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This is the old roll bar, time to go.... old roll bar removed and holes made in bodywork for rear stays: MSA bar arrived and ready to fit :-) roll bar fitted easy compared to the real one!

My first sprint event with the electric Westfield was at Croft. This is quite a long circuit so I wondered if one charge could last for a whole days sprinting? I also wondered what sort of reception the car would receive from the authorities. The MSA Blue Book has nothing to say about electric cars. In the end the scrutineers were diligent and helpful if a little bemused but they gave it the OK. On the way to the circuit for first practise all cars line up for the noise test. When it came to my turn, the tester looked around the car and asked “where’s the exhaust”. Other marshals, standing nearby, helpfully explained that the car was actually a converted hair dryer and didn’t need an exhaust. He wrote down 0dB. The electrical power systems performed faultlessly and the battery lasted all day. The handling on the other hand was a real handful. The car’s weight, including me, was 975Kgs (885+90). On the track it bounced and wallowed around the circuit. The under slung batteries gave it a ride height of 50mm so it hit the ground several times. Obviously the springs were too soft and with no anti roll bar the car leaned like a ship. After returning home I consulted Westfield and they advised that the very similarly weighted iRacer used 600 lb springs on the rear and 500 lb on the front! I duly fitted the recommended springs and set off for the MIRA sprint. MIRA was wet! My first lap was a disaster. A combination of rain on both sides of the windscreen and a motor cut out meant that I missed a red flag and had to report to the headmaster for a lesson in humility. Subsequent laps were better. The new springs transformed the handling and my times were comparable with the other Westys, mainly due to the extra traction afforded by the car’s weight in the wet. Mine was the only Westfield not aquaplaning – result. The windscreen was worse than useless so before the next event I resolved to remove it along with all the interior trim and fitted a new GRP seat and a 12V lithium battery. This saved a total of 35Kg. Car now weighed “only” 850Kg! After a summer holiday I returned to MIRA with a lighter and more aerodynamic car. Again it was a wet start but the track dried in the afternoon. After P1, I started to adjust the damper settings and tyre pressures, seeking advice from fellow WSCC competitors. Everyone was very helpful. In the end my best time was 59.16 seconds with a top speed of 101 mph (according to my GPS logger anyway) – the slowest Westfield in the dry - but not too bad. After a good run at Curborough I called it a day for this year. Only four events but all fun and I learned a great deal about the car and myself. I need more track time and the car is basically way too heavy for competitive sprinting. It’s clear I’ll need to reduce the number of batteries in the car by 50%. This should save about 200Kgs but it’s a big technical challenge to reconfigure the battery to get the same power from half the cells - but that’s another story.

By about 4-00 pm on Friday afternoon the decision to go for a 2 day event in July (because of better weather) seemed a little silly. After over 3 hrs to do 120 miles to get to Gurston we arrived to be greated by insecent rain. Fortunately we had a small window of dry to allow the tents to be put up without being soaked. Almost as soon as we had finished, the rain returned for another session. A second dry period allowed Keith the Teeth to assist with the beeding of my new rear calipers after all the intermitent binding problems I had previously at Blyton! After that it was off to the clubhouse for a thoroughly enjoyable and economically priced meal complete with beer and wine! All was quiet on the weather front until about 3 am Sat when the heavens opened once again! From 7-30 am onwards it was very damp and chilly. Points of interest included a late entry oldish saloon car whose driver and passenger were from Devon that was located in the paddock bay next to us together with their very tame and very obediant Bearded Dragon from Australia. The said Dragon was only interested in sun bathing (didn't need my sun cream) and eating live Locusts! Also present was Peter Steel (former Paul Edden car owner) now driving a very well prepared 2015 Radical SR1. As the morning moved on the early runs proved that the track was not very warm and a little green from the recent harvesting work by the resident farmer. As a result the course was in tip top order, being well manicured and with a keeness amongst all the admin staff to be pleasant helpful and ready to put on a good show! As the sun came out and the track got faster the agedas for the day in the Westfield SS class started to become apparent: Adam V Charlotte Adam V Matt Hillam 2011 Course Record Keith Adams V Howard G GF V PB Some succeded and others did not Adam beat Charlotte but did not beat Matt's course record with 32.73 Keith was second with 36.52 Charlotte 3rd with 36.59 Howard 4th 36.81 Glutey 5th with 39.17 just .12 off my PB A good's days intence competion was had by all considering the wet start we had. With not may repair issues to deal with we focussed on evening leisure activities. Mark Bishop arrived in readiness to share my car with me on Sunday Then 5 of us meandered off to Bishopstone for a well earned bar meal and a beer! Sunday arrived much more humid, cloudy and a warmer track! Right from the get go in practice the times were much faster than Saturday! The true SS competitive spirit was on show right from the off. During one break Simon Broadbridge (ex Tom Caldecote car) came over to tell us about his total lost of his Westfield, Trailer and part of the rear of his Motor Home into field just north of Oxford on the A34 some time earlier. (Dodgey things motor homes) He is now in the process of just owning a F Ford single seater with assistance from Paul Morcom. All Saturday's objectives and rivalry with the addition of Mark Bishop surfaced very quickly Sunday morning. Mark took to my car like a duck to water and posted a first timed run faster than my PB at the start of the day so no holds were barred anywhere! The Phelps car had minor technical issues with starter motor and steering rack issues but John was able to come up with quick fixes as he is still in the middle of his 3 month driving ban because of the Presscott off! With times getting faster the afternoon flew by and the final class positions were as follows: Adam 31.48 NEW CLASS RECORD beating Matt Hillam's 04/11 time of 31.90 Well done Adam but beware Matt is threatening to come out of retirement and get you! Charlotte was 2nd with 34.34 which was a new PB. What a Great Example to us all! Keith 3rd with 35.90 Howard 4th with 36.22 (Now threatening to put the Dog Box back in)! Glutey 4th with 37.31 a new PB by nearly 2 secs (Well chuffed) Mark B did a great job in my car which he had never driven before today with a 38.20! What a w/e of great competion and the usual banter which proved that with a positive mind set and a great outlook a small group of drivers can still have agreat time as part of the Westfield SS We would have liked more Westfields for sure but Gurston is a hill climb in the south of the country so we have to be greatful for small mercy's. Guston Down was well presented this weekendand I believe the Westfield group did Gurston and themselves proud! Well Done all! Glutey (Temporary blog reporter)

Zetec Engine block install: Exhaust plumbed in, air filter caused problems with bonnet not closing requiring a minor tweek ........and finished : .................OOps wrong pic ! here we go:

November 3rd, 2020 Spend: £12,000 Whilst on holiday in France, with very little to do, I started to reflect on life and really missed having a V8 in it. So a plan hatched; sell the Westfield, and buy a Seight! I present to you: Barney I'd spotted him on Ebay, but the auction disappeared before I sold my car. On the off-chance it wasn't sold, I messaged the seller. And as luck would have it, the original buyer had pulled out. So I agreed to meet up today and with the help of @kenton made a deal.

Blyton weekend 13th/14thJuly 2019 As usual the trackday on Friday was well attended and most people were very happy with their track time and the open pit lane as well as the tuition package offered by Alan and Nick Mugglestone of Triple M Motorsport. Mick Dent was out practicing but his car suffered brake binding , a failed bottom rose joint on his ARB and the threaded end of his flatshifter sheread off. Good use was made of the phone so that a die was obtained to rethread the gearshift rod and a replacement left hand threaded ARB rose joint was obtained before practice on Saturday. Mick Skidmore was there in his now turbo charged XE engine car. Adam and Charlotte Phelps were getting some practice in the partially rebuilt Busa following quite a bit of damage (bent rims, upright failure, wishbone damage, broken steering rack and cracked body panels) at Prescott when John Phelps had an argument with the scenery. Unfortunately Richard Houlgate had to withdraw from the sprint as his clutch slave cylinder failed and could not be repaired. Tony Mitchell ( AMM Photography) was there to take pictures during the trackday which are available from his website. Steve did a few laps to get used to his new Honda fireblade car nicknamed “Terry’s spare car” for some reason. As evening approached the rain started at 1915hrs and that curtailed any track walk or outdoor festivities. Poor John Williams was suffering from a very bad cold as well as the stress of being the Event secretary so he and others went off to the pub for the GF Meal deal! Saturday. By 0600hrs the overnight rain had stopped and the track began to dry out slowly. Signing on and scrutineering went smoothly and quickly and by 0900 we were ready for the first practice runs. As the Eastern track was still quite damp there were a few offs as people tried but failed to find grip on the yellow painted rumble strips. Steve had problems with overheating and we found that the water pump relay or fuse were at fault and we continued to monitor the situation throughout the day and indeed over the weekend. We installed a bigger in line fuse and borrowed another 4 pin relay from Derek Hodder. The worst failure happened to Jason Brown and that put him out on practice 1 as his nearside top wishbone adjuster sheared and damaged the wishbones etc so that was a sadly frustrating game over for him. Also in big trouble was Simon Waterfall who lost a bolt fron the gearbox to bellhousing connection which flew around battering the clutch case etc. Amazingly the Mugglestones went home and got an engine lift and Simon and Alex Gaskin( plus others) removed the engine, repaired it and reinstalled the engine in time to get a timed run in before 1600hrs and win his class.!!! The two practices were over by around 1100hrs so we went straight into the first timed run which was held before lunch at 1145 hrs. In T1 John Hoyle broke the class record easily scoring 101 points and for the rest of the day he helped on the start line. Matt Turner and I started our great battle again and we both broke the class record and battled throughout the day to see who would be quickest. Adam Phelps was also flying against a hard target time (class record) Steve was getting quicker but was still adapting to the revs, lightness, paddle shift, flatshifting and pure adrenalin of the blade car. Martin Harvey was going very well and Howard Gaskin and Keith Adams were having their usual battle and Howard was on his new Avon ZZS list 1B tyres. All the class B and C cars were putting in some good times. Michael Skidmore was using the extra power he now had however he blew a core plug in practice and got a lift to Scunthorpe in a Porsche car to get a replacement which he and John Hoyle replaced quite quickly so he was ready for T2. Steve Arkley, who had travelled 9.5 hrs from way up in bonnie Scotland was getting to know people and loving the track. Andy Silman was out for his first competition in several years in the Siltech car and from what I heard has caught the bug! We broke for lunch at 1145hrs and in afternoon we had 4 more timed runs. There were battles going on not just in classes but between drivers. During T2 Del decided to use all the yellow rumble strip exiting the lefthander at Bishops and he ended up in the field but there was no damage to the car as far as I know. It was a fantastic day of competition and the top 9 cars included 8 Westfields and were only beaten by Glyn Sketchley’s single seater Force. Many people had PBs and were pleased with their results and we were all happy to have had 2 practice and 5 timed runs. The three people beating the existing records were John Hoyle, Matt Turner and myself so it was good points for the Yorkshire area. The evening BBQ went well with the usual banter, beers, red wine sampling and leg pulling and the Marshalls were well fed and watered with Ian (Tolfree) and Andy Banks hosting the proceedings. The rain started at about 2130hrs so it was an early finish for some and the rain persisted during the night but had cleared up by morning. Sunday Today saw the continuation of the battles of yesterday but using the Outer circuit . Mark Anson had travelled up from the Lydden sprint on Saturday and arrived on site late so was looking a bit worn out as he had also been stuck in a traffic jam for around 4 hours. At least he had a toilet, food and drink in his camper van. Mark Bishop (class A) had been offered a double drive of Craig Spooners class C car as he had not been able to repair his own after last weekend at Harewood. Today we would get 2 practice and 6 timed runs so there was a lot of activity in the paddock all day long. Practice went well apart from Graham Frankland on P1 who lost his bottle of sun cream somewhere on the circuit when it fell off his boot cover. John Williams had a bit of fun presenting it back to him at the awards ( luckily the marshalls found it and could not stop laughing about it.) John Hoyle and Adam Phelps set the pace again and were determined to repeat their Sat success. Timed runs began before lunch and after T2 Steve Arkley left as he had such a long return journey to make but he had loved the weekend and is chasing the Novice trophy. At some stage, maybe even Saturday, Simon Waterfall suddenly felt he feet getting a bit warmer than usual and eventually realised that it was hot water leaking from the heater hose but he was in the middle of his run so could not stop. The result was some nasty blistered feet….hope it heals quickly mate. Mark Bishop and Craig Spooner went well until the engine expired with some internal head damage at the end of T4/T5. John Hoyle on ZZR tyres set a great time again as did Adam Phelps in class H who was 3rdoverall. Derek Hodder won his class on the day beating Garry Bunn by around 1sec. Charlotte Phelps achieved a PB and was very happy. Steve Everall went better today and is getting the hang of these sewing machines I think. Martin Harvey won class D against Howard and Keith so had a good weekend. Tony Smiley in the Busa had a few technical issues but I think he posted a PB. Andy Silman got to within 0.4 secs of the class B record with a time of 68.56secs. So what have I missed out????? Ah yes the continuing battle between Matt Turner and myself . I had beaten Matt on Sunday at Harewood with my last run so he was out for revenge. He had already just beaten me on Saturday and was keen to repeat it as he had no respect or sympathy for old people! What a great day it was . Matt had a few slides and spins as well as attacking a few innocent cones but he was flying. By T3 he was leading by 0.02sec and by T4 he increased this to 0.6 secs. As we both closed in on the class record previously set at 63.99secs by ACW. In T5 I really pulled my finger out and recorded the fastest at 63.03secs and as Matt waited for his run his supporters told him the news…bet that went down well. Anyway he went for it and I was gob smacked that as I watched he recorded something like 62.85secs to get ahead of me. However, just as I was about to throw my toys out of my pram there was a debate about whether his time was valid. Apparently Matt had passed 2 red flags at the end of the run but not seen them I had every sympathy for him as its impossible to see those flags when you are concentrating so hard on the track and trying to stay on the gas. His time was not allowed and as you can guess he was not pleased. Being a good sport I gave him a big hug and said get out there and do it again mate and blow me down he did just that on his last run recording 62.81 secs. He came back shouting “Oh Yes , Oh Yes” so a fantastic result.. He got his revenge so we will see what happens when we next meet at 3 Sisters. The people who beat target were John Hoyle, Matt Turner, myself with Derek just 0.5secs shy of class H target. Mark Anson won his single seater class and picked up another 101 points with his T2 being the fastest. So a great weekend and hope to see even more taking part next year and thanks to John Williams and all the helpers for a well run weekend. Terry Everall

Well, after a few beers in the pub at the start of April, it was decided that we should start scratching our itch to take the Westfields further a field than a weekend blat around the lake district. Destination - Scotland. Where in Scotland - Who Knew!! Date - 17th April and return sometime after the bank holiday weekend. @Bigchris092: 91 Westfield Seiw // 1660 Crossflow // Bike Carbs @Brad Stone: 06 Westfield Sei // 2.1 Ford Pinto // Weber 45s Joe Ashworth: Passenger & Media Extraordinaire (tech geek, who also likes road trips & motorbikes) Day 1: Manchester to Carnforth: Figure 1.1 - My route through the Forest of Bowland National Park - It only seemed right to take a photograph. We decided to originally set off on Thursday 18th April in the early AM, but realising exactly how much mileage we had to cover over the somewhat limited days we had available meant that we took the last minute plunge to get some mileage in the night before. My route was slightly different to Chris & Joe (C&J), taking the more scenic route via the Forest of Bowland national park - Arriving in Carnforth at around 7pm. The route itself was absolutely fantastic, and given that my Westy hadn't had much of a run since a minor rebuild, I was quite happy to arrive without a hitch! Phew. C & J took the more direct route from the other side of Manchester, going directly counter clockwise around the M60 and then straight up the M6 to the lovely caravan park up which was to be our home for the night (Alan and Maggie, Thanks - A very comfy night's sleep!). We then made our way to what seemed to be the only pub anywhere remotely close to the campsite - The Limeburners Arms. This pub was quite different to what the majority of us are accustomed to today, a real pub some would say. No gaming machines, no jukeboxes, just a bar, dartboard and some good ale. Oh, and all the drinks seemed to be £2.50 no matter what was ordered. Miles Completed: 70 Day 2: Carnforth to Dunoon (Via Lockerbie) Figure 1.2: Packed up and ready to take the long stint North. Day 2 involved an early start from the campsite with the absolute intention of getting as far north as possible. We loaded up the absolutely fantastic app: Kurvager, which Chris and Joe advised me is heavily utilised by motorcyclists (I can now understand why!!). The app, for anybody who is not aware, costs around £9.99 for the pro version and is essentially google maps but for driving enthusiasts. It finds routes that would be enjoyed by vehicles that love a corner / single track lane / alternative route to the monotonous A-Roads and Motorways. 10 Miles after setting off, the first slight hitch (although somewhat expected) - Chris' thermostat cap leaked somewhat under some slight enthusiastic throttle, throwing a raft of steam outside of the bonnet. A quick fettle and a muttering of "Be reet", and we were soon on our way again. We seemed to make great progress on the first day, eventually joining up onto an B road that runs parallel with the M6 just shy of Carlisle (B7076 IIRC), eventually ending up at our first planned stop of Lockerbie. For any Air Crash Investigation enthusiasts, I was quite keen to visit the Lockerbie Air Disaster Memorial and we paid our respects in the memorial garden along with a very in depth conversation with the visitor centre assistant. I would highly recommend a visit here if anybody is passing. Figure 1.3: Lockerbie air disaster memorial garden - An eerie but peaceful place of rest. We had made probably one of the only conscious decisions of the trip on this day, deciding to head for the Dunoon Ferry Terminal to avoid the s****y roads around central Glasgow. This would also set us in good stead for our planned Blat up the West Coast. After a number of Fuel Stops (My Pinto was particularly Thirsty, averaging 25 MPG on A & B Roads, and around 15-17 on the roads which required slightly more strenuous usage of the gearbox and rev range) we arrived very wearily at the ferry terminal. A short wait and £20 lighter in the wallet, we made the short crossing across to the small town of Dunoon. Right on cue, the first technical hitch of the pinto powered Westy: Prior to the trip, the pinto had been fouling the plug on number 3 cylinder - a quick change prior to setting off solved this issue. However, the slow roads leading up to the ferry terminal had caused a build up of fuel and black soot on the plug, causing it to run on 3 cylinders. I think this car has probably been set up for the track in a previous life, and so is planned to go on the rolling road in the not too distant future for a tune and carb setup more suited to the road. The issue we had in this instance is that we had forgot to pack a spark plug spanner and wire brush (Doe!). At this point, we had had a very long day in the cars and were somewhat tired. We found ourselves sat in the cars on the sea (loch?!) front pondering what to do, it was 7pm at this stage and thought all garages locally would be shut on bank holiday. Figure 1.4: Dunoon ferry crossing - A highly efficient service and would highly recommend if a trip to Scotland is being planned. We hadn't planned anywhere to stay for the evening in advance as we didn't know where we'd end up, unfortunately we had rang around the campsites local to Dunoon on the ferry with no luck (Surprising given that it wasn't bank holiday yet!) and started looking into hotel or b&b's in the local area. It was at this current moment that a local hotel manager came out of his hotel and asked if we were looking for a room(s) for the night. We somehow ended up grabbing 2 rooms including a wonderful breakfast for the measly sum of £50 all in - A steal I'm sure you will all agree. For reference, the hotel was called "The Esplanade" and was exactly what we needed. A quick shower and to the bar for a pint to discuss a plan of action on how to solve the running issue. I decided it might be worth a try to call a local garage in hope that I could leave a message and borrow some tools in the AM the next day. To my surprise one of the garage owners picked up (7.40pm) and agreed to meet me at 8pm to help me out. What a saviour. A quick removal of the spark plug and and brush off with a wire brush, and we were back up and running. William even helped point me in the direction of a motor factors locally whom we could visit in the morning to pick up the tools we needed. What an experience so far. Figure 1.5: William came out late on to lend some tools to 3 guys in need. Thank you sir. After the vehicles had had the once over for the day, we put them to bed and headed out for some food - We ended up dining in a local Indian restaurant who'm seemed incredibly rushed due to the need for the waiter to catch the last ferry back to the mainland. The food was absolutely excellent however and the beers were much appreciated at this point of the day. Back to the hotel for a couple more beverages, and then straight to bed. Tired! Miles Completed: 190 Day 3: Dunoon to Isle of Skye (Via Glencoe) Day 3 was started with an early morning breakfast in the hotel (basic, but adequate) and a quick trip to the local motor factors. We were able to pick up all of the supplies that we required and were able to get on our way. The morning started off with some great roads next to the west side of Loch Lomond - I didn't realise how big this particular Loch was. Around 1 hour in, the Kurvager App took us onto a particular road, which was an absolute playground for Lotus 7 type vehicles. The 3 mile track was constructed from pristine, newly laid tarmac with great visibility into each and every corner, and the main bonus was that there was absolutely no traffic. Chris, Joe and I could not wipe the smiles off our faces when we got to the other side, what an absolute gem of a find. Unfortunately, we were enjoying ourselves that much, we didn't take any photos of this or note of the name / road number. You'll just have to take my word for it. The mid morning / early afternoon then allowed us to make significant progress towards the Isle of Skye - Taking us through some breathtaking roads via Glen Coe (I cannot get these views out of my head - Fully surrounded by huge mountain ranges) and the pictures could not do this justice. The one thing I would say about Glen Coe is that naturally it is very touristy and thus the roads can get quite busy. There are a number of great viewing points which allow visitors to capture some great shots. Naturally, the Westfields were attracting some significant attention from overseas tourists and we had some great conversations that may not have otherwise come about - particularly with an Argentinian from Buenos Aires who owned a whole host of Lotus vehicles. In the early afternoon we tried to touch bases with the Ferry company that takes vehicles across to the Isle of Skye - Unfortunately this was fully booked for the evening and we started making alternative arrangements. We had two options at this point: 1) Take the A830 via Fort William to Mallaig and find a local campsite on the coast. 2) Take the long route round to Skye via the A87 and utilise the bridge that goes directly onto the island. Figure 1.6: Stunning views from a pub in Glencoe. Note: Fabulous weather - Phone was indicating 24 degrees! Over a swift shandy at a pub in Glencoe, we decided to go with the latter option, it would add a significant number of miles to the day but would mean we see more of the things we wanted to in the short time we had available. We cracked on up the A82 and stopped off at a local Spar to get some BBQ supplies for the evening. We hadn't booked any campsite at this point and somehow managed to stumble upon a location shortly after arriving. I believe this was called "Ashaig Campsite" and cost around £9 per person for the evening. Although quite a basic (but developing) site, the beauty about this place was it's location, it had 360 degree panoramic views of the whole of Skye and the owner / manager was incredibly helpful and showed us around the site before we had to commit. Tents pitched and BBQ's fired up - 3 or 4 beers and a whole host of food later, we were ready to hit the hay. It was incredibly cold during the night and it seemed by sleeping bag was not quite up to keeping me warm. Luckily I had packed a number of other fleeces / blankets just in case which came in very handy. Ever more tired! Figure 1.7: Isle of Skye Campsite - Stunning views and great company. Miles Completed: 240 Day 4: Isle of Skye to Torridan (Via Applecross) We planned to have a shorter day than the previous 2 on Saturday as we had covered a lot of mileage up to this point. Chris' dad had previously done a tour of Scotland on his push bike and recommended that we take a smaller more intimate ferry back to the mainland. Glenelg Isle of Skye Ferry Terminal was the name, and again was one of the "Off the beaten track" type experiences that you might not necessarily find in a local guide book. We arrived with about 4 vehicles in front of us - 2 Minibuses and 2 standard family cars. Unfortunately the ferry was limited to a maximum of 12 people at a time, and had to make one journey at a time with the Minibus due to size. I think we waited about 1 hr 45 minutes to get across in the end, at quite a pricely sum of £15 per vehicle - not value for money, but an experience none the less. The ferry itself was great as it incorporated a swing bridge, which meant no awkward reversing off at the other side with a fully loaded roll bar and the staff worked incredibly hard and even had time for a brief chat during the crossing. Figure 1.8: The Ferry with it's incredibly handy swing bridge. Figure 1.9: Chris remaining in high spirits despite the delay. Figure 1.10: Chris and Joe locked in conversation about the need to be 'Qualified' to operate the chain carabiner on the boat. Once we crossed back to the mainland - I had the recurring misfire on number 3 cylinder once again. A quick extraction of the plug and a brush down and she was ready to go again. Far from ideal but not a huge problem to have given the mileage we were covering. It was then all mission go towards Applecross - a road I had been pre warned about in terms of it's beauty. On route, we came across a group of younger chaps carrying out a "budget £500 car challenge", basically covering our route but in reverse. One of the MX5's exhausts were hanging off - Chris was able to assist somewhat with the limited tools and supplies we had with us to get his exhaust in a usable condition again - The lads were a great bunch and were definitely happy for the help. We are all a close knit bunch after all!! Applecross road (or Bealach Na Bà as it is known locally) stretches for approximately 14 miles, and gets its warning signs in very early... "This road rises to a height of 2053 ft with gradients of 1 in 5 and hairpin bends" & "NOT ADVISED FOR LEARNER DRIVERS, LARGE VEHICLES OR CARAVANS.” just a couple of signs that get the blood running. With a series of hairpins going and sheer drops off of the side of the mountainside, it really does raise the hairs on the back of the neck. When we reached the summit, it was unfortunately very cloudy and so views we limited somewhat, however you just "knew" that you were in some place special. Monumental. Figure 1.11: A spectacular view of the Mainland - The Five Sisters of Kintail. Figure 1.12: The infamous Applecross Sign - Warning behind the array of Car Club stickers. After carrying out a quick fuel stop at the community run fuel station (Very good price given it's location), we stopped for a drink at the Applecross Inn (Recurring theme throughout this post), made plans to stop in Torridan as the end destination. Upon arrival in Torridan, we spoke with a local garage and filling station owner (Kinlochchewe Service Station) about possible locations to stay for the night - He recommended a campsite no more than 50 meters from where we had pulled in - great facilities and some really welcoming owners. I believe we paid around £12 per pitch in this site, which boasted some great facilities. We found a local hotel and eatery around a 5 minute walk from the campsite which we were able to grab some great food and more than our share of pints for the evening. This was the first time we had to put the covers on the Westfields overnight - as it was forecast rain, and lot's of it! Swift walk back to the tent and it was good night and god bless. Miles completed: 100 Day 5: Torridan to Inveranan This day started with some very damp roads - Caution was absolutely taken as we set off incredibly early and there was very little sunlight at this point. We decided to take a rather large detour than the most direct route to Inveranan, we wanted to touch the outskirts of the Cairngorn Mountains and chose Aviemore as the intermediary stop off point. Via some awe-inspiring Kurvager suggestions, we then picked up the A827 southbound, stopping at the Falls of Dochart for some ice cream en-route. At this point the weather was fantastic, and this lovely local village was full of fellow engine enthusiasts on both 2, 3 and 4 wheels. We eventually arrived at our campsite nice and early on the Sunday evening to set up camp for the night, which was based in Inveranan. Chris & Joe had stopped at this particular campsite before now, and recommended it due to it's lively atmosphere and likely host of person(s) completing the West Highland Trail. We also paid a visit to the Drovers Inn pub which was very closeby, and I am led to believe is one of the (if not THE) oldest Inn in Scotland. I found this pub to be absolutely full of Character, some great local ales were served and the food was great. We then made it back to the campsite for a final couple of beers and sampled the not so delightful whiskey, and then headed off to sleep. Again we had covered quite a considerable amount of miles given the Cairngorns detour. Figure 1.13: Chris enjoying life en route to the Cairngorns. Note: Long and twisty road in background - Epic thrills. Figure 1.14: Falls of Dochart - Based in the Historic Killin Village. Miles Completed: 197 Day 6: Inveranan to Manchester Unfortunately not so many great roads on the way home - We got on the road very early (7.45) with the aim of getting home as quickly as possible. The first 50 miles completed were quite nice, passing down the west side of Loch Lomond before heading onto the M8 around Glasgow. We then picked up the A74M via a quick coffee stop in Moffatt (This town is lovely), and joined the parallel road to the M6 as we got further South. This road is actually a fantastic option if you're heading up to / from Scotland, as it is so devoid of traffic and although it may be slightly slower, is much more enjoyable than the groan of an engine running at the same RPM for miles and miles upon end. We reached the Lake District at around 2.30pm which was really good going given the mileage we had done. We had a quick final drink stop locally in Kendal and then headed off in Seperate directions due to the alternate onward journeys that we needed to carry out. Mileage Completed: Circa 280 Final Thoughts: Although this was a very broad summary of the trip, we were able to cover a lot of mileage and visit exactly what we wanted to see + more. The cars performed absolutely flawlessly (apart from a couple of almost expected issues) and we seemed to benefit in certain situations from not being bothered particularly about where we stayed. The fact that we didn't book hotels and campsites in advance meant that we were able to be flexible in terms of our own itinerary. I will post a separate blog post about the type of camping gear that we decided to take as this may be of benefit to somebody else planning a trip of this nature. I think in terms of plans for future trips, we are definitely looking into Europe (France would be a great start) and we'd also like to carry out a trip to complete the North Coast 500 route in Scotland. //Brads

