Q20 Oil Racing

Afghan Dans welcome home present

2012-01-22T21:41:00.001Z

Our faithful gimp Dan has been sorely missed since he buggered off to Afghanistan, but he is pulling all the stops out to make it for the first race of the season as he makes a fleeting visit before going off to Canada!! He will also be around for the meeting at Donington the end of June which also hopefully means he will about for one more race towards the end of the season. With that in mind we thought we had better make him a decent kitchen for him to knock up the food and wash all the plates up, lol!!!

The sink, hob and water heater all came from the old caravan, we also had cupboard doors and draws but they just looked a bit too scruffy, so a trip down B&Q found these along with the thin 28mm work surface for a very reasonable price. One thing we're concerned about is that the body of the bus obviously flex's, if you look at the rear doors as you drive along you can see them sliding up and down each other as the body rocks from side to side. If the body was to do that with the kitchen unit fixed to the sides and floor it would undoubtedly lead to the kitchen being ripped apart, so the idea was to hand everything from the side of the bus, with the end panels only resting on the floor. Ok it can still be compressed as the bus flex's in one direction, but the chipboard is a lot stronger in compression than in tensile loads through the screws.

Anyway this is how it has progressed over the past couple of weeks. There are a few finishing off bits to do, then get everything connected.

Creature Comfort???

2012-01-02T22:09:00.000Z

One of the biggest pains in the paddock is the lack of hot water in the bus, so next up is the kitchen. We mainly live on BBQ's, slow cooker meals and bacon sarnys during a race weekend, so although we have an oven and a grill ready to fit, we decided that we should only fit what we will actually use, so the kitchen unit will house a hob, sink (with hot water), fridge (3way) and a microwave. This area will also be the control center of the bus, housing the gas bottle, water heater and electricity/charging unit.

A rough layout of the 3 main items,based on where the main box section structure of the bus is allowing holes to be cut through the skin without hitting any of these:-

It was pretty scarey attacking the body of the bus with an angle grinder, creating large holes!!

The holes where squared up after the initial attack.....

Water heater fitted, internal view

Water heater fitted external view, oh and a whacking great hole for the gas bottle access door. As we are tight on space we decided to go for the smallest bottle, a 4.5kg butane item, but will ensure the pipe is long enough to allow us to use a larger bottle on the floor outside the bus if we run out while away for the weekend and no one has a small bottle available locally.

The nasty 80's caravan thetford toilet door taken at the same time as the cushions:-

And now painted and the panel cut out from the bus side inserted in place of the beige panel above. Must admit we are very happy with how this came out!!

I think there is some kind of law that says the gas bottle must be completely sealed from the inside of the vehicle (or in a separate external box), weather this is true or not i thought it was best for our own safety, especially after smelling Bobs leak from his gas bottle in the motorhome last year. I was initially going to make a mold from MDF and cast a GRP box from it, but decided to make an the MDF box and cover it internally in GRP to ensure it was airtight.

Yet again it has turned out immensely over engineered, but i actually think that if the gas bottle exploded the box would stay intact!!! A bit like a flight recorder in reverse.......

Gas box fitted above the water heater:-

Gas bottle in the "blast chamber"

The Cat Flap

2012-01-02T21:22:00.000Z

With the rear beds made, it was time to close off the beds from the the back door and also the top bunk from the storage space accessed through the upper rear door. The upper bunk just needed a bulkhead adding which was simply done by an MDF panel covered in carpet. The lower bunks needed a door that could be folded up out of the way for transport and we also had an idea that it could double up as a roof for the tool kit during the inevitable RGB race meeting rain if it folded outside the bus. And so the catflap was born. Simply a piece of 1/8" ply with an edging strip:-

Covered on one side in 2 layers of 300gsm GRP to stiffen it up and make it water proof:-

Sprayed black and the opposite side (internal) covered in carpet, various bathroom door latches to hold it in its 3 different positions and 2 rather funky hinges made from 4 gate post hinges that positions the pivot point to allow the desired degrees of rotation.

Then mounted to the underside of the upper bunk. The rather blurry picture below shows the upper bulkhead fitted and the Cat flap in the "sleeping mode!

This picture shows the cat flap in the "keep the bloody rain off the tools mode". 2 bathroom door latches go into the back doors to hold it up, plus 2 sandwich type ears that stop the doors from opening up and the roof dropping. Its hard to explain, but once its all latched in its very very secure and even an Anglesey style storm shouldn't bother it.

Bus Beds

2011-11-30T13:35:00.000Z

Over the winter i intend to get the bus a bit closer to completion. First job was to finish the fold out side seats/bed so that they both lock up in position during transport, rather than using rope. With that complete the rear double lower bunk could be made. This locks into postion ontop of the side seats when travelling, allowing the car to fit underneath, and lots of storage space for the journey. For some reason i forgot to take a pictuure of them in the transport position, but i'll get some next time. The bed/shelf has turned out pretty heavy and massively over engineered, but it will at least stand up to all the paddock kids jumping on it!

Birkett 6hr Relay 2011

2011-11-30T13:11:00.000Z

Long delay in updating again, sorry!! In essence it was a great day and we one class A on scratch and were awarded a trophy for our efforts, unfortunetly this was an error as the award should have gone to class winner on handicap!! Anyway, we get to keep our trophy which i now one of the rarest trophies in motorsport.

I will endevour to write a full report when i find the time, but a pending house sale and work make finding this time pretty tricky!! Watch this space.....

Cadwell Park - 8th & 9th October

2011-11-07T23:10:00.001Z

The last 2 races of the season were originally scheduled for Donington, but due to the continuing shambles at the place, they had overbooked the amount of noisy days for the year (dont start me on the subject regarding noise at a venue next door to an airport!!), luckily the 750MC are a lot more organised than this and had a back up plan in lace for us all to visit Cadwell! Cadwell is great fun, although my previous 2 visit were marred with mechanical issues, i was really looking forward to it. The championship was still to be decided with Al and Paul taking it down to the last weekend to fight it out, infact all down the field there were positions to be grabbed, and a slip up from Al or Paul would also bring Derek and John back into the running for the overall championship. I had already guaranteed 3rd in class F but was neck and neck with Matt Green in 5th place overall. I had said at the start of the year if ii managed 35rd in class and 6th oerall i would over the moon, so i was seriously up for trying to grab the no5 on my car next season. So much so i decided not to run allcomers incase i binned it (plus was worried i'd miss the Birkett if i had a big one).

Due to MOT issues and getting the bus plated as a HGV we had to rent a trailer and camp!! The lack of bus really took the edge of my excitement for the weekend as i wasn't relishing a damp, cold and wet weekend under canvas. The journey to Cadwell didnt go too well either, a dropped jockey wheel on the trailer, shortly followed by getting flashed by a speed camera, and within another 5 miles a fully grown deer decided to jump out infront of us! I had no time to brake or swerve, luckily (for the discovery) the deer timed her run to miss the car but make the space between the car and trailer, unfortunetly for the deer the corner of the trailer hit it, followed by my dads mountain bike, then the wheel arches and finally a side light.

Qualifying was dry but i spent most of the session trying to familiarise myself with the circuit again, especially as i'd never driven it with the R1 install. I qualified 12th in both races, a bit lower than i would have hoped for, especially being so far behind Al and Derek. Matt is in Class R so not a direct fight with him, but as i was 2 points infront of him with the dropped points taken into account, i just needed to finish in the same position in class as he did. Looking at the grid that meant i needed to try and get 3rd in both races, assuming both Paul and John finished ahead in class R to put matt 3rd. It meant i needed to pull my socks up for the race and make few spots up if i wanted to get the 5th place overall.

