My First Opel

My first Opel was an Ascona B 2.0L SR Berlina.  Within a month I replaced the original carburettor with a Weber twin choke unit, which gave it more power at full throttle.  This was the start of a hobby which has cost me 10's of thousands of pounds over the years.

By mid 1990, the car had a mildly ported head, Kent OP234 Cam and solid lifters, balanced bottom end with 0.5mm oversize Schmidt pistons, twin Weber 45 DCOE Carburettors and Mangoletsi inlet manifold, competition (2 silencer) exhaust system and tubular exhaust manifold, bias pedal box, 5 Speed Getrag 240 gearbox, ZF plate LSD, 15" alloy wheels with 205/50x15" rubber,a 2.2 turn quick rack and 12" (30cm) steering wheel, 700lb/in (125Kg/cm) front springs, Spax adjustable dampers all round, and the car was lowered about 1" (2.5cm).

I got my first Opel in early 1989, it In mid 1990 I was persuaded, by a friend and colleague, Alastair Crawford, to get a competition licence and start competing.  So I fitted a 3 point clubmans harness, a 1.5L engine breather bottle (plastic coke bottle), necessary to make the car eligible to compete in the Road Going Modified Saloon Car Class, and brought myself a full face racing helmet.

My first hill climb was at Wiscombe Park, in Devon.  At this event I found out what Terminal Under Steer was, while trying to drive around the fist hairpin.  In the picture opposite, the car is going straight on in the direction it is facing, yes, even with all that lock.  Fortunately, I lifted off the accelerator before the car piled into a stone wall, which is just out of the picture on the right.

My first sprint was at Aintree Racecourse, near Liverpool.  Here I learned that taking the correct racing line into corners is really important, and that traction on damp grass is similar to to that on ice.  I came into the sweeping corner before Railway Straight at about 80MPH (128Km/h).  I had turned in way too early and so apexed too early,  I put on more lock to keep the car on the inside of the corner, which was too much for the tyres and the car started to drift outwards.  On reaching the outside of the track, still sliding and still at full throttle (oops!), I slid onto the grass outfield and span uncontrollably for about 150m, finally coming to a stop about a cars length from the bottom of the railway embankment.

I continued competing in this car at clubmans level until March 1992, when I wrote the car off.  While travelling to work early one morning, I span out of control after exiting a roundabout and literally wrapped the car around a lamp post.  No excuses, I was pushing too hard in poor weather conditions, when the car started an LSD induced tail wag.  After about 75m of this I lifted off the accelerator,  a bit too quickly unfortunately, causing the the LSD to unlocked (I think!), and I found myself spinning across the road into the path of a stationary lamp post.

The lamp post came through the passenger side of the car behind the front wheel, until it hit the engine.  As you can imagine, the shell was a right off, in fact we couldn't find a single panel which was not damaged, even all four doors and the boot lid were bent out of shape. Luckily, I didn't have a passenger and I stepped out unhurt except for a small cut on my little finger.

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Last updated: Tuesday, 03 December 2002.