He said that his car on the track was very well behaved but when he gave me the spring rates he used I thought he was having me on.

I was busy with Targa and recovering from putting my fingers and thumb in a 928 radiator fan (believe me its not recommended) I didn't take his comments seriously .. until recently. There are some general rules of thumb and guidelines with spring rates that have evolved by trial and error over the years. These settings meant the rule book had to be thrown away and logic suspended to try them.

Anyway we gradually worked in small steps towards the Kiwis advise and the last race meeting was the first chance I had to try them out in race conditions. I didn't get a chance to fit good rubber, or replace the badly worn brake pads and had no testing time in the car at all.

Qualifying on the track was frustrating to say the least. Somehow the rev limiter had slipped while the car was stored (the spring had stretched in the distributor) and kept cutting in at 5900rpm. The engine felt down on power and as a result I was having to short change about 1000rpm early. Even so and much to my surprise the 928's handling with the new setup felt really good.

To say I was TOTALLY GOB SMACKED when I picked up my lap times from race control is the understatement of the year. 

The race organisers had put my category, 'Historic Production Sports Cars' in with the Group N cars (historic touring cars). We were mixed in with the very quick XU1s, Camaros, Falcon GT's and Mini Cooper S etc. On practice times I placed 3rd with a quickest lap of 70.24 seconds behind two seriously modified and very very quick Torana XU1s and in front of a very quick 5.7ltr Camaro.

My time was 2.3 seconds quicker than the car had ever gone.

At this point it certainly looked as though I could break my lap record in the race for Group S cars. The first race I started third on the grid but four seconds and eleven grid places in front of the next Group S car a very quick Alfa GTV driven by Nick Rhihimtulla. In race traffic I managed a fourth with the Camaro deciding to find a couple of seconds a lap, leaving me for dead on the straights and doing a best lap of 70.44 seconds setting a new Group S lap record.

Race two was a handicap race but still managed to lower the lap record to 70.18 seconds. Struggling to find power, in race three the car started to miss badly (928s do not like sitting in a shed for 6 months) and would not rev over 4500rpm. I brought it in after the first lap and parked it.

We discovered that the coil and ignition system were breaking down as well as the rev limiter. The lack of spark was causing the reduction in power. We have fixed the problem and will race again at the end of August if we can (as we hope to) get another full second plus on the track.

We will build a race motor for the car (it currently has a stock standard 4.5ltr 10:1 compression ratio in it at the moment) and prepare the car for a campaign on the East Coast next year in group S historic production sports car races. 

If our lap times are reproduced on the Eastern states tracks the car will be a front running car Nationally.

All the best and I've still got a very stupid grin on my face - Glyn Crimp

We had our most successful result since 2000. The car finished 19th outright in a field of about 130 and was the 3rd standard specification car in the results.

We also won our class and category. It was a surprising finish as the car developed a miss that kept dropping down the rev range by the last day we started with only 4200rpm down from 5200rpm on day 4. We suspected the problem was a faulty ballast resistor in the ignition system but won't know until the problem is checked out. I'm convinced that this car is a potential top 10 finisher.

This was the wettest targa ever and was the rain was torrential at times reducing visibility to 50 meters but the car handled the conditions with ease.

At the end of every day we watched drivers and navigators exhausted with the effort of driving in difficult and dangerous conditions while we went and had a shower ate and slept. The car required no oil or maintenance and was the easiest car to drive quickly in the event. We were consistently placed well up towards the top of the fastest cars on many stages.

Ian Rapier from Melbourne entered a 928S but was struggling with gearbox problems during the event. - Glyn Crimp

The car is a 1980 928S manual prepared to Targa standard specification. It has won its class over the last three years. The wet photo (above left) is from the 2000 event and was taken during the climb out of Queenstown in the famous 99 bends section of the uphill bit of the stage. The dry photo also taken in 2000 and is from the hugely popular town stage of Longford.

It's estimated that at least ten thousand people cram the streets to watch this stage.

Glyn Crimp

The wet raining shot we finished 14th outright (in '00). The other shot is this year 2002. We had alternator problems and missed several stages but still won our class. The 2000 photo was taken on the Rianna stage and the '02 photo on the Natone stage. Both of these stages are on the 4th day.

I finished with a category and class win outright and a handicap win in class in Adelaide. I'm also racing a 1978 928 in group SC historic meetings around the country.

We are gradually improving that car and it is slowly moving up the field. For example we finished 24th at Wakefield Park last year and if our LSD and clutch had held up and we had actually started in the last meeting based on the four or five practice laps I did we would have finished 5th or 6th.

We finished 10th at Sandown in a very strong field earlier in November. This car also holds the lap record for Group Sc over 3000cc at Wakefield, Eastern Creek, Oran Park short course and the outright group S lap record at Barbagello Raceway.

We just missed the lap record at Sandown as the cars clutch and LSD were starting to fail and a Pantera just pipped us. - Glyn Crimp.

It was extremely hot conditions and as a result I only finished the shorter handicap race with a second place. The car was finding the conditions very hot and I could only get six or seven laps on the short course before it overheated, forcing me to pull off the track.

Even so we managed to do a 53.812 seconds breaking my class record for the category. The car races as a group Sc historic which means standard brakes, standard suspension and bushes but bush material can be changed. Anti roll bars are free but you cant use roller bearings or rose joints. Internal modifications are free in the engine and gearbox but the motor cant be stroked or bored past 1.5mm over standard. Standard heads must be used as must the standard carby or injection system.

Does anyone know where I can source performance cams for the 1978 model? The heads, standard flow over 400hp and to try and get the benefit from them we need cams that can extract some of this power. - Glyn Crimp