In usual RGB style it rained before the race, and watching the races before it was obvious it was very slippy in places. The only good thing (for me anyway) was that Lee decided not to race due to the weather which not only meant i had 1 less class F car to beat, it meant i had a spot ahead of me for the start. Cadwell is very tight and a good start is important, so a clear track ahead is a big advantage. As it turns out i got a flying start, with an exciting first 2 corners alongside Gary in his contour, i got ahead of him and had gone from 12th to 6th by the end of Charlies!! Tim Pell then scuppered my flyer by spinning on the first lap and causing a red flag. Fortunately the restart went just aswell and i was 6th again heading down park straight, and this is how it ended, very uneventful,I had space infront and behind me and concentrated on finishing in the pretty horrid conditions without incident. So i finished 6th, and felt very pleased with my drive, my best finish to date and got my name in the results in Autosport :-)

Race 1 video didnt work apart from the forst start, plus i included a small "moment" where i tried to hold it flat(ish) around coppice!

A great evening was then spent in the paddock with the usual suspects and guests, drinking free beer from the remains of the BBQ and Tshirt sales early on in the season, Bobs tasty and extremely dry (like his humor) home brew cider and scoffing Bobs home cooked curry. The following morning wasn't so great, not due to a bad head, but i was producing some "violent" smells, making car prepping and cooking breakfast rather dangerous for the rest of the team.

I didnt have the clear track ahead of me in race 2 so didn't manage such a good start, although i did make up a couple of places and nipped wround Tim as he decided to go on a small sideways adventure up coppice. Tim soon had his spot back going down park straight. I left the door wide open for him coming into Park but was confident i'd get a shot at him within the next few corners, but as it turned out he managed to get past Dave pretty quickily and i then spent the rest of the race trying to get past him, with James close behind me. I was quicker than David in the first half of the circuit but he had me on the second half so the gap was constantly changing. My best place for overtaking him was coming down park straight into the Park and chris curve, but as you can see from the video i just could keep with him down the straight, especially coming up the hill. I had noticed on several occasions that my gear indicator was showing 4th instead of 6th coming up the hill, i put this down to to wheelspin, but looking back at the video, the way Dave pulled away, and a small amount of clutch slip on the last lap i think the clutch was starting to slip slightly. On the last lap Dave ran wide at the top of the goose neck, but rather than keep my toe down and try and get past him, i was uncertain (and i guess he was too) how and where he was going to re-enter the track, so i backed off a tad to ensure we didn't collide. He actually came back on under control and we probably would have been safe, but it just wasn't worth risking a collision.

Race 2 video

Pembrey - 24-25/09/11

2011-10-02T23:55:00.001+01:00

I was looking forward to the full weekends racing at Pembrey. I like the circuit itself, as much as i detest the truly awful facilities. The track has a great technical section, a proper balls out section and for a change some interesting left hand corners. The facilities have the most godawful shower block consisting of 2 showers that struggle to spit luke warm water at the wall, which in turn you have to splash onto yourself (the noise of the guy in the shower next to me doing this on saturday morning made me question the activity that was going on!!), and just to make it worse there are 3 stinking traps in the same room that tramps would find too disgusting to use. Imagine taking a shower in the Trainspotting bathroom and you are nearly there.............

The weekend started well with an incident free first testing session, recording a 1.02.82. The car felt very good and nicely planted. I really feel like the car has reached a point now where I have actually improved it and can exploit the power. Yes i can still make improvements and tweeks, but i know the car is now faster than me and i can gain more by tweeking myself (but not like the guy in the shower next to me on saturday morning!!). The 2nd session wasn't so great, coming out of the first corner, a tight righthand hairpin, i lost all drive and the car came to a halt on the side of the track. I sat there for a few seconds going through the gears trying to work out what had broken, was it the clutch, gearbox, prop, diff or half shaft?? While standing on the side waiting for the recovery truck (sorry for closing the session everyone) i'd decided it wasn't engine side as i could hear the prop spinning around in the tunnel, it wasn't the prop as the prop was spinning and not flapping and removing my legs and the car was sitting on all 4 wheels, so i was convinced the diff had gone and that was the end of the weekend. On the tow back to the pits there was a lot of dragging noises and the car started bobbing up and down on the left hand rear corner, until there was a clunk and the car dropped down on that corner. At this point i actually felt relief as i then suspected a broken half shaft, which after jacking the car up was proven to be the fault.

Other than the broken halfshaft and a bent brake caliper bracket there seemed to be no other damage, so whilts dad set about removing the broken shaft from the casing, i started to ring around to find a replacement. Now if there is one place on the planet where finding escort mkII spares on the shelf or in someones garage, Wales and its rallying scene is probably the place you want to be. Within 30 minutes i had the required parts set aside at Peter Lloyd Rallying and set off with Gavin (thanks!!) to pick them up. By the time i had the parts (expensive uprated Tran X items) in my hands i had 2 other offers (which were much cheaper, but 2nd hand standard items). Dad had removed the old shaft and straightened the bent caliper bracket and was waiting to fit the new shafts by the time i returned. The shaft was obviously machined to use a slightly narrower bearing, so once fitted the hub and disc sat about 4mm further out than the standard item, this meant that the brake caliper fouled the disc. Dan B had seen exactly the same issue when he fitted the Tran-X items a few months ago. A few washers to space the caliper out cured this problem and the car was good to go.

Qualifying was damp and very busy, i was caught in a gaggle of cars and found i couldnt get a clear lap, so ended up wasting laps backing off to give myself the chance of a big enough gap to have a good go at a lap. I qualified 11th but more disappointingly 2 seconds of where i wanted to be. A sterling performance from Ben in his lonely 919 powered westy saw him out qualify many of us in our more modern 1000cc class F screamers.

The race was wet, extremely wet! I'd go to say probably the worst conditions i have raced in so far. The first corner at Pembrey is pretty tricky in the dry, slow, tight and narrow, and i wasn't really looking forward to it in these conditions. Upon the red lights going out my concerns were confirmed, visibility was null, grip wasn't much better and Bens early exit onto the grass, which was actually caused by the rain drop obscured car of Matts in my video, did little to build the confidence!!! But somehow we all made it round without incident, infact there was very little contact or spinning during the entire race, which is a credit to all the RGB drivers. After the tentative first corner i then proceeded to miss a gear, well changed the wrong way down the box instead of u,p coming out of the 2nd corner which allowed James to sneak up the outside of me. For the next few laps i tiptoed around and dropped back slightly from James, the visibility was terrible, but infact grip was a lot higher than the conditions suggested. My confidence grew and i caught back up to James, who was driving and sliding his car around like i have never seen him do before (well done James!), I noticed that James was braking far to early for the first corner, so after a couple of laps i ensured i was positioned tom ake a move on him coming down into it. It all got a bit close and bit skiddy, but i managed to sneak by. I then set about catching up with Lee, whose car looked a bit lively at the rear, and coming into the first corner again he ran ride and i snuck up the inside. For the next couple of laps i managed to pull a slight lead on Lee and felt comfortable enough to slow it down a tad on the last lap to ensure i didn't over run on the 2 tight corners and throw away the position. This meant that coming into Honda Lee was fairly close but i knew i'd be able to defend the line and hold him off, that was until i spotted a back marker who i had to go inside coming into Honda, Lee backed off allowing him to get a good run out of Honda where i had tiptoe out off, i saw him flying up the inside of me, but i managed just to keep a nose ahead of him as we crossed the line 0.1 seconds apart. So i finished 4th in class, and had a very eventful race, great fun, tinged with terror, or should that be terror tinged with fun???

Sunday was a late race, so a very pleasent evening was spent with members of our Birkett team (Rabid RGB) eating chilli, rice and snacks, washed down with plenty of beer, followed by a trip to the paddock bar and more beer. The evening was bought to a close by the miserable circuit owner kicking us out of the bar, shortly followed by a covert mission to "redesign" a certain trucks livery, which was unfortunately thwarted by a local troll...........

Sunday morning weather was dry, as was the shower block, so after a cold water wash in the Transpotting toilet we proceeded to kill 7 hours by what ever means we could. There are only so many things you can check on the car, so after a mid day meat fest BBQ we were all packed up and ready to leave after the race.

