Race report catchup and some other stuff

It's been a busy time the last few weeks, but right at the center of everything that's been happening there has of course been - dragbikes!

I didn't report back after the Easter event at Santa Pod, so here is what happened in brief: We went, the weather was the best Easter weather -ever, and we qualified 2nd with a 7.32. There were some great qualifying match-ups against Allan Davies who took the 1 qualifier spot by a hundredth,  and on race day we met in the final where we managed to beat him with a holeshot win, our 7.20 to Allan's 7.19 (and his PB).... off to a good start. You can watch and listen to a good video of that run here:
https://www.facebook.com/dan.woodrow.92/videos/1901160116763650/

On to the Open sport Nationals at Shakey, we ran really well at the last event here and i was looking forward to building on those times.  But i just couldn't find a setting for the track, and out of 6 runs over the weekend not one was a clean one, and the bike suffered handling issues each pass, a combination of wheelspin and tyre shake. The number of entries was also disappointing, with just 3 bikes, and out of the 3 we qualified 3rd. On race day the weather delayed the start of the meeting so late that most people had gone home and only one elimination round went ahead before the track curfew put a halt to the proceedings. 

The next race is in a weeks time and is a new one for the ACU championship, it's the Race, Rock & Ride weekend - an all motorcycle event. We ran at the event last year - just doing demo runs, but at the end of the season everyone voted unanimously to drop the Extreme bike weekend in late October and make this one a round of the championship instead.
The bikes not ready yet, I've been thinking it's not been running quite right since Easter (even though it ran a 7.2) and investigations revealed I'd not fitted the head gasket quite right, allowing the copper power rings to sit slightly offset from the bores and they'd been leaking on every cylinder. The telltale was the outside of the carb rubbers were all showing burn marks!
A new set of rings arrived yesterday so I'll assemble it more cautiously this time and it should be ready in a day or two.
I've also made a small change to the frame where the seat sits on the rails. It's common to have a hoop at the back of the seat but I'd not put one on as i didn't think it was necessary. Well, it kinda is, and was damaging the bodyshell. I've now added little bit of tube just behind the seat to stop it moving backwards on launch.

I mentioned in an earlier post i was building a road bike, a chopper in fact.  It's been making some progress, but is on hold for the moment while a major workshop upheaval is looming.... More on that anther time.