[Fot] Road America - Part 2 of 3

[Keith Files]

Part 2

Jon, Denise and I arrived in Chicago on 13th May and drove straight over to
visit Joe and Jan (the very soon to be married Alexander and Huff) in Jesup,
Iowa. We abandoned Denise in Jesup in the tender care of Jan and Joe whilst
Jon and I travelled onto Geneseo to see the TR4; what a treat it was to see
it all finished and with nothing to do other than to stick it on the dyno!!!
Again, for those with an interest in these things we made 174 bhp at the
rear wheels but I might have got the numbers confused :-)  

We had so much time on our hands that Jack took us to see a friend of his,
Dave Morgan, who restores vintage Packards, what an afternoon that was. We
got to see a vintage Cadillac V16 (yep, one of only 4 cars made in that
model year), a Pebble Beach winning Packard and got a ride in a 1937 V12
Packard AND Dave even made us a cup of Earl Grey, as I said, what a day. 

The evening before we were due to leave Geneseo for RA we were joined by Joe
and Jan (and re-united with my lovely, but nutty, wife Denise) who had just
left Kas and Peg in their house in Jesup as well as Bill Babcock who was,
sort of, just passing by. We had a great supper that evening.

Thursday and onto RA which took a while as Joe has a blow out on his
trailer, Joe was providing transportation for my car over the weekend whilst
his son Sean towed his car to RA for him. RA came into site and now I was
getting really excited as there was a free test session schedule for 16:30
and I couldn't wait to get out there. Got through registration, long queues,
deadly dull and you would think that we Brits would be used to that. Car was
unloaded and I set of to re-acquaint myself with RA but not until after
Larry Rossi had stopped by for a chat, followed by John Sprinzel, Dick
Stockton and Kas himself; talk about being in good company, I was fit to
burst.

OK, the lappery itself, pretty steady stuff and nothing better than a 3:10
but that was ok as we were still running the engine in sorting out the
suspension settings and tyre pressures. Car then went through the very
rigorous tech spec without to much trouble (thanks to Dave Kettle(?) for
allowing us time to address the brake light issue).

Friday morning came and so did the problems, the transmission was throwing
oil out everywhere in the first session and then the clutch started to foul
so that was the end of that session (3:12 being the high spot; not good). Mr
Wood to the rescue, breather pipe on the transmission was changed, clutch
travel was altered and we were ready to roll again. 2nd session, 2 laps in
and the engine went sick, turned out the front rocker post had snapped in
the head, the rocker shaft snapped and 32 little roller bearings disappeared
into the engine somewhere. Time for some deep thinking from Mr Wood aided
and abetted by Kas. Jon stripped everything out whilst I went on the forage
for parts; now this is where you really see the true spirit of the FOT so
thank you to Henry Frye for the loan of a new rocker shaft (more later) and
2 new posts (another one was bent)and to Dick Stockton for the loan of sump
gasket. Jon worked through to 8pm recovering the engine (he found 31 of the
32 roller bearings and, as Kas said, the odds are with you so put it all
back together and it will be fine so we did and it was, thanks Kas). 

We were scheduled to run the Enduro with Mike Hughes, the UK Race Series
Chairman, but all he got was to do the lunchtime tour in his son's road car,
sorry Mike. 

End of part 2