Amazingly the race was dry, even though showers had been forcast. My grid position was 1 better than before and i managed a decent start. There was an altercation at the first corner between John C and one the 3 bikesports that had been chucked in with us as there pathetic numbers meant they couldn't have there own "race". The word race and bikesports don't go together in my mind as there never is one!! The rest of us made it round fairly unscathed, and within all this i had done rather well and was directly behind Al, Derek and Tim G. For the next few frantic laps i really felt as if i was part of the class F front runners. It was manic, and i honestly didnt know how i would keep it up for another 15 minutes. I managed to get past Al as he out braked himself going into the first corner, but he managed to get the place back again on the following lap. Al then managed to get past Matt who was in the middle of the class F pack, and i had to back off going into the kink before Honda as i couldn't make it past Matt too. I then had a rather large sideways moment at the left hander and dropped back and then Lee came past me like a scolded cat on the start finish line. For the most of the rest of the race i had Tim H in my mirrors, who sat patiently waiting for my inevitable mistake, which capitalised on and came past. I had noticed during all of this that Derek and Lee had dropped out so was 3rd in class so the sensible thing to do was just to pootle round for the last few laps and take the points, but the competitive side of me would allow that and i wanted to have a go at Tim, but then the car started missing, initially i thought it was fuel surge, but it became obvious it was dropping a cylinder as i headed down the start finish straight. The last lap board came out so idecided to try and limp the car home to get the points. I lost another spot to Tony on the last corner, but as he was in class R it meant i finished 3rd and didn't lose any points.

At the presentations i was awarded 3rd and 2nd as Tim G was apparently invisible as he never actually entered the championship this year. So it was a bit of a fraudulent 2nd and 3rd but i'll take the points thankyou which guarantees 3rd inn class for the year, wahooo!! This leaves the overall points table for the last race of the year very interesting, Paul and Al are both in the runnings for 1st overall, but any slip up can be capitilised on by Derek or John behind them. Matt is 3 points ahead of me in 5th, but when you take away the 2 worst results i am actually in 5th overall (only by 4 points). In the early part of the season i said i'd be over the moon if i could manage 3rd in class and 6th overall, so if i can manage 5th i'll have to get extra drunk at the awards evening!!

The official gimp/slave, Dan was back from Afghanistan and made a welcome return to the Q20 camp, so not only provided great company, but also lots and lots of pictures again!! Thanks Dan!

Silverstone - 27/08/2011

2011-08-29T21:25:00.001+01:00

Time, money and work meant no testing this weekend, but it turned out to be a good decision as the test day was sopping wet and there were lots of red flags and some big offs, including one of our newer recruits Steve M in his red MNR. Unfortunately Steve spent 36hrs in hospital, but has no posted he is fine other than bruises and stiffness and will be back soon.

Friday evening was enjoyable as Paul and Della put on some drinks and nibbles in aid of their 25th wedding anniversary, which seems confusing as looking at them i'm sure they must have been married off in some arranged nuptials by their parents in their early teens, maybe its a strange Norfolk tradition ;-)
The sensibly timed walk back to the bus to get a reasonably early night with not too much beer consumed ready for the early start got sabotaged by Dave Watson and crew in their MNR gazebo, where i ended up being "force fed" Carlsberg until the early hours. At least i fell asleep quickly when i crawled into my bunk........

As usual the adrenalin of a race weekend meant i woke as fresh(ish) as a daisy on saturday morning and got myself and the car already for qualifying at 9.40. Qualifying was damp, with the final 2 laps suddenly drying out, although there were still some tricky little wet patches, especially around Woodcote. Woodcote is a nothing bend in a RGB car in the dry, but in the wet its nasty. You accelerate all the way through it from Luffield, in the dry fine, but when its wet the car is constantly trying to spin up the back wheels as you approach it and as you hit the apex the back can step out very easily and very quickly. This is where Steve had his incident on Friday, and demand serious respect in wet conditions. I qualified 3rd in class and 10th overall, but more importantly not far behind Al, although Derek had pulled out a good distance on both of us.

The day stayed dry up until the race before RGB, when it absolutely poured down. RGB and silverstone means wet, very wet, for the past 3 years (sice i started) it has rained everytime we have been there, including the birkett, and usually just before the RGB race. I softened off the suspension by 3 clicks all round and we all waited until the last minute to go to the holding area, not wanting to sit in the tropical storm. The track was soaked, puddles and standing water everywhere, so we got a green flag lap so we could all at least see how bad it was. It was terrible, there was no grip anywhere, and viability in the spray was horrific. The only good thing was that i do always seem to do OK in the damp, so i was quite looking forward to getting off the line. The start went well, i got a good start with not too much wheel spin and managed to make up a couple of places, including getting passed Al, but soon lost out to him at maggots where Tim P spun infront of me, leaving me no where to go, i tried to go inside but the car wouldn't turn due to lack of grip, i tried to go to the left of him but he was still travelling that way, so ended up just hitting the anchors and praying we didn't collide, luckily we didn't and i managed to turn in, but this allowed Al past. On the next lap Derek and Paul came together at the front, moving me up to 2nd, and hot on the heels of Al. Al managed to get past Rich wise in the Sabre and for few laps we all grappled for grip trying to find a way past. Derek suddenly appeared in my mirrors and got by me at Luffied, but i wasn't too bothered as i knew it would then mean him and Al holding each other up, something i could hopefully capitalise on, unfortunately a lap later little bit of over excitement on the loud peddle sent me into a long drift and slow motion spin as i came past the pit lane entry. Bugger! I didn't lose a place, but was now too far back to make up a position, and with no one in sight behind me i decided to finish of the race at sensible pace, not risking an off or a loss of points, happy to take 3rd, which i knew would move me above Matt into 5th overall in the championship. And thats how it finished, 3rd in class, 7th overall, and my highest ever finish in RGB. It was a shame i spun and couldn't have kept the pressure on for 2nd in class, but again i feel like i've made a step forward.

I'missing Oulton due to a relatives 90th birthday, but will be back for more at Pembrey, and i promise to keep upto date with the blog now, and even add some development or bus news.

Late update for Snetterton - 30-31/07/2011

2011-08-29T20:43:00.001+01:00

I decided to really go for it t snetterton and do a full days testing on the friday, ready for the double header weekend. The test day went great, a few small tweeks to the the damping and the car felt the best it had ever done, no understeer, no oversteer, just a nice drift that could be altered with a dab of the throttle. I went to bed very happy on the friday, not just to the amount of Stella i consumed in the evening but the fact i had knocked 2.5 seconds off my laptime since last visit!!!!

Some pics of the car with all its new bodywork, some say its ugly, some like it, and some say nothing, but it seems to be doing a job, and personally i think it looks great.

Practice went fine for the first 10 miniutes and i was putting some consistent 1.19.xxxx times in, but then the car started losing power down the Betley straight and i initially thought the engine was seizing (as had Paul Rickers during the test day!!), but after stopping at the end of the straight the car ticked over fine. So i decided to venture out again, i managed about half a lap before the power went again, this time i realised it was fuel starvation, but not when cornering, just when i was on on WOT. When we lifted the bonnet, the high pressure side of the system was still pressurised at 3bar, so i was confident it was something to do with teh low pressure scavenge pump or pipe pipe work. We removed the return pipe from the swirl pot and pumped the fuel through, it seemed pretty poor and the pump was making a strange noise, something i had noticed on the test day to be honest, but just assumed it was a lose nut or bolt vibrating on the internal ali panels. We removed the pump and tried it alongside a spare pump, and sure enough the spare pump floe rate was far better, so we replaced the pump and assumed all was ok. Trouble is i couldn't properly test it until the race as WOT and driving at 100mph around the paddock is frowned upon.

The race started, only to be red flagged on the first lap due to Bobs 45 seconds hell, involving 3 separate collisions (all none of his fault) and resulting in a very badly damaged green and white BDN. I'm happy to say Bob came out virtually unscathed and is already well into the the rebuild. The restart was a little less hectic, but 2 laps in the fuel starvation returned and i had to retire. But on the bright side i had qualified 3rd and 2nd for the races, beating Al for the 2nd race grid position for the first time since the engine upgrades.

