2nd time at Wiscombe Park Hillclimb

[AJSki2fly]

As a reminder to newbies, we first entered hill climbing at Wiscombe in mid April when conditions were generally wet. Neil manage 58.65 secs on a dry run and I did my best at 62.45, not great. We then discovered a seized rear near side brake calliper and a poorly working rear near side. These were refurbished and Disc and pads replaced with Black Diamond ones. We also fitted a brake bias valve on the front due to the tendency for the fronts to lock on hard braking especially in the wet.

So we returned to Wiscombe on Saturday 17 May.

Well what a lovely day for our 2nd hill climb. Everything went much better this time. We discovered 2 weeks ago that the near side calliper was seized and the offside disc was drably scored, so we effectively had 2.5 brakes at our 1st outing. So we replaced the discs and pads with Black Diamond ones and serviced the callipers, also having read up on MR2 braking fitted a brake bias valve to help stop front lock up. Result was a car that stopped properly now.

First practice went well with NeilM and I separated by .07 sec with me at 59.57, an improvement for me off just over 3 seconds on the last meeting. 2nd practice I was 58.54 and NeilM had the bit in his teeth and returned 57.85. 1st run and feeling more confident I pushed harder and returned a 57.11, NeilM 57.76. Last run NeilM did 57.53 and I fluffed up on the first part of the hill selecting 5th gear instead of 3rd, I got into 3rd as quick as possible but knew that would impact the end result and it cost me 2 seconds returning 59.15. Our nearest rival Duncan in an Escort was parked next to us in the paddock, a very nice and helpful chap. NeilM pipped him last time but he was .64sec quicker on his best run. Duncan has his own car maintenance business and chatting with him he thought that we should do quite well in the future as we became more familiar with the MR2. Basically because the MR2 has a significant weight advantage and is probably one of the best handling cars in our class.