February
Not a great deal of progress at TOSS land really. Dave has nowhere near home in Blackpool to work on cars. James is (occaisionally) working on a mkIII Cortina on the drive leaving the mkII V8 stashed in a council garage as yet untouched.

17th Feb Time is running too late. After a week of zero work due to the flu, the mkIII is hastily returned to the garage, with newly fitted fresh 2.0i a missing core plug. The mkII is brought home and work begins.
The plan at this point is to modify the rear chassis to fit the 9" axle, centrelines and Hoosiers in a sensible manner. After that fit the "lobster" 350 SBC borrowed from Dave.

There will be either a TH350, TH200R4 or TH700R4 automatic behind it. All of this is supposed to occur over the next eight weeks.

22nd March
The Chevy plans are out of the window and Easter is getting closer with no real sign of getting the car MOTd in time.
 
Since pics, panhard bar fitted, new (Sierra injection) fuel tank mounts done, new underfloor battery box fabricated and a more secure nitrous bottle mount made - it just needs boxing in now.
Dave reports that the Sierra has 20psi compression on cylinder no.5
  Fuel tank sits under floor to right of battery.

2nd April
The first race is now a week after Easter, so the Monterey meet on Easter Wednesday is now the deadline. Looks like an MOT that day then.
Lower boxing to keep road spray off nitrous bottle done and closing panels on rear inner quarters done. Fuel filler pipe extended and some panelling around it made. This evening saw the fuel tank painted by NJR - pleasant to have some assistance.
Pix in arrears as usual
   

12th April
Things are moving on. A while back I'd bought a 2.75:1 diff assy for the 9" axle and planned to fit it today to resolve the appalling whining from the 4.56 locker. This was thwarted as unknown to me (and the vendor) the 2.75 is a 31 spline and my halfshafts are only 28. No option but to use the original diff. I did make an interesting discovery though.. the whining was caused because the LH shaft was about 1mm too long and was jamming internally, pushing the ring gear into the pinion. Now I have taken some metal off the end with the grinder the gears seem to turn a bit more sweetly.
Axle back on, wheels on, exhaust on, prop on, brake line connected, engine started and wheels turning (in air.) Floor still absent. Might take it for a drive tomorrow.

13th April
After another solid day which included trying to make the rear brakes do anything useful, reducing the runout in the prop and adjusting the four link so the pinion angle is sensible it was finally on the road at 10pm. The diff still whines badly and the exhaust was rather too loud for that time of night.

14th April
More test driving. First gear really is low - it must be if a near stock Rover can spin 275s. Coilovers adjusted to give some ground clearance, new Hoosiers fitted, new rear brake pads, cables front to rear re-routed under floor and everything cable tied down. I toyed with the idea of fitting a tow bar as I have a few lying around, but that can wait until after everything else.

In brief, got an new MOT and made NSCC round 1 at the Test and Tune at Avon Park - ran 13.6.

NSCC round 2
A nice sunny day at York giving a good track. Fourteen NSCC cars raced, I uncharacteristcally got knocked out in the first round although went on to run a 13.5 The meeting was won by Rick Swan running a 10.8 while defeating friend Vince Gibbs.

TOSS#1 is on its death bed - you would _never_ have guessed it was falling apart. It has now been retired after failing the MOT on everything.

Whitsun
With the alledged intention of fixing some minor oil dribbles, the Rover is now on the floor. It was too tempting not to put the Chevy in there to see how it might fit, but there is far too much work to even consider doing the swap mid season.
 
The Rover is now in pieces in the small working space on the garage floor for a slapdash job of new bearings, gaskets and seals. A compression test had revealed one under par cylinder, so I've bought a new exhaust valve and reground all of the valves. 10 days to the next race.
Another eleventh hour rebuild.. The day before the race and the car was still unfinished. Not aiding matter was the torrential rain and the lack of garage. With the loan of a gazebo and brighter skies in the afternoon I was ready for a test drive by midnight. I had to drive to the bypass and set my timing in the layby as the quiet residential area would not appreciate that sort of noise. After a little adjustment and some bolt checks I set off at 1.15 and made it to York at 3.15am, having taken it easy to run the new bearings in. The pits were wet but there was no rain. At 7am I was awoken by more bloody rain. The morning was cold, damp and windy making it difficult to gain motivation to finish the car off and ready it for racing. When the track did open it was a joke. The first run was a 16.6 (off gas) with hardly any traction off the line. The weather improved and the track dried during the day leaving me with a first round elimination at 13.9. Oil pressure relief valve and nitrous problems dogged me all day and to add to the fun, driving home the car overheated whenever I exceeded 3000rpm.

Failed to take the car to the Monterey Meet because of the problems!

After changing the headgaskets in vain, stripping the carb and fitting new carb manifold gaskets. The weak mixture overheating problem was minised enough to have a play at Street Machine Street Racer at the Pod. I increased the nitrous fuel pressure to compensate for the carb problems (the plugs were white as hell) and managed a 13.7 although I hadn't written SR178 on the car at this point.

After a trip to Preston cruise, I had the chance to raid Phil Royle's Holley carb collection and he helped rejet the carb as rich as we could. Initial testing around the local lanes were inconclusive apart from an exploded exhaust. On returning to Solihull and checking the plugs, I found that the jet work had yielded a super rich mixture as planned and I rejetted it with an intermediate setting.

Nostalgia Nationals - 30 June / 1 Jul
I arrived for the Saturday evening entertainment and was relieved to find an event that appreciated rock music.
On Sunday, the tuning work was rewarded with a NPB off-gas 14.30 and a NPB nitrous 13.22

Hot Rod Drags - 8-9 Sept
Another good NSRA drag event. The high attendance did mean hour plus queues to get down the strip though. After a bit of careful nitrous bottle heating (thanks Phil and Chris) I got a NPB of 13.013 @ 103.93. Oh so close..

September at York
While trying in vain to beat Rick Swan (502ci mkI Capri) I melted a piston. A few frantic weeks saw another piston fitted and a new cam as the last one had lost a lobe at some previous time... Engine was first started at 18:40 on Saturday the 6th

October 7th York - Final round
Not only did the engine work, I made it to the strip and won the meeting with a 13.5, beating the faster cars of Ian Walley and Russ Pursley along the way.
A great finish to the year. Thanks to everyone who has taken part in NSCC 2001. Look forward to seeing everyone competing again in 2002. See www.nscc.info