Back in the paddock again, a physical check of the glass bowl filter (which visually looked clear when we checked it earlier) showed up that the gauze was almost tota;y blocked, this had caused the first pump to run under serious strain for a period of time, causing it to semi fail, but was also starving the replacement pump. Luckily the pump seemed OK, and a free replacement gauze from Andy got the flow of fuel going again.

Race 2 on sunday went well for me, and i felt that i again improved my driving, staying focused, making far less mistakes and controlling the old red mist. This resulted in my first 2nd in class F, and 10th overall. Ok my 2nd in class was less impressive due to the fact that Paul and Derek not starting due to mechanical issues, but never the less i'll take it!!!

Update at last- Donington 02/07/2011

2011-08-28T22:29:00.002+01:00

OK,OK i've fallen behind a lot!!

So just a quick recap, there has been another double header at snetterton and a single race at Donington. Plus the car has been changed a little bit!!!!! Oh and i lost my phone too, so lost all my photos of the development of the car!

Anyway to summarise, the new front end was tested at a test day at donington. The day didn't go too well due problems with the front brakes seizing, the car over heating due to the new nose and terrible driving by myself!! The only thing we learnt about the new nose was that it caused fantastic front end grip without slowing the car down in a straight line, but the resulting effect of the increased front grip was a rear end that wanted to become the front at every opportunity!! just lifting off the power caused the rear to step out, which resulted in a large spin and visit to the kitty litter at the old hairpin! The cooling issues also meant i could only try 1 hot lap before having to do a slow lap to cool down. We tried to combat this on the day by putting some ducting in from the nose to the radiator and fitting some aluminium to act as a gurrny flap at the rear to try and settle the rear end. This helped a little but not enough to cool the car or increase rear end grip. So we returned home a little miffed and contemplating binning the new nose.

With just under 2 weeks to the donington race we reflected on the results and decided the front end was worth perusing, but we needed to add some rear down force as the car was un-raceable (is that a word??) as it was, and hence the batwings were born (i have no photos of the adjustable "batwings", but the snetterton photos below shows the mkII version with them blended in). You will also notice in the rear picture we cut a lot of the rear bodywork out to save some weight, and the new curved undertray set at 15 degree

I had enetered the Allcomers to test the new setup, but due to the exhaust lamda bung falling out on the way to practice i missed the session and had to start at the back of the grid. It also meant i had no practice before the RGB session, which resulted in a time i want too pleased with, although it was still quicker than i had done before. But importantly the wings worked a treat, the car had become very settled, and after a bit of fettling with the gurney flaps on the trailing edge after practice the top speed of the car didn't seem to be effect by all the new aero aids.

The Allcomers tuned out to be the best race i've ever been in, starting 32nd (at the back) of the grid, with a lot of slower cars ahead always sounded like it would be interesting, but i never imagined it could be quite so much fun!! By red gate (turn 1) i had gained 11 places!!! Then for the next few laps i quickly climbed up the field until i met up with Dave Wale where we proceeded to have great sport for the rest of the race, trading places several times, although he did finally get he best of me, with us finishing 4th and 5th!! Not a bad result gaining 26 places and probably not finishing any lower than if i'd actually taken part in practice!! Unfortunately the camera didnt work so i have no evidence of any of these claims.

I managed a 4th in class and 8th overall in the RGB race, the setup of the car and hopefully some of my own driving development resulted in me closing the gap on the Al, Derek and Pau in class F, although i still couldn't keep up with them, but i was now racing a bit further up the field and feel like i'm getting there.

Slacking! Brands and Snetterton - 2011

2011-06-13T21:39:00.002+01:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, work and home life have meant very little spare time, and what spare time i have found i have been using it up on the car! So although the blog has stopped for a while, the racing and car development have not.

Since the last update there have been 4 race (2 double headers) at Brands and Snetterton. I haven’t got time or the memory to go back through all this, but below are the videos and photos of the events.

Brands Race 1

Brands Race 2

Video to be uploaded

Photos

Snetterton Race 1

Snetterton Race 2

Photos

To sum up, the car has been working very well with no major incidents since Mallory, and i have managed 3 3rds and a 4^th in class, so results wise i’m where i was hoping i would be. Although this doesn’t tell the entire story, i am off the pace from Al, Derek and now Paul Rickers (who has suddenly got a rocket up his arse!!). I’d say 90% of this is down to me, a distinct lack of skill, plus i’m struggling to be smooth now that i’m carrying a bit more pace into the corners, and using and exploiting the extra ponies wisely is an issue, as is my gear changes going down the box. In an attempt to gain the 10% we are develop the car, adding some aero aids and trying to improve the handling through setup changes.

A spare hour!

2011-04-11T09:20:00.000+01:00

I've been extremely busy getting the lounge finished, so the car has had to take a back seat. Happily we moved back in on sunday so i'll get some time on the car this week (after fixing a freelander and attending a local parish council meeting). although i did have a spare hour on friday so had a another quick go on the bus.

The bus maybe used as a sales stand for Q20 at the up and coming Stoneleigh show, so i need to get the passenger side and bonnet finished off before May bank holiday. The car and I will also be at he show, but on the 750mc stand.

I'd better go and get on with the car, there is a gallon of engine oil smeared all over the front from Bobs BDN.....

Mallory Park - 03/04/2011

2011-04-05T15:11:00.004+01:00

Right where do i start.........

Confidence in the car was at an all time low, but decided i'd enter the Allcomers as a bit of a shakedown of the new engine. The plan started off well, 3 laps into practice i came in so dad and Dan could check for signs of problems under the bonnet, no problems, the car felt good, and so i went out to complete the session. I started to push on a bit more each lap, but was keeping my eyes on the gauges. After about 4 laps i noticed the oil pressure warning flash up on the digidash as i exited Gerrards, bugger!!! I slowed it right down and carried on down the straight, the pressure picked up again so decided to continue, but as soon as went past thepit entrance into the left hander of the Esses the light flicked on again, bugger bugger!!! So i slowed it down again and came back in. I'd checked the oil levels before i went out, but as this was happening on the corners i decided to whack a bit more oil in and give it a try. Unfortunately as soon as i got on track i realised that pressure was still dropping off and came straight back into the pits.

A look back at the video showed that the oil pressure light warning had started to flicker the lap previous to the digidash warning, which is set lower (15psi), bugger, bugger, bugger! The engine still sounded fine though when i came in, so we decided to quickily fire her up again. This time no oil pressure registered in the first couple of seconds so i killed the engine. We decided that this could be down to the earth on the senders or a blockage in the senders flexi pipe. Removing the pipe showed no blockage, so we then resorted to lashing up an earth lead straight to the battery.

Upon firing up we had oil pressure again, so all happy it was a sender issue we prepared for the RGB practice.

As i came out of the pits for practice, the oil pressure looked fine, but as soon as i entered gerrard its started to drop, and this was at a slow pace! I was going to come straight in and held my arm up, but noticed the pressure come back up on the straight, so i thought i would do a slow lap to try and figure out what was instigating the drop. As it turned out any corner at any speed caused the pressure to drop, but if i tootled round it would hold about 25psi, on the straights it would not get above 60psi, but at least it had some pressure. I continued for 3 laps (to ensure i could at least start at the back of the grid for RGB) at a very slow pace watching the pressure constantly then came in.

We drained the oil out, which looked horrible, a strange colour and very, very thin. This oil had only done the power runs on saturday morning and about 10 laps of mallory:-

This was 10-40 fully synth castrol race, which is red when new, it now had the consistency and look of muddy water! we assumed that this was the cause of the oil pressure problems but decided to continue and take the sump off. As i pulled the sump off the oil pick up pipe fell onto the floor!!!

The modified pickup that reaches into the bottom of the modified sump consists of the top half of the original plastic R1 pick up, glued to a metal fireblade lower pick up, this joint had failed allowing the bowl like pick up end drop off into the sump!! No wonder i had so little oil pressure!!!

