How wrong you can be, Thursday afternoon at about 3pm I received a phone call from my dad stating that the engine had just dropped a rod and the engine was knackered! A few pleasant words later and a lot of silence I left work at 4.30pm with a very long night ahead of us.

At 11.30pm that night we had got our spare engine in place with the gearbox on, we were fitting the head and carb's on Friday. Next morning we were at it just before 8am, myself driving to every motor shop on the planet to find the bits we needed to convert the car from a Cortina x/flow to a later spec Fiesta x/flow. At about 2pm the engine was ready to fire up, 3 seconds later and the engine made some very dodgy noises. The brand new timing chain had failed, yet again we weren't going to get to Snetterton. We dropped the engine out again and removed the chain, which I promptly took back to the shop and got a new one. The chain was put on and everything was put back together again. Fingers crossed and a Compression test later we found by the stroke of God that we had not bent any valves. By 9.30pm we had pretty much finished and had a cup of tea.

Saturday morning we took the car to have the tracking sorted and did about 1 mile of driving the car to make sure it was OK. We left for Snetterton at about 1pm.

The car passed noise at 99.7dB surprising as it has a brand new twin box exhaust on it!!! And should be a lot quieter than that!!! The car was scrutinized for the first time in 5 years and passed with just a few pointers to sort out. Phew what a relief.

Sunday morning started at 5.30am and the 20-mile trip back to the circuit, my Dad tweaked the car and we had a bit of much needed breakfast.

9.35am was our time for kick off. 5,4,3,2,1 Go the car went great for about 4 seconds then decided to run on 2 cylinders for the rest of the stage, limped her round for a finish. Service was a bit frantic with trying to get her to run on all 4 cylinders.

Stage 2 was the same so we limped round.

Stage 3 was better but not right.

Stage 4 we upped the fuel regulator to 2.5psi and finally had the carb's balanced correctly and the car was on the move now!!!!! We had a great tussle with a MK2 escort that could not get away from us. I later found out it was a 2 liter car! Cheered me up no end!!!!

Stage 5 was very good but in stage 6 I noticed a whine from the Diff. At service the car was jacked up and the shaft popped out. It was duly put back into place and the gearbox filled with more oil.

At the end of stage 7 right on the finish line the drive shaft came out completely. We had to push the car all of the way back to service from the stop line picking up a new time card for stage 8 along the way. The problem was duly sorted and a modification to the shaft is required before our next outing.

Stage 8,9 and 10 we took it easy. Eager to get a finish on our first event and racing for the first time in the dark and with the worries we had I only gave it full pelt down the straights. After letting car 77 through before the hairpin I found on the straight I was actually catching him up. Again cheered me up no end!!

I would like to thank my Dad for all of the work that he has done on the car and for keeping it going even though it looked like we were out even before we got there. And a even bigger thanks to my mum for letting my dad do all of the work!!!

A big cheer goes out to every one involved in the team for being there and for the support!!!