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28/04/2006 EASTER THUNDERBALL 2006 Easter Thunderball, the beginning of spring, the first daffodils, the first big event of the season and, as usual, it was bl**dy cold. Ok, reasonable on Good Friday but downhill thereafter. Anyway not to worry, this was to be a weekend bonanza for Wilson’s Used Cars as we were holding an ‘everything must go’ sale of the Nemesis dragster. It’s February and the Hadman race car is serviced and ready to roll and the Mayer car is on display in Anthony Cohen’s showroom at American Car Imports so what is there to do? No problem, we’ll borrow the forklift and bring the Nemesis car down from the racking and we’ll race it (and try to sell it) at the Thunderball. It would be a bit like those special horse races where the fillies are for sale immediately after the race. Well this filly looked a bit beyond her sell-by date so a lot of work was necessary. 6 years of workshop grime had to be removed then a full strip-down to bare metal for the entire chassis followed by treatment with special oils. A new fuel tank was fabricated and re-located at the front and the engine was moved further back at the rear. New cockpit shielding, new flooring, new chassis cross-bracing, new parachute mounts, new controls, new undertray, re-calibrated data logger (thanks Graham), re-built rear axle, etc, etc, etc. At the end of all this there was a common feeling that the Nemesis car looked really ‘sick’ (personally I don’t understand, it but that’s what they say on American Chopper when it looks the business). We managed to fire up the car a few days before the race but only briefly as a neighbour to the workshop has a tendency to get upset. Not surprising really as the workshop amplifies the engine noise so it must sound to him like the start of world war 3. The first qualifier was a slightly strange affair in that Dave didn’t glide into stage as is normal but jumped forward and then stopped abruptly a bit like a kangaroo in leg irons. A good clean launch and a time of 5.59 at 251mph. This was amazing, 2 tenths quicker than the Nemesis car had ever run before and straight off the trailer. It transpired that the staging antics occurred because the brakes were next to non-existent. Good job the ‘chutes worked then. We took our time servicing the car and decided to sit out the next round of qualifying. The brakes were bled and generally fettled. At the end of day 1 we were still no1 qualifier. Q3 and the launch looked very quick. There was a lot of shake yet the clocks showed an improvement to 5.56 at 253mph, this was becoming a fairy tale. Well the fairy tale soon ended when Nemesis returned to the pit. With the car up on stands and the transmission coupler disengaged, two of us could not rotate the rear wheels, the back axle was broken. Dave seemed surprisingly relaxed about it and joked that “there might be some teeth in there but not necessarily in the right order”. Needless to say we sat out Q4 but at the end of qualifying we were still no 1. We were all intrigued to know just what had occurred in the axle so the pinion assembly was removed amid expectations that the teeth would quickly follow but separately. In fact the teeth were clearly modified from standard but were attached and recognisable. Some work with a grinder improved things but not enough for the rear wheels to move freely. We needed some extra gaskets to move the pinion assembly forward but we had none. Rice Krispies came to the rescue, not thrown in to the axle to make it quiet but the cardboard box was cut up to make a gasket. Fitted with the gasket from Kellogs Car Parts, the pinion assembly was refitted and the rear wheels moved freely. The car could at least move under its own power. We had a bye in the first round of racing and knew that if we ‘broke the beams’ under power we would earn points for the championship. A burnout and launch were out of the question. It actually worked out well in that it began to rain just as we were ready to run, so we told the starters what we wanted to do and they allowed us to break the beams in the wet. Nothing changed for the final against Rob Turner but again if we made the start line we could earn more points so that is what we did. There was always the possibility that Rob might red-light but he was cool and took an unopposed win. Our fans will know this was not the way ACI Racing likes to race but we could do nothing more without a spare gear set. The weekend was considered a resounding success in that after a lot of hard graft, a retired race car had been brought bang up to date and on its first two runs set new personal bests and been quickest in class. Dave believes the Nemesis car could do a 5.4 and on the strength of this performance, few can doubt it. A big thank-you to the Santa Pod track crew for all their efforts to continually dry the track against the wishes of the weather gods, and a really big thank you to all our supporters and sponsors . If it were not for the support of companies like: Playstation, Silverline Tools and USautomotive we would not be there, plus the contribution of Lucas Oils, O.C.W, Custom Graphics, Total Design , Expert IT & Ist Line Motorcycles all help to keep the wheels rolling.
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