Andy Bates has done this modification to several engies that run in the NIsevens and never had a failure, so either i was just unlucky (again) or something in the oil attacked the glue (liquid metal) causing it to drop off. So andy went off to fix the pickup, including a strap that would stop it ever dropping off again even if the glue gave up again. meanwhile we cleaned the sump and oil cooler out. We still dont have an explanation for the odd oil, maybe cavitation caused by the air being sucked in through the broken filter, dodgy, contamination in the engine or maybe fuel getting into the crank case???? We check the fuel pressure which was staying at a constant 40psi, so fuel being forced in through over pressure cant be the reason. If anyone has any suggestions please post!!

With the pickup and sump all back on i refilled the engine with some of Andy's 15-50 oil that he recommends and started the car up. Instantly pressure was back up high, and reving the engine saw a good increase! But by this time i had missed the allcomers, so other than a pootle around the pits i wouldn't know if it was all operating as it should, or if the engine has sustained any lasting damage.

A small monsoon fell 20 minutes before the RGB race, meaning lots of scrabbling around in the pits softening off suspension and fitting wets for some people. But the good thing about this was that we would get a green flag lap, giving me nearly 2 laps (including the out lap) to asses the engine and oil pressure. My initial plan was for a very steady start and keeping my eyes on the gauges, something i had mentioned to a couple of the new guys when i was advising them to hold back and brake early at the first corner due to the bunching up effect. But as it all looked good as i rolled up to at the back of the grid for the start lights, and the red mist descended, i ended up flooring it and got an absolute flyer, making up 3 or 4 places and also nearly getting passed Henry before he shut the door on me. This left me and Bob side by side around Gerrards. This is how it stayed for most of the race, bob and i slowly making up a few places while dicing with each other. It was very very slippy, and visibility behind the BDN was pretty horrific, especially when bob decided to start using his James Bond like oil slick spray device, otherwise known as a leaky oil cooler! We had plenty of side by side moments, slidey moments, nearly touching moments and one grassy/mud moment, but on the whole a very gentlemanly tussle, bob drove well in the BDN debut and also defended very well (and fairly), especially coming into the hairpin, but after he missed a gear coming out of the Devils elbow i managed to get passed. Unfortunately the oil slick from the BDN had found its way onto the camera lense, and my visor, so the last 2 laps have been cut from the video, you will just have to take my word for it that i managed to get past.

So from starting last out of 21, i finished 12, so pretty damn pleased with that considering what a terrible few weeks i've had, and whats more the car seems to be working!!!! I will drain some of the oil off when i check the car over to see what state its in, hopefully it will be fine and i'll be fighting fit for Brands in 2 weeks!!!!

Pictures of the day:-

And one i like which sums the race up nicely for me

HLM mapping

2011-04-05T08:28:00.000+01:00

The 1-2 hr mapping session turned into a 4 hour marathon and 18 power runs due to the software on HLM machines expiring! So rather than using the automatic fuel mapping, every 250rpm rev range for 40-100% throttle had to be mapped manually!! Fair play to Hamish at HLM, he could have done half a job and i wouldn't have know any different, but he spent ages sorting it, ensuring a nice flat and safe air/fuel ratio at all throttle positions. I only gained about 5bhp, but the fueling is smoothed out and i am now happy its safe!! The end results, which are pretty meaningless on their own shows 149bhp and 101 of torque at the wheels.

At least with 18 power runs and no signs of problems it left me feeling a bit more confident in the engines chance of survival!!

Less of the pikeyness!

2011-04-05T08:11:00.001+01:00

The bus was looking pretty sad for itself, so my good friends Dan and Miles, who both have a polishing fetish, got busy with the buffer, cutting paste and wax!!

Meanwhile my other good friend steve (www.planetgraphics.co.uk) had been busy with the vinyl cutter:-

We only had time to apply the stickers to one side, but pretty damn happy how good the old girl looks now!!!

The cleaning of the bus hadn't quenched there need for wax, so they then moved onto the fury:-

It was then time to load up, ready to head off to HLM in the morning for the mapping session.

Up and running and itching to go!!!

2011-03-31T22:57:00.000+01:00

New engine is now installed and upon firing up it seemed to start better than the last engine and sounded different. So fingers crossed it was just a duffer and i was just very unlucky. We will have to wait and see how the car performs at Mallory and if it survives before i draw my final conclusions!!

We swapped the engine over within a few hours, so pretty confident we could manage it in the paddock if the its ever required. I have sourced another engine with damaged gearbox, so will combine the 2 to hopefully make a good engine to carry as a spare.

The engine drama seriously affected the progress of the front splitter, this is were we are at the moment, lots of trimming and filling to do and the actual floor tray will not be as big as this.

With the time lost it means that at mallory and Brands (dad is on holiday the week after mallory, how dare he!!) i will have to run without. The problem with that is that the lower half of the bonnet is completely missing and open, luckily we kept the corners we cut of and have now bolted them back into position.

So the car is ready, but i want to get it on the rolling road to check the fueling is ok, so on the way to Mallory on saturday i have booked a session with HLM in Bromsgrove, i have no idea how good (or bad) they are, but they maintain and run Jedi Hillclimb cars, so hopefully know their bike engines. Bob is also going there on saturday so i will be able to get a sneak peak of his lovely new BDN!! And nick his corner weight scales to set the Fury up.

Mallory Test = Disaster!

2011-03-21T23:17:00.002Z

I was nervous about the the test day, Mallory isn't my favorite circuit and i find it the most intimidating, but i was more worried about a serious mechanical problem with the car. My concerns would soon turn into reality........

It didn't start too well, battery was dead on the bus, then i damaged the rear tub mounting bracket as i drove the car over it. The trip there was at least uneventful and we arrived bang on 8am ready to sign on. After unloading i took the car for a slow spin around the paddock and everything was fine. I went out for the first session at 9 and did about 3 laps, taking it very steady, but could already tell it was going to be a flying machine compared to the blade!! Coming back to the pits and removing the bonet showed i had a small oil leak somehwere around or near to the oil level sight glass. It was only a small amount of oil and the levels was still fine so i headed out again. I started to push a little harder, but was still taking it very easy, i had no gear indicator or shift lights as these were still set for the blade so probably went no where near the rev limit. Returning back in we then set about trying to track down the oil leak.

The oil leak was only minor, but was coming from the union between the oil cooler and hose and it wouldn not tighten anymore. So we decided to remove the pipe to investigate further, this showed that the end we had had fitted on the old hose was the wrong type and would never seal properly, bugger! The leak was very very minor so at least it wouldn't stop the day, but dad being dad, came up with a solution using an o-ring, and "bang, the leak was gone". Whilst dad was doing this i set up the shift lights and gear indicator, something that would have been less fiddly if i had remembered to bring my laptop along!! By the time this was all done the 2nd session was well underway, but it was still worth a run out, but as i went to use the reverse the car went dead, no power!!! Bugger!!! I thought it was the master fuse, but a flick of the master switch and it came back alive again, but as soon as i tried to crank the engine it died again. I started to fear a serious electrical sort, until a waggle of the battery terminals showed they were lose!! A nip up with the spanner and i managed to get out on track for 1 lap before the flags came out!!

We again checked over the car, the oil leak from the cooler union was cured, but there was still dampness around the sight glass, very very minor but a leak none the less. It was either the glass seal itself or the cover plate directly above it, but not something we could sort with stripping the engine down a bit. The oil level was still perfect and not dropped so it would be fine for the final session. With 15minutes to spare we set up the new video vbox camera system and refueled.

In the final session I slowly started to build up the pace and started to use the full rev range, although still not really ragging it, and getting to terms with the swapped over gear change. I saw Al in my mirrors and thought oh dear this could messy (actually i thought wahoo a race!!), the circuit was damp and i was still being cautious (as was Al), but now the purple peril was behind i was hoping to start stretching the cars legs, unfortunately the following lap, whilst going down the start straight, there was an almightly bang, a horrible vibration, plumes of smoke and no engine power. I quickly pulled off onto the entry slip road of the pits and contemplated jumping in the lake.....

Pushing it back to the bus i knew something big had happened, i was hoping it was an exploded diff, but was pretty sure it was the engine. After removing the bonnet the damage was obvious, a hole in no1 barrel and crankcase, bugger!!!!

