I recently attended a local SATA meeting. The SATA (or South Australian Timing Association as they are also known) are a small group of racers who have got together to promote and create South Australian land speed racing events. They have successfully held a few test and tune days both at Tailem Bend and at Waikerie Airstrip and have planned another next month. The next Test and Tune event is on November 8th at Waikerie. Only three weeks away.

Whilst there is absolutely no way that I will get the engine finished in time, there is a chance that I could get the car finished and install another engine in it. at least this would allow me to do a shakedown and make sure that the gearbox is working properly.

It's been a while since I did anything on the Oval. It's pretty much been left abandoned in the garage and used as a bit of a storage shed. I think that this is a necessary step in any restoration project, or at least thats what it seems like as all mine end up this way at one time or other. 

So after sitting for the past few years its time that the oval project was revisited once again - mostly as I've decided that I'm going to race at speed week next year.

So. Spent today fitting the engine into the bus. Had a bunch of shits and bits to fix up like fixing up my dizzy, rewiring for the alternator, fitting a new exhaust, adding the electric fuel pump, running new fuel lines, cleaning red dust from everything. In fact it took most of the day just getting everything to the stage where I could fit the engine.

One thing that really struck home on our recent interstate jaunt to ReVolks was how damn slow the bus is. I have often joked that when I toured around Europe (also in a 1600 bay window) you would have to go flat out down the hills just to be able make it up the next one. Well somehow the reality of driving a 1600 bus over very long distances  had managed to become little more than anecdotal humour. This is a bit of a shame, as had I remembered how painfully slow driving a1600 bus was I might have opted to build something a little larger. After all, as our cousins in the good ole yew ess of aye say... 'there's no substitute for cubic capacity', or is there? Faced with the reality of having to build another bigger engine I opted to take the easy way out. Forced induction!

You might recall from my last blog Paint Your Wagon, that I ordered some parts from MoFoCo, unfortunately they were not posted out so after a bit of chasing up they were finally mailed out to me express. Well according to USPS they should have arrived no later than 5 days later, so after waiting for 6 days I decided to lodge a paypal dispute. The initial slackness on MoFoCo's part, and time limit that PayPal put on making claims pushed me past the point of trying to pussy foot around the issue. I figured that if the parts arrive - all well and good, and if they didn't, then at least I could order them form somewhere else.

Last night I spent half hour out in the garage going over the fasty engine that I have spare. I want to use the 1600 barrels and pistons (and maybe heads) on the 1300 bus engine that I have.

To determine the condition I did a compression test but his was not really conclusive as I could only turn the engine over by hand which didn't really give a suitable reading. Not deterred i decided to take the heads off and inspect them instead.