Had a bit of luck - the engine had not run in the blue car for 3.5 years! I thought I had blown it up, but recent events made me think I had only blown the turbo. Decided to take a chance and let Terry build up the car with its existing engine, rather than Peter's engine which we fitted to the yellow car. Anyway, to cut a long story short, she ran OK and after a session on the rolling road to jet the carb suitably, we now have 113bhp @ 5900 rpm. Now that's hardly going to set the racetrack alight, but the engine is totally standard save for the Uno turbocharger and a bleed valve, and has done about 90K miles! So a big more boost and I get 28 nice new bhp to play with. In the opinion of the rolling road guy, if the engine was balanced and freshly rebuilt, he reckons 135bhp would be possible just upping the boost further - just didn't want to take the chance on an engine in unknown condition.

Looked like I was going to have problems with tyres. I felt it would be useful if I set the car on wets and dries of roughly the same diameter so suspension set up would not change much between wet and dry. I had a set of 185/50x14 Yokohama A509s on 5.5x14 wheels, I also had a set of 6x14 wheels lying around. Browsing through my Demon Tweeks brochure, I saw that Yokohama listed a 180/530x14 slick with almost identical rolling radius. Perfect. Well, it would have been except Demon Tweeks then told me they could not supply these tyres as Yokohama had not supplied any. I contacted Yokohama who confirmed that due to lack of demand they had not ordered any from Japan, but after some thought suggested he may be able to get some in from Germany - at a price of course! A couple of phone calls later and the man from Yokohama confirmed he could get them within a week and the cost was about the same as Michelins I had been offered by Demon Tweeks, and about £50/tyre cheaper than Avons I was offered from a Birmingham Tyre supplier!

So this is it now - the car is ready, the driver is ready and Cadwell Park beckons! Now check out the race report to see what happened!