Wheels.
On the Afternoon of the 13th of May, West Ham had beaten Manchester United, I'd been at the Champagne, and Brian Burrows was on the telephone from France talking about the Two Turbo cars he was bringing in from the States, one for himself and one to sell to another racer to boost the number of quick cars in the VWDRC Pro ranks. Whether by a mixture of elation and inebriation or just a complete lack of common sense, by the end of the conversation I had agreed to go up to Tewkesbury to see the cars, and had as good as commited to buying one of them.
Brian had sent both cars to Raceshack to have a few small jobs done, and more importantly to get their jetting sorted out for UK conditions, with less heat, humidity and Altitude than their US homes. By the time I got there Brian had selected the car that he thought had the most in it, and I saw a white '58 with a standard steel body and all it's trim retained, but for an Aluminium Jammar front beam and a missing deck lid. Around back sat a big ass Turbo that had a Holley carb hung off the back of it with a Carbon Manifold, and that dominated the engine bay. We had a chat about the price, Brian showed me all the bills that proved that i was paying only what he had spent, and as I had just two passes in my '63 under my belt at that time, Brian wanted to run some shakedown runs in the car before handing it to a novice, so we agreed that Bug Jam would be the handover day.
In the meantime i had decided that Claire Williams would be driving the Blue '63 without it's Nitrous system in the Sportsman Class as as well, so we turned up at Santa Pod with two cars, and no forward planning...more of that later. I had planned a few gentle runs to get myself used to the car, but after two passes I decided that it was running so nice that I wanted to open it up a little. Danny Allen agreed to coach me on the startline, and with his help i peeled off an 11.4 second pass at 118mph. Since that day we've never topped that run, mostly because it was a touch of beginners luck and I've never been that quick off the line since, and partly because of the myriad of small mechanical problems that have dogged me since.
On that Quick run, the car threw it's crank pulley out the back as i came through the finish line lights, thankfully missing people and other vital engine parts, to this day it still sports a small black mark on the MSD distributor body as evidence of that cheap ally pulley's bid for freedom. Being dumb i fitted another aluminium pulley for VW Action in September, and this time we noticed the crack in the webs before putting the car out, another disapointing day at the track foiled by inadequate components. There was much more of those sorts of thing to come, but a more pressing matter came to light, I really hadn't thought it out how i was going to get two race cars home from the Pod, and more to the point where I was going to keep the new one.
The VWDRC came up trumps with Team Filth sorting me right out, Andrew running about to find help, Abi (Sambasaurus) Teather phoning her mum to free up some gagarge space at her house, and the ever helpfull Rob Judge (later to be Crew Chief) of RNJ Motorsport driving home to fetch his trailer to drag it there. They are still far better organised than me, I'm lucky to have great people around me that help us out all the time and keep us racing.
In 2008 we where looking forward to Big Bang as the first meeting of the season that we could make, but it didn't go well. The car seemed to be slipping it's clutch, and more experienced onlookers noticing that it seemed to have a slight missfire and was 'flaming' from the exhaust on shifts. Along with yet another pulley going west, I decided to park the car as it was blowing more oil than i liked. People from the VWDRC wanted to get the engine out and help fix it, Shane Rae even trying to convince Claire to take me off to party whilst they made a start so I couldn't say no, but I stood my ground, helped by a dose of man flu giving me the hump, and we trailered the car back to RNJ Motorsport.
When Rob opened the Engine up it has sheered all the dowel pegs and destroyed the mating surfaces of Crank and Flywheel, and was dangling the Flywheel by a single turn of the Gland Nut. we believe that it was due to vibrations from the rear main bearing that had also contributed earlier to the pulley issue, but I still dread to think what could have happened if the flywheel had come off at the top end turning 7500 revs.... During the rebuild we brought in a Gene Berg pulley to finally put an end to that problem, even though it's four times the price of some other 'quality' manufacturers parts, and fitted a new clutch and preasure plate due to oil contamination.
The new Black Magic disc certainly made a difference.... Bug Jam 2008 saw a return to the track, and some crazy issues with traction. We had too much of it and every launch sent the nose reaching for the clouds. This scared the hell out of me, and ruined my ET's for the day, but we pushed the terminals on to 125mph, so there was clearly a major improvement in the car from that point of view, if only the driver could get his act together.
Bracket racing is cruel to those whose technique isn't perfect, and with a wildly varying ET I still am nowhere near consistent results in the VWDRC, unless consistently bad counts, but i am loving every minute. The car's history closed for the moment with a loss of oil preasure at the top of the strip at VW Action 2008, I hadn't noticed that the oil return line to the filter had crimped, so much for the American 'very expensive' braided hoses. By this time i had been made redundant and funds have not been there to get the car prepared for 2009. The lesson of all this i guess is, Drag racing can be a cheap weekend's fun if you know your limits, but chasing the dream (mine is a 10 second floorpan car with a back seat) is expensive, and what you would call near anal maintainance levels for a street car isn't nearly enough for a VW motor churning out 340bhp plus. But I wouldn't have it any other way.
It looks like I may get to go racing in 2009 as a few people have shown an interest in sponsoring the team, but it's not a done deal yet. I must thank Rob and Polly at RNJ Motorsport for all their help and support, Abi and Andrew and the rest of team filth for being great people, and John Johnstone at Big Digital (www.big-digital.co.uk
See you all at the track!
So there you have it, nearly the whole story of a boy and his Volkswagen. One Love.
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