Tel's Tales 035– Blyton Park 12th and 13th July 2014 Well I don't know where to start really as there was so much going on it was hard to record or remember all the good and bad bits. Firstly I have to say that as our own WSCC organised event this was very well managed and executed by Nick Algar and all the team of volunteers to which are thanks go are offered. Steve and myself set off early Friday afternoon to get settled in before the rush of competitors. It was good to see lots of Westfields blasting around the inner circuit on their trackday and for once the weather was hot and dry so I even had my shorts on which was not a pretty sight! Friday night saw the arrival of Richard Kerr with the long awaited supercharged duratec that he has been putting together with Luke Algar from Playskool. Luke, Nick and family were flying back from a family birthday in France so several of us got stuck in and helped big Rich finish the car off ready for scrutineering the following morning. It has to be said that there was still quite a lot to do........ I found some thin ally sheet to fabricate an alternator heat shield as well as helping to fit bulkhead panels and the scuttle and some careful use of black duct tape etc.... it kept us from the beer for a while!. Paddock parking was a bit tight in places but nice and friendly and several families were camping in the middle of the large grassed area. Pete Goulding was missing after his car suspension/ brakes fell apart whilst out on the road last week but he still turned up to spectate. Several guys went to the local pub with Phil Nicholls acting as taxi driver in his chip fat guzzling Landrover. Most of us managed to walk the track and remind ourselves just how tricky this track really is and how committed and accurate you have to be into the corners on this fast circuit which would be tackled by a full 125 entry. Saturday I think there were 6 Class A, 5 ClassB, 2 Class C, 3 Class E, 6 Class D,4 Class F, 5 Class G, 2 Class H and 1 Class J2 car, so a great turnout. Lee Smith's car seemed ok after we had tightened up a water hose to cure a leak as well as putting the alternator belt back on his crank pulley and new alternator which kept throwing it off all weekend as it was not aligned correctly. Lee's excuse was that he was too busy installing his new Cateringvan 6 speed box. Richard and Luke passed scrutineeringok and were seen to be tossing a coin to see who would break the car first... sorry I meant drive it first and experience the wallop from the supercharger. Practice saw Dave Cleaver showing us the way and Stu Hill frightening the culprits in class G which included Mark Anson (back in the fold) who was suffering a bit from binding front brakes. Lee's belt flew off again and the Tricky (aka Richard) brought it back in one piece to be refitted AGAIN! Drivers were trying hard to stay between the white lines and not have 4 wheels off as well as avoid the hares and rabbits crossing the track. The new guys in class Aand B were realy having good battles as indeed they did on Sunday. Into the 3 timed runs and the competition hotted up as the guys in G and H put on newer rubber to get every last bit of grip. In class H Del's car suffered a terminal failure of the geartronics ECU controlling gear shifts so the only managed 1 run with Gary beatig Del by just 0.30sec. They were loaned a car by Justin and drove back to Garry's place in Derby to rip the ECU out of Gary's car and get it replaced ready for Sunday. In class A the improving Jason Brown drove well to take first with 73.43secs with James Alexander allowing his mighty crossflow to get him to second closely followed by Dave Richings, Craig Spooner, Barry Francis and John Williams. Class B was blitzed by Phil (vodka jelly) Nicholls (aka Filfan) with an impressive 68.91secs which beat all the class D cars except John Hoyle.. Martin Harvey drove well to get second with 72.07secs followed by Lee Smith, John Walters (Shaggydo) and Christian James. In class E Paul Aspden was struggling to get on the pace against Andy Hargreaves but the guy out front by miles was Adrian Clinton Watkins in the unique 1800cc Duratec he has just completed and he won with 65.83secs to smash the class E record. Andy Hargreaves tried so hard that on T3 he missed the finish and cocked up the timing. Class D was a great battle and John Hoyle won with 66.33secs followed by Matt Hillam,, Howard Gaskin, Keith Adams, Steve Everall, Stephen Herbert and Michael Skidmore who all had their own battles in the group. In F Dave Cleaver won with a great time of 64.56 secs after removing his rear carbon wing on a cone. Rich Kerr shad with a spin after the finish on T3 and was just pipped by young Algar with 66.31secs whilst David Birch had only one run due to technical problems I think. Stu Hill tried hard in G and had a spin during T2 as he attacked Bishop's bend too hard, I broke the record on T3 with 65.26secs but nutter Nunn spun but had already beaten the record to win with an impressive 65.04secs. Matt Turner drove well with 66.63secs chased by Stu Hill and Mark Anson who was a bit short of seat time. Paul Morcom in his immaculate Merlyn had a good battle in his class. Fastest Westfield was Dave Cleaver and he was 5th overall, Tim Nunn 6th and me 7th overall so pretty impressive performance against some quick cars. So due to John Fisher's paddock control and the Jane Algar and Jane Loudons efficient recording of results we had a great day and got in 5 runs and all retired for vodka jelly or vodka gin as well as getting the cars ready for tomorrow and nursing our red sunburned faces....what a day! My day was complete when I saw a T shirt that said “ Racing is living- everything before or after is just waiting!” Sunday Two practice and two timed runs today: Del's car was back running with gear selection possible again, John Loudon was showing off his new orange onesey complete with a brimmed hat and he looked like one of the flowerpot men! Overnight we had heavy rain but the weather cleared and we had a dry warm day. Practice was ok but Phil Nicholls had all 4 wheels off in P2 and Matt Turner repeated last year's feat by removing his rear wheel arch on a cone again and also dented his silencer. Stu Hill took my advice and lowered his tyre pressures and I helped free off Mark Anson's brakes to cure the binding issue. Lee now had a new alternator belt as his other one gave up the struggle and snapped in bits. In the timed runs Paul Aspden unfortunately had 2 failed runs so did not score. Saturday times were hard to beat and this may have been due to the strong crosswind. Class A was won by Jason Brown again on 73.37secs, class B order was same as yesterday Phil, Martin and Lee in that order. In D John Hoyle's 65,44sesc wrapped it up from a fast drive by Howard Gaskin who beat Matt (Fatbloke) Hillam and Keith Adams chased hard by the two Stephens. Class C was won by Graham (gluten free) Frankland on 72.65sesc so he was well pleased. ACW won E easily with 66.15sesc against Andy Hargreaves(GOM) 69.85secs but he was worried about his noisy R1 after its rebuild. Class F gave Dave Cleaver a chance to show how fast he was again with a win on 64.40 secs being fastest Westfield and 5th overall and Luke sneaked a win over Rich to make it a double. In G Tim won with 65.30secs, with a massively improved Mark Anson taking second on 65.54secs and me on 65.81secs, Matt on 65.91secs and Stu on 66.65secs so all quite close in this very competitive class. Gary Bunn pipped Del and took the win as well as 6th overall. Paul Morcom also won his class on the day. So there you have it, a well organised and run event that we should all be proud of. If I have missed something or someone I am sorry but there was a lot going on and sometimes I have to keep an eye on my own battle. For those that were not there it was a great spectacle and a fantastic track to drive. Let's hope that whoever takes over fro Nick can get a good team in place and repeat this next year. Terry Everall Speed Series Correspondent Class G competitor

Having seen some really nice tidy engine bays, I decided to take a look at mine, and see if I could improve in the view that already contains a mighty xflow Main thing I always got drawn to, was the return pipe from the thermostat to the header tank, basically a bit of hand bent copper tube running over the exhaust header. So, had a think and looked at other cars, and a nice hardline properly clipped down as per a photo on this forum was the way to go. This was the inspiration picture Bit of 10mm alloy tube, some blue silicone pipe, couple of P clips, and a hand pipe bender. Also routed the plug leads differently, need to source some nice clips for the leads now.

Tel’s Tales Blyton July weekend 2017 Well as I look back at the Friday trackday (on two track layouts) plus Saturday and Sunday sprints, it seems that absolutely everyone had a fantastic weekend of motorsport, sun, bbq, gluten free meal deal, beer, buying and selling T Shirts for charity as well as support from families and club members. There was so much happening that I apologise in advance for missing or not mentioning stuff, events, praise, insults, leg pulling, car repairs, car damage and the sprint achievements as I could only be in one place at once. It was good to see so many friends and competitors all gathered together at our own weekend organised by John Williams (and Louise) and much better due to my paddock planning with Nigel Curry (who acted all weekend as paddock marshal) enabling us all to be in the same area. I am already looking forward to the same event next year. I arrived at around 1030hrs on the Friday and things were in full swing with mainly Westfields filling the trackday which was also car testing for a few drivers. Paul Aspden was out in his nice orange car which he has up for sale and Stephen Herbert’s recently finished Westfield 1X was on display for all to drool over. Dave Cleaver was ominously running in some new slick tyres, I was bedding my new front mintex 1144 pads in by running up and down the paddock as I could not pay for the trackday (typical Yorkshireman!). John Phelps was helping daughter Charlotte diagnose their Busa’s battery charging issue which seemed to be the alternator rectifier/regulator but it seemed to sort itself out in the end. During the weekend I did have to keep asking Charlotte what else she had broken , much to her indignation. It was nice to see newcomer Simon Waterfall out in his red Westfield which he had being desperately getting ready in the last few weeks in order to take part in his first Sprint competion. He appeared to be having misfiring and starting issues in the afternoon and for some of us this turned out to be a long project of trying to trace the problem. I reckon that around twelve of us were actively swarming round the car looking at the fuel and electric system on his old crossflow engine which unusually was not covered in or leaking oil. We appeared to have fuel but the plugs were not wet. We did suspect the coil and or the main coil to distributer lead but it also had a Lumenition module fitted so there was lots that could be wrong. At around 2100hrs we had to pack in as we had to use torches to see what we were doing and as the engine started once we got a telling off as there is a noise recorder on site which is monitored. In the morning Ian Morrison (aka Gadget) rang his wife Rosie at 0800hrs Saturday and asked her to come to site and take Simon into Gainsborough to buy a new Coil and leads (it required 2 visits). Then Paul Morcom amazingly produced a matching side entry distributor cap, which are as rare as rocking horse poo, and this was fitted due to the existing one being defective. We put the newly purchased bits in during early Saturday practice but it still would not start. When we were almost at the stage of giving up, Graham Millar (aka Windy) noticed a thin black earth wire on the bulkhead held in place by a chrome self tapping screw so he prodded it and guess what …..it moved. We therefore took it off, cleaned the terminal/wire and fixed it to a bolted earth stud. We turned the key and it fired up first time. Simon’s face lit up as we got his car scrutineered and out for practice just in time. On the Friday Howard Gaskin lost his alternator belt and had to go buy another one to keep going but on the Friday night track walk eagle-eyed Steve Everall spotted an undamaged belt at the side of the track so Howard ended up with a spare. Actually the track walk was just an excuse to enjoy the evening sun and down a few beers whilst discussing approach speeds, apexes, braking points and generally talking about theoretical issues when in the end how quick you go is often down to how brave you can be and also what grip is under the car. Signing on and scrutineering was possible for many on Friday night and this was easy and appreciated by all who did that. The paddock layout meant the Westfields were all together and people seemed to like this but some single seaters had to use tarmac a bit further from the start than they would have liked. Saturday. The bright sunshine and warm weather meant that it was time to slap on the sun cream and delay getting into our fireproof babygrows! A fantastic turnout of 39 drivers in the Speed Series were entered and chasing points driving the normal circuit and on Sunday the Eastern circuit. It was interesting to note that the noise meter calibration had malfunctioned and readings were ridiculously high and even the noise scrutineer agreed something was wrong so he adjusted the readings. Dave Birch appeared to be having some problems getting his engine started but succeeded in the end. The first practice showed that the track was a bit green and lacking grip despite the previous day’s track action. Simon Waterfall was up and running in his first ever sprint and he was not put off even though he spun on his first run. Graham Frankland tried a bit too hard and put all four wheels off at Bishops and Maurici Revilla spun off after the finish line and he entertained us for most of the weekend with similar driving. He admitted later that he was trying out a new rallycross circuit using plenty of gravel and off track routes in his long suffering Westfield. Dave Cleaver emphasised how quick he was by breaking the record/target time on his first run and it was clear that close competition also existed through all the classes and in my own class G that was certainly in evidence. Timed run 1 went smoothly for most but our Spanish “rally driver” came in with no offside rear wing and wires dangling behind the car due to hitting a cone (same one I hit last year). He stopped to park up but then reversed over all the lights and puled the wires off. His wing came back in 4 parts and Adam Read helped to fix it back together with tie wraps and duct tape. John Hoyle had engine problems and he stopped on track but managed to start again and drove back to the paddock forgetting to put his helmet back on so he got a yellow card from the clerk of the course (bad lad!) He traced the problem to a loose lead on the battery and was back in action again. Mark Anson was taking part in his first competition with his latest single seater Jedi which developed a slipping clutch in his early runs. It turned out to be an easy fix when diagnosed as a rubber seal in the clutch master cylinder was inserted the wrong way round. Nick Algar in the DJ Firehawk had gearbox failure again and despite Luke bringing spare parts it could not be fixed. He gladly accepted a double drive in Pete Goldings Ecoboost. T2 took place after lunch and saw John Loudon with 4 wheels off, I got a rerun by catching a car with a loose bonnet but I had to queue for the rerun so in my opinion my tyres were cold. However, it was my fastest run! Mike West appeared to have a broken engine mount but found a welder and fixed it on site. Matt Turner was having gear change issues and Del and Gary had a misfire that was a suspect TPS or the traction control setting/sensors. T3 saw Jason Brown going well but he had a gear shift problem that he was trying to cure, Paul Dew (aka Tigger) had a hairy moment at The Wriggler chicane and went straight on rather than revisit the field he ploughed last year. Interestingly Matt Hillam made the top 12 British Sprint run off even though he was double driving Keith Adam’s car. So, in summary, Dave Cleaver wiped the floor with everyone and set a new class record with 62.21 secs with other class winners as follows: A1 Adam Read 69.23 B2 Maurici Revilla 68.68 C Craig Spooner 71.20 D Martin Harvey 68.57 F John Hoyle 65.08 G Terry Everall 64.89 H Dave Cleaver 62.21 Novices A1 Dave Richings 73.94 B1 Steve Carpenter 70.04 C Jason Brown 71.55 F David Birch 71.51 Sunday Most drivers seemed to have recovered from the previous night’s BBQ, beer and wine ( the Marlbec and Merlot red wine provided by Paul Morcom and Martin Harvey at Del’s camper was delightful and not much was left at the end of the night) Today’s track was going to be a different challenge with only a few drivers ever having driven it and the trackwalk had highlighted some tricky areas, particularly for braking as well as the very twisty first sections. It was hoped that today the people having issues with loose alternators would have trouble free runs. P1 saw Matt Turner going very quickly as he had driven this layout before but once again Dave Cleaver banged in a time of 66.58 secs that was not much slower than the Gould single seater car. Keith Adams also had a DNF along with Adam Read. P2 Maurici threw it into the gravel again and DNF but maybe he was trying out a new line? John Loudon spun after the finish, Mick Skidmore had all 4 wheels off at Bishops and. Andy Hargreaves who has ventured into class G was going great on 3 year old slick and was well as being on the pace in his Yamaha R1 car. John Loudon and Matt Turner were both having gearshift problems to deal with. Due to the 120 cars it was taking quite a time to complete runs and this was not helped by the number of offs which deposited gravel on the track, so it was looking like we would only get 2 runs and therefore they had to count. T1 John Hoyle posted a good time but his offside rear wing took a battering but luckily he had not repaired it since his last altercation with a track cone. John Loudon was trying too hard at Bishops and had a spin whilst Paul Dew seemed to be having a problem with braking. It turned out that “somebody” must have forgotten to insert the little R clip retainers for the 2 pins that hold the pads in place. Luckily he still had 2 so just use one on each wheel which seemed to work fine. Steve Carpenter was judged to have had wheels off the track and got a DNF which was made much worse as the same happened on his last run. T2 Dave Cleaver found an oil leak on his dry sump tank so decided not to take his last run. Maurici also decide that his car and tyres could not take any more abuse so he also DNS. Matt Turner spun at the chicane suffering from “tryingtooharditis”and this contagious illness had spread to his mate Andy Hargreaves as he threw it off at the finish and also had a DNF. Despite his gearbox Jason Brown was flying and recorded a great time which would have won our class C outright. Fastest times A2 Adam Read 75.37 B2 Maurici Revilla 89.55 C Simon Broadbridge 77.74 D Martin Harvey 73.11 F John Hoyle 69.43 G Matt Turner 69.61 H Dave Cleaver 66.02 Novice B1 Roz Kennett 84.39 C Jason Brown 76.44 F David Birch 78.66 My highlights were Dave Cleaver’s awesome times on both days, my battle with the guys in class G who are all quick, Jason Brown’s Sunday result, Steve Carpenter and Roz Kennett’s £175 engine that goes great and has now done several events, Simon Waterfall’s efforts/enthusiasm and members support to get him running on Saturday, warm dry weather, the Westfield crowd craic and the BBQ Thanks to all for the organisation and friendly atmosphere and I am looking forward to next year already. Terry Everall Class G Competitor

