King of the Mountain.

Saturday's blood test was a disappointment. Platelets a meagre 7. That was all I needed on top of the other things that were getting in the way of my motorsport.

I'd spent the last couple of days trying to remedy a severe misfire in the engine of my race car and was having no luck. I'd replaced every part that could possibly cause a misfire and still it persisted. It was not until I sat down and thought about the sequence of events that lead up to the fault that the answer came to me. The fault appeared while racing at Port Road in February this year.

Last year while at the same event I had held the engine at maximum revs in second gear while between two corners.
This often happens when racing in situations where changing up would be a waste of time as you would almost immediately change down again for the next corner. At that event in that situation last time the engine spat a rocker arm clean out the top of the engine cover, punching a hole in the alloy cam cover as it went.

We discovered that the engine rev limiter function in the computer that runs the engine was set too high at 8500rpm. I reset it to 7800rpm and have not had any further problems.
So thinking back I realised that the misfire had occurred on the same part of the track and under the same conditions. I checked the computer's settings and found that the rev limit was back to 8500rpm. This must have happened when the computer was upgraded last year.

Saturday morning I removed the cam cover and there hiding under one of the cams was a rocker arm. Far from where it was supposed to be. I checked for damage, found none and replaced the rocker back to where it belonged. A road test confirmed the car was fixed.

I then drove into Wellington and had a blood test at ward 1. They phoned me back later in the day with the bad news that I needed a platelet transfusion. Good news for my motorsport plans but not good news for my bone marrow status. I phoned the organisers of the Hillclimb and told them I would be racing Sunday.

Sunday Sarah and I got up early and headed to Mount Victoria. Alexandra road leads to the top of the hill from the Newtown end and is 1.7km in length. Last year I covered the distance in 44.11 seconds winning the event with a comfortable margin over the next fastest.
This year my plan was to drive at a sensible safe speed and obtain points towards the Duncan McKenzie series which I currently lead. (For the fourth year in a row).
The competition was stiff this year with Murray O'Neil and Jeff Ward both capable of posting winning times. In fact on the first timed run we were all with a few tenths of a second of each other.

I just didn't seem to be able to get into race mode during the day. I put it down to my health and the lack of events I've entered lately. However I was able to improve on each of my three timed runs over the day and pull out a lead of over a second on Murray and Jeff. The Final result had me in first place, Jeff second and Murray third. We were all very stoked with the result, made all the better in that we are all good friends. First and third places both going to Flextech sponsored cars was an added bonus!

I've had another blood test today and I will compare that to the one we take on Wednesday to get an overall picture of where I stand with regards to my marrow. I shall post again then.