EliseTypeR.com

The fuel protests made for an interesting and reasonable stressful start to the proceedings on the 15th. I’d just come back from my holiday with the family to find my spare set of road wheels hadn’t been balanced and the country’s Shell stations were running low on fuel. My car is specially tuned for ‘V’ power and I didn’t want to chance anything else. After a few crossed words with the ‘nice lady’ at my local Shell station I managed to get 60 litres of fuel loaded up and I went off to get my wheel balanced.

The trip across to Lincolnshire was uneventful and I arrived at the pub / B&B ready for the bar to open at 7pm. Far too many pints of Guinness led to a poor night’s sleep and a thick head.

In the morning we were greeted by beautiful sunshine at Cadwell Park - happy days!! The Car was running great until just before lunch, ‘clunk’ over the ‘Goose neck’, ‘no drive’ and I coasted down the hill and around ‘Mansfield’ to a stop and wait for the pickup truck - receiving my second red flag in 4 yrs! I was towed in thinking that I’d broken the gearbox and sat there recalling the week I’d spent putting the car together and the thought of changing the gearbox left me feeling a bit peed off. 180 miles from home with a broken car isn’t a great feeling.

I took off the race suit and gave the car a quick inspection. This revealed that the driveshaft had popped out of the out board CV joint - I was quite chuffed! Not a major drama and I was back on track within 2.5 hrs (after stripping down the offside suspension and hub assembly, much to the dismay of many other track users). I wasn’t alone either, a fellow track driver broke the driveshaft in his VW golf clean in-half.The driving tutor said it was quite common at Cadwell. News to me but I can understand why it would happen a lot on this track as the ‘Mountain’ section has to be hard on your transmission.

I’ve not had chance to rebuild the shaft yet but I’m guessing that it wasn’t put together too well in the first place? I suppose one major advantage with a DIY job is that you’re just not phased by problems and can fix them without having to re-mortgage the house.

Here is the video (I know, I know… I’m a bit of a girl’s blouse at the end of the straight). 

I’m at the great ‘Anglesey Coastal’ track on the 11th July, so I need to get cracking and rebuild my driveshaft and fit some new suspension bushes to the front of the car.

Hope to see some Lotus fans there… p.s. I’ve bought and fitted a tow bar to my diesel Mondeo - no more driving my track car to track days for me! Mmmm comfy seats!