TEL's TALE's 060/16 3 Sisters 10th April 2016 The weather alll week was wet and cold so it was promising to have a good forecast for the Sunday event. Crossing the M62 int deepest Lancashire saw lots of fog, snow on the hills and temperatures down to -2C. I pulled into the paddock at 0725hrs and got the car out of the trailer in pristine condition after its clean up following Croft. b******* me if Andy Hargreaves came charging onto the paddock to park alongside me and go through a deep puddle spraying my pride and joy with muddy brown water! Anyway it was good to see him out as well as our spanish newcomer Maurici Revilla-Vasquez (Maurici for short) in Adam Read's old car. Matt Turner was starting his season and prancing around the paddock displaying his new WHITE overalls ( it made Mark Anson's black and green ones look tame). As the day progressed he realised that although he bought them at the right price the easily get dirty and he was nearly in tears as mud and dirt splattered his arms after the first practice. Scrutineering went ok except there were annoying comments about the required width of harnesses and buckle positions on Hans devices but it was all wrong. During the day I gave out 12 T Shirts so keep an eye out for me at events if you want yours. P1 The track was damp and very cold so no surprises that there was little grip for anybody. Unluckily Graham Ware, who was double driving Kevin Jones's car, had to withdraw as the seat mounting would not adjust to accommodate him but was ok for Kev. Richard Kerr reported an engine misfire so Tim Nunn (spectating) helped check plug leads and coil etc P2 Derek Hodder's car picked up a gear selection problem which I think they diagnosed as a faulty connection. There was still a lot of slipping and sliding going on and sideays action, rally style. Was being practiced by most drivers. At the end of practice I was quickest on 47.38secs closely followed by Matt Turner on 47.96secs. In the Novices John Williams and Maurici were getting slowly quicker and chancing the new class B1 and A1 respectively. T1 was before lunch and the track was drying but still cold. Matt and I still looked to be the quickest Westfields on track but we were all still a long way off the target times due to the prevailing conditions and lack of tyre heat. T2/T3/T4 the afternoon timed runs ran quickly at first and the sun was out a bit. Maurici was getting the hang of the car and had Adam Read helping him with dat and set up. In class E Andy Hargreaves was holding off Kev Jones ( both with Yamaha R1 cars) on a time of 48.67 secs which he never bettered. Kev Jones best was in T2 with 49.62 secs. In class C was a lonely Craig Spooner who was going well until he spun and went backward after the finish line in T4 and luckil only damaged the corner of his rear diffuser but it was his fastest run of 50.72secs. In class G, Matt and I had a tremendous close battle with Matt's T2 time of 45.65 secs being the best of the Westfiields for some time. I will come back to the outcome later. In class H Del and Gary were close as usual. In T3 Del banged in a 46.36secs to hold the lead until Gary went out second with tyres that Del had warmed up and then, the jammy b*******, got a rerun on really warm rubber and set a new record with a fautless, fantastic run of 44.21 secs. Then things got messy as charging Richard Kerr flew through the finish and then ran out of grip on the right hander to end up in the tyre wall. It was his best time of the day on 47.33secs but it bent the offside steering arm and broke the rosejonted connection to the steering rack. We patched him up with a straightend steering arm and a few tie wraps holding the steering rack in place but he did not fancy his chances with another run.... it would have held together.....NOT! Mark Anson was pleased with his progress in the nice looking OMS2000 and for his first outing set a time of 46.51secs. Then things got interesting as more cars ended up in the tyres after the finish and slowed down the proceedings as well as the timing gear only allowing one car on the track at any one time.Matt Turner began to look at his watch as the time sped by and he started a rain dance as the clouds came in and it got a lot colder. He was seen speaking secretly to officials saying “lets call it a day as we have had 4 timed runs” and he was leading me! We had a good banter about not being able to go any faster due to the colder track etc and I agreed with him but I wanted another shot at it. Tim Nunn was smiling as he and I had a well remembered battle which was only settled on the very last timed run 7 when I won by 0.01secs. The track was cleared and the officials annouced a last run so Matt and I had to battle it out again. Matt did not go any quicker and did a 46.36secs but I slammed in a 45.52secs to beat him by only 0.13secs. Now thats close competition! Maurici ended uo with Best Novice award and was very pleased. Another great Longton and District event and lots going on in the paddock so hope to see you at the next eevnt soon. Quickest Westfield Gary Bunn Class H and new class 3G record of 44.21secs Terry Everall Class G competitor

Last year after seeing a photo of a Caterham stuffed under some Armco on the internet and being horrified by just 4 x 8mm bolts through fiberglass holding my windscreen away from my face I started making some phone call about buying a cage For one reason or another I could not buy one off the shelf, have a delivery date or I would have to trail the car halfway across the country then do the same trip a few weeks later to pick up the car again With this in mind I started looking at retaining my RAC bar for its integrity and adding a forward loop of my own construction DISCLAIMER Don't do this if you don't know how to weld or doubt your ability. Treat it as information I no nothing about the subject and do your own research or just buy the off the shelf item and have it fitted So I leant a pipe bender from a mate bought some seamless pipe and made a start reading the blue book for info and ideas I first started by bending the pipes to shape I made saddle type claps to fit over the box section with spacers to stop the saddle hitting the bodywork or the box section collapsing 1 2 I trimmed the end of the tubing using rolled up toilet paper centres to sit on the saddle stubs 3 I cut trimmed and tacked the roof bars to the rear loop, the put a bit of wood across the tub to support the side impact bars at the right height to tack them on 4 I tacked in a diagonal to give strength and shield the mirror mounting plate from passengers 5 Cleaned old powder coating off with abrasive disc 6 Fresh back from powder coating 7 Fitted to car Costs were £160 for steel tubing £40 for powder coating £20 for cutting and grinding discs, mig wire and bolts

The weekend started off on Thursday evening when I dragged the caravan across to Blyton and Dave Cleaver dragged the Westy there as he was double driving with me for the weekend, we got set up and then said hello to the others that had arrived early and were going to be taking part in the track day on the Friday. Friday morning came and it was very overcast and word of rain at home only 40 miles away so prayed it stayed away for the day. The plan was for Dave to get some time in the car and use his experience to make any changes that he thought would make improvement. We let the normal track day first hour rush pass then Dave headed out, three laps later he returned and I thought something was wrong “It’s fine we don’t need to change anything” so that was that, a few runs on track throughout the day to get our eye in for Saturday which was also being run on the outer layout and that was that a great day and a little more confidence into some of the areas of the track that I hadn’t previously had the confidence to attack. Friday night most of the other SS competitors arrived and we managed to sign on and get scrutineered so less of a rush on the Saturday morning. Saturday and the outer circuit, we set the tyre pressures and applied the sun cream, it was going to be hot. A very straight forward morning practice runs with Dave a second quicker than me, although I had already beat my PB by 2 seconds. We had lunch then set about trying to find a little more time. I went a little faster with a 71.1 so set about trying to get in the 70’s while Dave was on 70.3 aiming to get a sub 70 second time. The last run of the day and Dave did it 69.8, I over drove the car and in true spin to win fashion I came over the finish backwards. So Dave to the honors but showed me what the car was capable of once I had more seat time. On the Saturday evening at prize giving we were notified that the local farmer had ploughed through the main water pipe for the site and therefore there was no water on site at all. So we did what and good speed series competitor would do and cracked open a few cold one’s, we had earned it by having our over sized baby grows on all day. The water was fixed about 8pm and we could start using the showers. A great BBQ where you bring your own food was in full swing with a mix of Marshall's non speed series club members and the speed series competitors all together. Sunday and the more technical of the days using the eastern circuit. Again we got the car ready and applied the sun cream it was going to be even hotter today. We had P1 and everything was fine Dave then came in from P2 and said one of the rears was binding and under breaking pulling to the left. After investigation we had lost a pin to the hand break rod on the back axle meaning the tension had been taken up on the opposite side. We disconnected the other side as well and cable tied the full assembly up out the way. So a job to do before my next run out. It got hotter through the day and we though the track had past its best. Dave managed to put a 75.47 only 1 tenth of the class record I was currently down in the 77.3 area but still pleased to be 4 second faster than my previous best. Last run of the day and Dave was on a flyer coming down towards the last corner with what looked to be a very quick time but couldn’t get the car slowed down enough and went straight on and through the kitty litter and onto the grass. I lined up knowing that I could go quicker but would be happy to get in the 66’s. bang off the line 64ft of 2.35 and nailed the first technical section and was 1.3 second up in the first sector, I was then brave round curva Grande and managed to get the car turned into the wiggler 2nd,3rd,4th into bishops where I had been scrubbing some speed but carrying 4th through that corner all weekend and a down shift to 3rd and powered out of the corner down and round bunga bunga and flat to the finish managed to get the car slowed and turned in………….75.40......... 1.9 seconds quicker in one run and first in class by 7 one hundredths and only 3 one hundredths off the record. Great weekend great company. Special thanks to the @John Williams - WSCC Competition Secretary and his organisation team and thanks to @tkm_dave as without someone telling me that the car is setup well and then showing me what it was capable of I would never have pushed as hard as I did to make up the time. on the Outer I went 4 seconds faster than my PB and eastern I was 6 seconds faster than my PB of only 6 weeks ago at the longton event. Let’s do it all again next year.

Well just to give you a bit of understanding on how I got to this I consider myself a bit of a petrol head, I studied mechanical engineering but have a reasonable understanding of most things I have completed 3 kits to date, first been a Robin Hood with Redtop engine using a manta gearbox on twin 45's, then had a bit of a break from Kits as I tried motorbikes for a bit but found out even though I have a love for bikes they were not for me, (I was too scared worrying all the time about would I get home in one piece) Then I returned buying my first Westfield which had a RS1.8 silvertop this soon was modified but the urge for more power saw that get removed and in went a ST170 with stage 3 head and a megasquirt ( I hear a few growns) ecu with a set of Hayabusa throttle bodies, the gearbox was changed to a straight cut and had a twin plate clutch (nightmare on road) this did not las long. After a good few years with this I was looking again for another project when I came across my current Westfield which had a poorly running engine due to the carb setup, this was ideal for me as I wanted to put an Ecoboost engine in, Ive always been of the opinion a Westfield should be a small engine and these modern engines are truly amazing. So lots of planning research saw me talking with a few members who were on similar paths, so a steep learning curve as there was almost no information out there on the net to help. so some of the decisions were trial and error, I had hoped to get it completed so I could take to Stoneleigh but that was not going to happen due to contracting a really bad cold (worst I have ever had) anyway this project was completed and I took it to the classic at Silverstone. I am still impressed with this car drives great so I intend to keep this. Where we live there are some great classic events so my thoughts went should I buy a classic I looked around and could not find anything which really took me there were some close calls E type, TR5 and 6 but then I saw a C type and fell in love with it everybody I talked too agreed on its beauty, so I was sold, next job was to get my wife to sign up to the project. Oh I could not afford a genuine so Kit manufactures were googled, then the decision should I have a GRP or aluminium body, well this became a no brainer I was not going to pay at least another 30k for an alloy body as lets face it this will always be looked at as a kit, plus the GRPbody is more durable to stone chips etc. So the decision was made Realm Engineering 3 visits to the factory oh this is a real culture shock if you are from the current day thinking of what factories are like, but as I've been around a bit longer it was like going back to my apprentice days. So before I commit to buying I need to find a series3 Jaguar but these are starting to get collector status so finding one a a good price is not easy, so bit of scouring all the usual places I found one that met my criteria (cheap) as it had been partially stripped, so prior to Christmas the deal was done and I would collect in the New Year. My next attention was to look for a gearbox for the kit, I need a W58 supra box I finally found on in Czech Republic a deal was done and it arrived safely in the new year, these are like Hens teeth so bit annoying that I just found another one 10miles from where I live at less money, oh well never mind. So last few weeks I have been slowly stripping the car Daimler XJ6 4.2 for the bits I need. So here is the doner, it looks much better than it is and a image of the future

Started the new body panels, blue and black lego bricks are a lot more popular than green so I have made good progress Side panel drivers side minus exhaust cut outs (zetec): Black rear arches and blue/black tub sides on, testing scuttle ready for fw bonnet, Ive not taken engine out yet still working on options FW bonnet work in progress trial fit, hinge mechanism not sorted yet !

Well I've managed to tear myself away from the Christmas food and drink long enough for a quick update... Quick release arrived from Playskool - I'm really impressed with how solid it is, now fitted. Wheel is totally finished and working perfectly (in my study, anyway ) Took a lot of fiddly soldering and heatshrink, but pleased with the results - here's the messy side: The transmitter fits snugly inside the black box, velcro'd to the wheel - so easy to change the battery when the indicators pack up... Buttons are indicators (will be self cancelling), main beam (will flash once if headlights are off, or latch on if headlights are on), trigger for GPS lap timer on ETB DigiDash2. Now I just have to build the vehicle-side control module - hopefully ready before summer Enjoy the mince pies everyone!

November 16th, 2019 Spend: £10.00 Winter upgrade time! After cleaning the car last weekend, today I finally made a start with replacing the damaged nose cone. Part of the hesitation to do it 'in season' was that I wanted to go from 2 bolts holding the nose cone down, to 2 dzus sliding fasteners. I had @Ben (bunje) create two M8 to M4 reducers which would allow me to re-use my rivnutted M8 mounts on the chassis. But once they've been screwed in, there would be no unscrewing. But I shouldn't have feared the job, it turned out to be quite simple! Now I just need to fit a new stripe and grille November 23th, 2019 Spend: £13.99 It took some effort to get the stripe on neatly (I'm not a sign writer!), but it does look tidy, even up close November 30th, 2019 Spend: £10.00 I bought a nice badge from @marcusb again, but it has no fixings on it. I didn't want to drill screw holes in it, so I got some JB Weld SteelStik and improvised. And then I 3D printed some fixings that will hold it into the grille I bought from @Steve (sdh2903). Last month: £ 9402.26 This month: £ 33.99 ----------+ Total: £ 9436.25

Knockhill Sprint Sept 2019-09-09 Well I am back from a most amazing weekend in sunny Scotland having attended the 2 day sprint. It seemed like everything that could happen did happen and it turned out to be a great weekend of motorsport with 8 Westfields plus the class J cars taking part in the sprints alongside the usual Super Lap Scotland competition. It was originally Mark Anson’s idea to go to Knockhill (it has been many years since we were last there) and my discussions with Steve Arkley and his knowledge and contacts at the circuit made it all possible. An added bonus was that there were a lot of spectators on Sunday as well as some of the Scottish Westfield crowd in attendance. For the five Yorkshire area competitors it was a 500 mile round trip, Two travelled around 600 miles and Steve Arkley was a “local” who just had a 3 hour trip each way. We all arrived on Friday afternoon to enjoy watching a bit of the car trackday followed by 2 hours of watching the bike lunatics on track pulling wheelies and ballistic speed down the pit straight. The scenery was great too as we could look down across the Firth of Forth and see the new and old Forth Road bridges as well as the Rail Bridge with Edinburgh in the background. The weather was sunny all weekend and we even saw a shooting star on Friday night. Friday scrutineering was a piece of cake with friendly people doing it as well as the noise test. Signing on took place Saturday morning and was completed in just 15 minutes followed by a briefing at 0815 and we were on track for P1 at 0830 hours. We had walked the anti clockwise track on Friday night, with Steve Arkley pointing out the lines to take as well as the trying to point out where the hell the track went on the blind brows etc. It was extremely hilly and looked like it would be quite a challenge. Quite a challenge became an understatement as in reality P1 became a blurred comedy of errors as we knocked down flapper posts and visited gravel traps in attempt to get to grips with the layout. I took out 4 flapper posts as I tried to straight line the chicane, Matt Turner jumoed the red light at the start, Mark Anson ended up in the gravel as did Steve Everall. Simon Waterfall needed towing back as his engine cut out which he later cured as he found a loose terminal on his ignition system. I was not a great start and we began to wonder why on earth we had bothered. I had hardly had time for a cup of coffee ( after removing gravel from Steve’;s car) when we were out again for P2 at 0950hrs. John Hoyle had a bit of a brain fade a she did 3 laps instead of 2 and Mick Dent discovered a broken nearside diagonal on his chassis but was ok to run. In general we slowed it down a bit and tried to use more of the black stuff rather than the grass and gravel. 1145hrs saw us lining up for T1 and getting down to the real business of posting a good time as a banker. The start was very difficult as it was extremely narrow and inclined to the left as well as being downhill and then crossing a metal drainage channel. From memory we all stayed on track and I posted the fastest time very closely followed by Mat Turner and John Hoyle. T2 was I bit more eventful as Simon Waterfall , at high speed, got it totally wrong at Clark’s corner near the small grandstand and tried a straight line across the grass followed by crossing the track at 90 degrees and entering the gravel trap but avoiding the tyre wall . back in the paddock we cleaned out the gravel (this was becoming a common theme) and he discovered he had lost the alternator belt so had to keep using a slave battery for starting all weekend. I think at one stage he thought it might hurt him physically as well as in his wallet. This time Matt put in the quickest time and Steve Arkley put in a good run using his local knowledge as well as the fact that he was also competing in the SLS event. The final T3 was held in between the top 12 runoffs and most people improved their times and came away with a smile on their face as we were all really pushing hard and loving the track and its technical challenge. It really was like a big dipper ride at Blackpool where you seem to be going too fast and the turns arrive too quickly. Quite an adrenalin rush and the most technically difficult track most of us have ever driven. In the end these were the times with John Hoyle showing us how quick his powerful car is down the straights even on ZZR tyres. John Hoyle 101.68 Matt Turner 102.09 Terry Everall 102.56 Mick Dent 105.79 Steve Arkley 109.34 Simon Waterfall 112.05 Ian Davenport 114.98 Steve Everall 122.79 On Sunday we ran in a clockwise direction which was a shame as we had only just begun to master the Saturday circuit. It was supposed to be easier but it was still very tricky with the same challenges but in reverse. The start line was easier this time but after about 150 metres there was the fast blind right hander called Duffas Dip which was a bit scary to say the least and on the second lap we approached it flat out !!!! In P1 Steve Everall appeared to still be asleep as he tried to put his helmet on and forgot he was still wearing a baseball cap. I got belted in and could not reach my gloves. We all had a pact to go slowly on this first run and not perform like we did yesterday. Luckily it worked. Steve Arkley did not bother with practice as he was on track with SLS again. There were a few stories of wild slides and problems with the hairpin at the start of the straight which was very slippy and provided little grip. As usual we exchanged track information and suggested the best lines and when to be on and off the gas. That’s what we do as we want everyone to go quicker and despite rivalry we genuinely give our advice to anyone who wants it. I just remembered that I helped soften off the suspension on Simon Watefall and Ian Davenports car in an attempt to make them faster. T1 saw Ian Davenport taking Duffas dip too quickly and his excursion ripped off his front diffuser. Mick Dent also had an off but did not sustain any damage. Elsewhere Nick Algar lost all oil pressure on his DJ Firehawk and Mark Anson had gearchange problems. Later in the runoffs John Loudon also had an off and damaged something. On our last run Mick Dent appear to jump the red light and his run was not timed. John Hoyle once again pulled off a great final time and was quickest Westfield and only just beat Matt Turner. I would like to have been closer to them but my clutch was failing and I could not get the power down. Times as follows: John Hoyle 104.64 Matt Turner 104.78 Terry Everall 106.58 Mick Dent 110.72 Steve Arkley 112.57 Simon Waterfall 115.91 Ian Davenport 119.80 Steve Everall 127.29 So the question at the end of the day was “Do we want to go back” The easy answer was YES absolutely. Two great track layouts and well organised event so lets hope I can get it in the calendar for 2020. Finally Steve blew a trailer tyre on the way home but managed to get back without changing it so that’s my vote for twin axle trailers Terry Everall

Harewood 6th& 7thJuly 2019 Once a year the speed series circus visits God’s own county to tackle the longest hillclimb in the country at Harewood. I have to report that the weather was fantastic on both days with both sun and warm weather despite a few threatening clouds so our decision to move the event to July rather than September seemed to pay off. The only downside is that due to its popularity there is always a big entry and we only achieved 2 practice and 2 timed runs on both days but a lot of time was lost due to drivers having spins as they became over excited and forgot where the grip was. The drivers on Saturday were Richard Houlgate (class B), John Hoyle (class F on ZZR) plus Steve Everall, Matt Turner and Terry Everall all in class G on slicks. Five Yorkshire puddings and one from Chester. It was good to see Richard back out in his rebuilt car as well as Steve in his new Fireblade car (aka Terry’s spare car!). The day started poorly with scrutineering at 100hrs with our first practice run at 1115. Before that both my car and John Hoyle’s moved down the grass slope on their own whilst warming up the engines and nearly hit the cars opposite and stopping John’s car damaged both his leg and bodywork. In P1 Matt Turner was having bad gear change issues following a modification to his flatshifter system. He did not sort out the problem until timed run 1 when he discovered that 2 wires were the wrong way round making the ignition cut on the downshift instead of the upshift. Steve was still finding things a bit tricky to use as everything is different to his previous car so was a little off the pace. In P2 Matt was too fast through Quarry , the last corner before the finish and had a big spin but kept out of the gravel traps and avoided the Armco barrier. It was clear that John Hoyle on ZZR tyres was going very well and Matt was hoped up to beat the competition. T1 started at 1500 by which time most of us were getting a bit annoyed with progress. Most of us had a better T2 than T1 and the results were as follows: Richard Houlgate 68.23 John Hoyle 59.58 Matt Turner 59.59 Terry Everall 60.68 Steve Everall 72.83 John Hoyle was 2 seconds quicker than target and was back to his old self going very quickly indeed. Sunday saw the arrival of Mark Bishop (Class A) and no Richard Houlgate who had to meet up with friends in Harrogate and York. Mick Dent as another Yorkshire pudding joined in the battle in his slick shod class H Busa. Once again the day started with a couple of issues. Firstly I bent down toward my car and cut my forehead on a roll cage bracket and later we spotted a loose nut on Steve wishbone mount. It was good to see lots of spectators and some Westfield support including Paul Aspden and Paul Pocklington who was marshalling at Quarry bend. Just for the record there were two Margaret Everall,s spectating! Mark Bishop had an awful day as his engine blew up due to the crank bolt coming loose and messing up the valve timing etc so let’s hope he is out for Blyton next weekend. Steve was still being a bit tentative as he did not want to damage the car before Blyton. Mick Dent was chasing a hard target time of 57.20 set by Dave Cleaver last year. John, Matt and I were battling again and I think John had a rerun and posted an incredible 58.22 secs beating the record easily again on ZZR tyres and he did not take his second timed run as he had scored 101 points. Matt and I were looking for the points in class G and Matt had the upper hand recording a great 58.67 against a target of 59.23 and was well pleased. Almost at the end of the day and on T2 Steve and I got a re run and then I was red flagged twice more before going for my last run. I did not know how much fuel I had left as I only started with about 3/4 gallon but I risked it. I had a long wait whist the track was cleared and I knew Matt and John would be watching how I went as a lot was at stake. The consecutive runs were logged in brain and helped as I pushed the car through the corners and braked as late as possible for the bends. As I saw the clock I punched the air as it read 57.93secs to break the class record and go quicker than Matt and John. I also think that only Dave Cleaver has gone quicker in a Westfield class. So despite there not being many of us there the completion was great and close Mark Bishop DNS John Hoyle 58.22 Matt Turner 58.67 Terry Everall 57.93 Steve Everall 75.17 Mick Dent 60.72 See you at Blyton Terry Everall

