User talk:B1ackcr0w

Hillclimbing

Hello... I see you made a couple of very useful additions to hillclimbing articles (though I'm not sure why you marked the Gurston one as "minor", which it wasn't). I don't know if you're still around on Wikipedia, but if so: do you know what the current status is with regards to Graeme Wight Jr and his GWR Predator? He seems to have dropped off the map completely in 2006. Loganberry (Talk) 14:52, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

--b1ackcr0w 13:37, 25 July 2006 (UTC)Hi,

Thanks for that :)

The Predator is somewhat in limbo at the moment. Over the Winter of 2005/6, there were lots of snippets of information surrounding Graeme and the car. Most of them suggested that the Engine had suffered a serious problem on the Dyno after a rebuild. There also appears to have been a deterioration in the relationship between him and Pride Engines. The facts of the matter are difficult to distil from the rumour borne of personal motivations, and therefore not a good subject for entering on the Wiki.

The last I heard, The Engine had been taken to Judd Engineering for remedial work. As a purely personal point of view, I feel that it's becoming evident that the F1 V10 may have been a mistake. It's design was so specific to it's original purpose, that there were was no latitude for engineering it for a different application. I really, really hope I'm talking nonesense here, because not only was it one of the most wonderful noises ever heard, Graeme is also a friend and a competitor I respect hugely.

BC

Thank you; most enlightening! I have to agree with you about the noise, even if I've only got to hear the thing running properly once or twice. I'd love to see the Predator back on the hills, and fully competitive, but I do have to wonder. After all, as you say F1 engines are such specialist things - I don't think it's only because of Graham Hickman's dreadful accident (which I had the misfortune to see at close range; how much worse it must have been for those close to him) that as far as I know we haven't seen modern-ish F1 cars competing since. Loganberry (Talk) 18:40, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the update regarding the V6 etc! I'll tweak the article slightly as it's just tilting a bit too much towards journalism rather than encyclopedia now, but the basic information is very valuable and will certainly be retained. Loganberry (Talk) 00:24, 3 November 2006 (UTC)