Obviously in the wake of that disaster there was a fast moratorium carried out, and my investigations quickly narrowed in the direction of the diff as most likely candidate.

Sure enough, it takes only the most basic check to discover that the power lock has leaked all the lock away, the wheels can be operated independently at a much reduced pressure, and there are lumps and tight spots in it. Removing the propshaft and the diff drops oil all over my face, and that’s not right at all. In short, it’s cream crackered. Broken, bust, screwed, kippered.

It also appears that a wheel bearing may have been on the way out. They shouldn’t be purple.

This prompts much celebrating. I know, woohoo, my diff’s broken and my wheel was trying to fall off. But finding a reason for the woeful display on Sunday is a great relief. Better that than the alternative, which was that the driver can’t.

It does mean that for the second year in a row I’ve won D class at Mallory with a rear end that simply would not behave itself.

In a moment that causes me to smirk a little bit it does dawn on me that we managed a class win without a powerlock diff. Makes me feel a bit better. It’s another one to check off the list of car ailments that have failed to defeat us, we add it to the race win on 4 cylinders, the class win with a blown head gasket, or failed brakes, or bald tyres. It's a pure driver ego thing, fooling yourself that you can drive round any problem. We have to keep the ego inflated or performance drops off, it’s every bit as critical as tyre pressures.

Oddly it’s the Bear who finds it especially funny, but he knows how dire he felt the car was when it was working, his little brain has extrapolated what it would have been like when broken, and that nobody overtook it has him giggling as if he had found an unguarded picnic basket.

The part that upsets me, other than that I didn’t get to go play at the front last race, is that I spent all that time changing the diff and rebuilding the subframe over the winter, and it turns out to have been a bloody dud.

Fortunately, I have another diff lying about. A check for functionality, and Helen drops her subframe to let me play with her internals. I don’t know much about the horrors of the inside of a diff, but I can bolt in the whole thing from another car, that’s easy. Settings and shims are very confusing, but point at a subframe, tell me yank the whole diff casing and replace it with another, that I can do. Mungo like big piece of metal. Mungo hit with hammer.

The donor is Angelina’s old diff. Yes, the one we took out over the winter as we’d assumed it was tired. Once we discovered that the subframe was smashed up though, it became questionable whether she was actually bust or not. I think not. So we’ll put her back in. I can always swap it again after we’ve been back to Mallory.

Dismantling the subframe, and there are two broken cross bolts. This ought to be impossible, they were in well, lockwired up, and the entire subframe has been beefed up. How the hell can the diff have moved to break them? Well, it has, so we need to do yet more to prevent this. How do you more securely bolt the diff to the subframe? A solution presents itself as a longer-term solution, we will have to make a mark 3 subframe. In addition to the U bolt that the Bear fits to his diff, I have the old inboard calliper mounts that are going unused. It should be simple enough to weld brackets to that enormous bottom plate that bolt direct to those. That should hold it in very well, and offer 4 more bolts, widely-spread, to take some of the load.

I have said it before, but if I can break them, anyone can.

With that done the subframe is swiftly reassembled and installed, and Helen gets refuelled, re-armed, and she’s heading back to Mallory to find out how fast she is meant to be really. I can’t believe I’m going back, willingly. I swore I’d never return to this godawful hole, but I have to know.