I was pretty sure it wasn't oil starvation as i had been keeping a very close eye on the oil pressure around Gerrards during the day, but unfortunately my data logger wasn't running. Luckily watching back on the video, the oil light is just visible in the bottom right hand corner. It does flicker on coming into the hairpin, but this is because the engine revs have dropped right down due to changing all the way down the box. Nowhere else does it come on so i was then confident it was not oil starvation, but a strip down of th enegine would need to be done to confirm this. At least my new video kit worked well, and it captured the moment of destruction very well

Back home we took the engine out and stripped it down

As you can see the big ends and crank are perfect, so the conrod failure was caused by oil starvation and the a seizing big end. So we can only conclude there was a fault with the conrod, either in caused in manufacture or by an excessive stress load during the its lifetime in the bike.

So making Mallory race 1 was looking fairly dubious on Thursday, until i decided to take the bull by the horns and start a nationwide hunt for a replacement. Malc at Yorkshire engines who supplied this engine offered me a replacement at cost price, but hadn't got one in stock, Andy Bates was on the look out for me, but then i stumbled across one in Stoke for a good price, so i shot up there and picked it up the same day.

So its now operation fit engine 2 and hope for the best next time out!! Fingers crossed!!

Final jobs and Prep for Mallory Test Day

2011-03-21T21:37:00.000Z

With Mallory test day only a few days away there were lots of jobs still to do, mainly tidying and binding the loom up, plus lots of there bits and bobs. It was one of those times where you are 99% complete but still have about 25% more time needed to complete. After a long day of jobs and a blast up and down the lane in the car at full operating temperature, we decided that the 9th was going to be too early to test, a water leak from the lower hose exit from the block, the throttle not returning properly, plus a few other bits and bobs made us decide to put it back a week. This took the pressure off and meant we could be fully prepared for a good mornings run. It also gave another couple of days to have a go at the front splitter. We are creating an GRP front lower valance, that will replace the lower half of the bonnet, hopefully creating more down force and creating a new look for the car, The fury Evolution??????

Rather than trying to match up to the returning underside of the bonnet, we decoded to cut this off to make a horizontal flange to mate between the valance and bonnet. Bonnet pins mounted to the front suspension mounts now hold the bonnet in position at the front.

Using a plub line we marked out the silhouette of the bonnet, then added 50mm to this, this gives us a maximum projection for the splitter (to comply with RGB rules) and cut it out

We then added the upper parts which follow the lower edge of the now shorten bonnet. This gives a buck to build up a mockup of the valance.

Lack of posts but an eventful few weeks

2011-03-21T21:18:00.001Z

Dad finished the bonnet off, including repairing the front after the falling of the scales incident last year, which has ended up looking pretty damn good, especially for a temporary solution!

Meanwhile i had filled the engine with fluids and been spending many hours scratching my head trying to figure out the wiring. A couple of evenings with the wiring diagrams and i had labelled the bike loom up and was fairly happy what i was doing. So after a few more hours, some hot wiring of plugs (side stand, clutch switch etc) and lashing up of light switches (temporary stop switch) I was ready to flick the master switch. I was waiting for a big bang, but to my amazement everything lit up, the EXUP valve rotated and the throttle body butterflies cycled!! But i couldn't here the fuel pump prime, a bit of digging a round showed nothing obvious, but then i had a thought about the tilt switch. I had glued the original tilt switch up so as not to cause the engine to cut to due to G loads while cornering, but stupidly filled the switch with sealant afterwards as the casing had cracked when i took it apart. This obviously altered the impedance of the sensors and was causing the ECU to think the bike was tilted. Luckily the sealant hadn't gone off by the time i had realised so i managed to scrape it all out and clean it all up. After doing this the pump primed! Next thing we noticed was that the scavenge pump (the old blade pump) had stopped, indicating that the system was pressurised, but as there is a return from the swirl pot to tank this shouldn't happen and it should run continuously. A bit of investigation showed that the hole in the tank i had tapped into, was actually a blind hole that needed to be drilled out, idiot!! With that sorted everything looked good, and it was time to flick the start button. I had removed the plugs so as to check i was getting oil pressure, which turned out i wasn't. Cracking the oil filter while turning over sorted this, but this then showed a fairly major oil leak between the sandwich plate and the block. Removing the plate showed that the adapter threaded fitting was holding the the plate off the block. You can see the marks on the plate where the nut head was chaffing. A bit of lathe time soon sorted this out

After this we were ready for a proper start attempt. A few attempts and the engine burst into life, and a flick of the light switch stopped it again. After restarting a few times and allowing the engine to tick over for a short time, I stripped it all out again and began to strip all the loom apart, just leaving the wires i needed

It was then time to lay it all in place and try to find homes for everything and then shorten and lengthen wires as required.

This went on for some time, and i was actually quite confident in what i was doing, apart from how to wire in the main feed from the master switch. After a long evening of sitting and scratching my head, plenty of swearing, declaration of giving up, followed by 2 ohone calls to Bob and Al i had my epiphany or Eureka moment when the penny suddenly dropped. A frenzied 15 minutes followed as i cut and joined various wires, not quite sure if i knew what i was doing or where i was going, until i had all wires connected.

The moment of truth was here, kill switch on.........dash illuminated, star button pressed.........engined turned over and burst into life, wahooooooooooo!!!! I then drove car 15 yards up my parents drive, and apart from the brakes being seized and the throttle sticking open slightly causing middle panic as i shot up the drive it felt great and we retired for the day happy!

The hole job

2011-02-15T08:32:00.000Z

The U bend was put back on the toilet and after fixing the 90deg bend to flat board and covering in masking tape, Dad layed up a few layers of fibreglass to create a flange to join the bend and airbox (sorry no pictures). After some trimming, sanding and drilling the flange was mated to the 2 parts as seen below.

It was then just a matter of bolting it on the spacer and making up an aluminium support bracket. We are pretty pleased with how it has turned out, very secure, neat and hopefully give the best breathing possible (based on the bike design)

The height of it all does look very menacing and we were wondering how much bonnet was going to have to be cut out and how it would affect my field of view! This engine is one of the smallest due to the lack of secondary injectors and variable trumpets in the airbox, the later R1 is much taller.

I am getting a new bonnet to build up a plug for a new design that will be more accommodating for the modern injection bike engines, but for now we will just cut a hole in the bonnet. To do this i copied the shape of the airbox on to a piece of card, cut it out, placed it over the engine and marked up where the bonnet pins on the chassis were. I then aligned the template with the bonnet pin holes in the bonnet and transferred the cut out onto the bonnet

The first problem we encountered was that with the front of the bonnet wrapping under the ducting for the radiator it was almost impossible to lower the bonnet over the airbox, and once it was on the hinge it definetly wouldn't work. There were 2 options, make the hole in the bonnet bigger (longer) or cut the lower edge of the bonnet away. We are creating a new lower front end for the bonnet to incorporate a splitter which would mean that a hinged bonnet would not work any way so it was decided to cut out the lower section.

The wooden spars are still entact to attach to the hinge bracket if we need them, but by adding 2 bonnet pins to the top of the upper wishbone chassis mounts, it now now ,means the bonnet lifts on and off easily, rather than the scrabbling around trying to get to the hinge bolts.

Now that the bonnet could be lowered on properly, it became obvious that a lot more of the bonnet needed to be removed!!! First off the choke and secondary throttle position sensor fouled the bonnet, so this was nibbled away, then the throttle cable mount, AIS valve and breater pipes started touching so this required more cut out, then the coil pack on the front spark plug caught, then the 2nd, then the 3rd and then the 4th, and finally the front top corner of the cam cover fouled!!And this is how we ended up with this whacking great hole!!!! So much for a neat little hole!!!

The bonnet must have been 20mm thick in places due to all the repairs and graftings of bulges onto it, and i reckon i have cut 3kg of weight out of it! New lightweight body work is definitely needed!!!