Like a kid counting down to Christmas, this race meeting could not come round quick enough. I had been over thinking the championship and really trying to get my fitness up, I just wanted to get out there and was chomping at the bit! This was the penultimate meeting of 2018 with the Welsh Sport and Saloon Car Championship. I had to book a different hotel to the one I usually get and although an ok place, it did smell damp in the room and my mate again, snored like a trooper. The ear plugs just didn’t sit right in my ears and I got another crap night’s sleep. Still I’m used to that now and several cups of tea, Lucozade and a healthy dose of adrenaline sorted out the tiredness. Overnight it was very windy and wet. Thankfully the new gazebo (Rock Awnings) held up. I got to the track in drizzle and an uncertain forecast…..after the biblical weather at Donny I wanted summer to return! The grid was down to 14 as a few cars had either crashed or had major failures since the last meeting. This suited me fine as I had enough in my class for a potential maximum points and it gave me lots of space to set a quick one in quali. I was mucho surprised though when I got back to the pits to find out I was on the front row. I thought my mate was taking the mickey (he does that a lot….). P2 was my best ever quali result and for sure down to the wet. Now I wanted it to rain all day so then the sun came out….. The start of race 1 was playing on my mind as I had two powerful cars on the row behind and I had no hope of holding them back. I opted for the don’t change position and let them past as this was least risk (neither were in my class). This worked but I did end up in a Caterham sandwich approaching the first corner. I tried to outbreak one car round the first corner but didn’t quite get it done and held 4th. Just as I was looking to get a good run out of the 3rd corner I got caught unaware by one of the Class CT cars (he was really, really close to my car) and in taking evasive action, ended up on the grass (he apologised after the race). It was a proper heart-stopping moment as the grass was sodden. This can mean you end up either spinning or the car digging in….I backed out of the throttle and got away with it, just managing to hold off 5th place. I quickly got the space back and finished 4th overall, which was what I was hoping for and more importantly 1st in class. Race 2 was less interesting and mostly uneventful to be honest. One of the chasing pack span at the first hairpin and caused bedlam as about 10 cars had to go round a stationary car. I focused on getting the car home but I had also set myself a target. The class lap record was just a tenth of my fastest lap from race 1 and I manage to just dip under it on lap 14 of 16, despite my mate waving to tell me to slow down and think about the points. I finished 4th again and 1st in class once more. All these points mean I can now officially call myself the Welsh Sports and Saloon Car Champion for 2018. I’m a very happy racing driver! Thanks for reading. Vids to follow tonight. Mike Pic of the close moment in Race 1 (yep...that's literally about 3 inches away!) -

I arrived Saturday evening with Tony Smiley and got settled for the night, A member of staff from the track approached me and asked if many more were likely to arrive that evening being unsure i said probably up to 10pm. He handed me the key and said well can you lock up tonight and open up in the morning. We walked the track using the double lap formation for this event and soon realised that none of the videos portray just how tight and technical the circuit is. The track has been re-surfaced over the winter as is no longer the 7 different types of blacktop it once was. Sunday morning up at 6 to open the gate and prepped for the day. set off in P1 massive misfire issues managed to get round but nearly 20 seconds off the target time. Checked everything over added 3L of fuel just in case and went out for P2 a little better but out of the tight hairpin onto the back straight again a bad misfire an improvement but still nearly 7 second off the target. Ian Davenport who was attending who also has a K-series offered up a spare set of pugs in case that was the issue but in conclusion we thought fuel starvation from a standard road size tank and i don't run a swirl pot .over my first few events i have been keeping the fuel level quite high on the gauge as my old car read terribly and was unsure just how much was in the tank. T1 with a full tank no issues the balance felt good a little loose on the back end but 100% better than the practice runs, over the finish you have to be committed and the track falls away massive lock up and came off the breaks to get it turned away from the wall and in to the pit entry. My time showed on the left 82.13 boom i went mental in my helmet punching the air, Howard Gaskin and Alex Gaskin watched from the pits and walked over as i was heading back to my trailer "enjoy that did you" yes it was brilliant i beat the target time by 0.94 seconds. T2-6 the weather changed and it got much cooler I felt like i was getting faster but the times weren't showing it, i tweaked a few settings and pressures but didn't help so T1 was my fastest and hopefully if my calculations are correct My first 101 points from an event and new class record. Overall a fantastic day a class win points in the bag and a new class record. Lots different to the circuits I have driven so far, I'm having a month off now until the WSCC Blyton weekend with a few jobs to do on the car.Just want to say a massive thank you to Longton & District Motor Club for putting this event on with so few entries. It was a great event so if you have time please support the other three sisters events.

Back to Pembrey on the ‘Classic’ circuit for rounds 5&6 of the Welsh Sports and Saloons Championship. I stayed down the road at the usual place and with my trusty ear plugs in and had an ok night’s sleep despite my mates ridiculous snoring again. It was an early start with sign-on at 7.30am. Annoyingly we were the last race of the day as well at 5.30pm. It was going to be a long day in the hot sun….. Still, it was dry and that’s how I like it as these caterfields just don’t seem to go as well as the saloons in the wet (or is it just me!) Quali went well as I dialled ina tidy lap having cleared the traffic early on the session. I was very surprised with 3rd overall, albeit the grid was only 14 for this race, down on what it normally is. It was tight with 4 cars within a second of each other from 3rd to 6th and some powerful cars behind. Into the first race I had a shocker as I missed 3rd gear on the rolling start. That put me well down and my main championship competitor two cars in front. I just thought ‘get your head down’ and don’t panic as it’s class points that count – I won’t be winning any races outright. The two cars between him and I, passed him mid-race and on about lap 10 of 14 I managed to get past him, overtaking around the outside of the hairpin again. This car is great on the brakes! A class win and 4th overall was a result I was pleased with but a bit of a let off really as I screwed it right up at the start. The second race was looking interesting as I was on the outside of the grid. I also had some powerful cars ahead of me so I had it all to do on the brakes into the first corner. But… just before the 1-minute board came out, main my class competitors got out of his car. Turns out he had left the filler cap off his petrol tank located in the rear of the car. Sportingly, my mate gave him a hand and he started from the pits, setting off as the last car went past. He had a great race through the pack by all accounts. At the start, I got lucky on the brakes round the outside of one car in front of me, then managed to go round the outside of one other car before the back straight (I backed him up a bit before the straight as I thought he might just outdrag me otherwise) and before I know it I was second overall! It didn’t last! One very fast car that had a problem in the first race drove from the back of the grid and caught me on the second lap. Impressive stuff with only a 1.05 lap! Still, I managed to hold onto 3rd place overall, albeit with a lot of defending at the hairpin and doing my very best to get away in the twisty bits from the more powerful cars. 1st in class too. I was well chuffed to be on the podium (even if they don’t actually use it at Pembrey!). Fastest lap in both races was the cherry on top! In what must be the fluke of the century, I’m still leading the championship after 6 of 12 rounds. Rolly on Donny in July, one of my favourite circuits. Bad race start: Mid race shenanigans: Good race start (up to second - that's a first for me if you can excuse the pun!!!): Mike

Tel’s Tales Silverstone Stowe Circuit 3rdJune 2018 After around a 6 or 7 years break we eventually managed to get invited to attend this meeting although it turned out to be a single lap and not the 2 lapper I remember from the past. We had quite a good turnout of 11 Westfields even though it was on the same weekend as Pembrey (2 events in the south on the same weekend!). The forecast for Sunday was good but as I loaded up the car and set off it was raining hard in York. The first bad news I had was that Mark Anson’s engine had failed in first practice at Pembrey so he was not a happy bunny particularly after his long haul from Blackpool. That track does seem to eat engines for some reason. We could only arrive after 1600hrs to get a decent paddock position but what a shock Steve and I got as it was in the worst condition I have ever seen. Basically it was a gravel covered dirt area with no chance for cars on slicks (one actually punctured on the gravel and you can’t repair slicks) There was dust everywhere and even a sweeping brush had no effect. Steve, Margaret, Simon Waterfall and I walked the “new track” and it looked very tight in places through the chicane in the straight which was about 40m wide so it was anyone’s guess as to where the best line was and there was even gravel patches on that too. On getting back we noticed that the main toilet block was being locked for the night and were told of an alternative hut where there were only men’s toilets so that went down well for the people camping with girlfriend’s , wives and kids. The place reminded me of a rundown building site. We met up with Lee Collar who is now driving Mark Anson’s old orange blade car and it was good to see Richard Houlgate, Matthew Haynes out again. The sunny evening and a few beers with my chilli diner made the world look a bit nicer but sleeping was hard as there were 2 generators running all night. Sunday was a hot, hot day. The contrast between surviving the Siberian cold and wet of Croft compared to today’s Saharan desert sun was crazy but just as difficult as we suffered in our hot babygrows and helmets whilst in long queues towards the start line. Some of us signed on and were scrutineered on Saturday night but Howard Gaskin was panicking a bit as he had left his competition licence at home. I was lucky enough to have Steve’s wife Margaret acting my pit buddy and carrying tyres as well as doing a great job cleaning them between runs. The first clean after P1 produced two tack nails that she found stuck in my tyre. We were promised 2 practice and 3 timed runs but an hours delay at the start plus problems with the heat affecting the timing gear meant we only got 2 timed runs. Whilst waiting in line for the start some of us were politely told not to lean on the pit wall which was odd as the event had not even started. It was obvious from early incident of cars hitting the tyres forming the chicane that this was a tricky area that could cause bug damage if you got it wrong. I missed the tyres by a whisker on my first run and I think that Richard Houlgate and Matthew Haynes had to go for a gap between the tyres as they lost their way through the chicane. The timing was also frustrating the drivers as often there was only one car on the track which slowed proceedings down so we did not finish P1 until 1115hrs approx. After P1 there were 10 Westfields in the top 12. Just to add to the fun the Gents toilets became blocked and the café ran out of food. Most of us found that by P2 we were beginning to get an idea of where the track went and starting to get some grip through the tricky bends. T1 started at around 1400hrs by which time the heat was becoming intense and god knows how many cans of diet coke I drank. T2 was the final run except for me as my engine refused to start as I headed to the start. Despite the help of Steve Carpenter, Roz Kennett, Steve Everall and Howard Gaskin we could not get it sorted. The other guys put in some great times in a field of 110 cars and there were some very close battles going on for class on the day awards as well as our own classes. In the end there were 6 Westfields in the top 12 cars and Simon Waterfall, Matthew Haynes, Howard Gaskin and myself won our classes on the day. I had a personal with Lee Collar and I just beat him by half a second (he looks a good bet for future honours as does Simon Waterfall). Overall Positions on the day were as follows: 3rdTerry Everall 4thLee Collar 6thHoward Garkin 8thMatthew Haynes 9thKeith Adams 12thSteve Everall I was quite jealous of the trophies awarded as they were huge and well received by our guys. In summary it was a good challenging track to drive but the weekend did not run smoothly. Terry Everall Class G competitor

Tel’s Tales Blyton Sat/Sun 19thand 20thMay 2018 (LDMC event) It was a good job that I did not get an invite to “The Wedding” as I completely forgot that it was on the same weekend as the Blyton sprints run by Longton DMC and I would not have been able to support Harry and Meghan in church or at their evening do. There was an added bonus in that I did not have to sit through the 6 or so hours of TV broadcasting the proceedings but I understand that it all went well without my support! Back to the serious stuff as Steve and I arrived on the Friday to see the back end a of a Lotus 7 trackday. We had a great forecast for the weekend and I gave out a whole batch of the new red 2018 T shirts. We had a good Westfield attendance and after speaking to Doran (the chief paddock marshal) I negotiated a great paddock position for most of the non road going cars which was close to the results office, toilets, had clean smooth tarmac and was 25metres from the start line! As usual we had a few beers on Friday night and discuss tactics for the weekend which mainly revolved around how much sun cream we needed to apply and at what intervals as this varied for factor 30 or 50. Saturday Signing on and scrutineering was quick and easy and was followed by a convoy run around the Eastern circuit which LDMC had not run before. I went in Steve’s VW Tiguan which was full of tools, clothes, beer, petrol cans and god knows what else and we cruised around at 25mph enjoying the scenery, forgetting all about apexes and braking points never mind what gear to be in. After the convoy run Derek Hodder seemed to have a leaky water problem and the nose cone and bonnet were of as they quickly diagnosed that a mounting boss on their alloy radiator had cracks around the weld edges. Nobody on site or locally seemed to have a welder or be available (Del did not think that alraldite would work) but in the end a Caterham driver took pity and offered a tube of Quiksteel epoxy putty. I have to say that not only did the repair look very neat but it did the job and set almost immediately and lasted all weekend (must get a tube of that stuff for my spares). Also a few of us had got a hook up for power running a long way from the supply point and someone ran over my cable and pulled it out the wires from the plug during the convoy run! Actually it was a doddle for me to repair and we all were back up and running with power to our campers and motorhomes again (mainly to keep the beer cold). P1 - Immediately after first practice Mick Skidmore noticed that his battery power was low so I quickly tested a few things and found it was his alternator that had packed up so he had to keep charging the battery between runs but that worked fine and it was lucky that we did have 240v power. Del’s air powered actuator for his gear shift seemed to be having an off day as it kept changing up and down the box on its own. Del and Garry were on the case and cured it by remounting the actuator valve in a better position/orientation. The general consensus of the drivers was that this was a very technical and tight course that was challenging everyone in terms of how tight the first section was and the braking point into the wriggler from Curva Grande at high speed. This was compensated for as the long twisty flat out blast from Bunga Bunga was exhilarating and took some guts before braking late for the tight right hand finish. P2 – I was really on it this time and as I exited the Wriggler out came a red flag so I abandoned the run and as I crawled to Bishops left hand corner there was my mate Mick Skidmore reversing out of the ploughed field but at least he was living up to his reputation. I gave him some stick back in the paddock and suggested he repeated the performance in the timed runs so I could have a rerun on warm tyres. Mick Dent was pushing the limits of adhesion in his Busa and went off near the finish spinning out and taking a cut through between the tyres, to avoid hitting them, only to find himself facing an oncoming Jedi! T1 - Simon Waterfall was out for the first time enjoying his new (ex Kevin Bamber) car but his clutch adjustment screw had worked loose but was an easy fix. This session saw me getting a bit too aggressive with my right foot at the tight lefthander called Chapmans and I clipped an outside cone and caused a bit of damage to my rear wing and rivets holding the tub in place. Everyone was going well but target times seemed hard to get near as we pushed hard. Newcomer Tony Smiley was out in his Busa and John Loudon and I spent a bit of time trying to change the set up to get it to handle better and it seemed to work. T3 – Mick Dent threw it off after the finish but still posted a good time. It was good to see Steve Robinson call in for a chat and catch up with a few friends (and also Ron Siddle on Sunday) T4 – This would be our last runs and chance to bang in a good time but we had quite a long hold after a TR4 rolled down at Bunga Bunga causing a lot of damage to the car, which was a shame. Richard Houlgate went well as did all the roadgoing cars and they all seemed to put in some good times. Del (fastest LDMC member) just managed to beat Garry and I held off John Loudon in a very close contest. Keith Adams went very well in class D scoring the best points of anyone against target and Steve Everall was finding it hard to match his pace. Sunday Well miraculously nobody had headache from last nights relaxation and all slicks had been cleaned up yesterday. Today it was the challenge of the normal outer circuit with the fast straight from Lancaster to the Wriggler so it should suit the more powerful cars. Today we had Matthew Haynes joining in the fun but no Richard Houlgate and all the Westfields from yesterday were still running. Practice started at 1000hrs and our two runs were over by about hrs 1130hrs proving just how slick the LDMC crew is. T1- We went straight into the timed runs and all went well apart from Mick Skidmore who reported what he thought was a propshaft vibration so we whipped off the tunnel panels but all the bolts were tight so he was good to go. T2/T3 – Things were hotting up now, particularly in our babygrows, and in T3 Del was a bit late on the brakes into the Wriggler and got it all sideways taking out a cone and spraying gravel everywhere. Mick Skidmore thought his clutch had failed but it turned out to be just a large stone stuck under the pedal. T5 – For Del this was a bad end to the weekend as he was towed back into the paddock with oil all over the engine and exhaust pipes so something had gone badly wrong and it looked similar to a problem he had with the engine at Croft last year. Fingers crossed that it is an easy and simple repair. T6 – John Loudon was pushing really hard as he battled with me in class G and he hit a cone and split a wing. (more gaffer tape please!). Keith Adams had a senior moment as he presumably forgot to clip down his ally boot cover which was picked up by the marshals about 20m after the start line…whoops ! Garry Bunn was best LDMC member, I beat John Loudon after an epic battle and I took most points against targets. Simon Waterfall had another good day as did Keith. Steve’s car engine needs stripping down and taking to Exon Racing to cure the head porosity problem it has which was getting worse. Well I hope I have given a report of some of the weekends entertainment which was made all the better by LDMC’s efforts where we had 2 practice and 4 timed runs on Saturday and 2 practice and 6 timed runs on Sunday and I was home for dinner by 1815 after a 90 minute drive. Maybe a contender for event of the year? Terry Everall Class G Competitor

Tel’s Tales Anglesey Sat/Sun 7th and 8th April 2018 After a very disappointing Easter Monday event at Croft which was wet, freezing cold and probably should never have started about 10 drivers were entered for this LDMC extravaganza attended by approx. 70 cars. The Croft event was abandoned before any timed runs had been offered, so we all scored a miserable 75 points (I will be discarding that score). We all arrived on Friday to find plenty of room in an almost empty paddock and plenty of space to get an electric hook up for our campervans and motorhomes. This was a bonus as it was quite cold and heating was essential as we had to leave the onsite café/bar due to too many staff and not enough business. Saturday Saturday morning saw a wet, gloomy start and the rain continued all day until 1700hrs when we finished sprinting! The day saw some great battles between all classes as well as individual personal targets irrespective of which class you were in. This would become the first event in 19 years that I have used wets all day rather than slicks and the competition was close and hard fought on a track that was wet but perfectly driveable and created a bit a level playingfield between cars of different specs/engines etc. During practice the pace was set by Richard Kerr and myself running around 10secs slower than the target time. It was good to see Mick Dent out again after his broken ankle caused a premature end to his 2017 season and his busa was going well. He also had his son as a secret weapon cleaning tyres and checking the car was going ok after the Friday trackday sessions. Their car would not start despite charging the battery and I quickly diagnosed a seized starter motor. Luckily they found a local supplier who had a secondhand one and they did not miss a run !. There was a lot of slipping and sliding mainly on the black stuff as well as a few spins but I did not witness any damage to Westfields. Mike West was enjoying the conditions and during the day he reduced his time down to 78.10secs from 82.74secs. John Loudon kept changing front springs for stiffer ones to improve grip and handling and it seemed to be working as the two of us were having a close battle in class G. Derek Hodder, Garry Bunn and Richard Kerr were after the class H points chasing Mick Dent. Steve Everall and Mick Skidmore were close in terms of times but running in different classes ( D and F respectively) We had 5 times runs and in the end Richard was quickest banging in a last run of 63.23 to better my time of 63.98secs and Mick Dent’s 64.10secs. We were 3rd,4th and 6th overall fastest with John Loudon 9th. Sunday Well it was a cloudless night and there had not been any rain but it was a cloudy start but it stayed dry all day and the afternoon was very good and we had a drying track to play on. Mark Anson had arrived at 0230hrs and was joining us in the Jedi. He had a few jobs to do fixing the front wing brackets and softening the trickshifter. During practice 2 Mark came back to the pits on a tow rope as it turned out he had fried some wires in his harness. This took him around 3 hours to trace the 12v power issues (or lack of power) but eventually he sorted it. I helped a bit by making him a nice cuppa tea. It really was a dream to be able to drive a dry track and push on a bit. We now saw Del and Garry showing the pace of their car whilst Rich K was trying to repeat his Sat performance. Unluckily for Rich when he came in after T1 the engine bay was full of oil and it looked like a blanking plate on the block had come adrift and ended his weekend. My weekend nearly ended too as I was way too quick into the left hander at the end of the garages and as I ran off the end of the outside rumble strip I hit the soft wet grass and soil to do a 360deg spin. I ripped off part of my carbon fibre floor but back in the paddock Steve, Mick Skidmore and John Loudon did a quick and great repair job to keep me running. The car looked like it had been used for grass tracking and the amount of soil and mud under the bonnet was ridiculous and took some cleaning up. Later in T3 Mick Skidmore ran over a rumble strip coming out of corkscrew and split part of his tub. In the end we had 5 timed runs and were well pleased with the day. Garry just beat Del and was 2nd fastest overall with Del being 4th, me in 5th and John Loudon 6th. Mark Anson with only 2 runs was 3rd overall so an impressive performance by him. That made 5 Westfield speed series drivers in the top 6. A newcomer was Chris Griffiths in his class H car and he was 9th overall behind Rich Kerr 8th. (7 cars in top 10!) We return in 4 weeks time to do the MGCC weekend. Terry Everall Class G Competitor

Tel’s Tales Curborough Figure of 8 Oct 2017 This event was run by MAC and the figure of 8 has become a popular layout compared to the single or double lap options. There were 12 speed series competitors (including 3 in class J2) present and a few Westfield supporters visited to watch the runs. At the briefing we were told that the event was oversubscribed and a few of us wondered why that had happened! The result was that special arrangements had been put on place to make sure we got 2 practice and 2 timed runs before 6pm. For me, I had a frantic early morning start due firstly having to do a one mile walk at 0500hrs to free off my sciatic nerve pain and then when I set off the trailer lights decided to have a mind of their own and switch on and off at random. A swift kick sorted that problem out! It had rained overnight and the track was still damp but a cloudy dry day was promised and that is what we got despite some threatening dark clouds. P1 was marginal and entertaining for the slick shod car drivers and Matthew Haynes spun off whilst Derek Hodder and Adam Phelps put in quick runs. I then helped Martin to soften off his shock absorbers to try and get more grip. P2 the sun actually began to warm the track and the tyres (not had much of that this year) so times tumbled. I watch Garry Bunn on his very aggressive run and was amazed he made it through 2 of the corners but clearly the car is handling brilliantly including speeds of around 115mph through the finish. Derek Hodder posted 57.00 secs ( target of 58.09secs) and Adam was not far behind in the Busa with on 57.31 secs which he could not reproduce in the timed runs as the track got colder. T1 This started after lunch and saw Del and Garry tightening up the paddle shift which had worked loose ( Garry is a bit of an animal!). Mark Schlanker in the OMS broke a halfshaft so that put him out. Due to the clouds reappearing and Stephen Herbert telling us that rain was forecast after 2pm we all needed to get a good run in the bank. Luckily the rain never arrived. T2 was definitely a colder track so improving on times was hard. As I queued up for my run Charlotte Phelps approached holding a wheel wrench in her hand. I had previously commented on her sitting on top of the busa’s roll cage and I thought she was going to get her own back. It turned out that the starter solenoid on the busa was on the blink so she had a suitable tool to give it a friendly tap and get it working. I am sure that if I was her and Adam I would have a word with their travelling mechanic/sponsor/dad as I am sure they had this problem at a previous event and it should have been fixed! In the end Derek, Garry, Adam and Matthew Haynes all beat the target times and banked some good points. All cars looked undamaged and ready for the final Anglesey weekend despite John Loudon trying a new line straight across the top of the molehill which certainly tested out his ground clearance and suspension but did not improve his time. ( he still beat me!) See you there and bring some good weather Terry Everall Class G Competitor

TEL's TALES 06/17 3 Sisters 21st May 2017 As most of you know the future management/liquidity of the Three Sisters venue (or parts of it) are under review and it is to the credit of Longton DMC that they managed to keep this event on. The entry was not massive so everyone was looking forward to good weather and lots of runs in the normal LDMC tradition. The weather did stay dry all day which was a bonus as some weather forecasts had predicted a bit of the wet stuff which we would not have been amused about particularly those of us on slicks. There were 11 Westfield club members, many of who are also LDMC members, so some good completion was on the cards. P1 was completed in about 40 mins without any problems at all and Dave Cleaver’s pace showed he was out for maximum points as was John Hoyle. Del and Gary had managed to put their spare 2litre honda engine in the car whist the bigger engine is repaired and with the supercharger they were going to be fast. With motorsport you always get an unforeseen problem and this time it started in P2 and continued into T1 with major anomalies in the recorded times and delays due to reruns. The LDMC officials were on the case and did their best to sort the problems out for the afternoon runs which , in general, went well and meant we had 6 timed runs which is good value for money. During the day John Hoyle was suffering from an electrical fault on his gearchange system and his rival Dave Cleaver got stuck in with the laptop and his IT knowledge to help sort it out. The efforts even included calls to Kevin Jones at home in Harrogate to see if he could come up with any ideas. In the end John just ran with all the high tech disconnected so he could get a decent time. Mick Dent was enjoying his first visit to the track but was a little off the pace in his slick shod Busa so myself and Adam read came to his assistance to adjust the suspension and also get the wishbone bolts loosened as they were stopping movement of the shocks.He also had a sticking throttle which caused a nice spin but no damage. Matt Turner and I were ready for the battle in class G and it was Matt’s first time out this year to defend his track record. I had an interesting day softening off my suspension to suit the radial slicks I am using this year which is work in progress as I still do not have as much rear end grip as I would like. Steve was alone in class D and posted some consistent times throughout the day. Adam Read was in class A2 and had his personal ding dong with Maurici Revilla in class B2 who managed to keep it on the black stuff this year and avoid the tyre wall. It was good to see Steve Wilson out in his black Lotus Elise and he won his class to score well in class J3. The highlights of the day were Matt Turner beating me by 0.05secs on the last run (I am usually the master of this technique) which made his day, Del just pipped Gary in class H whilst Dave Cleaver took a well deserved FTD and only bothered with 2 timed runs as he had maxed out on his score. Five Westfield took the top five spots with very close times and they were Dave Cleaver, Derek Hodder, Matt Turner, Terry Everall and Gary Bunn so it was a Notts and Derby plus Yorhshire clean sweep. Mick Dent and John Hoyle were also in the top 10 so a great Westfield performance particularly as there were a few Cateringvans competing. A great day for all and no serious damage to a car with the promise of a return visit in July (which I can’t do as my family have booked me on a holiday!). I may see some of you at Pembrey in two weeks time. Best Times were Class A2 Adam Reid 48.12sec Class B2 Maurici Revilla 49.64secs Class D Steve Everall 49.23secs Class F John Hoyle 46.35secs Class G Matt Turner 44.91secs Terry Everall 44.96secs !!!!!!!!!! Class H Dave Cleaver 43.73secs FTD Derek Hodder 44.82secs Gary Bunn 45.11secs Mick Dent 47.49secs Class J2 Steve Wilson 54.20secs Terry Everall Class G competitor .

