Race Report - 750 Motor Club - Snetterton UK

Date: June 23, 2024

Having blown the gearbox at Donnington thanks to me not doing enough pre-race checks on the oil levels I skipped the next meeting at Thruxton. It also fell on the weekend of my stag do so I couldn't make it anyway.

Having purchased a brand new second hand gearbox from a certain online auction site I fitted it to the engine no problem at all, topped it up with oil and crossed my fingers!

Another issue that cropped up from the gearbox failue was that an engine mount had broken, probably due to me not being the most skilled welder on the planet so I asked a friend to weld these up again and a day later they were delivered back to me with some gorgeous welds on them.

Yes welding can be gorgeous!

Once the new gearbox had been delivered to me I checked it over and it was very clean having just gone through what looked like a very high quality rebuild.

Still a standard Type 9 gearbox but it will do for what I need until I decide I need a straight cut gearbox upgrade.

It was still a lot better than the broken one I had which as you can see from this picture had a large amount of metal filings in the casing! That is not what you want in any gearbox, let alone a race gearbox!

So with the new gearbox bolted to the engine and slid into the engine bay I then topped up the oil. I had worked out at this point that when I put the engine and gearbox assembly into the car the angle I have to tilt it to lets oil spill out of the output shaft end so I took the decision to top it up once it was nearly in place to avoid running another dry gearbox!

With the new gearbox in and the new engine mounts in place I was a lot more confident going into my second race at Snetterton. The single aim was to finish qualifying, race 1 & race 2

You'll never guess what happened...

I actually finished!

It was a very hot weekend so I was a bit worried about engine temperatures but I had no need to be. Everything stayed in the green, I kept checking engine oil and gearbox oil levels and topped them off where required but the car was brilliant!

Slow, but brilliant.

I had great cornering speed but on the straights I was left for dead with nowhere near enough power and the wrong final gear ratio meaning I wasn't even getting into top gear down the long back straight at Sneterton!

This needed to change!

All in all a great fun race weekend though, I was on time for all the briefings I needed to attend and I completed all sessions to get 2 signatures on my license!

Only 4 to go until I can get rid of the black and yellow cross showing everyone I am a rookie!

Below is the video from Race 2 for your enjoyment, you can see if you look carefully that I never get into top gear!