Even though its only temporary (maybe the entire season temporary!) the hole needed to be covered to meet the regs. The bonnet is all over the place in this area due to the curves and existing bulge for the old airbox, so the initial idea of forming an aluminium panel over the top was not looking easy. It was decided that a fibreglass bulge would be the easiest, but how could we form something over all the bits and bobs on the engine. Hunting around the garage and workshop we found some thick foam (from the base of an unused seat from the the bus) and trapped it under a plastic bag between the bonnet and engine so it covered and formed its self over the bumps and knobs of the engine. The trouble with this was it was still a bit too uneven and left an abrupt edge between the hole in the bonnet and the protruding foam, we needed something flexible and flat to smooth the foam out, this was found in the form of a piece of carpet!! With this trapped under the bag, between the bonnet and foam laid on the engine it gave a nice smooth bulge. We then used masking tape to blend in the curves and reinforce it, and covered the boinnet in plastic to protect it from the up and coming GRP resin.

3 layers of wet CSM matting latter and we had a pile of sick on a bonnet.....

A few hours latter and a bit of trimming we had a mould for the bulge. After some prep and further trimming of the bonnet this will be temporarily attached to the bonnet and a couple of layers of fibreglass laid from the inside of the bonnet to create the bulge.

Another job i needed to do (and another reason not to start the wiring) was to fit a cat. I had an unused cat and sleeve of Tim Cheeneys in my garage, and he said that i was welcome to use some of it as long as he was left with a usable piece aswell (thanks Tim!!). I simply cut it in half to produce what is shown below.

I drilled 3 holes in the sleeve and used steel pop rivets to attach it to the end of the exhaust. I can quickily and easily drill these out to inspect the cat at race meets if i suspect the cat is failing or blocked with wadding.

It is getting desperately close to only having the wiring left to do so i was scrabbling round looking for mechanical jobs to finish. A new tunnel top was required......

A boss was needed in the top aluminium hose for the water temperature sender....

And the the pressure sensors needed fitting.......

So with dad busy with the fibreglass it looks like i have no choice but to start the wiring next time!

Fury of activity

2011-02-07T11:39:00.000Z

Up until last week it felt like we were getting no where very quickly and a long way off, but has suddenly all come together. Its going to be a bit of a midge modge of a report as we did lots of bits and bobs, but here goes....

I completed connecting up the fuel system, incorporating an inline fuel pressure gauge and high pressure filter. I've probably gone a bit over the top with filters as i have an inline one at the rear before the low pressure scavenge pump, the standard filter in the bike pump and then this inline high pressure one before the fuel rail. I managed to reuse the clip on fuel pipe connectors between the pump and injector rail

An exciting moment was the arrival of the carbon fibre spacer plate to enable the airbox to be turned 180degrees and miss the injector rail. I wanted to try and keep the seal between the throttle bodies and the airbox, plus machining off the profile from the throttle bodies would mean a fuel strip and clean of the them, something i really didn't like the look of. It also means that the other than the removal of a small bracket on the fuel rail and one small triangular extrusion on the airbox, the engine parts are completely standard, making replacement easy and also hopefully ensuring no running problems. The couple of hours spent drawing up, printing, laying the drawing over the profile, then modifying the drawing and reprinting numerous times paid off, and the spacer slipped on perfectly. A nice touch is that the guy who made it for me normally makes the Mclaren F1 chassis's, so now i have a bit of F1 car on my little Fury!! :-)

I should have made it up in MDF first as per the engine mount as few small modifications to the design would have made fitting the spacer a lot simpler, i.e. making it 5mm larger so that the outer most holes on the throttle bodies and airbox could be used and moving the 2 small holes into a central position, but if i ever have any more made i will incorporate this. But with a little thought and few blunted drills (carbon fibre is horrible stuff to work with!) it was attached to the throttle bodies and 4 holes taped into it to attached the airbox to it.

Another small job was some sort of prop catcher, as the prop was higher than before the existing straps couldn't be used. The straps would have also been pretty useless, as by the time the prop has hit them, the reverse gear would have been chopping itself through my leg, so i was keen to have a robust design. Dad had the the brainwave of using the metal support from a centre bearing, so with a bit of grinding and the addition of an aluminium bracket (with curved side just for Tim H ;-) ) a very effective catcher is no mounted as shown below.

Next up was thecam cover breather mod. The 5VY R1 has been known to pressurise the crankcase enough to eject lots oil out of the breather, causing the destruction of said engine. The well documented mod is to add a breather to the cam cover, and pipe this into the top of the catch tank, which then has a return line back to the crankcase breather. Some people block off the AIS valves and fit a breather to the came cover, but another way of doing it is to remove the AIS reed valves and use these as the outlet. I liked this idea as it seemed the simpliest and neatest plan. I got the info from HERE. To route the oil back to the catch tank i just used the standard hoses from the AIS system, removed the solenoid valve from the plastic T piece and cover it with an ali plate and the pipe that normally goes to the airbox now goes the catch tank. OK, i could have used a plastic T piece from anywhere, but this one was free and sitting in the garage, plus it pushed the pipes in the right direction.

The catch tank was mounted on the bulkhead just above the height of the crankcase breather, so any oil that finds it way in there should hopefully drain back in. The photo was taken before the return from the cam cover breather was attached

Next up was the plumbing. The oil cooler was pretty simple, reusing one of the hoses from the original install plus a new 6" longer one for the other. The only mod required around the take off plate was the main water inlet pipe had to be bent out and the mounting bracket back to the engine modified, all to allow the cooler pipes to attach to the sandwich plate.

The water pipes were also pretty simple once i'd gathered together all the info of where all the pipes went (see HERE). I only needed an extra couple of meters of hose, 1 x 90deg pipe and some extra aluminium pipe, which i was very pleased about, the price of silicon hose is criminal! There were a couple of places where hoses were required to T into the main upper and lower hoses, so we had these welded into the aluminium pipes.

With all the pipework in place it was time to bolt the exhaust back on, and get the pictures i promised earlier. Its not a shiney stainless system, but its beautifully made, and just slides together

A nice touch from Tony Law Exhausts:-

Finally the airbox needs some clean air funnelled into it. The intake of the airbox is under the airbox which is now above the gearbox. The addition of the 15mm spacer helps with the available space, but some kind of 90 deg bend was required to mate the triangular intake and bonnet scoop/air duct. Some hunting around in the garage and head scratching and we were heading towards making a fibreglass mould based on a shaped foam plug. That was until dad scurried off to the bathroom and returned with a toilet U bend

It was the start if a good idea, but i refused to have anything that is designed to have turds passed through it attached to my car!!! We have a famous situation in RGB involving underwear in an airbox, but i'm not ready to have crap in mine ;-) Anyhow it was slighty too bulky, but gave us the idea of using a standard 100mm 90 deg waste pipe with the end sliced off, and attached to the airbox with a fibreglass moulded adaptor

So while Dad makes that up i'll be refitting and tidying stuff up in a vain attempt to keep away from the wiring! The aim now is have the car running by the end of the month, ready for a mornings test at Mallory at the start of march, and a full trackday at Silverstone 24t March, so i'd better start looking ta that wiring diagram!

Swirl Pottering

2011-02-01T13:20:00.000Z

I'd been musing over the fuel supply system for a while. If i was starting from scratch i would have had a custom made fuel tank with built in swirl pot and either used the original bike pump or an inline high pressure pump. But i already had a perfectly good fuel tank, and being plastic i couldn't modified it. I'd mused with just using an inline high pressure pump but was worried about fuel starvation so that meant i'd need a swirl pot. I had the bike pump included with the purchase of the engine so it made sense to reuse this and i know it will be supplying enough fuel. So with the help of Bob and his welding man i had a custom pot made that housed the bike pump. The pot is fed from the original blade pump at the rear of the car using the new fuel lines pictured earlier in the blog.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time cutting. turning, drilling and taping various bits of horrid pure aluminium. Pure aluminium is great for welding but rather less fun to machine, the resulting fun from taping the m4 threads in the base plate resulted in me drilling them out and retaping more carefully with M5's. The pictures either show a luna landing module or the pot in the question, depending upon who you listen to ;-).

Initially i wanted to mount the pot infront of the pedals, but it would have been very fiddly to connect up and inspect the pipes so opted for the the more spacious option, just behind the front suspension.