Fixing the car has proven to be quite a task - big surprise! The chassis needed repair and modification to remount the diff, motor and new prop shaft and to add fixings for the new rollover cage. This involves welding - and a lot of it. So far I've used the services of an expert welder but this is expensive. This time I elected to do it myself - how hard can it be? I bought myself a Clark 151TE welder, some CO2 and Argon mix gas bottles and various wire sizes. After two months practice and a load of scrap metal, I can just about weld - as long as I have the grinder handy to smarten it up. I then set about making the brackets (and some more scrap in the process). First, strip the car down to the chassis. The electric motor needed new mounting brackets to remount it at the front and I had to make the Freelander diff mounting brackets from scratch since Westfield had no stock. I had these parts designed by a colleague at work using CAD. The brackets were designed as assemblies and were cut from 2mm and 6mm steel sheet by a local water jet cutting firm. I initially tacked together the brackets and checked them for dimensions and fit. Once satisfied I fully welded the assemblies. The motor brackets were linished to remove excess weld and create a good finish. Then it was just a case of painting the finished brackets. I had about a dozen or so brackets and frames to paint so these were sent away to be powder coated. A new two section prop shaft was made to order and a centre bearing bracket welded in place. Over the summer I was unable to do much work on the car due to other commitments but with the new brackets finished and the chassis repaired and rebuilt, new propshaft in and a roll over cage fitted, I've able to reassembled the chassis. With the addition of the cooling system I now have a complete rolling chassis. The cooling system has been upgraded with a much bigger radiator - high power electric motors need to be cooled! The power controller is mounted low down in the engine bay with the charger and power switching box above. The original bodywork was badly damaged. Luckily Potenza had lightly damaged and hacked red and black FW body kit from one of the early prototype cars gathering leaves and slugs behind the factory. Potenza Technology (not Westfield) are unofficially sponsoring this rebuild so this was donated to the cause (along with the roll cage, wheels and suspension parts). When the car is finished it will look quite different with it's new red bodywork. Then next stage is to either fit the body work or I start the body electrical and power train wiring (at last). Another 6 months of effort probably.

Not had much chance to get stuck in recently due to work being busy, but can't complain. Have had a lot of time to think about stuff though and work things through in my head, which helped when I did get a few hours at the weekend. Things will quieten down at work now after Xmas so hoping to make better progress... although I have just taken on two engine builds and (pretty much) a full MX-5 race car rebuild to be completed before early March so we shall see :lol: Anyway - bits I have done: Ended up with 3 steering racks. A de-powered MX-5 one, a 2.4 ratio Escort Mk2 one and another from a Mk1 Golf. There were a few considerations for each of these - mainly distance between tie rod ball joints (bump steer), weight / simplicity and amount of rack movement per 360 degree turn of the pinion. The standard Mazda rack gives 44mm per turn which is a 22.5 deg turn of the front wheels when the length of the steering arms on the uprights is worked through. I want something a little faster than this ideally, and it was too far between ball joints (about 640mm, I'm after 580-585mm) - could be chopped down to suit though. The Escort rack offers 52mm per turn (26 deg at the front wheels) which is pretty quick... maybe a touch too much when combined with a fairly small (300mm ish) steering wheel, but it is very light / simple and has a good ball joint distance of 583mm. I need to investigate these further but it looks like I may be able to slightly tweak bump steer by adjusting the position of the inner tie rods on the rack. They are locked off with collars at the moment but have a pin smashed in there to prevent loosening. I ended up with the Golf rack as a bit of a punt from eBay at £25 delivered. I'd read that the ball joint distance was about 550mm (chassis could be tweaked to compensate for that), but it turned out to be somewhere around 570-590mm due to the tie rods being adjustable and locked off with a lockring, result. The downside is that it only offers 36mm per turn... but I could chop the steering arms down to 80mm from 106mm to give 24deg of front wheel movement per turn. It was also designed to run with the rack behind the front hubs (Escort and MX-5 are in front), meaning I could flip the rack over and have the column to the left (rather than to the right like Mazda and Escort), which would give better clearance to the pedals. I decided on the Golf rack, so chopped / modified the tie rods ready to take some aluminium track rods with rod ends: Then found out that the input spline was a stupid size (40T spline) and all the UJs were megabucks So I've now gone back to plan B and the Escort rack... no big deal, it will still work fine! Thought I'd found the perfect wheels too - OZ Racing ones from a Formula student car, 13x7", 3.4kg each, forged, 4 with slicks, 4 with wets, advertised as the correct 4x100 fitment for Mazda - couldn't have envisaged a better setup all for £350! However... A***. Turns out they are actually something like 97-98 PCD. I've got a way around it though after some deliberation... just awaiting a 60 degree inverted dovetail cutter to arrive through the post then I can confirm it's good to go. An additional ballache I didn't really want, but worth going through for these wheels I think. Then I also found a bargain dry sump system (£400 for the lot) and couldn't resist... so much for a budget build, lol. But this does have a few benefits. 1) It will definitely not oil starve now, 2) the manifold clears the sump without modification (by less than 2mm), wooo: The oil pump goes in place of the standard water pump, meaning I need a separate electric pump now... Luckily the cooling requirements of the engine aren't huge, so only needs a tiny pump - in fact the one SBD recommend for their up-to-300bhp-turbo-nutter-Busa engine is a Bosch PAD one (15L/min), which turns out to be exactly the same pump Mercedes use to cool the gearbox on an E320... You can guess which option was cheaper I can also mount the pump almost anywhere, also really low down, so gives more options regarding radiator position. Need to sort out a way of controlling it now (sod paying £150 for a Craaaiiigg Daaaavid one) - have got thoughts about a heater fan resistor / switch from an MX-5 (just stick the pump on low for warm-up to keep things circulating and avoid hotspots - also as a manual controller for when back in the paddock to keep things moving around) plus a low temp (75-80 deg, ish) fan switch that kicks the pump in and out, running it at full beans when needed. Just need to get it all straight in my head... Anyway, had a gander inside while the sump was being swapped and it is absolutely spanking in there, can definitely believe this was a ~750 mile engine: Manifold hangs down from the sump by 75mm, so set up a 78mm tall platform and sat the engine on this in the rear part of the chassis - before I got stuck in with the welder I wanted to make sure the diff / half shafts would work and the engine cleared the chassis... Engine is about 8-10mm away from the chassis there, and lining the sprockets up puts the diff about 11-12mm from the centreline of the chassis - result. The 1.8 half shaft was 20mm shorter than the 1.6 one, so that almost perfectly puts everything back into line again. (Diff isn't going there, it was just to check the left-right spacing) It was then time to grow some balls and actually do some welding. Just tacked the rear part into place for now, in case of any severe oversights. My tacking is usually ****e, about 30% on one tube and 70% on the other or something, haha, so actually concentrated this time and it came out ok. Then re-situated the rear part to give space for the front part to get built up. Also chucked the seat in to give an idea of perspective. Yes, that is a high roll hoop, yes I did typo the dimension when I sent the drawing off, lol. Never mind, there's a couple of benefits from it being taller than planned, and at least it means even giants will be able to drive it, haha. Next up - more chassis work, then once the main outline for that is done I can move onto making wishbone jigs. Cheers! Adam

This is the final race of the year for me, mainly due to lack of time, family commitments, holidays and a depleted bank balance. So off to Donnington Park I went with my friend Mark. This was a race meeting with the CSCC rather than the WSSCC. The format being 30 minutes practice/qualification and a 40 minute race with mandatory 60 second pit-stop. I was in the ‘Magnificent Sevens’ Group 1, which is for cars up to 185 bhp. Group 2 is for cars above 185 bhp. I was really looking forward to this one having been at Donny for trackdays in the past. I even started weight training to build up my lower arm strength for this 40 minute race. I knew from the Forum that another WSCC member was racing. Lee Morey or ‘Iowlee’, albeit he was in Group 2. We stayed at a pub with rooms near to the track, which wins the award for the most sticky tables in the Midlands... At least the bathroom was clean. This turned out to be an important fact. Marks snoring was quite frankly, unbelievably loud. I have always managed to avoid sharing a room with mark as I knew this and I forgot to pack my ear plugs. Damn. This meant at 2.30am and not having slept, I took matters into my own hands and moved the matress from my bed into the bathroom. This along with earplugs made of toilet tissue helped, but I didn’t really sleep until about 3.30am. Up at 6.45am, it was not the best preparation I was hoping for. Still nothing a gallon of strong tea, Lucozade and adrenaline could not sort out. Scrutinering was a non-event and only took a matter of minutes. Looking at the entries prior to the day, I was very concerned that I would be off the pace with a field almost exclusively of seasoned racers driving Caterhams. I knew I had lapped Donnington Park earlier in the year at a trackday in the low 1.22s and this didn’t bode well given the times of the entrants who were there the previous year. So out I went for the 30 minutes practice and quali, determined to not come last. We were qualifying with the Group 2 cars as well so it was busy. Some cars in Group 2 have 2.3 duratec’s and full pit crews, so it was an exercise of watching your mirrors whilst setting a time that I would be happy with. Lee followed me round for a few laps then overtook me, only to have a bit of a moment and end up running thought the gravel at McCleans – no damage done thankfully and he carried on (we both had a laugh about that one). I managed to set my best time on my penultimate lap, before I got the dreaded fuel surge again and had to come in 2 minutes before the end of the session. Lesson learnt. I posted a 1.21.5 which was good for 5th. I was more than happy with that. Lee managed a 1.19.9 which was a great time considering he had not even been to Donny before. So now we had a near 6-hour wait until my race. I managed to fill some of the time by helping Lee out with his race (Group 2). I offered to time his pit stop and give him some water. Mark was going to take his tyre pressures. The race turned out to be quite eventful. Lee pitted early as agreed but it was clear he had a problem. His front wheel arch had come loose and was rubbing against his tyre. We spend a very frantic 2 minutes trying to get a spanner and tighten up the nut. It was a blind panic as there was not a tool box/mechanic to be seen – blooming typical. We watched Lee go round for a few laps only for him to then start frantically pointing at his front arch again. Turns out it was his other arch rubbing this time. We prepare for another pit stop which the race commentator picked-up on but Lee decided to stay out. Having given me the thumbs up we monitored it from the pits for the rest of the race. Towards the end of the race Lee had another moment going straight on at the chicane, hitting the raised kerb and taking off skyward (the airport is next door Lee!). The floor was looking a little second hand but all was good. We also had more drama as one of the leading Caterhams managed to break his propshaft. The carbon firbre propshaft with CV joint still attached (well who doesn’t have a CF propshaft on their car?) came to a rest in the middle of the start/finish straight, being collected by one car which lost it’s rear arch as a result. Luckily no one was hurt. The safety car was called out and the Marshals grabbed it. So after a nervous wait, it was finally time for my race (Group 1). We were caller earlier than scheduled so Lee kindly stayed on, delaying his long drive home to help with my pit stop. I got a good start from the rolling grid. This was despite the 6th place Caterham being in front of me prior to the lights going out. At one point the grid was so messy I thought the start would be aborted. I held position in fifth despite grabbing some oversteer into Redgate and again at Craners (not something I want to repeat). Annoyingly I fluffed a gear change and didn't defend well going onto the back straight and lost two places as a result. It was that close running. My pain was made worse when I just could not find third coming out of the Foggy esses. This reined my speed along the start/finish straight. Fortunately, the two cars that overtook me continued to battle and I began to reduce the gap. One caterham span having lost the back end at McCleans and I managed to get clear of him for the rest of the race. Then at the next corner, the Westfiled of the Mowbray father/son team had a coming together with a Caterham and with bodywork all other the track, both retired from the race. This was a shame for the only other Westfield in the race. They were both quick too. Surprisingly, the safety car was not called out. I soon caught the car in front and we traded places for about 6 laps. This was sevens racing at its best with very equally matched machinery and plenty of drafting on the straights. The racing was hard fought, very close at times but clean and fair. I lost one of my front wings going down Craner Curves at some point was well. Shame really as it was CF. At about 23 minutes I pitted. This went as well as could have been expected. We know from the race organisers that the minimum time you can do a pit stop is 76 seconds and I managed 79. That helped a lot - thanks Lee and Mark!. The lap after pitting was ‘exciting’ to say the least with tyres not quite up to temperature. Pitting late meant the pit lane was virtually clear and there was no traffic in the pit lane or on the track as I left. This allowed me to put in 8 consecutive laps (after the pit exit lap) in the 1.22’s with a 1.21 on my penultimate lap. That Lucozade during the pit stop really did the trick! With about 6 laps to go Mark put out the pit board. This was really helpful. The pit board said ‘Mike 14’ (my race number) ‘30’ and ‘P3’. I though great I only have 10 minutes to go as I must admit I was very worried about my fuel level (I finished with virtually no fuel but with no fuel surge either).The following pit boards said the same but this time with ‘35’ and ‘37’ and I prayed that the safety car would not come out. I know this was the time remaining/counting down but refused to believe I was in third – ‘P3’. We had not agreed to put positions on the pit board. With two laps to go I saw a Caterham approaching fast and I could just not keep him behind me. Had I just lost out on my first podium? Again, I could see cars in my mirrors on the straights and I really dug deep to keep my concentration until the chequered flag came out. I was so relieved. I went round on my cool down lap, thanking the Marshals on the way. When I came into the pits I was pointed towards the winners section, I still didn’t believe it until Mark confirmed it – I was third and took my first podium! I was over the moon. What a result, even if I was a little lucky. I was interviewed by the race commentator, but quite frankly I didn’t know what to say! Interview practice was not on my training schedule! What a race and one I won’t forget in a hurry that’s for sure. Thankfully I remembered to collect my upgrade card and with my previous 4 races plus marshalling, I now have the 6 I need to upgrade to National A next year. I ceremoniously ripped my yellow cross off the back of the car. What a great journey this season has been. It’s been such an experience and I have enjoyed every moment. I cannot wait until next year now. Thanks for reading. Mike - No. 14. (My internet at home will finally be working next week so i'll try to sort some video)

Blyton Westfield Sprint weekend 9th and 10th July 2016 Introduction This was the long awaited Westfield organised Sprint weekend and also a Friday trackday attended by many Westfileds and a few Competitors. Much work had been put in by John Williams and his team of helpers and by this time they have already received our thanks. The weekend also saw a great effort in raising approx £730 funds for “Hope for Cancer” charity which was well supported and offered nice cakes and a raffle. Many of us arrived on Friday afternoon and some of us managed to park up in our paddock positions. There was a bit of light hearted mumbling about how the roadgoing classes had ended up on new tarmac but the slick cars had to contend with gravel areas so maybe we can look at this next year and also try to keep all the Westfield guys together in the same area so that Tim, Rich and Matt can keep everyone awake! There was some off track amusement provided by Matt Turner erecting his camper awning which lasted some considerable time but amazingly did not involve any swearing. Also in a short space of time and before beer refreshment Steve Everall broke one of my bestest camping chairs and then lost his car keys...talk about panic stations I have never seen him move so fast in his search to find them. They turned out to be in the cup holder pocket on my camping chair so I got the blame even though I never touched the keys. Mind you , I did loose the motorhome keys later on ....found them in the door lock! The track day seemed to go well and there was good track courtesy as well as some over enthusiast driving by some who seemed desparate to destroy their tyres with big slides and screaming tyres. Steve Carpenter and Roz Kennett were trying different suspension set ups and made good use of their track time and Adam Read was instructing again. The evening saw BBQs out and a “little” alcoholic intake as well as a magnificent sunset..... but the saying of “Red sky at night, shepherd's delight”turned out to be false as we awoke to a very wet morning of rain whick got heavy at about 0930hrs just as we got ready for P1. Due to the large numbers of Westifelds I apologise if I miss out some people or problems but it was a big paddock and I could not keep track of the many incidents etc. Saturday It was good to see Phil Nicholl's out to play (but there was no sign of Vodka jelly) as well as Paul Dew (aka Tigger) for the first time this year. Everyone was looking at weather apps on their phones and the concensus was that it was going to be wet on and off for most of the day. In P1 most of class G and H kept their slicks on and had very scary drives with no grip and unpredictable surface water but at least it cleaned the tyres up. As I was keeping dry I couldnt see a lot of the action but I know Tigger's enthusiasm got the better of him as he had an off exiting the Wriggler chicane but the car was ok when they pulled it out of the field and farmer's crops. There were the usual tales of near mishaps, lurid slides, no grip on the start line, opposite lock and lucky escapes. In P2 it was even wetter than before and some of us used our wet suits to keep dry and the slicks came off to be replaced by Wets for everyone. By this time there was standing water so keeping it smooth and dealing with the standing water was the main issue especially in the braking areas where most of us suffered as the cars just refused to stop. In practice we had about a 45 mins delay as the track conditions were assessed but most of us just wanted to carry on and deal with whatever we had to drive in. At last it stopped raining and after a break for lunch it was drying up quickly and the sky looked promising. T1- Michael Skidmore had total failure of his clutch so unfortunately that was his weekend finished so he has had a bit of bad luck recently and he was keen to get the engine out on Sunday and see what had happened. ( turned out the clutch plate and springs had all collapsed due to his power and sequentail box). Steve Everall forgot it was still a bit damp on track and nearly went straight on at the Wriggler chicane and quite a few people had spins or had all four wheel off the course so had a Fail. Also all four wheels must be inside the white lines at the finish and quite a few did not manage that as they slid around the fast last right hand corner across the finish. I was determined to get a good first run but clipped a blue cone on the apex of a left hand corner which knocked my silencer back by 25mm and put a big hole in my left rear wing but that was quickly patched up with a bit of duck/duct tape in a matching black colour. Matt Turner had a spin and Mark Anson, in the OMS, was finding it hard to post a good time as he is still getting used to the car as is Mark Schlanker, both on OMS 2000M cars. T2 – Matt Turner had a big spin after the finish and Tim Nunn pushed hard but did not have all four wheel on through the finish. I wont try to analyse the resuts as we had 33 competitors out there and its hard to pick out individuals as there were some great battles in all classes. Sunday We had a better forecast for the weather today but the sky was full of threatening clouds and we did have some rain in late in P1 and P2. T1 was drying and T2 was bone dry. At various stages through the day people had spins, Richard Kerr went straight on at the chicane, Adam and Charlotte Phelps had fuel swirl pot lift pump failure on the Busa (luckily Rick Kerr had a spare) as well as a defective starter. In P1 Tim Nunn had a spin at the first corner and Rich Kerr was having gear shift issues. In T1 John Gilmour in the Kevin Jones's R1 car took out the timing gear at the finish. Paul Dew was getting to grips with his car at last and posting decent times. Phil Nicholl's car failed to start due to a broken starter motor so he needed pushing for rest of the day. Steve Everall went better than Saturday but his times reflected the apparent poor grip from the Avon ZZS tyre compared to the ZZR he was used to last year. Ian Davenport was enjoying being back in the paddock and put on a great display for the spectators at the finish line. Gary Bunn just got the better of Derek Hodder and Barny Francis put in a very good drive again and continues to improve. Maurici Revilla won his class on both days with excellent drives whilst Dave Cleaver was also well on the pace and beat some of the slick shod cars. Tim Nunn won class G on both days with Matt Turner taking second on Sunday with a great drive. In the end we all had a busy and interesting weekend fighting the weather and the track. The paddock banter and support was the best this year and John and his team did the club proud. Thanks to everyone who helped. The only downside was probably that very few people actually got anywhere near the difficut target times and scored low points in the championship.......maybe we need to move away from Target Times! Interestingly the Saturday event was nearly declared a 1.6e event (Wet rules apply) as approx 45% of drivers were more than 10% slower than the target time even though the timed runs were dry. The date for our return in 2017 is already booked so get it in your diary early. Terry Everall Class G competitor

