Those of you familiar with our On the Run race reports might think that we do not prepare our transporter and trailer as we seem to have such disastrous luck on the road. With the 10,000 klm round trip, we spent close on $5000 on electrical and mechanical works on the truck, changing everything we thought possible and making sure we had all good tyres, brand new alternator, full services, belts and what ever we could think of we had done.

We purchased a brand new custom made tag along trailer professionally built by Alan Woods at Rebound Metal products, 6 tonne axles with air bags and air brakes, 10 metres long, 4 metres high and capable of carrying three cars. After procrastinating for years about bringing in an imported American trailer thankfully we chose to have one built in Australia because I think the American light weight trailers would simply fall to pieces on our roads.

Even after the greatest preparation with a brand new trailer we struck trouble before we even left. We flew down on the Thursday to bring the new trailer home and after getting back to Rockhampton at 2.30 Friday morning, I went to work at 8.00 a.m while Nathan started to try and load the trailer and figure out how we were going to get the race car into it.

The Victorian brackets for the shock absorbers were obviously not up to our Queensland roads and whilst we were loading the trailer we noticed that the air bags would not come up and found that four shock absorber brackets were broken. About 9.00 p.m. Friday night with the help of new sponsors John and Chris Barnes from Barnsey's Truck and Trailer, Steve McIntosh, Alan Croft, Lachlan Tree, Nathan, Zac and Heather making sure we all had something to eat, Dan the man from Biloela and Bruce Watt, we finally re-manufactured the shocky brackets and Nathan's mate David Gall was able to obtain an air bag after hours out of Mac Trucks and we set off at 3.30 a.m. on Saturday morning.

Already tired and knackered and we were only at the start of the trip. The plan being to get over there Tuesday morning, do the test and tune and our IT Guru from Piranha Insurance Brokers Adrien Lang had to leave Perth at 5.00 p.m. on Wednesday and fly back to Brisbane and tow Rowing Queensland's skulls boats from Brisbane to Sydney and on the ferry to Hobart for the National titles.

We were going well coming into Broken Hill Sunday morning when we discovered that the harmonic balancer had come apart. Being a typical Queenslander all you do is hale down someone in the street at 6.30 a.m. in Broken Hill on Sunday morning. A nice young man who is working in the silver mines and who had recently moved from Tasmania was getting the papers and some bread and milk, jumped into his Nissan and proceeded to drive around Broken Hill trying to find a garage open.

Resourceful as us Queenslanders are, we drove into a five acre paddock, saw a few wrecked trucks, a roo box shed, saw some welding, went inside and was told "Old Len out at the abattoirs, he will be able to help you". So we drove out to the other side of Broken Hill and meet a remarkable man. Len is 63 years old and rents part of an old abattoirs where the owner of the abattoirs lives on site with about 250 English gaming hens and a assortment of contractors. Len use to have a car but it went to Adelaide years ago and did not come back and I inquired was the wife in the car and he said Yes, she did not like Broken Hill.

His only form of transportation was a Suzuki motor bike with a side car and he is living in a half converted old bus out the back of the workshop. He even had a workshop manual for our Mitsubishi truck. Since it was Sunday, by the time we got all the parts Sunday afternoon we had no hope of getting any parts in same day express delivery. Ned Kelly would be a patron saint compared to the freight companies when you ask for same day delivery, paying $285.00 for an air bag leaves a bit to be desired and then another $100 for one out of Sydney for a seal that weighed about 20 grams.

In Broken Hill we had some superb help from the locals. XYZ from Commonwealth Motors just gave us an old Falcon for three days. You just cannot beat the help you get from the Australian public when you are in trouble.

The end result was that at 12.30 on the Tuesday we were on the road again. We drove another 2000-3000 klms, saw some magnificent sights - you must drive the Nullarbor at some stage as at sunrise it is just simply beautiful. At border town they confiscated our only fruit - 2 onions. I remember the officers saying either eat them or put them in the bin and I remember not feeling too hungry at the ungodly time we hit the border and decided to give them to the quarantine officer.

Personally without a shadow of a doubt I would take the trip across the Nullarbor, even the 90 mile straight, although Nathan and Zac decided that they would not take over at any stage. Unfortunately we had lost Adrien at Broken Hill because he just could not get over to Perth on time to catch his flight so he flew out of Broken Hill, went to Perth, hired a car for a day and a half and flew out of Perth to Brisbane to do his trip down to Hobart, so it just left Nathan, Zac and Dad.

