Le Mans Classic 2018

Anybody have a line on which and how many original GT40s (or cars pretending to be original) will be racing this year?

Will there be a paddock for GT40 street cars?

Hope to see some of you there! :thumbsup:
 
With regard to Mike's question regarding parking for 'street' GT40s at Le Mans, yes there is - and more to the point, I have one such permit for sale, covering the entire weekend, area Yellow. I have had to cancel my visit. Contact me, sale at face value. Also two sets of admission tickets, all areas, including paddock.
 
Well the Eastern Region of the Club did a 900 mile round trip in four 40’s and survived
Whilst we did have a few teething problems, with Nick & Phil’s black Mk3 having ignition and fuelling problems after a winter engine rebuild & upgrade and Neil’s white Mk1 had a sweaky rear suspension and the recently fitted central locking kit locking him out of the car on the first night. Fortunately a few (well lots!) of screws removed it was easily by-passed

We travelled down via the Portsmouth to Caen ferry on the Thursday. After a push-rod change on Tony’s freshly finished red Mk3 (there seems to be a quality issue with soft push-rods from Comp-Cams as we changed one just before we left; fortunately took spares) we got all the car’s to the Pistonsheads gathering at Chateau Le Sarthe on the Friday morning and to the circuit in the afternoon.

However as Nick Brough previously alluded to, getting into the circuit on the Saturday was chaos, over an hour to do the last 400m was not a joke, especially with the heat (and tempers!) building. Tony car struggled the most with overheating and the clutch slipping. After getting it all sorted, the police told him it take another couple of hours to get in, so he gave up and went back to our residence for the duration. Grandstand Motorsport who were providing parking for all club ‘40s said that many of their clients had given up trying to get in on the Saturday and gone for a drive instead

The racing, the cars and the general ambience takes some beating, and on the Sunday after visiting the museum, which was very impressive, especially with special Gulf exhibition on, we joined the club gathering at Hotel le France for an excellent meal and a talk by one of the original 60’s team members

All the cars made it home and a great time was had by all. We’re off to the Silverstone Classic on Saturday, which hopefully should be a little cooler…:thumbsup:

Regards,
Andy
 

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With respect to the multiple pushrod failures—it is almost the height of insanity to believe that multiple failures in a single motor of parts that are produced and used by the thousands elsewhere with no problems are indicative of a defective product.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the geometry of THAT engine, not the quality of the pushrods.

A friend had a similar problem which was eventually traced to valve spring coil bind. The cam had excessive lift for the springs fitted. When the valve is opened to the point where the spring is fully compressed, the spring turns into a solid object. If the cam is still attempting to open it further then the weak link is the pushrod, which will deform. If by chance the pushrod was stronger, then the rocker arm would suffer.
 
Hi Andy ,
it was nice to meet you and the others in hôtel de France ,and thx for all the little explanations and hints which i will use in my rebuild mk3

thx again Paul
 
Paul,
It was also great to meet up with you and hopefully gave you encouragement to finish your Mk3

Mike,
Regarding THAT engine, it’s one I built and is an identical specification to mine which has now done over 9,000 miles without any issues, even using the same manufacturer and part number of the pushrods. It runs a mild cam and the valve springs have been checked for coil binding and there are no issues there. We ended changing 4 push-rods, all with the same failure mode (ball end collapsing) and when we swopped out the remaining a few more were showing early signs of failure.
I’m no definitive American V8 expert, but I can follow a set of instructions and they were set-up correctly with the correct lash adjustment (the same as mine which has no issues) so I can only conclude they have a hardness issue causing this pre-mature failure.

Talking with other people there does seem to an issue with recently supplied pushrods (on Ford & GM Engines) and with parts being sourced in China and then shipped worldwide, stringent quality standards are the first thing that slips first

Regards,
Andy
 
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