For those who have not had the opportunity to visit, Pembrey is an airfield circuit located on the south west coast of Wales, about 20 minutes beyond Llanelli. Known as ‘The Home of Welsh Motorsport’, it hosts car, truck and bike racing as well as rally cross, tarmac rallies, track days, karting and driving experiences along with an annual sprint for National A and National B competitors. Facilities include a spacious concrete paddock, plenty of grass areas for camping, toilets, showers, restaurant and a catering van, all of which are basic but entirely acceptable. The track is also very close to the coast, with a country park giving access to a large, sandy beach just a short drive from the venue. The location itself is barely convenient for the residents of Llanelli, let alone the rest of the country, but the motivation to make the trip is the track itself. The combination of a technical in-field section, some really quick bends, long straights and grippy tarmac makes it my favourite sprint venue. Typical of airfield tracks, it is almost entirely flat, and spotting braking/turn-in points can be difficult due to a lack of distinguishing features, but the run-offs are generous in most places. That said, at least one notable Westfield has come to grief at Pembrey, and a dual-drive Fury suffered significant damage on Saturday, so thought is required. There are corners that can be cut aggressively, bends that you can really commit to and options to stay flat (and clench accordingly) where others may lift, as well as places where you can stretch the boundaries of the track to your benefit. The track, operated by BARC Wales, was a popular venue for testing amongst Formula 1 teams in the late 80’s and early 90’s, including McLaren and Williams. This illustrious history has led to a small amount of ‘legend’ being cultivated, including Ron Dennis using a test session at Pembrey to attempt to diffuse tensions between Senna and Prost in 1989, and Senna being allegedly quoted as saying that the Dibeni/Paddock sequence of bends was amongst his favourites in the world…. . The number of entrants for the event was notably smaller than previous years, with the sprint held at Abingdon on Saturday being seen as the culprit, although the finger may be fairly pointed at recent (and much discussed) changes in regulations, too. The Westfield entry seemed smaller too, particularly with Terry and Steve Everall giving it a miss this year due to the 7 hour journey from God’s Own County that it entails. The St Gueno hillclimb in France, held the weekend before, may also have distracted some other Westfield competitors. Charlotte and Adam Phelps, Mike Skidmore, David Cleaver, John Loudon, dick Spanner Racing, and I made the trip and all seemed to be subjected to delays on any motorway that they chose to use. A warm, dry Friday evening provided the opportunity to explore the track and enjoy the evening sunshine in the peace that comes with a remote location. Saturday began cool and overcast but, critically, dry. The driver’s briefing was performed in the genial, informal manner that seems to be customary for the BARC Wales team, and practice commenced just after. Progress throughout the day was slow, with a number of incidents leading to delays and re-runs. For reasons beyond his control, Gary Bunn made a bid for the record number of re-runs in a day, having been victim of a number of baulks and red flags. Mike Skidmore ran into an issue ahead of Practice 1, but was able to register a time for Practice 2, in which most drivers made good progress. I managed a personal best in Practice 2, but then failed to match it for the rest of the day, which was frustrating. All Westfields registered a first timed run, but Mike Skidmore’s second run was compromised by a gear selection issue, and a particularly quick Westfield managed a double-pirouette at the exit of the kink on the back straight; no time was recorded, but style marks were awarded (and you could smell the rubber from the paddock!). David Cleaver finished the day as the fastest Westfield with an impressive 107.81s, with Adam, Derek and Gary in hot pursuit. To give some context, Fastest Time of the Day went to Colin Calder in the well-known Gould GR55, recording 90.11s. Our own Matt Hillam finished fifth in the Top Twelve Run Off with a time of 94.20s in his Dallara. Sunday dawned warmer and brighter, and proceedings were notably quicker than the previous day due to fewer incidents. My pit crew (family) retired to the beach for the morning, which is not an option at all Speed Series venues. With the help of some valuable suggestions from an experienced Westfield pilot and a bit of deep thought undertaken overnight, my times started to improve. Derek, David and Garry all recorded practice times of 108 seconds. Mike had managed to resolve his gear selection issues but then fell foul of another problem on his second practice run that put an end to his troubled event, which was a shame. Garry pipped David to the honour of fastest Westfield with a 108.61s, with Derek close behind. Adam consistently recorded 110s runs in the slick-shod Megabusa, while Charlotte made significant improvements on her Saturday runs. John Loudon progressed from a best of 114.28s on Saturday to a 113.31s on Sunday. I managed on new personal best of 121.35s after a very committed (for me, anyway!) final run, which ended my event on a high note. John Graham in a Gould GR55B managed to break the Calder stranglehold on the Fastest Time of the Day by recording an 88.68s run, which doesn’t bear thinking about! All Westfields were done for the day by about 14:30, which enabled a much-appreciated prompt departure in warm sunshine for the long journey home. Two days of warm, dry weather at a great, albeit remote, track were not without frustration for some, but if you had even half as much fun as I did, you had a great time. If you haven’t visited Pembrey before, grit your teeth and make the journey – it’s worth it. written by Simon Broadbridge Class Competitor

TEL's TALE's 058/2016 Rockingham March 2016 So here we go for the 2016 speed series which has a good number of entries despite the enforced MSA changes to roll over bars, cages, tyres etc. Class F seems to be well supported and this years sees a few more in single seaters or having sold their Westfields. Despite all the doom merchants suggesting it would be cold, wet and snowy it was actually dry, reasonably warm and we had sunshine. Nine speed series contenders were there. Only the track stayed a bit on the cold side but we are still in March so we were happy with hat we got. I had the usual start at 0445hrs meeting up with John Hoyle and Steve and Margaret Everall on route. Due to his blown engine Steve had to spectate which was a shame as he went well here last year. Spectators included Martin and Michell Harvey who turned up on the Harley Davidson, Derek Hodder and Matt Hillam. After a straight forward scrutineering for all we got stuck into the convoy runs. John Hoyle and I were out alost last wth me leading John as he had not walked the course. John was having trouble with the electronics on his new Sadev gearbox and his altered rear brake calipers. I has a brake snatch at the first corner so I opened up a gap from John down the main banking straight and just before the bend I braked hard to test the brakes. The car snaked around a bit and had a short lock up but were then fine ( no use since October last year and sat in the garage does not help). John slowed behind me but his brake bias was wrong so he moved alongside me as there was plenty of room. Unkown to us the Sierra cosworth turbo car behind John for some reason thought we had stopped on the circuit (we never got below 40 mph) and locked up, skidded , just missed both of us and slammed into the wall. I felt a bit sorry for the guy until I heard him say that he was in 4th gear and doing 130mph!!!!!. In reality this was a convoy lap where you do not overtake anyone, you can check everything is working ok and you normally go around 50 to 60mph. This guy was clearly in his own little world and nearly wiped out John Hoyle and myself. I think that was not a clever way to drive on a convoy lap. Practice saw a reasonable level of grip and newconers Simo Jones and Paul Beesley geeting to grips with their cars on this testing track. Simon Jones admitted that he had been on a trackday practicing the day before so he knew the right lines to take and was feeling confident. John Hoyle and his brakes were still giving him concern as he had too much rear brake bias as well as missfiring due to the electronics on his Sadev box deciding that they did not want to play ball. On his second practice he braked hard for the 180 deg lefthander at the end of the banked section and glanced the concrete wall causing damage to the rear offside wheel arch and his brand new immaculate bodywork. He was not a happy bunny. Eventually disconnecting his gearbox electronics at least gave him some smooth runs but he did need to use the clutch. Pete Goulding was really enjoying his new Formula Ford Mygale 1600cc ecoboost and improved his tomes all day. In summary here is were we all ended Class B1 Simon Jones 85.57 Class C Mark Bishop 87.40 Graham Frankland 88.73 Craig Spooner 83.09 Class F John Hoyle 76.82 Gerry Houghton 88.11 Class G Terry Everall 74.10 Class J2 Peter Goulding 71.64 A good start to the season for most but John Hoyle has a bit of work to do before Croft on Easter Monday but he will be there. Terry Everall Speed Series Correspondent Class G competitor.

TEL's TALE's 057/2015 Ty Croes Sept : 2015 A big Westfield presence was to make this a great weekend for most but not everyone! Many had long journeys and fought their way through the Friday traffic and Pete Goulding and his son Jack had another epic 8hr trip which they were thinking was too far and too long. Lee Smith had pulled out as his engine failed close to the weekend. As most people know Adrian Clinton Watkins made a monumental effort to get his (well Barry Slingsby's car actually) engine and box transplanted into a substitute car after Mike Allard smashed it to bits at Loton Park the previous weekend. Most annoying for some was that the messages about whether the cafe was open for food and drink on Friday night were confusing but it just about worked out ok in the end. The next drama was that Stephen Herbert's tow car broke down in Holyhead (he had left the car in the paddock on its trailer) and luckily he got a lift from the B&B. After the breakdown man said the car had a serious defect it decided to start later in the day and seemed to keep going all weekend much to Sally's delight. Saturday: 2 laps of National circuit P1: would be 2 laps so just one practice for everyone. Steve Everall had a bad run as “someone” forgot to clip down both sides of his bonnet but he got round without losing it. Graham Ware was double driving Kevin Jones's R1 car but due to being about 19 stones and very tall he broke the carbon Fibre seat so it was swopped for the passenger GRP seat and refixed which kept them running all weekend. Pete Goulding had an alternator/ battery problem which bugged him all day despite attempts to fix it. Jason Brown was running with number 13 and did not seem to any bad luck all weekend. Ade , John Hoyle and Dave Cleaver put in the quickest times on a dry track. T1: For most competitors this went well and Mark Anson, Dave Cleaver and Richard Kerr recorded their best times for the day our of the 4 runs available. For me it was the run that everyone fears....perfect oil pressure, car running absolutely on song and the without warning as I passed the start line at about 110mph, on second lap, there was a big puff of blue smoke from nearside and the realisation that the engine had blown up. As I lifted the bonnet I could see that number 4 con rod had punched a large hole in the side of the block so that was game over. Thanks to my brother Steve I double drove his XE car ut would not score any points. T2: As I watched Dave Cleaver pass the same spot where I had blown up I saw a similar engine failure with associated smoke......luckily for him it was a water hose that had blown off so quite an easy repair and he was going again. John Hoyle had a great run and blasted inside the Target Time to set a new record and he improved it even more on his last run. Richard Kerr's car, double driven as usual by Luke, broke a CV joint but Mark Anson had a spare so that was fitted asap. They also had an issue with the car stuck in 3rd gear but sorted that as well. In class Martin Harvey, in the silver bullet, beat a very fast John Walters. In D all went quickest on their last runs, John Hoyle broke the record on 109.65secs, Steve Everall was second on 117.29secs, Stephen Herbert so so close on 117.31secs and Michael Skidmore with 124.13secs. Kevin Jones won n class E whilst in F Luke Agar broke the record with 111.12secs from Richard Kerr on 115.42 secs bt the star was Dave Cleaver recording a new record of 109.80secs. Mark Anson, in G, was fast with 113.21secs but Adrian C Watkins was quicker with 109.18secs. In H Derek Hodder 108.46secs just pipped Gary Bunn 108.83secs to be fastest Westfield in his supercharged honda. In class J, Steve Davies was beaten by Marshall Rowland with a smooth drive in his Lotus Elise. After his last run John Hoyle changed his diff, went for a shower and still made it in time for the awards...how the hell does he do that! Sunday 1 lap International circuit. Another overcast but dry day made for good conditions on track and the two practices went ok for everyone particularly my brother Steve as luckily I spotted 3 very loose bellhousing bolts that had almost fallen out! They were quickly tightened up so at least I would be driving a car that was still in one piece. John Hoyle and Ade (who had altered the car geometry /set up overnight) were very quick again in practice and likely to set the pace whilst I had to get to grips with no slicks and a stick to change gear with rather than paddles but at least I was not spectating. The event ran much quicker than the two laps did yesterday so we did not get much breathing space. Timed Runs : Kevin Jones decided to adjust his nearside camber as the tyre wear pattern looked like it was only using part of the tread width. Stephen Herbert came in after T1 with a broken cycle wing stay which he repaired with jubilee clips and a short piece of alloy tube curtesy of Pete Goulding. In T1 John Hoyle suffered and engine cut before the finish and was not happy. Dave Cleaver and myself set about trying to trace the fault using DTA software and checking 12v supply etc. When we checked the rpm signal it was ok , so crank sensor working. We had fuel and a spark but it would not start. When I looked at the live data it showed no throttle position signal so John checked it and found a broken wire coming out of the throttle pot. It was going to be tricky to solder a connection and repair it but that was tried and the car started again ready for T2. In T2 John Walters tried a bit too hard and spun at the finish, John's car failed again as the wire solder did not hold, Pete Goulding had a major issue with a vibration in the transmission/propshaft area that he could not find despite checking bolts etc. Ade, Dave and John were setting good times but Kevin Jones's car was suffering from the double drive and started to deposit oil into the airbox which caused lots of smoke and reminded us of his “red leader award” of a few years ago. Stephen Herbert was leading the battle with Steve Everall who was running out of revs and struggling to shift down from 3rd to 2nd. T3 saw John Wlliams setting yet another Pb and he was well pleased! Marshall Rowland beat Steve Davies again and he left early! If you want to see the times achieved have a look at the speed series results. In summary we had 5 timed runs but not everyone took them, I think Gary Bunn was fastest Westfield with 87.35secs closely followed by Ade on 87.45secs, Del on 87.82secs, John on 88.02secs despite his problems. Not many people stayed for the awards as they had long drives home and for me I had an engine change to sort out!!. It was a great weekend and we will still have to wait and see what happens at Ty Croes in October to see who wins the overall championship. Hope to see you there Terry Everall Speed Series Correspondent Class G competitor.

So after months of anticipation Wednesday 27th May had finally arrived and time for us ( Michelle & I ) to set off on our trip to the St Goueno Hill Climb. We set off for our ferry from Portsmouth to St Marlo at 2.00pm, after an easy run down the A34 we’d soon joined the queue at the ferry terminal and could see ahead another member of Team WSCC Graham ( Windy ) Millar. Once checked in the three of us headed for the terminal bar to get in the spirit of the weekend while we waited to be loaded. The crossing was an overnight run so following an evening meal and a few drinks in the bar chatting to fellow competitors we retired to our cabin for a few hours sleep. In the morning we joined Graham in his commodore cabin for a complimentary continental breakfast before setting off on the short drive from St Marlo to St Goueno. Just over an hour later around 10.00am we’d arrived at the empty paddock hoping to drop our trailers off but not only were we turned away until 3pm we also noticed that one of Grahams trailer tyres had delaminated and lost a large chunk of tread, so out came the jacks and in true motorsport style the wheel was changed in no time. Many competitors camp in the paddock however following Grahams visit last year we opted to share a small gite in a village a few miles away and used our time to pop to the gite, unpack and have a cuppa. Time rolled by and no sooner had we sat down than it was time to head back to the paddock and set camp ready for the rest of Team WSCC. We quickly had our paddock area set up banners flying and cars ready, just in time actually as the remainder of the team had arrived, Tim Nunn & Karen, Richard Kerr & Lisa and Paul Morcom and then with a mass joint effort we organised the motorhomes and trailers ready for the weekend. Now the time had come for us to drive the hill for the first time, all be it still an open road but we couldn’t wait to set sight on the hill and see how it compared with the video’s I’d watch a thousand times before. With Graham taking Tim, Richard & Paul for passenger rides in his gorgeous orange MK2 Escort Michelle & I jumped in the Westy to get a proper view of the road. Wow this was going to be the most challenging hill climb I’ve driven so far, 2 miles of fast tight & twisty narrow road, steep banks to one side and armco to the other it became very clear there would be no room for mistakes here. So with the recky runs done and much debate about how to tackle this for practice on Saturday it was soon time to get ready for our first evenings entertainment in the Sal d fete in St Goueno. The hospitality here was exceptional with the organisers laying on evening meals and entertainment all weekend for drivers and their crew, they even provide a free Navette ( minibus ) to run everyone the couple of miles from the paddock to the village centre & back and also to and from our gite so we could all kick back enjoy a few beers blonde, cidre and vin rouge, bring it on. Friday was a nice relaxing day, as other than signing on and scrutineering in the afternoon we had no other motor sport duties so took full advantage and enjoyed a bit of a lay in ( we needed it after the night before trying to keep up with Tim & Rich in the bar ) followed by a walk to the village patisserie for croissants and pan aux chocolait . When we finally made it back to the paddock not much was going on so we took the short walk across to the Cheval hair pin to watch some of the local historic regularity cars running up the hill, a very enjoyable couple of hours drifted by and it was time to return for signing on. Friday nights entertainment was bigger and better than the night before with a live band playing and plenty good food and drink, again the Plays-kool boys were a bad influence forcing me to have one or two beers too many ;-) When we got home to our gite we had been joined by David Birch & his brother Alan, Ade ACW and a friend of Windy’s Paul who were all sharing the gite next door and spectating for the weekend. Saturday morning was beautiful bright and sunny, full of nervous anticipation ( well certainly on my part ) as our practice runs started at 9.30am. Unlike our British hill climbs the paddock was not laid out in competitor order, so to get everyone back in order before a run you first get called out to the pre grille. We had been divided into three groups of around thirty who get called out together, on leaving the paddock your given a pre grille number which you go find painted on the road and park behind it. Just as soon as the pre grille has all assembled your taken off in a convoy on the 2.2 mile drive down to the start line. Finally my group were called and off I set for my first proper run up the hill all be it un-timed, I quite liked that idea as it was a chance to sight the hill without the pressure of posting a reasonable time. It wasn’t far into my first run that the scale of this hill hit home, despite watching last years video’s a thousand times and driving the hill the previous day it only took a couple of corners before I was completely flummoxed as to what was coming next, that would be the challenge to driving this hill fast, memorising the course well enough to attach the corners. Well my first run was fairly cautious but completed without any dramas so I was happy with that. Back in the paddock we all chatted about our first runs, exchanged ideas on how to memorise the course and couldn’t wait to have another go and post a time. After lunch we were called again, wished each other luck and set off for the start line. Things all started to go a little wayward from here with delay after delay ( breakdowns and accidents that took an age to clear ) then at last it was my turn. My start was ok and the first half of the run went pretty much to plan ( I almost felt like I knew where I was going ) until I was Red Flagged just after the crossing ( a cross roads about half way up ), I pulled over to a marshall’s post only to be told the red flag was a mistake and I should turn around go back down to the start for a re-run. This was the last thing I’d expected and after a stressful 5 point turn I trundled back down to the start line, with one thought in my mind, I now had warm tyres and should take full advantage. This second start was much better and I set off at a faster pace, to my surprise the next few corners were all in the order I’d imagined, the run was going well I soon recognised the next section which is much faster and even managed to keep my foot half in through the crossing, the next two right handers went well ( including the nasty tightening one which was catching out a lot of drivers ) and I was heading down to the Cheval Hair Pin then just the last two corners and I was done, first timed run over and I thought went pretty well, just needed to see my time which was displayed on the return road, blimey 1min 46s I was very pleased with that. When I returned to our paddock all was very quiet, the girls had all gone to spectate as had Windy so I had a few quiet moments to re -run the hill in my head before I expected Tim & Richard to return as they were a couple of cars behind me at the start. It soon became clear more problems followed my run as no sign of Tim let alone anyone else, what I didn’t realise was it was Team WSCC causing some of the hold ups. Unfortunately Tim suffered a mechanical problem and had to quit his run half way up, then Richie rather enthusiastically clipped the armoc on the nasty right hander which he seamed to get away with only then to suffer steering failure on the very last corner and collided heavily head on into the water filled barriers, finally Paul returned in his beautiful Merlin having completed a successful run and we waited to hear of of Tim & Richie. Thankfully the Plays-kool boys escapades were not too serious, Tim’s air box had worked loose and was soon fixed and Richards off ( which looked spectacular on the big screen ) had left his supercharged Duratec unrepairable for the rest of the weekend but more importantly, other than a sore wrist ( no jokes about using the other hand please ) he was fine. A perfect example of why we should ALL be wearing HANS devices if ever one was needed. Due to all the hold up’s P2 was cancelled so that was practice over. Saturday evening was again full of good food, drink and great friends as we all reflected on the days events. ( I seam to remember even finding a bar selling hot dogs and chips somewhere, or did I just dream that ) ?? 5am Sunday morning I woke to the sound of rain lashing down on our gite roof, not good but what can you do, the bad weather looked set for the day. We arrived at the paddock with everything cold wet and soggy, while Michelle sat in the camper with heating on I set about drying out the Silver Bullet which although covered had not faired well overnight. Thankfully I’d done most of the prep for Sunday already so just a check of tyre pressures, get togged up and I was ready, leaving my time free to dry the car out and wonder what this hill was going to drive like in the wet. Soon enough we were called out to the pre grille, time for our first run. Well the conditions certainly slowed everybody, we all returned from our first runs having wheel spun, slipped and slided up the hill safely but non of us made it in under 2 minuets, this was now a very tricky and treacherous hill to drive. Before our next run we had lunch laid on, cold meats, bread & cheese and strangely cidre & vin rouge, shame we had to drive later! With lunch done time to return to the serious part driving the hill, unfortunately the weather had got a little worse over lunch and any chance of having a dry run looked off. Somehow we all improved for T2 ( maybe the wine at lunch ) and now Tim was leading our class, Windy second in his and Paul battling well with the other formula ford in his. We now waited in the drizzle to be called for T3, Windy, Tim & Paul were all eager for their final run but I was unsure, I had a few moments thinking I’d enjoyed my weekend, the car was still in one piece, the weather didn’t look like improving and maybe I should call it a day, thankfully I was talked out of that thought as T3 although still treacherous turned out to be all of our fastest run of the day and we all got round safely. The final results for Team WSCC were: Tim Nunn 1m 52.489s 1st in class & 9th overall out of 84 entries Graham Millar 1m 55.369s 2nd in class & 13th overall Paul Morcom 2m 01.828s 2nd in class & 24th overall Martin Harvey 2m 08.904s 7th in class & 36th overall Richard Kerr NTR With the cars and kit all loaded we headed up for the presentations and made sure Tim got the reception he deserved as he received his trophy, well done Tim. That just left the final nights meal which was a quieter affair, still loads of good food, great company with friends old & new and yep you guessed it all the vin rouge you could drink, in fact I think I had a few too many as I don't remember the journey back our gite, lol So how would I sum up the weekend for any of you thinking of giving it a go next year, hmm, well if you put our Blyton weekend and all your other favourites together your getting close to St Goueno experience, see you there next year!!!!

Black Team Dynamics wheels have arrived, slight delay no 2 1/2 inch in stock would you believe! windscreen also fitted and first side screen ready to fit Old wheels off New wheels on First sidescreen frame trial fit: FW rear section prototypes built: Assembled: trial fitted, still a bit of tweaking required plus I need to change the reg plate!