Coming into Merredin and about 280 klms from Perth on the Wednesday night (having already missed our opportunity to do the test and tune and work on the car at the Donis Brothers Street Scene workshop) we had a hell of a vibration. We got a mechanic out at 9.30 at night only to discover that the gear box was OK, the clutch was OK but the noise coming from the back was a suspected broken crank. The service station closed but they left the toilets open for us and we backed the trailer up into the Service Station, hooked up the water, turned on the gen set, had a shower and we were waiting for the tow truck to come the next day but because it was not going to be there until midday on the Thursday we were seriously running out of time, we decided to have a go.

We in fact drove 280 klms with a broken crankshaft and the vibration was absolutely enormous until you got it above 1400 revs. With Nathan driving through the traffic in Perth there were not many cars that were prepared to stay beside when you were going through the first couple of gears. Bloody near shook the cab off it.

By this stage Bruce, Macca and Dan had flown over (the easy trip). We could not find the same motor but we got one out of a 99 Mitsubishi from Saltoggio Wreckers but we had to buy the whole engine, gear box and tail shaft, so it was an expensive exercise. Half our years budget went on this trip to Western Australia and if you ask me if I would do it again (I would do it again if I knew the crankshaft was going to break), everything other than the money was sensational. The comradeship and the help we had - people like the wog chariot, winner of supercharged outlaws - Lyndsay, Wendy and Shane Catalano. Lyndsay drove his truck all the way up to Perth to us after we spent $300 for extended air hoses so we could get the brakes off the trailer, towed us out to the QUIT Motorplex. The Monday after the event he towed us back into Perth then he went all the way back to the other side of Mandurah. These are not short trips. They even gave us their beach house at Mandurah for the week afterwards.

Lexus of Perth - XYZ of Perth certainly both XYZ and the sales manager gave us a LX470 for our week and a half in WA. To the staff at the QUIT Motor Plex - Peter Pike and Ray Treasure, again many thanks.

I spent one night sleeping in the truck in Vic, John and George Donis's workshop before we could get to Lyndsay's. Their hospitality and Peter Vukovich, who drove us around in his ute getting parts for the engine and gear box. I must say that the Donis Brother's certainly eat well at the drags. We did not have to use any of our food hardly because they just kept supplying it all day.

Vic did a magnificent job changing a few things on the race car, obtaining a cable drive for the fuel pump and moving the fuel pump down to be gravity fed close to the tank and certainly helped us out at the race track as well. So much so that we ran personal best in everything bar the mile an hour and probably that was due to the air as it was not exactly shit hot and it was quite hot.

Our first pass was a shut off - 11.9 seconds, the next qualifying against our old mate Bronte Henning and later in the night we produce a 7.93 at 163.33 MPH or 262.85 Klms per hour for the metric freaks.

We were then rewarded with a win over Daniel Reed at 7.925 seconds at 166.66 MPH/268.21 KPH. Round 2 was against Clive Hudson and Nathan had it won well and truly as Clive had .106 reaction time against Nathan's .079 and ran off his dial in of 7.26 with a 7.46. Nathan however on a dial in of 7.89 broke out unfortunately with a 7.853 and consider the fact that he was off the throttle, on the brake and had pulled the chute at 7.1 seconds into that run, that was still our personal best.

We had a grudge race later in the night which is something that I think other tracks should allow as long as they have time, especially the people that have travelled a long distance. There we matched our personal best for a 7.85 second with a little bit down on the MPH at 164.23 but a great 1.09 60 footer, 3.15 seconds to the 330, 4.926 to the 660, 6.48 seconds to a 1000 foot. All personal best except for the mile an hour.

For a bit of fun after the meeting, the Wednesday night after we had been working on the truck all day, we drove all the way to Bunbury for their local club meeting. We stayed at the Catalano wog chariot buildings, had a great night and drove back 190 klms to Perth the next day. I have to say it is the longest distance I have travelled for a club meeting that we are not a member of but again great people, great place to visit.

Running short of time to get everyone back to Rockhampton on time, on Friday night at about 7.30 pm. We finally started the truck, moved it out of the workshop, Nathan took it for a run around the block, basically trying to find the new gear shift pattern and believe it or not they then headed home with nothing more than a quick trip around the block as a test run.

I worried myself stupid (as any father would) for the next three days. The only worry on the trip home was some blown tyres, first near Port Augusta and then the spare letting go after another 50 kilometres, but thankfully ??? from Tyrepower at Peterborough came down to his workshop on the Sunday afternoon and fitted 2 tyres for us, finally some luck as it was a public holiday in South Australia the following day. A side from a few roo's and emu's, they did not have any other major problems on the way home.

Regards

PETER A PEIRANO.

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