CandJAUTOSPORT

History: Craig

Back in 1990 I went along and watched sprint cars at Ruapuna, it was an instant addiction.

Not ever being to speedway before I thought it was the only type of racing that existed for a few months, until one night I was talked into going along to what was referred back then as the beginners track Woodford Glen. Well I was impressed, and far from it in my opinion was it in any way a beginner’s track, the Stockcars having the biggest impact on me…excuse the pun. 

Later that year a friend got hold of  a Nissan Sylvia, I believe it was an 89 model with an 1800 ohc in it, we decided between 3 of us to have a go at building a production saloon and take it to Kaikoura, we built the car in 2 weeks and went racing.

Time to have a go myself, I started messing with a stockcar that I bought complete off long time racer Peter Fields, it was an old flat chassis, bent as a sausage and bloody ugly, but to me it had potential….boy was I wrong lol.  After chopping and changing things I really should have left alone I started to realize how big the monsters of what stockcars were all about, a lot of hard work!

From this point I messed around with 4 more chassis, (one even being an old Modified) a couple time wasters and a couple with great potential, but money was always an issue and a motor was the biggest hurdle.

I also built a Commodore production Saloon, having finished the car to close to the end of the Glen season I chose to race it at Oxford Speedway, the cars first outing being at the Rangiora hot rod show on display for the Oxford Club.  I had mixed results with the car but always managed to finish mid pack or higher, it also gained me my first sash in  the 2001 North Canterbury Champs, I went on to race the car for two seasons.

Next Was the A Grade, a swap I did for one of the unfinished stock Car projects, it was an old car first with a Trans Am body, I dumped a bog stock 350 chev into it and went racing, again at Oxford.  A great grade the A Grades and one I feel I will return to in the near future.  Again mixed results, and the most memorial Kaikoura weekend in my racing history.  Crashing during warm ups on the first day…not good.

Anyway the latest addition was the Super Stock, a car that even I felt was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, but it came with enough spares to keep it on the track awhile, and the other really important part, a motor!  After spending time redesigning it to make it look half decent on the computer, work started on a new body and bonnet.  I wanted at the time to cut the cage off and redesign that two, but was only a short time from the start of the Glen Season 08/09, and the NZ Champs were there this year.  The car under went a minor change with little work being done in the engine department, it ran it had good oil pressure…leave it alone!!!! 

After finally getting the car done we managed 4 races before the first engine failure, a bent valve, this lead onto 3 more failures all ending in the same result, bent valves. The final failure happening at the NZ Champs in the fisrt lap turn 3, went into the turn well then the engine failed mid turn, got turned by Tony Mac in the new Clive Elliott Tri rail in front of the rest of the field, ended up dragging Scott Hewson and Scott Joblin infield with me (sorry fellas) having no power to get out the way.

As the season was over  for me, the budget was blown, I looked into changing the car to how I felt it could look, and I found and fixed the engine problem thanks to some good advice by a mate (also a top engine builder).