TEL's TALES 05/17 Snetterton weekend 13th/14th May 2017 Well I am just back from a great weekend run by Borough 19 at Snetterton where we had 13 speed series cars on the Saturday and 15 on Sunday so it was a good turnout and a well run event. I delivered another set of Force rims to Pete Goulding and also transported a nosecone. Despite the worry about paddock space due to a massive Mini/racing weekend on the outer track we were mostly on the tarmac apart from a few who arrived on Sat am or Sunday who were on the grass but found it ok if annoying that they were split from the rest of the Westfield crowd. Having arrived late on Friday a few of us walked the track to see if it was all still there…..and as usual Steve Everall spent most of the time picking up nuts, bolts, screws and washers of all shapes and sizes from the trackside and I pocketed the good ones for future use. There was some debate about whether John Hoyle could walk at all as he had damaged his knee at work and looked in a lot of pain walking, never mind driving. As he does not drink alcohol I could not offer him any pain relief. Sadly Derek Hodder and Gary Bunn had not made it as the engine repairs and clutch installation had not gone smoothly and the engine had to come out again. I understand they eventually found a broken clutch plate rivet jammed in the clutch housing behind the springs. Steve Carpenter and Roz Kennett only completed the install of the £180 replacement engine from ebay (after the Ty Croes big end problem) at 2100hrs Sat night but they did manage to compete on Sunday. Saturday Weather was good and we all passed scrutineering and got 2 practice runs and 1 timed run before lunch on a dry track which seemed a little lacking of grip early in the day. Simon Bainbridge had his son with him who was being very professional as pit mechanic and wheel cleaner/polisher during the weekend. I noticed Steve’s car had the end of the nearside bottom wishbone bent upwards so later we got out the big hammer and straightened it as he had forgotten to bring his spare wishbones with him but knew where they were in his garage! John Hoyle was quickest in practice but at the end of P1 Steve came with the oil warning light on and the oil pressure gauge reading zero but the engine sounded OK which was a bit odd. I checked the sensors were ok so it did not look good, however John Hoyle said he had previously had issues with a sticking release valve in the dry sump pump. So as usual the Westfield crew got stuck in and with John, Dave, Mick and myself and a clean bucket and trays we drained the oil and removed the dry sup pump during P2. I found a small piece of grit on the valve so we cleaned it and put it back in and the job was done with oil pressure now ok. Mick provided a massive industrial sized roll of blue paper towel son we mopped up all the spillages and all was good with the weekend saved by Steve’s mates. Steve has asked me to thank everyone! John may have been going fast but his timing strut was deemed inadequate and not sticking out far enough so that was quickly modded. In the timed runs Dave Cleaver was seriously quick and smashed the class target time/record with 88.24secs on his first run. John Hoyle was chasing him but it looked like the ZZR tyres could not deal with the grunt and power he has. Steve was so happy with his car repair that he was sideways for much of the time. Jason Brown was getting to grips with the track and eventually beat the target time by a good margin on his last run. In class G I had been having a good battle with John Loudon and was over a second up until on the last run lady luck appear for John. Mick Skidmore lost it on his run and went off meaning that John Loudon and Dave Cleaver got a rerun… so now maybe he had warm tyres and put in a great run to beat me by 0.47 secs. As a result I have now requested that he is renamed Mick Skidless! In class J2 the 5 competitors were matt Hillam, Steve Broughton, Carol Torkington, Pete Goulding and Paul Morcom in a wide variety of cars. In the evening there was a live rock group in the bar which most of us really enjoyed as we had a few refreshments. Mick Skidless, Steve and I were still in there at 2345hrs until they finished and once again I was reminded that Steve knew all the words to the songs but not necessarily in the right order as Eric Morecambe once said. Sunday It rained during the night and the practice runs were very wet and slippy with most of having an entertaining drive and a few slides and odd car angles as we got round the circuit. I think Roz Kennett had an off in P1 but the car was running well on its £180 engine. Steve Carpenter was trying so hard that he had an off in P2 so he would not feel that he missed out on anything Roz had done. Steve Everall had two big moments at the start line hairpin and Pete Goulding did a nice 360 deg spin for us. During the day John Loudon had to fix his alternator bracket alignment and then his alternator would not charge so he just used battery power. Once again Dave Cleaver set the pace and was showing us how its done and he only bothered to take 1 timed run as he smashed the target time and record with 88.16 secs. After T1 I was leading john Loudon by 0.04secs but in T2 he posted a very quick 91.24secs to beat my old record of 91.37secs and take the points. Jason Brown beat target again and Steve Carpenter also broke target time so the rebuild was worth it. A great weekend and I have only mentioned a little of what went on… The battle is now hotting up as Dave and John Hoyle are scoring big points but there is still plenty of time for others to challenge. Terry Everall Class G competitor .

TEL's TALES 04/17 Ty Croes, Angelsey weekend 29th/30th April 2017 This event was run by MG car club (NW) with 2 laps of the National circuit on Saturday and 1 lap of the International on Sunday. The weather for all 9 Westfield drivers was very windy and very cold but despite the weather forecast it did not rain apart from a few early showers on Saturday morning during practice.. The big bonus was that it was a medium sized entry, well run and we got loads of runs particularly on Sunday. From a personal perspective I was happy to be back in action as I had clutch failure and then the big ends went at start of April so I have had almost zero seat time and not really scored any points. I have installed another blade engine and used the honda HRC kit ECU and Powercommander V, so had to get it on the rolling road again. I do hate watching as the engine is mapped and has it neck rung at in excess of 14000rpm and watching the oil pressure , water temp, etc is very traumatic. Happily all went well and it produced some reasonable figures. I have also had to work with Steve changing his gearbox after an expensive rebuild due to the cost of quaife gears. Thanks to Graham Millar for a brilliant service and quick turnround. Saturday Some of our southern softie drivers were sharing a garage and quite early on Saturday they were working on changing John Loudon’s alternator as it failed during the start of practice which he missed (lucky he had a spare and had previously driven the circuit so knew where the corners were). I got to the noise test only to find out that my tacho was not reading the correct revs so I just blagged it and got through. It was clear that apart from the Westfield classes there would be some “personal battles” going on and some quick times were expected. In the timed runs I was one of the first to have problems as in T1my flatshifter decided to give up the ghost and have me missing gear shifts so I was not amused and disconnected it for the weekend….now I had to learn how to change gear using the clutch. Steve was having his usual battle with Mick Skidmore who started to lose oil from his gearbox. Steve Carpenter and Roz spent ages helping a guy called Chris in his ailing Westfield which appeared to have sensor or wiring problems but they kept it going all weekend using a spare battery Steve had. As the day went on it became clear that some of the target times were going to be very difficult to achieve ( class G ??) We had one practice of 2 laps and the track was cold with limited grip. During the day things got a little better but it was hard to go faster. Dave Cleaver in class H on slicks, chased by John Hoyle set the pace and did a 106.65secs against a target of 106.37secs. John Hoyle scored high again as he beat the class F target with 109.77secs on his last run. John Loudon beat me in class G with a good drive and 110.26secs against a very hard target of 107.94secs. Steve Everall was wearing odd shoes on each foot for some reason. I thought it was some new speed enhancing technique but it was because he was having trouble with a painful left foot!. The evening was great as we all ate together in the bar and had a good craic until we were thrown out. Sunday Mark Bishop was out first still running in a true road going class and finding the targets hard but had a smile on his face all weekend. Dave Cleaver was constantly adjusting his car geometry and I joined in, using the flat garage floor, to adjust my nearside front camber. John Loudon was convinced that he needed wider front tyres as his new slicks were getting some severe abuse on the fast International layout and my new slicks were not looking much better. The times were not consistently available to drivers as they finished, so a few of managed to get onto the TSL website for live timings. Fastest 3 in practice were Dave Cleaver 87.15secs, John Hoyle ( on ZZR tyres) 88.73secs and me on 90.33 secs. At the end of T1 John Hoyle had problems with the clutch cable needing adjustment and I had an exhaust manifold pipe fracture almost in half. Once again the Westfield “crew” sprung into action and with an old diet coke can, some jubilee clips, snips and some gloves to stop hands being burnt a repair was effected and I have to thank all those who helped including Dave Cleaver, Steve Carpenter, Roz Kennett, Mick Skidmoe etc . I hardly got involved and the repair was great. In the end we had 5 timed runs and set some good times. Dave Cleaver was once again fastest with 85.77secs and beating target. John Hoyle beat the target with 88.128secs against the 89.50secs target and packed in after two runs. I managed to get revenge against John Loudon and our times were very quick with 88.13secs and 88.44secs against a target of 88.02secs. Steve Carpenter had gone well all weekend but his ST 170 engine expired with big ends knocking on the last run. Roz Kennett was very pleased to pick up the fastest Lady award. So a great weekend and enjoyed by all with some good drives on the ragged edge. A few repairs and I hope tpo be out and see some of you at Snetterton Terry Everall Class G competitor .

Tel’s Tales Anglesey 1st and 2nd April 2017 I guess that any of us involved in motorsport have a bad break, once in a while, such as my clutch issue at Rockingham but things can only get better……or perhaps not in my case. I thought that it was just an unlucky start to the season but more doom and gloom was on the horizon. It was my oldest grandaughter’s 18th birthday on the Friday so I delayed my 4 hour drive and set off at 1830 thinking I will miss the traffic on the M6. I was correct and Steve and I flew along until we hit the M56 where there seemed to be accidents every 5 miles or so. Then the Welsh Highways department played their best card as they had apparently (with little warning) closed about 10 miles for roadworks, with no diversion routes shown. After what seemed like hours of ignoring my satnav request to “turn around when possible” we went through Chester and back to Queensferry. Arrived in the paddock at about 2330hrs too late for a beer or two so just went to bed! Woke at 0100hrs to the sound of heavy rain belting down on the motorhome roof which even drowned out Steve’s snoring. Saturday was a bit dull and cold but the damp track was drying and with only 35 cars there would be lots of track time….for most people! Some Speed Series stickers had been dished out by Tim so they were being slapped onto car sides. Scrutineering was easy and away we went at 1000hrs prompt with 2 practice runs. Alas, in P1, Craig Spooner hit the tyre wall somewhere near Rocket complex and having hoped that things were repairable he found a damaged chassis so had to pack in so that was a big blow for him. I was fastest car in P1 and P2 and I was predicting that a Westfield could take FTD on both days so things looked good. Steve’s gearbox was still playing up and no matter how much we adjusted the clutch cable he had problems all weekend with selecting 2nd or 3rd gear and as a result his times suffered. I set off for T1 like a scolded cat but after about 200m approaching Rocket the engine note changed and I lost most power so I killed the ignition and came to a halt for a tow back to the paddock. The engine would start but sounded awful, no sign of plug or piston damage but that was it I was out! Tim Nunn was having a problem as he was losing power at around 10000rpm in the blade car. Mick Dent was continuingly having to tighten up his nearside front hub axle to prevent it coming off. In T4 John Hoyle got a bit giddly approaching the LH hairpin near the finish and came off so he could test the grass surface grip. This was not a god move as his car literally got bogged down and filled with soft brown mud resulting in damaged bodywork. Even the recovery vehicles got stuck and could not pull him out. The long break whilst they sorted this out helped people refuel and get a cuppa as the runs were coming fast and furious. In the end there were 2 practices and 8 timed runs by which time most people had given up trying to go faster. Great value for money and day for Derek Hodder as he took FTD closely chased by Gary. Tim Nunn had a good battle with class G newcomer John Loudon and only just won. Mick Dent running in class H with his Busa was really quick and only 1 sec behind Del. As this was a new circuit there were good points for many. The final straw for me was when , due to only a few of being in the bar, we were kicked out at 2100hrs. Sunday- Mark Anson had turned upon Saturday afternoon and stayed over to spectate with me and help around the paddock. He biggest complaint was that he had to pay a fiver to get in. I had been appointed as a Steward for LDMC so I asked the lads to be polite and give me some respect in view of my position…that had no effect at all. During practice Tim’s replacement fuel pump seemed to be working ok but in the end a change of plugs was probably what cured the loss of power. John Loudon was running out of revs and on the limiter for a long way down the back straight and was a bit puzzled as his new Elite box ratios should have given him a top speed of about 135mph. It seems that his drop gears may have been installed incorrectly which helped his acceleration but not his top speed. My old tyres seemed to be working well on his car so he will now need a new set particularly as there were 2 practices and 12 Timed runs available which is unheard of. In T2 Mike Skidmore’s prop shaft failed at the universal joint so he put the car on the trailer. Del and Gary were going well but their WIFI gear change system seemed to be sticking and cause shift problems. In T1 John Hoyle beat the target time and scored 101 points so was a happy bunny. In the end Gary Bunn beat the target and took a well deserved FTD in Del’s car so they did the double and did Westfields proud. So it was a great effort by LDMC in running this event early in the season which I believe will be well supported next year based upon the weekend weather and number of runs made available. Terry Everall Class G competitor

Tels’s Tales Rockingham 26th March 2017 Well what a way to start my season! Spent most of the winter putting spare engine in and doing several other mods so hoped for a good shakedown but my clutch failed to work after convoy sighting run. I was not too pleased to say the least but Steve offered me a double drive in his car so at least I would get out on track. The day was bright, warm and sunny so the other 12 competitors got ready to score good points in both Expert as well as Novice classes. It was good to see some old faces as well as some new ones joining in this year’s competition which has around 60 registered drivers. In the Novice class B1 four people battled it out over the 2 practice and 2 timed runs. Steve Carpenter came out top with Simon Jones, Roz Kennett and Matt Haynes getting quicker throughout the day. Paul Beesley blasted round in the busa for a fastest time of 78.13secs and he was quickest novice. In class A2 Mark Bishop beat George Newrick by nearly 4 secs whilst Barny Francis was fastest Westfield on the day with 76.45 secs and Steve Everall had a good run with 79.92secs despite a clutch and gearbox problem but he was happy to be back on ZZR tyres. Craig Spooner went well in class C with a best of 81.61 secs whilst Michael Skidmore’s first timed run was his best with 84.52 secs In class J2 Pete Goulding was second in his class so picked up 100 points. For most this was a great start to the season but I spent 9 hours on Monday diagnosing and trying to rectify the problem on the spare engine I am using for the moment. It had been stood in my garage for since a rebuild 18 months ago so I did not expect to have problems ……but that’s motorsport. I hope to be ready to set off for Anglesey on Friday so hope to see you there either in your cars or spectating Terry Everall Class G competitor

TEL's TALES 071/16 Ty Croes weekend 1st/2nd Oct 2016 The third visit of the season and the climax of our speed series saw 22 competitors plus Dave Cleaver who was tyre testing. The overall championship had already been sewn up by John Loudon so the pressure was off him but there was a great battle between Maurici Tevilla and Barny Francis which would be decided over the weekend. Derek Hodder was tyring to overhaul me to get 4th overall and Matt Turner was in with a chance of beating me for the class G championship. Friday afternoon saw many of us setting up and enjoying the late afternoon sunshine but dreading the rain forecast for Saturday. Sure enough at about 3am I was woken by the noise of heavy rain on the motorhome roof. By morning it was stil raining and the track was soaking wet with standing water on many corners so there would be no cutting of apexes. For the slick shod cars in class G, H and J2 this meant we all put our wet tyres on and in act they stayed on all day! There was too much going on over the weekend for me to give you a full run down as we were in covered garages as well as in the paddock so it was hard to keep up with events. Most people had spins, big slides, gear shift issues and in Matt Turner's case a red oil warning light that worried him all weekend. The timing was causing a bit of concern as some times were clearly wrong and faster cars caught slower cars which messed up the timings and produced several reruns. Indeed Gary Bunn had so many reruns that he was nicknamed “Re Run Bun” and Barny Francis nearly ran out of fuel as he did more reruns than Gary! The conditions during the day were very wet and it was only on our second and unfortunately final timed runs tah the track dried a little. As the road going cars ran more than an hour later than the slick cars they were the quickest Westfields. Despite trying his hardest Maurici Revilla could not beat Barny Francis who was the fastest Westfield and nearly took the National B fastest time of the day whilst also securing the Overall Novice Championshipso he was very pleased. Roz Kennet won the fastest lady trophy on the day and Barny picked up fastest novice. The evening celebrations were great and quite noisy as the 20 or so Westfield crew took over the bar and the booze flowed. Richard Kerr had a free massage from Julie Hodder who pinned him to the floor and she was later seen sandwiched on the settee between Richie and Tim all wearing ginger wigs( whoops..except Julie).After we were thrown out at about 1130pm Barny finished the evening befriended the infamous Richie and Tim duo who had a date with Captan Morgan. After the bottle was finished Barny left for his bed. Next thing he knew it was about 5am and he had apparently spent a very uncomfortable in the gents loos overnight! He was up bright and breezy ready for battle on Sunday as we woke to a glorious sunny day. At lunchtime we gathered together to congratulate John Loudon on winning the overall championship. He is a worthy winner and has set some great times over the years and his persiverance has paid off. Sunday saw us get 2 practices and 2 timed runs in dry conditions although P1 was a bit slippy. We had a stoppage for sheep on the track and timing issues (reruns) lost us valuable track time. Highlight of the day was Derek Hodder breaking the class H record and moving into 4th place overall and moving me down to 5th as I was beaten by Tim Nunn and Matt Turner on both days. Mark Anson won his first trophy in the OMS and was very pleased with how it went. All cars kept running and were not damaged as far as I know despite the usual mechanical and electrical gremlins that happen. Dave Cleaver was testing his car on a combination of slicks and ZZRs but I think his gearbox shift system was not playing ball. In summary I think everyone had a great weekend but struggled with the traffic jams on the way home. Hope to see many of you at the Awards dinner and hopefully out competing next year. Terry Everall Class G competitor .

Tel's Tales 070/16 Curborough Figure of 8 27th Aug 2016 With a late entry for Pete Goulding in his Mygale FF single seater there were 6 of us compared to last year's 8. This ws probably due to the clash with the Loton hillclimb weekend and LDMC's Harewood event on Sunday. In the end it was a disappointing/frustrating day mainly due to the number of cars and the weather resulting in only 1 timed run for most of us. There were actually 80 entries with thousands of Porsche cars and Cateringvans. P1 was mostly uneventful but did take nearly 2hrs 30mins and this prompted the BMMC orgainers to run nonstop with no lunch break in an attempt to get the 2 practice and 2 timed runs in. John Loudon seemed to have a lack of power exiting Fradley hairpin and my Dash2 display was going bonkers with intermittent faults which need tracing...my least favourite job. For T1, which started around 1400hrs, the track was still not warm after the early morning rain so most of us went for a banker run rather than flat out. Towards the end of these runs there was a big downpour which was really “game over” and we all put our cars in our trailers. Unluckily for Steve Everall he had already left the paddock and was stuck in the start line queue getting soaked. He did his run and on his Avon ZZS tyres was about 10secs slower thatn T1 but was quickest in his class on the day in the wet but not in the dry!. It was good to have quite a few visitors during the day who had braved the bad weather forecast. In the end Pete Goulding was second fastest car just missing out on FTD. Pete was awarded the trophy as fastest “Westfield” driver but the real fastest Westfield on the day was Derek Hodder in his supercharged Honda car beating his mate Gary Bunn. Best Times Pete Goulding class J2 55.91 secs Derek Hodder class H 58.09 secs Gary Bunn class H 58.44 secs Terry Everall class G 59.01 secs John Loudon class E 60.78 secs Steve Everall class B2 66.06 secs Terry Everall Speed Series Correspondent Class G competitor

TEL's TALE's 064/16 Snetterton 21st and 22nd May 2016 ( B19 event) For me this round trip of 400 miles is worth it as Snetterton is a great track with 2laps and some very tricky and technical corners. Particularly novel for me was the use of my newly purchased Motorhome which would provide fantastic accommodation over the weekend event. I did not find the fact that my total vehicle length was about 13m a problem but my god it does use some fuel and recorded about 24mpg!!! Having said that it would easily travel at the legal limit and was a comfortable drive along the A1, A14 and A11 to the circuit. When we arrived in the paddock my new aquistion had detailed inspection by Jane Loudon, Julie Hodder and Sandra Bunn who all gave it the thumbs up and asked why I didn't do it earlier. There was a decent attendance by the Speed Series guys and gal including a few single seaters and about 1800hrs I walked the track with Steve Everall, Dave Cleaver and Mark Anson. Snetterton is a quick track and wide but even though we discussed apexes and the correct lines most of us would find it difficult to adopt them as the track seems to have a poor grip level so late apexing is nigh on impossible and a visit onto the green stuff is waiting if you get too brave. It was good to see Dave Cleaver and my brother Steve out for the first time this season after engine rebuilds. Dave's Honda is now stroked and bored and pushing out some serious bhp and torque. I do know the figures but I would have to kill you if I told you. I think it was also Simon Broadbridge's first outing this season so he was keen to get stuck in. Saturday P1 as expected saw quite a bit of slipping and sliding as the lack of grip was the talk of the paddock and posted times were quite a bit off the targets. Dave Cleaver was having a few problems with the engine (I think it was the traction control settings ) which he sorted by switching traction off. I dont think it can have been that bad as he was the quickest Westfield. Steve Everall found it strange using a 5 speed syncro box and the new, less sticky, Avon ZZS tyres. In the single seaters, I think Pete Goulding in his FF Ecoboost had all four wheels off whilst Matt Hillam was straight on the pace. It was Mark Anson's first visit to Snetterton and he was taking it easy and nearly got lost twice. P2 saw very little improvement in track grip and maybe some of that was due to Dave Cleaver trying to beat me by dropping oil around the circuit from his oil filter housing. At the end of T1 we managed to fabricate a clever blanking plate from alloy sheet and some quick setting sealant did the trick and stopped the oil leak. Mark Anson came back to the paddock complaining about a big vibration at the back of the car. We got it up in the air and got the engine going and spinning the wheels but could only see a slightly imbalanced left rear wheel and a tight halfshaft. As nothing was loose and all bolts ok it was safe for him to go out again but it did seem strange that we could not find anything major on his OMS 2000M. Nick Algar (not in speed series) had a blown supercharger so set off to the midlands on a five hour round trip to get a replacement only to find that there was too much damage and itcould not just be bolted on and required further work. T1 was before lunch and Mark had a good run but all was not well. Just before the finish his Kwazaki engine let go and punched a big hole through the block and nearly set fire to the car and Mark who was still sat in it! It was a frustrating end to his weekend, which is not what you want having driven 270 miles to get to the event from Blackpool Both Pete Gouding and I offered him a double drive on Sunday, for which he thanked us but he was more concerned about concentrating on getting his own car sorted. We were all finally getting our heads around the track now and times started to tumble.I think Steve Carpenter had a moment as he did not record a time as he tried to stay ahead of Roz Kennett who was double driving. They were also camping in a tent on site as the cost and lack of nearby B&B meant they had no option. In the end Roz said she quite liked it, apart from the noisy bikers who were camping and they may also camp at the Blyton weekend. John Loudon was the first to set a new (class E) record. T2 Dave Cleaver (class F) and I (class G) both set new class records on this run so we banked good points and were ready for the final runs. Derek Hodder and Gary Bunn were having the usual ding dong and its never over until the last run. T3 It was now obvious that to get good times you had to be very brave and trust the car when you threw it into Hamiltons, a tight lefthander at the end of a short straight with not a lot of run off on the exit. The left hander called Palmer's was also technically difficult and getting to the apex or on the inside rumble strip took some doing at high speed. There were a few examples of late braking that did not pay off as people overshot corners or locked up the wheels. In the end John Loudon improved on his record time and quickest Westfield was Dave Cleaver on 90.29secs closely followed by Gary Bunn with 90.53secs and Del on 91.05secs. In the single seater Pete Goulding went well but Matt Hillam in the SBD Dallara was very quick with 83.15secs. Just after we finished the rain started !!! Phew. During the day it was good to see a few spectators from the Westfield club supporting us and they included Denis and Andy Silman of Siltech racing who produce some very nice wishbones etc for Westfields. Sunday Paul Beesley joined us in his class F busa to get a piece of the action. The weather forcast was a bit unpredictable but in the end we had a dry and quite warm day. The warm day brought a few more spectators including our old mate Martyn Van Zeller who now lives fairly close having emigrated from god's own county. P1 Despite the overnight rain the track was dry but still people complained about a lack of grip so it wasn't just my driving style that was causing me to oversteer. Gary and Del immediately suffered from a lack of power which Del quickly diagnosed as a faulty TPS. Off with the old and on with the new and they were back in business in no time at all. Dave Cleaver set off like a bat out of hell to show his intentions again. P2 Nothing much to report here except for Paul Beesley starting to chip away at his times. T1 The big issue to report here is that Gary Bunn produced a blinding run of 89.21 secs (new class H record) which he would not better and nobody else could get near it. As the trcak now got a bit warmer it was clear that there would be some good times and records would be beaten again if we were brave enough and had a heavy enough right foot whilst ignoring the brake pedal and any survival instincts. T2/T3 In T2 Dave Cleaver showed us how not to do it as he ran out of tarmac pushing too hard at Hamiltons bend. Dave Cleaver's, John Loudon's and my last runs were quickest and beat the class records/target times again. Steve Everall, Steve Carpenter, Roz Kennett and Simon Broadbridge all improved on Saturday's times and Paul Beesley saved his best run until last. In summary it was a great weekend for most of us and excellently run by Borough 19 MC. Steve's time would indicate that the ZZS tyres are about 3% slower that ZZR and the car suspension may need changing to allow for the different grip level.pOn my way home my driving skills were put to the test as a pheasant tried to commit suicide by walking out in front of my new motorhome.....there is no way I would allow that to happen as my pristine coachwork would be smashed to bits ….so a reactionary swerve at 60mph on the A1 saw me miss the stupid bird JUST!. Steve was behind and culd not believe I managed to miss it and said if it had been a cat it would have lost one of its nine lives. Terry Everall Class G competitor

