The Easter Thunderball wasn't the best of starts to the 2011 season for Team Rampage:
The first round of qualifying on the Friday put us in the number 2 spot, dialling in an 8.10 and running an 8.126. Knowing how tough the class is continuously becoming, we knew that it wouldn't be long until the others would be settling in and getting a lot closer to their dial ins.
Rounds went by, and the last qualifier on Saturday evening proved to be the start of issues for the Rampage dragster as a loss of traction off the line ruined another chance to move up the field, eventually ending up in 9th.
Sunday morning was where things started to get worse, as the dragster began to bog-down and misfire as soon as it was leaving the line. With that being the case, it was time to put the thinking caps on and start to string together the possibilities of what was going on.
First round of eliminations came at around 7:00 o'clock that evening and the team were fortunate enough to gain a bye run, after Leon Green in his 7-second Supra had earlier announced that he wouldn't be running. That gave the opportunity to launch the car without having to worry about any competition in the other lane, but the dragster was still experiencing its misfire.
The decision was to arrive bright and early on the next and final day to resolve the matter, the theory being that, somehow, the engine was being starved of fuel. The morning arrived and having checked all the fuel lines, the filter, the regulator, you name it, the second round of eliminations was suddenly upon us and so it was time to ready ourselves for that, despite the trouble. We were matched with Nigel Turner, who had qualified a solid third, so we knew it would be a task in itself. Predictably, the car again misfired which enabled Nigel to take a comfortable win.
Before packing up and going, the choice made was to explain what was wrong and having already checked the components to do with fuel, the team eventually found that one of the two fuel pumps had no current going to it, according to the multimeter. Once that had been noticed, we were able to confirm that this was the issue, because the regulator was only reading two pounds of fuel pressure, six pounds lower than it should have been.
However, it was later discovered that one of the switches that had never been used before, operated the second fuel pump, meaning that all the time that we had had the car, it was only ever running on the one fuel pump.
So the team ended up soldering the two together onto the one switch, which then gave a reading of just under eight pounds of pressure. Funny how something so simple could cause such inconvenience, eh?
To some extent, it turned out to be a test weekend for Team Rampage and big thanks must go out to Jeff, Adrian (especially for coming straight off his night shift to help!), Ian, Felicity, Daniel, Geoff Hauser for giving his valued knowledge and opinion and especially our sponsors Mini Gears and Smiths of Bloxham.
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