I second Ians experience of Classic Le Mans. It was the Monsters second trip down to Le Mans in as many months and it nearly made both trouble free.
Travelled down with TSSC North East on Thursday to get the overnight ferry and had a very wet run up to Le Mans on Friday. Sun shone for the rest of the weekend though more or less.
Met up with lots of familiar faces, good to see you Ian and pleased your TR8 is back to its usual reliability.
Highlight for me was doing the track laps. Got a clear run down the Mulsanne straight with the V8 pulling like a train 4800RPM in 5th gave me 140MPH [:D] with plenty left to go before I ran out of raod before the first chicane and my cheeks hurt afterwards from all the manic grinning id been doing. Need to uprate the brakes though as even with 4 pot calipers and green stuff pads I still got horrendous brake fade by the end of lap 2.
Came out of the esses up to the dunlop bridge, floored it in 2nd and fishtailed and wheelspun right under the famous Dunlop bridge,while the rear tyres warmed and found traction - what a feeling.
The car didnt even get to half way on temp, but on return to the campsite noticed it was loosing oil on idle leaving a big puddle underneath. Diagnosis was that the extreme crankcase pressures on track had blown my front pulley oil seal in the timing cover clean out of its housing and it was hanging on the shaft. Drifted it back in though with the help of my dads comprehensive array of tools and made it home without so much as a drip.
Will treat her too a clean sump of oil and a fresh pulley seal this week. Amazing how smooth the engine felt after the track laps though, its as if everything came together and the car came off idling and purring smoother than ever. And the MPG? I calculated it at about 6 MPG on the track laps (22 on the road). Thats ruined my carbon footprint for the year!
Great weekend - Malvern next!
Purple 2.0 Litre DHC Grinnall
Red 4.0 Litre V8 DHC Grinnall (with huuuuuge arches...!)
