Engine leaves Little livid

IT takes a lot to get Masterton truck racer Malcolm Little down. He has the amazing ability to absorb setbacks and come back even stronger. But after a third blown engine at the weekend's final round of the New Zealand Supertruck championship at Manfeild he was stunned.
He bought the state-of-the-art Cummins diesel from the States as a fully-developed race engine and quite reasonably regarded this would be the season he claimed the New Zealand crown. The engine has huge horsepower and looked like a winner, until it started failing, even when it wasn't working hard.
If anyone knows diesel engines, it's Malcolm Little. The former Tranzit engineer and now business-man developed an earlier-model Cummins into a very potent piece of machinery and then, with the help of long-term sponsor Alan Griffin, of West Bush deer stud, repowered the Freightliner Century with his secret weapon. Since then there has been little to smile about. The most recent was in Timaru in January, when the engine died while cruising to the finish after qualifying 3s faster than anyone else on the track and then blowing them all away at the start of the first race.
"It was absolute Sunday driving," Little said then. "I had backed off, down to about half power, because I didn't want to be penalised too much in the reverse grid race later.
"We were on the last lap, and there was this rattle, rattle, rattle from the engine."
At that meeting Little protege Ashley Hey, a member of his service crew and rookie driver in his own right, gave Little the use of his Detroit-powered International, just so he could get some points. The extraordinarily-generous offer was rewarded by Little installing his old Cummins ? more powerful than the Detroit ? in Hey's race truck for Manfeild. Little also rebuilt his own late-model engine for the season finale. On Friday, during practice, the new Cummins let go again, in spectacular fashion. It blew out both sides of the block ? observers said afterwards you could see right through the engine. Engine parts littered the track.
"It was gut-wrenching," a sombre Little said on Sunday, holding a $20,000 souvenir of the final of the supertruck series.
"Each time it happens we make major alterations, looking for solutions, and each time we come up short. The engine is a brilliant base ? it's got all the modern stuff ? but we've got to revamp the pistons and rods."
Just to add to the misery, Hey's "new" engine melted a piston, putting him out for the weekend.
"It's heaps better than the Detroit," he said later, "but it was smoking a lot and I guess that was a warning." Hey had qualified 5th, an effort that impressed Little. Ash can drive, there's no doubt about that," he said.
Now it's back to the workshop for both men, in preparation for, hopefully, better times next season.