TEL's TALE's 060/16 Croft 28th March 2016 Easter Monday is always Croft sprint so most of us got loaded up on Sunday. I managed it just before we had thunder and lightening and a massive hailstorm so things did not look good for the morning. I live in York and the rain belted it down all night and caused some local roads to flood so my 0600hrs start for the drive up to Croft was dark and a bit hairy in places. Arrived to find an almost deserted and empty paddock (which never looked full all day so entries must be down). To say it was wet and very very cold is an understatement. Did I mention it was cold? My feet stayed like blocks of ice all day and several warm layers were needed under race overalls. Only 4 Westfields were entered plus Mark Anson in his OMS and Matt Hllam in the Dallara (both in class J2). During the day we had quite a few supportes/spectators includig Steve and Margaret Everall, Beverley, Lisa, Justin, Paul Aspden and probably a few others I have forgotten. John Loudon was pit monkey for Nick Algar who was out in the DJ Firehawk. Tim Nunn came out with his first excuse claiming he did not feel well and was full of cold (excuse number 3 in volume 1 of the drivers compendium of Excuses). There was no debate about which tyres Tim Nunn and I needed so on went the wets. Tim, (used excuse number 27 in volume 2 this time) explained that his tyres were not really wets and were old and rubbish, I just stuck to the fact that I found I only had 3 psi in my left rear so at least the footpump exercise warmed me up a little. Now I must explain that it was really really wet and cold and slippery. I was blasting down Tower straight at about 110mph and braked for Tower bend but just locked up the fronts and had to quickly get off the brakes and just got round but it was a bit of a moment. Tim had spin down at the first bend and his engine would not rev beyond 10000rpm whilst Richard Kerr braked at the same place I did but completed a 360 deg spin and just avoided the armco barrier. John Hoyle seemed to have cured the problem with the sadev gearbox electronics and was going well setting best P1. Mark Anson looked good in the OMS so his wet practices at 3 Sisters were useful. P2 started as the rain eased off , the wind blew and it was COLD! The track was still very wet with standing water on a few bends. Unluckily Tim Nunn slid into the barriers after the finish line and hit the nearside of his car breaking the upright balljoint and bending the end of the lower wishbone. John Hoyle was the next car and got a late red flag which he missed. Sometimes I wish that the marshalls could be a bit more visible to drivers or the Clerk of the Course understand how focussed we are on the track/next corner. John was quickest in practice with 103.85 secs. T1 We had a 60 min break for lunch and withmy spare balljoint, hammer and molegrips we straightened the wishbone end and refixed the balljoint but Tim decided to call it a day as the engine issue was frustrating him. The track was now dry enough for me to put my slicks on and I posted a much faster time of 85.93secs for the others to chase. Richard Kerr had a good run with 90.65secs on his ZZRs but the bad luck gremlin got John Hoyle. His car sounded a bit odd on the start line with the revs up and down irratically. As he got to the first bend the engine died and later he was towed back to the paddock. We looked at electrics etc and then someone spotted that his external trigger wheel for the crank sensor had broken off....game over for John. With just two Westfields left Richard and I kept improving in T2 and T3 as the track dried but stayed …..you guessed it …..COLD. Matt Hillam went well in the SBD Dallara but mark had a few problems. I think it was at the end of P2 when he caught the rear wheel on the edge of the garage door and bent the fabricated upright and had to readjust the rear toe in to allow for that. Later in the timed runs he had the misfortune for the end plate of his rear wing to detach itself ( failed rivnuts appeared to be the culprit at high speed). He did not get a T2 or T3 time but he can sort these teething probems out and be competetive at 3 Sisters in April. Final best times were Terry Everall (me) class G 84.37 secs Richard Kerr class F 87.11 secs Mark Anson clas J2 95.59 secs Matt Hollam class J2 75.10 secs Nick Algar recorded 73.63 secs in the DJ In summary there was quite a bit of carnage and the track was too cold ( also headwind ) to get near target times despite some spirited driving. In my opinion this would be a good reason to use a First Past The Post scoring system and not Target Times. Terry Everall Speed Series Correspondent Class G competitor.

Back in July 2015 my Sport E electric Westfield was very badly damage due to a 'racing incident' at the Curborough sprint circuit. The car rolled three times and in the process ripped off or bent all four corners of the car. None of the wishbones, uprights or wheels escaped undamaged. In addition all the bodywork was broken in some way. On the face of it this was a total loss situation. However, amazingly all the electrical systems, motor and battery remained undamaged and in full working order. Fortunately I work for Potenza Technology. We had worked on a number of Westfield related design and development projects in the past. As a result Potenza were able to find a complete set of suspension parts and enough body panels to make the rebuild possible. The first job was to strip the car down to the chassis and check its condition. The main battery was hard mounted within the engine bay and so must have strengthened the chassis because it proved to be completely straight. On the other hand the wishbones and mounting clevises must have absorbed the crash forces. Also five suspension mounting clevises were either bent or ripped in some way and would need replacing. So with a bit of welding and a lot of kit building and the car could be back on the road again quite soon. But here's the problem - apart from my lack of driving skill, one of the reasons the car crashed in the first place must be to do with the unusual weight distribution. The engine bay battery weighs in at 160Kg. The motor, power controller, battery charger and cooling system were all mounted behind the rear bulkhead. Thus about 100Kg of weight was carried mostly behind and above the rear axle line. This weighty rear end made the car over steer and I found it quite difficult to control. Plan B. The original car carried batteries in both the engine bay and in an under tray beneath the car. The under tray weighed in at 200Kg so order to lighten the car for 2015 I removed these and reconfigured the remaining engine bay batteries to maintain power levels. Thus the car was 200Kg lighter - and faster - and unfortunately less stable! So for the 2016 car I will revert to the under tray battery, remount the differential in the correct orientation, fit a prop shaft and mount the motor and power controller etc into the engine bay. I calculate these changes will increase overall weight by 50Kgs to about 720Kg all up. This should result in a better balanced car that's easier for me to drive - and when people ask, where is the electric motor? - instead of pointing to the back of the car, I can open the bonnet and say 'in the engine bay'.

TEL's TALE's 057/2015 Ty Croes Oct Weekend: 2015 This was the weekend showdown when everyone wanted to improve or consolidate their position in the various categories and championships with the biggest battle between John Hoyle and Adrian Clinton Watkins (ACW) for the overall championship position. John Loudon and myself were trying hard to stay near the top and Tim Nunn also wanted more points. The Novice championship was also up for grabs. The event was run by the Longton and District Motor Club and they had changed their layouts to be two laps of the National circuit on Saturday and 2 laps of the new International with the corkscrew included. Many people wanted to try the new layout and it was very popular and what proved to be too many ca which restricted the available runs. As a result there was a lot of standing around and waiting which was quite frustrating and a disappointment for LDMC as well who usually give lots of runs and value for money. It will be interesting to see if they stick with the same circuits next year or revert back to the previously successful 1 lap layouts. I arrived early Friday afternoon to bright sunshine and I watched a few of the Westfield guys on the trackday getting in some early practice. I think we had 27 WSCC competitors due to take part so it was going to be an interesting weekend. I can mention everyone but I will try to pick out the highlights. In the evening we had a look at the corkscrew for Sunday and a few took advantage of the BBQ beefburgers or chicken burgers that the cafe had prepared and we washed it down with suitable liquid until we were thrown out much later in the night. Saturday: I was back in action with my spare engine fitted and rolling roaded since the blow up I had a few weeks ago and sadly it was Stephen Herbert's last weekend of competition and Steve Everall was not there to have their usual battle as he is on holiday in Australia. Adrian was polishing his brand new radial slicks and had Barry Slingsby ( making sure that his car stayed in one piece) and Mick Allard as helpers.The first problem was that after his trackday, Martin Harvey noticed that his battery was failing and we quickly diagnosed that it was his alternator that had given up the ghost. So with a borrowed battery courtesy of David Birch and my charger he managed to keep running all weekend. We only had one practice which was due to it being a 2 lap event and that was probably a good thing as we began to see the slow speed of the runs. Stephen Herbert noticed a squeal as he was getting ready for T1 and he asked me to look at the problem and in practice he had his right cycle wing come loose which dave cleaver helped repair. His toothed belt on the duratec engine seemed to have jumped back one groove on the alternator pulley and when he revved the engine I could see movement of the alternator but it looked ok to run and a bit of wd40 quietened it down. Later we found that the bottom alternator bracket had fractured so Stephen (who had found a stick welding machine)John Hoyle, myself and decide to weld it up. Eventually Michael Skidmore showed us his skills and produced a very professional repair and the job was a “good un” as they say but thats about the fifth or sixth bracket that I have seen fail this season. Richard Kerr's car was leaking water from rad plug that would not seal and Lee Smith, who had just fitted a cheap £200 ebay engine, put two conrods through the block as he went past the pit wall. In the true Westfield spirit he was ok for Sunday as he was offered a double drive from John Walters. In the end we managed just two timed runs and the best were as follows: Class A Jason Brown beat Dave Richings, Craig Spooner and John Williams with 124.21secs Class B was hard fought and Martin Harvey won with 118.55secs from Barny Francis and Lee Smith who may be installing a Honda engine for next season. Class C John Loudon won his class on the day with 112.82secs just beating target time Class D saw John Hoyle blitz the target time with a 109.86 secs (TT was 111.49secs) from Phil Nicholls on 116.61secs who is really flying this year. Stephen Herbert beat Howard Gaskin with 119.80 to 119.81secs! Mark Schlanker came home in front of Michael Skidmore with a time of 120.40secs. Class F blew away the target with 110.06secs as did Luke Algar on 110.77secs ( target was 111.54secs) chased by Richie Kerr on 112.68secs Class F had Dave Birch in his Busa getting used to the track with 121.91secs Class G was won by ACW who also won his class on the day with 107.94secs and beat the target time of 108.28secs, I was second and won my class on the day with 108.89secs. Hard driving Tim Nunn was third with 109.80secs and Mark Anson, whose tyres were knackered and his car needs softer springs, was frustrated to be a bit off the pace with 113.62secs. Class H saw Gary Bunn recorded a very close win from Derek Hodder on 109.25 against 109.56secs in the supercharged honda car on massive slicks. In Class J Steve Davies in his Lotus 340 beat Marshall Rowland in the Elise with 124.35 secs. So there we were with calculators at the ready. Who had what score to drop and who had beaten the targets by the most.........in the end we provisionally agreed that John Hoyle had done it and was the 2015 Champion and he received the well deserved congratulations from us. It was not until later on Sunday that his achievement was ratified. At the awards Martin Harvey was pleased to get Best Novice award and I got Fastest Longton & District MC driver award. Sunday: This was a new circuit so only one person could score 100 points but the main interest was doing two laps of the international track which included the corkscrew which is a very tight downhill bend and is off camber. The day started cloudy but remained dry and we were all looking forward to attacking the new track layout and today Matt Hillam was double driving David Birch's busa which later needed the brakes bleeding and a few adjustments to accept Matt's skinny physique. Paul Aspden, Mick Cooper and Justin were still around spectating and Marcus Barlow was taking pictures again and looking for good vantage points. Mark Anson had fitted the softer front springs and would later use my spare front tyres as his were down to the canvas and not providing much grip. P1 actually took from 0930hrs until 1200hrs and I sat in my car for 50 minutes from when called to finishing my run so there were a few mutterings in the paddock about too many cars and were we even going to get a timed run at all! Nick Algar in his DJ Firehawk forgot to switch his sat nav on and only did one lap as he completely missed the corkscrew out which was surprising as it was one of he main reasons for attending this event. P2 also took an absolute age but eventually we finished it and a very late “lunch was taken”. I heard stories of John Hoyle on the grass at church as well as ACW who also had loose bodywork to contend with. For some reason my P2 was not recorded and Phil Nicholls lost a nearside cycle wing. In the end we only had one timed run which was a shame and Longton MCC were aware that things had not gone to plan and asked for comments to improve things next year. As an indicator of the time pressures I started my timed run at 1630hrs exactly. Lee Smith is rumoured to have liked the corkscrew so much that he did it twice and had to terminate his run. David Birch was going ok but his clutch packed in half way round the track and Howard Gaskin bent a valve so did not finish. We had no target times but everyone was giving it maximum effort as it was the last competetive drive of the season. Dave Cleaver was the fastest Westfield with a breathtaking 145.45secs in class F from Luke Algar on 147.36secs. Tim Nunn beat me with a great run of 146.06secs in class G. Jason Brown was just beaten by Dave Richings on 162.87 in class A. Martin Harvey romped away with a win on 156.78secs and John Loudon recorded a smooth 151.91secs. As expected John Hoyle flew round in 147.12secs to win class D and Gary Bunn won the class H battle with146.80secs. I am sure I have missed out some notable incidents and battles between drivers but I hope this gives a flavour of what happened as we end our 2015 season. All that remains is the publication of the final points tables so we can see who ended up where in their class and who will be picking up pots at the annual awards dinner in November See you there! Terry Everall Speed Series Correspondent Class G competitor.

Tel's Tales 043– 2015 Season- Rockingham 22nd March 2015 Well this was it, the start of the new 2015 season for 12 Westfield guys to clear the cobwebs and prove that their winter mods worked and their driving had not gone rusty over the winter period. It was clear that any New Year's Resolutions in terms of dieting and losing weight (rather than paying for more bhp!) had been long forgotten and last years overalls were still a skin tight fit for some. So there was 1 class A, 4 class B, 1 class C, 3 class D, 2 class F and 1 class G car. Like many drivers I had a very early start at 0415hrs which was the bad news but the good news was that a dry warm day was forecast and that turned out to be a big plus for chasing target times. The most frustrating part of the day was as we approached the circuit nobody could find the entrance as Sat Navs wanted to use non existent roads or take us through a factory gate! At one time there were 7 cars and trailers driving up and down a double carriageway and the roundabouts trying to find the correct route, which we eventually managed after a few swear words about missing road signs etc. After parking up in the paddock and in my case a spare garage, a few of us did the long track walk and looked warily at the concrete outer wall and talked about the possible speed on the outer oval and whether we would dare to keep our foot down all the way round the banked corner. The infield section looked wide but tricky particularly near the end. Scrutineering seemed to take forever and drivers briefings had to be done twice in order to accommodate all 146 competitors. Eventually we all stared a convoy run at about 1000hrs and tried to find where the good/best lines were on track which is not easy at a reduced speed. Martin Harvey was showing off his new bling bits in the form of a coloured Bell helmet and Hans device whist I had to get used to my new Sparco helmet in plain white. Pete Goulding was hoping his diff would not try to shake its bolts free and his halfshafts would be strong enough. Dry track and getting warmer by the minute greeted everyone with a chance to put on a couple of good practices. I was going to have a good personal battle with Pete who had done well last year and I was indeed fastest in P1 with 74.74secs with Pete chasing and second fastest on 79.55secs. Most people were in the low 80 secs bracket and enjoying the track although later in the day a driver did hit the wall hard and wrote off their car with big front end damage. In P2 I had put my new tyres and changed the geometry and expected great things. Pete G showed me how to do it with 76.03secs run with Matin Harvey in class B pushing hard with 81.33 secs. Approaching the start line I noticed somke coming from my dash and jumped out to check what was wrong. One burnt finger later showed that the ignition/starter toggle switch was shorting so that was soon sorted. I then set off like a bat out of hell but got caught out at the end of the start straight and could not take the corner and went straight over the rumble strip and the yellow concrete ramp behind it..........I was lucky that I only bent the offside steering arm and this gave me massive toe out. Back in the paddock and all was fixed in 15 mins and the toe geometry reset and the rear bar stiffened up a bit to counter the understeer I had. Lots of Westfield spectators turned up including John and Jane Loudon, Barry Slingsby and his missus, Keith Adams, Mark Bishop and a few others. Poor Stephen Herbert suffered damaged nosecone when a Ferrari driver reversed into his car while in the paddock!!!!!! Timed runs started after lunch and the weather was great with the track getting warmer by the minute. There were no major incidents that I am aware of apart from John Walters noticing some strange marks on a couple of his ZZR tyres but they were safe to run. T1 and T2 times were very similar for most people and John Williams was happy with his time in class A whilst the close battle in B ended up with Martin Harvey winning on 81.33secs followed by very closely by newcomer Barny Francis with 81.66sec, John Walters 81.84 secs and Lee Smith 82.29secs so all very tight. During a break between T1 and T2 a few of us were chatting and trying to convince Lee not to be a “wuss” and keep it flat through banked oval as he had he bottled it in T1 and in T2 he took the hint and kept his foot down reaching 125mph ! John Williams said his aerodynamics were affected by wind getting trapped in a gap under his scuttle.....I assured him that we all suffered from trapped wind from time to time and I added that to my list of excuses for going slow! Graham Frankland in class C was on his own and record a good 88.00secs on his last run. In class D the battle had raged all day and ended with Steve Everall winning (well done our kid) with an impressive 78.77secs, Stephen Herbert close with 79.95secs and Howard Gaskin on 80.48secs. Pete Goulding in Class F scored a max 102 points with a time of 75.73secs whilst I bagged the quickest Westfield run with a time of 74.31secs. A fantastic start to the season and good points scored in the championship. Terry Everall Speed Series Correspondent Class G competitor

Tel's Tales 026 – 3 Sisters 6th April 2014 Some of the competitors had a few preparation problems before the event including Steve Everall not being able to find any polish for his car and having the rear of the tub resprayed after a shunt last year. Matt Turner was still waiting for a new clutch which seemed to have got lost en route. I had a panic when the car would not start and I quickly traced this to a battery at 12.2 volts which will not power the MBE ECU. Nick Algar was also working until 2330hrs on Sat night to get his Force ready for an early morning start. I woke up at 0330hrs to hear rain hammering down on the house roof so things did not look promising for the morning. Up at 0530hrs and away at 0545hrs without breakfast (no time and as a racing snake I needed to keep my weight to a minimum). As we got closer to 3 sisters and crossed the pennines the rain eased up and it looked a bit brighter. It was great to see a lot of the usual guys and new faces in the paddock and during the day many Westfield guys came to support us or just for the craic. After signing on we all got through scrutineering without problems and a brisk walk of the track showed that although the rain had stopped the surface was still very wet and practice was a bit hairy ( especially on slicks) with most of us posting times that were about 7secs or more slower than target times. Immediately it became clear that a few cars had problems but that always happens on the first event for most people. Steve Everall had a misfire which John Hoyle helped cure with a new set of plugs, John Hoyle was playing around with his new launch control and traction control gizmos, I could not use the flatshifter to change gear for some reason and this persisted all day, Nick Algar was having gear selection problems and eventually a clutch fluid pipe burst after an electrical fault blew a hole in it so he only did a practice. The worst issue was Matt Turner who initially bent the gear shifter rod and later the newly fitted clutch gave up the ghost in a cloud of smoke from the bonnet and that ended a frustrating day for him. We had 2 practice runs and then we managed 2 timed runs before lunch and on each run the track was getting drier but was never really ideal/dry with some patches of damp remaining. Indeed most cars looked like they had been involved in motocross or grasstracking as the were covered in water and mud spray so Del decided he had to wash is immaculate car between runs! Lee Smith, who visited the green stuff earlier on, nearly missed his curry and chips lunch and had to leave it in the trailer as he forgot we were having T2 before the break. Still, he is a young lad and maybe thinks food is better than sprinting but he will soon get his priorities right! Steve Wilson and Andrew Lowe ( who also took some good photos) were having a great time despite being new to the scene. In the end the times gradually came down and everyone had their best run as T2 just before lunch when the official description of the track was warm and damp. John Hoyle won his class closely chased by Stephen Everall and both got trophies. I just held off Tim Nunn to win the class and come 4th overall, Tim was 6th overall, Derek Hodder was 7th overall and John Hoyle 8th overall so quite a good result. Andy Hargreaves, Del and Marshall Rowland (in his Elise) had no competition in their classes which was a bit disappointing. The anticipation of an afternoon with lots of runs soon turned into the reality of steady rain and that ruin my battle with Tim Nunn and put a dampener on it for everyone. Some of kept going out to get some seat time but the conditions gpt worse so we had slower times and also some sideways action to amuse the spectators. Finally a few of us were left with repairs and mods to carry out before the next northern round at Croft on Easter Monday and we all hope it will be dry! Terry.everall@virgin.net Speed Series Correspondent Class G competitor

Ok so onto the build up of the bottom end mounted on the engine stand. In this case I am using ARP main studs from SBD which are reusable compared to the OEM bolts. Because I will be using a dry sump pan that fits tight under the Main Bearing ladder I need to shorten the studs to prevent fouling as can be seen in the pic below. I do this by putting each on one the lathe and taking off around 4-5mm. Once this is done the studs are completed with the bench grinder followed by a thread file to clean them up. The studs are screwed in hand tight to the block using ARP Ultra Lube on the threads. This is after cleaning the fasters in brake cleaner and blowing out the holes in the block with the air line to make sure everything is clean and there is nothing to bind up. Once they are all fitted the main shells are pressed into place and lubed up on the bearing surfaces with assembly lube (the red stuff). I check that all the studs have gone in right using a straight edge against the block. Next the crank is cleaned up. In this case a steel Arrow SBD crank is been used. I liberally lube up the bearing surfaces with assembly lube. In this case I have already done a dry build with plastiguage to check clearances already. The crank is put into place and then after pressing the bearings into the main ladder this is placed onto the block studs. Take extra care to ensure nothing is on the mating faces between the block and the ladder. Washers and bolts are fitted with liberal amounts of arp ultra lube, again after cleaning the fasteners in brake cleaner. Next the main studs are tightended using a torque wrench. For these the technique is staring from the centre and working outwards to tighten initially to 25 lb-ft then to undo working out to in by 1/2 turn. Then back to 25 lb-ft starting centre to outside. Once this is complete they are done up to 60 lb-ft starting from centre to outside. Then undo 1/4 turn from outside back to centre. Then back up again to 60 lb-ft from centre to outside. This tighten / un-tighten sequence helps ensure that the main ladder is bedded to the block correctly and snug. As you tighten you should spin the crank around to make sure its sat nicely in the bearings. Next - Pistons and Rods.