Saturday 21st September was the Rocket Industries Fuel Altered Challenge at Sydney Dragway, and we entered the Pro Extreme class to get some testing time leading up to 400 Thunder in November.
The event was rain affected and we only got down the track twice all day, but on a points count back our round 1 win with a time of 5.866 put us in first place and took the trophy Luck was certainly on our side against some proven very fast cars.
Thanks to Sydney Dragway, Rocket Industries and all the other sponsors as well as Sigra Rollingstock Components and the Sigra crew. Thanks also to the other Pro Extreme teams we met for their enthusiasm and warm welcome.
On Saturday in the pits, I met Ian from Ian Elliot Photography and he gave me the photo below, taken in May 2019 when we had a supercharger explosion 3 seconds into the run at 166mph (265 km/h). Ian tells me that his camera was taking 7 frames per second and the frames before and after this one showed no smoke or flames, so he nailed the explosion just at the right time. You can clearly see the indent in the windscreen from the blast out of the rear burst panel and the cloud of compressed fuel and air escaping from under the blower as it is lifted off the inlet manifold. The mounting bolts are designed to break in case of such an explosion and the blower is held in place by seatbelt type restraints.
Here is a short video from the roof camera:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W27HQ5bPueE.
This unfortunately happens when I get the tune up wrong, melt a piston or two and get a backfire through an inlet valve. There is a lot of fuel compressed by the blower waiting in the inlet manifold to be delivered and it makes quite a bang. In the past this has resulted in a broken windscreen and another time the roof camera blown off the car from the force of the explosion – video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq9VrpAxjic
Photo below was taken by Ian Elliot, it’s a great photo for our archives and takes away some of the pain of rebuilding that motor.
Next event for us is the East Coast Thunder in Sydney 1st and 2nd November. Event information can be found here on our events page.
