My brother was the first to start competing in cars in our family, he started with an 8 valve Astra GTE and progressed onto 16 valve 2 litre engines. To get a bit more poke from these he used kits supplied by SBD and had quite a bit of success but he stopped racing quite a few years ago to start a family.

I then decided it was my turn and bought a 1.6K series Rover powered Caterham and did a year of learning the ropes and hillclimbing with my girlfriend Jenny.

After a year of many top 3 places but no class wins (Jenny won the ladies Harewood championship) I was thinking about having a bit more power and did some research into who could do what with the K series Rover, and nobody could give me any firm figures or prices so I was getting despondent.

Then I saw a Caterham with a 1.6 16valve Vauxhall engine in Car and Car Conversions magazine and rung up SBD whose details were printed with the article, and they gave me a price list with performance figures for each kit, just what I was looking for.

I had many class wins and came first in class and 6th overall out of 70+ championship contenders in the Autotrader Harewood hillclimb championship. Jenny won the ladies championship by a huge margin for the second year running.

During the last run of the last meeting of the year, the differential bolts sheared and the casing shattered which was a stroke of luck happening when it did, and I beleive a testemant to the power that the engine puts out. For our second year of competition I don't think we could have asked for any more. Overall we're very happy with the engine which suits the Caterham very well, and are looking forward to many years of trouble free competition.