So as some of you know, motor sport was a big part of my upbringing and a lot of my childhood was spent either under cars in a pool of oil clutching a spanner, or equally spent bump starting various cars in all sorts of places and weather conditions. So hence my love of cars and getting my hands dirty. Today my Dad and I went and did a track day in his Jedi 600 - a very light single seater racing car at Curborough race track where you pay 25 quid each and can use the track all day. So very cheap by all means.
We've never ever had any trouble with the Jedi and its been probably the most reliable car I have ever driven. So usually we literally fill it up with petrol, pull it out the trailer and hit the track. Until today.
The day started well, with a few decent laps until my dad hopped in and next thing we see is him rolling down the straight very slowly towards the pit area. We realized that where the Jedi had been so reliable we hadn't checked over the tightness of a few bolts holding the cog which sends the power to the drive train. So we got some new bolts from my Dads bottomless tool box and in the process of fixing this realized the rear wing mounting was seriously cracking. So it was a blessing that we found this as had it had broken during driving a quite serious incident could've occurred.
We then continued to enjoy playing around with the car minus the rear wing which we had removed. Which I can tell you now, makes a car like the Jedi very slippy and we both narrowly avoided spinning off multiple times. However we where testing the speed of the Jedi on the straight when the back end decided to fly out out of nowhere taking my Dad and the car spinning dramatically across the track decelerating from 85 to 0 mph in a matter of seconds.
This was due to yet again a bolt that had worked loose on the suspension and broke off part of the suspension, this twinned with the lack of rear wing ended up sending the car off the track and to an early finish for the day. Luckily my Dad, the car and myself all managed to survive and I think We've learnt a vital lesson about tightening up screws and generally checking the car before a race event.All in all a very hair raising but fun day.
Our thrown for the day, more like a plastic bucket/ coffin!
The grass my dad managed to pick up on his spin off the track
This is the car after the spin, notice that rear wheels are supposed to face parallel to the car...
Us fixing the rear sprocket.
We've never ever had any trouble with the Jedi and its been probably the most reliable car I have ever driven. So usually we literally fill it up with petrol, pull it out the trailer and hit the track. Until today.
The day started well, with a few decent laps until my dad hopped in and next thing we see is him rolling down the straight very slowly towards the pit area. We realized that where the Jedi had been so reliable we hadn't checked over the tightness of a few bolts holding the cog which sends the power to the drive train. So we got some new bolts from my Dads bottomless tool box and in the process of fixing this realized the rear wing mounting was seriously cracking. So it was a blessing that we found this as had it had broken during driving a quite serious incident could've occurred.
We then continued to enjoy playing around with the car minus the rear wing which we had removed. Which I can tell you now, makes a car like the Jedi very slippy and we both narrowly avoided spinning off multiple times. However we where testing the speed of the Jedi on the straight when the back end decided to fly out out of nowhere taking my Dad and the car spinning dramatically across the track decelerating from 85 to 0 mph in a matter of seconds.
This was due to yet again a bolt that had worked loose on the suspension and broke off part of the suspension, this twinned with the lack of rear wing ended up sending the car off the track and to an early finish for the day. Luckily my Dad, the car and myself all managed to survive and I think We've learnt a vital lesson about tightening up screws and generally checking the car before a race event.All in all a very hair raising but fun day.
Our thrown for the day, more like a plastic bucket/ coffin!
The grass my dad managed to pick up on his spin off the track
This is the car after the spin, notice that rear wheels are supposed to face parallel to the car...
Us fixing the rear sprocket.
Removing the wing.
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