In late September 1975, the Longton and District Motor Club held their excellent Isle of Man Hill Climb. The Event was the grande finale of their championship for Sprints and Hill Climbs. The course started at Hillberry near Brandish and climbed to Creg-Ny-Baa before finishing just after Kate's Cottage, a distance of 2.15 miles. The practice runs were taken at a steady pace, but there seemed to be a hint of fuel starvation or at least some kind of fuel problem. Times were around the high 80 seconds
The event proper - first run confirmed the fuel problem which was traced to a faulty electric fuel pump. Fortunately I had brought a garage-full of spares including a spare electric fuel pump. A quick change before the final run meant no real chance of testing the pump.
The car performed perfectly. Not only did it run faster (About 125 mph through the speed trap) but it also broke the class record by 18 seconds with a time of 83 seconds. This record stood for many years, I'm not quite sure who broke it, I was told it was Andrew Wareing in an Europa, but I cannot confirm this - Does any one out there know ?
This final result put me in 8th place in the championship - which was won by Bob Speak, also an Elan/Europa campaigner.
The BRM engine performed realy well, it felt almost unburstable!

I can recall a number of incidents which happened during the cars racing career such as breaking half shafts or twisting the splines - All pre-Sprint type shafts.
Replacing the early half-shafts with the Sprint ones went a long way to curing the problem, but created another. The Rotoflex couplings began to suffer and show signs of stress at regular intervals. On one occasion, Ihad driven the car to a Harewood Hill Climb meeting. About 3 miles from the Stockton Farm venue, coming up to the traffic lights at Harewood village, the nearside coupling came adrift. Fortunately I was stopping at the time and I pulled into the roadside. Luckily for me, I was being followed by Tony Bancroft, he saw my predicament and kindy offered to help by sending his trailler back once he had unloaded his car. I was able to replace the coupling in the paddock - once again having the right spares and tools to hand.
In the Hill Climb event I was unable to match Geoff Goodliff's remarkable, long standing, class record of 45.26 seconds which he did in the famous BVRT Elan.

The other niggling problem had been with the loosening of the locating pegs in the hubs. The original 5 peg hubs had been replaced by a 4 peg version (See previous page) which allowed the fitting of F pattern Minilite wheels. Unfortunately the peg location was inadequate and despite wiring the knock-on 3 eared nuts, to prevent movement, there was still displacement in the pegs.

On to part 4