We took the racer to Mallory Practice. Paul Dobbs has a thrash round on it in fine style and upset some Manx Norton owners in the process. All good heart warming stuff!
Come the Revolution— or rather the Easter Sunday race meeting at Mallory, Dull drizzle — great! The Scott goes well in the wet and this offsets the slight speed disadvantage in some cases.
Practice, going well, then— he did not come round!
Has he crashed —
He came in, the gearbox would not change
We stripped it and found the layshaft end has broken off and damaged two gears.
Remember this is a copy of the Scott four speed box with modifications to make it change gear, so the only spare are those in my box.
So far I think I have the gears, but there was a weakness in one gear design that some years ago caused failure that knocked about the spare mainshaft. If it is salvegeable then I can get it back together quite quickly. If not, I have to make one and given that I am trying to finish engines for customers, this would be a potential delay I could well do without.
I have agreed to have it race tested by Classic Racer on April 6th at Mallory so I need to get my skates on!
In case I did not announce it, I was awarded the VMCC Racing Section Award for Engineering Excellence at the presentation some time back.
I hope this is not like a show business lifetime award and they think I am now “Past it”
I shall race it this year whwen Paul is otherwise engaged and after he returns to New Zealand next Christmas, I will resume full time duties.
Kind Regards to all
Roger
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