Baby Blue just before Donington 2004 practice (photo: James Carruthers)
Update 10th December A full suspension-off rebuilt of the front of the car has taken place with all new bushes and some new paint too. A few other mods like a lightweight radiator has brought the overall weight down by another few kilos and the very tired and clunky gearbox has been rebuilt by Canley Classics.
Update Late Summer 4 class wins in a row for Stacky made him 2004 newcomers champion!
Update 9th August 2004: It was the coil! Every electrical part was swapped but we reckon that was the part at fault!
Update 2nd August 2004: A very inauspicious start to Stacky's racing career with a d.n.f. at Donington after some mechanical gremlins sneaked into the car preventing it from revving over 5000 rpm. At time of writing we are not sure what the problem is but it's probably not much.
Baby Blue just before Donington 2004 practice (photo: James
Carruthers)
Update 1st March 2004: Baby Blue has an MOT - good news for us, bad news for Bedfordshire...
Martin Stackpoole in Baby Blue on 7th Feb at Bruntingthorpe for the
first test.
Update 7th Feb 2004: It runs. First shake-down test completed at Bruntingthorpe and all went very well. The session was mostly to run the engine and drive train in and bed the brakes; the only problem we unearthed was a worn rear wheel bearing which was rectified when we got back to the workshop. Next stage is spanner check the car and rolling road tune to see how close our guestimates on fuelling and ignition were. Both Martin and I drove the car and all I can say is that it is amazing compared to the TR7V8; the turn-in is superb and the balance is good if slightly less power! I spent some time trying to kick the car out of line and put it into some spins and it all seems robust and controllable. It's so tiny inside compared to the TR7 but I felt at home pretty quickly, I can't wait to try it on a race track.
Next test will be in a couple of weeks time - I'll let you know how it goes.
It's all smiles from Dave Thompson and Stacky after test 1!
Update 4th Feb 2004: The car is nearly ready to roll. We are just waiting to fit the rebuilt differential unit and we'll be off and away! No idea how the car will handle but it should be comparable to some of the other Spitfires in the TSSC Championship. After a few hours of running in and spanner checking etc. we'll probably take it to Cambridge Motorsport for a rolling road tune-up. We don't think it's far off actually and I suspect that the only changes will be to ignition timing. We'll also get it 4-wheel aligned while we are there.
We are hoping to take some pictures at the weekend and get them up early next week.
The Project: It has been on the cards for a number of years now, but it's finally nearly there; the project to resurrect from the scrap yard my first ever Triumph race car and return it to the track.
This is how it looked at the end of 1995 after an altercation with Pete Whiteman's car. I have not driven it since. It was the only time I have ever raced on the full GP circuit at Brands Hatch and it was raining very heavily. I spun coming out of Druids and planted my car backwards into Pete Whiteman's Mk II Spitfire which he had parked up following an ignition failure. Pete was just getting out of the car at the time and to be honest it was lucky he wasn't injured.
Anyway, after a couple of changes of ownership and a complete rebuild the car is now back as part of the stable, but this time with new owner Martin Stackpoole taking it out on the track. It will run a few times this year in the TSSC championship.
It's painted Tahiti Blue, the same as the V8, hence the name 'Baby Blue' and will run as number '33' to complement my number '3'.
Pictures to follow.