Here's a post I put on Zuckerbook, yes it's true we nearly had it ready to go with the old motor....
So purely for entertainment purposes this is how it all went down. The world is gripped by an unprecedented threat and yet my friends and I continued on desperately trying to get ready for Australian Speedweek with the Spirit of Sunshine.
We were given a Chevrolet V6 race motor by Robin Dripps from Virginia in 2016 and it took us two years to get it fitted to the car. Due to issues with the engine management computer, although we had the motor running and took the car to Speedweek 2018 we were unable to make a run. We didn't come up with a useful plan and failed to make the cut for 2019 but at that point I made a commitment that whatever else happened it would be there in 2020, it was at Speedweek 2019 that Marcus Thomson and James McMurtrie introduced me to Lee Smits after I told them I was thinking of looking for someone local to me in Lancefield who could help with preparing the car, I needed to commit to at least a day a week to make it happen. Just to rewind a bit I built the car with Dik Jarman an architect and animator... if you like the way the Spirit of Sunshine looks it is all down to Dik. Not long after we started Gray Hadley came on board, he is someone who if it flys floats fires or even just sits there he probably knows how it works.. The car exceeded everyone's expectations and set an Australian record with a Holden V6 power-plant running 215.041mph in 2013. By 2014 we'd worked out to beat the US record in our class of 236 mph we would need something like 460 horsepower. One morning in 2016 I got an email and at first I thought it was a prank....someone wanted to give us a 500hp V6, all we had to do was pay the freight and insurance from LA and it was ours. I messaged a few landspeed racing friends in the US, "do you know Robin Dripps? She wants to give us a chev V6...".. It checked out, the process started. We needed a new gearbox, our "Aussie" 4 speed was not going to be strong enough. Another friend we 'd made over the years Andy Welker who'd built an incredible bellytank in Pennsylvania offered to help, he had a G-Force super close ratio T101 type 4 speed and had made his own "shorty" conversion..." "I've got it all on CAD, give me $200 and I'll CNC it for you"... In all it cost nearly 10 grand but we had the ultimate gearbox and the close ratio aspect meant we weren't going to "fall over" on the 3-4 shift....race engines, specifically landspeed engines make all their power at high revs, if you fall out of the powerband when going into the next gear you can't accelerate so an ideal box has a high first gear and small percentage drops between gears...this box had 20/19/18% everything was looking good.
Lee and I started working every Friday, just doing what I'd call housework, tidying things up, doing jobs on the car that had been neglected over the years, tidying up the wholesale changes that happened when the motor swap was done. The original motor used a total loss cooling system, a 60 litre water tank and the exhaust was routed through the body exiting at the very tip of the tail. The new Chev motor was physically bigger and meant we had to send the exhaust out the sides and use a radiator with a fan. The initial install was pretty rushed and there was a lot of tidy up that needed to be done and there was also a bunch of stuff that was busted and fried from a few years of towing it out to Lake Gairdner.
I'd been hassling Graham that we needed to get the motor on the dyno up in Shepparton mid year but various things happened and that didn't get any air. This is an amateur game and everyone has a life and life as we know gets in the way. In the meantime Gray had bought Wayne Mumford's Waza Vudu Bellytank as Wayne had made the decision to simplify his life and leave bellytanks to idiots like us... It is hard building a bellytank, it is just as hard reworking one that someone else has built... So, we had a strange motor that didn't seem to want to run because someone in the States had lost the code for the bin file that would allow us to remap the engine management computer and a car that was "nearly" ready but not quite....
We decided to ditch the original Electromotive engine management on the Chev and use an Australian built Motec...
The motor didn't get to the dyno until three weeks before we were due to leave for Speedweek. It took a day to set it up and on the second day I spoke to Gray and there was no joy, the motor wouldn't run. Was it the fuel? they didn't know... A plan was made to return the next week. They did and Gray had some ideas but as time went on there was no consistency, each time they chased out a problem another one appeared and then it fried a bunch of new expensive ignition parts. A change of tack still gave no consistency and by Wednesday, ten days before we were to leave for Speedweek the pin was pulled, whatever was happening the Chev wasn't going to make it to Lake Gairdner. I had leave booked and Thursday was my last day, I called in sick, I was so pissed off I figured the last place I should be was at work... I'd been working at least a day a week all year and spent a massive amount of money since we'd got this motor in, and now it had gone to shit.
Cassie decided not to come seeings how the car wouldn't run, but I was still going...I spent a day in a mix of shock and anger. My sister Ruth called and said in light of the Covid 19 situation that I, with emphysema, probably shouldn't go... I had to, it's my thing, friends were coming from the States.... I promised her if I got a fever or a sore throat that I'd come straight home.
The Spirit of Sunshine has always run in E(3-4.3Litre) Gas (petrol) class... and still holds the record, but the Fuel record is what is referred to as "soft" at 155mph.... after some phone calls and grinding of teeth I decided we weren't going to lie down. Despite all the structural changes that had been made to the car to fit the Chev we would reinstate the Holden V6 and run against the fuel class record.Gray had suggested the move and initially I rejected it saying " no point, it won't go any faster"..... but that's where we went. I tracked down all the removed parts and got the motor and box bolted together and washed two years of shed grime off them, it took a while but I found everything ....there had been no plan to ever go back... By Saturday night I had it all sitting in place it needed engine mounts , a gearbox cross-member and wiring and we were ready to go. Graham and Lee arrived on Sunday and by 5 o'clock we had a cross-member, engine mounts ready to weld in and wiring mostly done. Scott Morison announced a 14 day isolation order on international arrivals but it was too late to persuade Stainless and JohnBoy to stay in the US, then as we feared and as was right the meet was cancelled because of restrictions on gatherings over 500 people.
it was over.
Our plan now is to strip the Chev and do a ground up measure and check. The car will have the capability to mount either motor and with a few changes both motors will run the G-Force box.
Compared to what is going on in the world right now this is a mere trifle but it's our trifle and we're going to keep doing it because we love what we do. My friendship with the people I've met through this pursuit and the single minded commitment to making it happen is one of the most intense and fulfilling things I've done in my life.
Look after yourselves everyone, we'll get through this and we will come out better and stronger.