Yesterday Tom and I took the car out and it is running great! There were no overheating issues proving Tom's recent modifications to be successful. During this past week Tom installed an oil cooler and moved the oil filter farther from the engine to reduce the oil temperature. He also has the timing set perfectly (not an easy engine to time) and what a difference in how the engine runs. I brought up 55 gallons of biodiesel this weekend. We have been running the engine on biodiesel for the last several weeks and it is running great. We are having some unexpected cravings for french fries.Yesterday was my first day of driving and what a thrill. Tom gave me some instructions on powering through the corners and we had a blast on some of the winding back roads (very much like the roads we will be racing in Newfoundland).Meg picked up our Triptik for our drive up to Newfoundland. We will be driving through Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and through Nova Scotia where we will catch the ferry in North Sydney NS. We then...

Just heard that Tom was out testing a new series of baffles for his ram air cooling and unfortunately got ticketed by a cop. The car performed well, a little bit too well..

Practice Day - I arrived at 11:00 and Tom was working installing new coolant fittings as one of them gave way yesterday and he needed a tow back to the shop. He was also re-timing the engine (which is no easy job). Tom had finished installing the rally computer and today we were going to do some hands on training. Tom finished the repairs and we headed off to Jrecks to get a sub sandwich before our serious work. The cooling system was working well and then we heard a slight knock in the engine. We pulled over and found that the timing belt was starting to shred. It must have gotten out of alignment when we were re-timing it. We limped home and put the car away for day. Tom needed a break as he is putting in many hours to get the car to racing form. I received the mandatory first aid training this week and we are putting together a list of supplies and spare parts that we will need. We leave one month from today!

Tom and I did our second practice run with the Porsche on the back roads in St Lawrence county. We had very heavy rain so it was good practice for what we will likely run into in Newfoundland. Tom woke up extra early this morning so he could install the 6 to 12 volt converter for the windshield wiper motor. The wipers came in handy today. The windshield defroster is not hooked up yet and we would have rubbed an onion on the windshield if we had one! The car is now running only on biodiesel and the performance seemed excellent. The acceleration all the way up to 70 mph was impressively quick which should be well suited for the winding roads of the Newfoundland coastline. Tom is spending all his spare time working on getting the car to race form. He installed the headlights, directionals, mirrors, tachometer and worked on the insulation of the interior floor before he installs the carpet which should arrive this week. While installing the tachometer under the dashboard his metal watchband came in contact with...

Tom and I took our first practice ride in the Porsche. We put in four gallons of biodiesel put on our helmets and fired up the turbodiesel. Tom took off down his dirt road sliding around the first two corners. The car is a rocket ship. The torque and acceleration is impressive. The car is not street legal yet but we took it our for a quick run down Kring Pt. Rd. We were very please on the acceleration which will be important for the winding roads in Newfoundland. Tom is planning on installing the lights, directionals and mirrors and having it inspected in the next week. In six weeks we will be on our way to Newfoundland.