The car was, at the time I drove it, the F/GMR record holding vehicle. Unfortunately it was lost to another car the following day.:tdown:
It's powered by a 3.0litre n/a Mercedes V8 of 1971 vintage, has a mad compression of 15:1, individual coils and throttle bodies giving it about 360bhp. The gearbox is a TH350 reverse pattern and the gearing is so long that a push start is required for the first 40 mph.
My best run was 168.13mph, 0.37mph away from the record at the time. Even if I'd beaten it it wouldn't have counted as you can't record break on licencing runs.
The car that eventually took the record from our team was powered with a 3.0litre Aurora engine with more than 700bhp n/a, it pushed the record over 200mph which was game over for us as the poor Merc lump was never going to get that sort of output in our wildest dreams.
Driving was an experience and a half! The driving position meant that I had the back end of the gearbox and the prop between my legs, throttle to the right of the tunnel and brake to the left and bolt heads sticking up out of the seat pan to keep you just comfy!
No suspension meant wobbly eyes at speed. The salt looks flat but is more like when snow melts and refreezes. It has little undulations that rattle your brain!
The biggest difficulty was the heat. Apart from wearing a black, 5 layer nomex suit and underwear in 40deg heat, the car didn't have a radiator. This meant that the cooling system consisted of a large water tank full of iced water which rapidly became boiling water and where was it? In the bloody cockpit with me to the right of the shifter and underneath the bodywork projection to the right of the cage.:shocked: I have never been so hot in my life!
In fact it got so hot that on one run I dehydrated and the medics wouldn't allow me to drive for the rest of the day.
A Buick that had gone in front of me had spun at the 2 mile marker which meant that the start marshall held me on the line whilst his push truck recovered him as he'd stalled and couldn't restart. It's such a carry on getting in and out of the car and getting settled that I stayed put for the 15 minutes it would take. Then the marshall came over and said he'd clipped a timing beam which would have to be resetand would be another 15 minutes. This turned into a total of 45 minutes but because we'd been told in 15 minutes segments I'd stayed in the car. I had umbrellas shading me and water poured down the inside of my crash helmet to keep me from melting but at one point I still managed an afternoon siesta as captured by my good mate Steve!
Anyhoo, the upshot of that run was dehydration and my 'C' class licence.:tup:
The atmosphere and the surrealism of the place is incredible. My fave photo I took was of a rod and a wooden framed Harley and in the background is the curve of the horizon....nowhere else on the planet has an atmosphere like this place and everyone should go at least once.
