hi all.
ok, first off, this isn't the real car. the real one was raced at Bathurst in this colour scheme in 1982, and was re-painted green for 1983, which is when Dick set if off into the trees in qualifying, completely destroying it.
the rest of the Dick Johnson XD-XE Falcon story is a multi-page history document in itself. if anyone is interested, i can write it all up and post it later.
this car is owned by my old man, who many of u know as "Wal". he owns a couple of cars, including a mark 7 Bolwell that he's had since new. this car was found on the side of the road in 2003, and it's a genuine factory 351 V8 XE Falcon. if u know your Falcon history, u'd know this is a very rare car. it turns out it was originally a South Oz police interceptor.
anyway, we've done ALOT of work to it, and use it in club racing. Wal hasn't driven it for a few years now, so i get a steer of it from time to time.
the colour scheme came about when we were re-painting it (it was white when he got it). being a Johnson fan, a Johnson-inspired scheme was in order. some research showed that this car no longer existed, so it was the perfect candidate to replicate.
the pic below is from the weekend just gone (7 & 8/8/2010). the event was the "Victorian 6 Hour Relay" at Phillip Island.
we spent hours and hours in the weeks leading up to the event (hence why i've been quiet on here!) getting the car ready for the event, as it's a huge effort for all involved to just be there, let alone 6 hours of racing.
then i came down with a horrible head cold on the friday before the event, that's still with my as i write this on the following tuesday................... made it interesting to say the least.
the race has 50 teams competing (yep, 50 cars on the track all day. it was crazy out there, i can tell ya!) and briefly, our team had 5 drivers and 4 cars (1 car was shared between 2 drivers). 1 car died on saturday in qualifying, so we started with only 3 cars. we qualified 38th due to some slower qualifying times set by a couple of guys in our team. 10am sees the start, and i started the race, was up to 15th in the 1st hour, and 10th at hour 2. one of the other guys then got a small lap penalty, dropping us to 20th. then our 3rd car died, leaving myself and 1 other car to do the second half of the race. we climbed back to 16th, only to be pipped in the last half an hour when my car had the needle and seat in the carb jam open, flooding it and requiring a quick fix. our goal for the race was to beat the other team our club entered (good ole inter-team rivalry!), and a top 20 would be a bonus. when we found out we finished 18th, and our rival team was 44th, we were extremely happy with the result, as none of us had done this event before, alot of more fancied teams finished behind us, and with only 2 cars finishing, the poor bloody things got a flogging all day but they survived. by the time the 4pm finish rolled around, i was more worn out than the car!
ohh, BTW, it only had number 24B on it due to it being allocated by the race organisers, meaning number 17 had to be covered for the race.
enjoy!
