The First Drive

15th February 2004

The First Drive

So having finished the car the remaining task was to see if it all worked :-) So early this morning Dad^(TM), Val and myself transported the car to a secret, guarded private test track that was closed to the public, tabloid newspaper photographers and other 'undesirables'.

The atmosphere was heavy with nervous excitement (not to say dread) as the pre-start check list was run through:

Right, this was your idea wasn't it and I really really hope I don't blow this thing up
B#gger, no you said you had the keys, oh wait, I was sitting on them, sorry
This may take awhile, I'm a tad nervous and my hands are shaking and making it difficult to get the key in
Are you sure we want to do this? Oh all right then....
Contact!

The engine purred in to life and slooooooowly warmed up. Once the water temp was around the 70^o mark I engaged first gear (left hand pull on the paddles NOT right hand) and moved off.

The first run was just to make sure I could change gear up and down and that the car 'felt' OK. At the end of the first run I found out why cars tend to have a reverse gear :-) so I gently bumped up the kerb and headed back to the big turning circle at the other end at a slightly faster pace. Turning round here was easier and much helped by full lock and go fast peddle. The next run was again a bit faster and I managed to spin the wheels in the first three gears, I also remembered the tight turn at the top of the track and again spun the car on it's own axis by way of reverse gear. The next run was to test the brakes which turned out to be very progressive and seemingly in balance front to back, in that I locked up the N/S front first. Go four, more wheel spin from very low down in the rev range, which I found pleasantly surprising and an amazing feeling of acceleration to the change in to second at around 8000 rpm. The car pulls from very low down and shows no sign of any lag, just a constant heavy pressure squishing you into the seat. The next run back I locked up the O/S front first, so the car shows no tendency to lock the rear wheels.

The rest of the half dozen or so runs all went very well, with car feeling very stable (even with the rear wheels spinning) and delivering a quite frightening level of acceleration, the brakes probably could do with another bleeding bleed but are still very good, the temperature never went higher than 85^o and the paddle shift worked extremely well apart from me scrabbling madly for the gear lever that wasn't there (but only on down changes weirdly) :-D

Oh, and did I mention that it sounds fan-flippin-tastic!

The only faults we could find were that the speedo was erratic (re-seat the sensor), I'd put the steering wheel on at twenty five to, NOT half past six-o-clock and we had a very slight oil leak on one of the unions in the remote filter head... so not too bad at all.

Just the SVA to get through now.

Some images from the day:

Some digicam video:

And the story continues below with the SVA, DVLA and Mods & Drives

or you can go back to the top of the page

Disclaimer:

The test track used was on private land and not a public road, the car was insured and transported to/from the test track and anyway, all the images and video are cleverly doctored as the event never happened - so there.

(c) 2000 - 2004 J.B.Cobb