Paul - is Avalon the airstrip that Motor magazine always seems to use for their "top speed" articles? Looks good.... Got any contacts to organise something for us?
The public liability / indemnity bullsh.. that everybody's faced with these days has made it impossible for the Cobra Club to organise any such event any more, but it's amazing how little events come together by word of mouth. For example, a friend of a friend used to work at a factory that required access to an unused Brisbane Airport runway. They rarely used it, but on the odd occasion a few race cars happened to be going past on trailers when the gates would swing open for an hour or two.
Fantastic opportunity to go for a fang, and it wasn't hurting anyone!
I started building this car of mine while West Wyalong was still going. OZVENOM and I had pretty much formulated a plan on how to convert our cars from street to "runway" trim. Underbody aero, enclosed grill, solid tonneau, no screen, rear diffuser, front splitter, etc, etc. Then they canned the event
Oh well..... let's get Avalon organised for sometime in the future. I bet Zoom magazine would be keen to do a feature on the day.
A genuine 200mph is a big ask. I'm sorry to say that the old barge didn't do 263, but only 236kmh. Mike's car also wasn't anywhere near 260+, as his space shuttle effort was around the 450 metre mark (from memory). I didn't drive my car on the runway, as I didn't have a CAMS license. I threw the keys to someone who hadn't ever even sat in the car, and he backed off 100m from the speed trap when the motor hit the rpm limiter. I had it set for 6,800. He said the car felt like it had a parachute on it when he backed off, so the speed should have been higher. How much higher is anyone's guess, but it has done 7,200 in top. Quite a sound!