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2009 |
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July 19th: The Westside Racing camp has been awfully quiet since the last update and the reason is just that I have been sort of "fed up" with dragracing... some updates have been shared on facebook but other than that...silence... The fast recap of what has happened since last update; One Mustang sold - one new on the way! We have also become agents for Composite Specialties, so if anyone needs an injector or anything else made from composite please drop us a line. More info will follow. Well, lets go back to Santa Pod; We thought we were as prepared as one could be for the Main Event and the first run started really well. Our best 60ft ever, but approx after 5,2sec the burst panels blew again and it ended with a 6,07sec run. We repaired the damages but the rest of the week-end we struggled with silly mechanical breakages as a broken fuel fitting and last but not least big wheelies. Everything culminated with a red-light in the first round against Leif Andreasson and that was just sort of the final drop. I was just "fed up" with drag-racing for the time being and we sat down and had a team discussion of the way forward; the first (impulsive) act was to put the car up for sale. When that was done we were sort of "sad" that this was the last event with our trusty Sunoco Mustang that had humbly served us through all the beating in all of these years... What should we do now?? First of all we needed to get everything back home from England and it just seemed like "turning a knife in the wound" when I was ripping off the tail gate doors of the trailer when entering the ferry in Immingham... but with good help from Leif Andreasson and Fred Hansen, together with the DFDS crew, we managed to get it temporarily fixed so I could drive it home from Gothenburg. However, even though everything felt bad, we were down but not out. The urge to go drag-racing was only away for a very short while. Most of my adult life has been spent in the drag-racing environment and I soon figured out that I was not ready to quit. The camaraderie in this sport is just fantastic and when everyone in the team agreed to go for another year, we started looking for options. The options were either to buy a used car or to build a new car. To cut the story short we ended up with a deal on another Mustang. It is a 2007 chassis and it is NHRA 2009 legal. The car will not arrive before October/November this year and we are all very much looking forward to it. I will share more news on this later. As an economical result of this we will not participate in any races for the rest of 2009, but will be back with a new ride in 2010. AG ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
May 11th: We are now getting closer and closer to the real 2009 season starter - FIA round #1 @ Santa Pod which takes place the week-end 21st to 25th of May. May 2nd we were @ Spring Nat's, Gardermoen for testing purposes. We did not run any breath taking ET nor speed, but it was as important for that matter. The new Sunoco oil worked very well so that was a success! We spent the entire 1st of May doing the last bits and pieces in the workshop before heading to the track. We arrived 10.30PM and rigged the awning and all the rest of the things needed and at 2AM we were more or less done - tired yes...Saturday we did the last prep's on the car including chassis SFI inspection (thanks to Peter Larsson). A new rule of the year is a "foam seat insert". As said in April 27th update it proved to be more work than anticipated and it continued to be... When in the pit sitting in the seat when warming the engine it felt ok, everything was within reach. On the other hand when on the starting line it was a bit different - I could not reach the gear lever - crisis!! But a quick fix took care of that - a soft strap tied to the gear lever cured the problem and I could again shift from reverse to 1st gear :-) amazing..... (has anyone been to the hospital where there is a rope going over a tackle over the bed :-) ) The first run was very close to the guard rail but I managed to keep it away from closer contact (could not damage the new headers Gunnar just made...) but just after the 1/8" a noise I'm too familiar with came - burst panels just blew. Reaching the shut down area I realized there was a small fire on the back side of the engine, but Speedy Rescue put that out in no time (even though it felt like an eternity..). At the same time I had some problems getting out of that "da*n seat". I was just stuck and had to do all sorts of gymnastic exercises to get out. Anyway, back in the pit we looked at the damages and realized that a push rod had let go which in turn caused the burst panels to blew, lifted the blower etc.etc. However, the worst thing was that one of the brand new cylinder heads were damaged. Well, it was just for the crew to dive into it and get the engine fixed (luckily we have spare cylinder heads....) As for the "da*n seat"; a lot of massage later and we thought it was ok (but was it..?) Another 2PM late night/early morning before going to sleep and Sunday arose. We had everything done, "da*n seat" fixed (we thought..), engine repaired, gear lever customized and eager to go. What happened next - TIRESHAKE - and lots of it... Did a decent burnout, gearlever worked perfect, reversed and was shut down by the crew due to oil on the track. The oil was from the car just before us and luckily not from us, but we didn't know and do not take any chances. Did another burn out, staged, got the green light and everything went fine for about 70-80ft and that was it. Just had to let go and lift and just idled to the finish line. Nothing was hurt except the fact that various things had broken loose as the clutch lever etc. It was a violent shake I can tell you.. How did it go with the "da*n seat"? Well, it seems like it grew along the way - still problems getting out so it needs more massage before the Main Event - story continues ;-) After that run we had to pack our gear as Jan Vidar was going to use the trailer at a construction fair and we had to go down to the workshop and empty some of our racing stuff. Looking back at the week-end it proved to be a needed "shake down". The "rust" accumulated over the off season was shaken off both the driver and the crew and we are a lot more prepared for the Main Event. See you all there! AG
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April 27th: Another month++ has passed by and the race season is coming closer and closer. Last week-end we had the Sunoco Mustang on display at Bergheim AS in the city of Drammen. Keddell&Bommen A/S has just entered into an agreement delivering Sunoco Lubricants to Bergheim AS. Bergheim AS is a Norwegian car dealer selling & repairing GM products and now also Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge.
This week-end we worked frenetic in order to get everything ready for next week-end's Spring Nat's at Gardermoen. New of 2009 is that it is mandatory to have a foam insert seat. This proved to be a bit more challenging and time consuming than we thought but hopefully we managed (foam is probably curing as this is written...:-). We will also welcome IKT Allianse - Delmo Tele og Data AS as an associated sponsor. They offer customers complete solutions in the area of telephone systems, network, hardware and software to servers and PC.
AG ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
March 14th; Lars Rud @ Keddel&Bommen has in cooperation with Sunoco come up with a new single grade 70W Racing Motor Oil. The oil is of course of the very best quality @ an reasonable price and it is aimed at methanol & nitro burning engines. If there are any racers (or others :-) who wants to buy this high quality product, please contact Lars @ +47 22 06 15 30 or e-mail lars.ruud@keddell.no or e-mail westside.racing@gmail.com AG ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
March 8th; It has been a few months since last update, which I apologies for, but there has not been very much going on. The winter is still holding it's cold hand over everything here at the Westside Racing basecamp and the race season seems far,far away.. (how wrong could one be - should have learned this by now ;-) We attended the NDRG banquet in 31st of January and was awarded the "Gotten's Gentleman prize". This prize was set up by Anne ( Svein's girlfriend) & NDRG after Svein "Gotten" Gottenberg tragically died in a Super Twin Top Fuel top end crash in Mosten in 2006. We are very proud of being awarded this prize, but at the same time it feels hard as Svein was a very good friend of ours. Picture is showing all the NDRG prize winners (click to enlarge).
We have started the preparations of the Sunoco Mustang and we had a good week-end's work just a week ago. Jan Vidar came over from Haugesund and with him the new Westside Racing team member, his son Bjørn whom we whish a warm welcome!! The SFI re-certification took place in Stockholm this week-end but it was not our turn to drive this time and hopefully our clutch passed... I will try to update a little bit more frequently from now and towards the season start. AG
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January 1st;
THE WESTSIDE RACING TEAM WISHES EVERYONE AN ECSTATIC NEW RACE YEAR!!!! //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// AG |
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