Heart Transplanted

2011-01-24T08:16:00.002Z

Dad picked the brackets up from the plastic coating company, which have done a great job in hiding my bird poo welding, infact they now look very professionally! Rather than having them done in black, which hides cracks, they have been done in a metallic grey, very similar to engine casing on the bike.

The engine could now be fitted and left in place, but first the modified sump and oil pick up needed to be finally fitted and sealed. I have a slight concern that the baffle plate looks too restrictive, any comments would be appreciated.

While the engine was out the prop flange was tightened and locktighted in place, the clutch arm refitted and spring modified to fit with the clutch arm in its new position and the oil cooler sandwich plate bolted on.

Dad got busy with the degreaser and POR15, so the engine bay now looks shiny and black, as do dads hands!! POR15 must be the paint equivalent of Sikaflex, it does not come off your skin until the skin dies and peels off.

Using all nice new stainless nuts and bolts the engine mounts, engine, gear change and clutch cable were installed. The prop was also bolted up into place.

It felt really good to be bolting this all in for the final time, its taken a long time but its getting there!!! Got to crack on now and get all fuel, oil and water hoses all connected up.

Plenty Of Progress

2011-01-19T12:29:00.000Z

Firstly sorry for the lack of updates, i've just been too busy to spend time writing it all up. I promise myself i won't leave it too long between updates as it takes ages to write up otherwise, but inevitably i fall behind then have to spend a couple of hours uploading pictures and writing my drivel. So here goes......

Before Christmas the aluminium mounting plates from www.precisionwaterjet.co.uk arrived, looking very nice and definitely substantial

We'd decided not to get the mounting holes cut out during the waterjetting so that we could fine tune the position of the engine, the last thing we wanted was to have made a mistake in the drawing causing them not to fit!So using a combination of the MDF templates, measuring, trial fitting and a bit of luck we got the mounts plates mounted to the engine itself. The holes in the engine its self are 11mm, so had some 12mm bar machined down so they would pass through, with 10mm threads added either end. We then dropped the engine in place in the car and drilled through the top two ears to hang the engine.

With the engine hanging we checked and aligned everything and drilled the bottom two ears

As the engine mountings are not all in the same plane i had to pack out the plates with washes for the trial fit, but once it was all in place i jumped on the lathe and knocked out a couple of nice ali spacers. The lathe seems to be an important RGB garage tool, and very much like the mig welder i have no idea how i survived without it!!! I just need to convince dad to get a milling machine now!!!

With the engine hanging in the two brackets we were amazed how solid it was, there was no obvious movement however much i pushed it around. But its obvious that it needed some bracing, especially in the longitudinal direction, to ensure the continued forces would not break the mounts or engine lugs.

After plenty of head scratching we decided that we would use the 2 main lugs (1 x front and 1 x rear) on the top side of the engine and copy Dans idea using notched tubes and plates. Rather than welding a face on one end of the tube where the bolt passes into the engine we decided to keep the tubes longer, also allowing us to add a web, and turned down some steel top hats to pass a long bolt through the 2 ends.

We haven't got a tube notcher, but I found a very handy little program on the web, Tubemitre, you tell it the diameter, gauge and angle of tubes to be joined and it creates a paper template that you print out and wrap around the tube to be cut, then using what ever means you have (angry grinder in my case) to cut out the notch. I had my reservations, but it was bang on and it created some nice joints!! What wasn't so easy was getting the angle onto the flat mounting plates to the chassis, which resulted in some not so great joints!!

The picture below shows the rear upper mount, since the photo i have machined a wedged spacer up so that the nut has a square face to tighten up against, not the jaunty angle shown!

Happy with the mounts we retired for the day. On returning to the garage Dad had his doubts about the upper rear mount, it really needed some extra bracing to the chassis as it would tend to try and twist the chassis tube, which is made worse by the fact its mounted through a 25 aluminium square section spacer between the chassis rail and bulk head. Looking at the option we decided to add an extra tube down onto the chassis top side rail, again using the notching program and some angry grinding.

The engine was now solid, i'm confident we could lif the entire car by it now!!! It is over engineering, but hopefully means no nasty engine mount breakages like at snetterton last season!

Next up was the clutch linkage. The nice people at Yamaha decided to fit the clutch arm on a spline, so it was very simple to slide it of the arm off and reorientate to suit . This means a very short and direct cable that could be mounted direct to the new engine mount. Its also meant that, after buying a crimping tool, the old cable could be cut down and reused. This wasn't a money saver as it cost about 4 times more to buy the crimping tool and ends than a new cable, but it means we can make our own cables up to exact lengths in future. We drilled out a piece of steel bar, put a slit in it to pass the cable through and welded it onto the upper engine chassis tube via an ear and a web.

You can see the short run of cable below. I also turned down an aluminium top hat so that the cable seats nicely into the pedal box, rather than the horrid angle shown in the picture.

The gear change was next up, originally i was going to use solid bar arrangement as per Dans car, but due to the paddles lever arrangement, dash position, pedal box and engine mount it was looking. The other option was to stay with a cable as the setup was with the blade. The issue with this is that the direction of rotation of gear shaft is opposite to that of the blade, so that means that to go up the box i would need to pull with my left hand rather than my right hand. Not a problem if starting from scratch but after 2 years driving like this i was worried i'd start getting confused. After a look at the possibility of turning the paddle upside down to put the lever on the other side we concluded that it would entail a lot of work, and that it would be far easier for me to learn to use my left hand to go up the box!!! So finger crossed i don't blow it up my first time out!!! The cable was source from Dads mate who does auto gearboxes, we have no idea what it is out of, but it was exactly the correct length and had a nice crimped on mounting plate that lined up nicely with the engine mount!! The only mod we needed to do was to cut the one end off and thread it to accept the rose joint for the connections to the paddles. We also have a spare to carry with us incase of breakage, but this is very unlikely as its very substantial!!

With the engine all in place we could also finish the prop and reverse. Most of the work was already complete for this, we just had to assemble the it all to the aluminium centre bearing/reverse mounting plate and then fit the mounting lugs to the chassis. Below are a couple of shots of the assembled reverse and prop in the vice.

Access to the top of the tunnel for welding wasn't easy and the chassis tube is only 1/2" so we decided than rather making separate little ears to mount the centre bearing mount via the cotton reels, it would be best to use a piece of angle that spanned the tunnel and allowed two good welds either side. The lower ears were impossible to weld without getting the car up on a ramp, plus would make fitting/removing the prop and assembly very awkward, if not impossible. So we decided the best plan was to bolt this through the 1" chassis tunnel members. There is no real reason for all the radi cut into the brackets, it just removed some unneeded metal and looked better IMO

A few shots of it installed, although its very difficult to get a clear shot

Access to the engine prop flange is now very easy so i can keep my eye on the bolts, even though they will be extra secure as we are lockwiring them due to the easy access, something that wasn't possible on the blade.

With it all in place it was the moment of truth. We connected it up to the battery with a couple of jump leads and i sat in it ready to power up the solenoid. We both had visions of the car moving forward, but to our relief it not only moved backwards, but also moved and a decent pace and made no nasty gear crunching sounds. IT drove around the gravel drive no problem and easily ran over the 40mm block we put directly behind the wheel. So the reverse is a success, and i intend to drive all round the paddock in reverse from now on, as its the only time it will ever get used!!!

With all the mounting brackets finished and associated bracketry we removed the engine and sent the brackets away for plastic coating. In the mean time i started fitting the fuel lines and ordering everything needed for the fuel and oil lines. I have been musing over what to do with the fuel pumps and lines. The simpliest was to fit an inline high pressure pump direct from the outlet of the tank, and run a return line back from the fuel pressure regulator on the rail, but i wasn't surepr if the tank would be baffled enough to ensure no fuel starvation. After various plans and ideas we decided that we would keep the original blade low pressure pump to feed a swirl pot that has the original R1 pump mounted in it (i got the pump included with the engine), mounted in the engine bay. This meant running a return pipe back to the tank aswell, but as the tunnel was looking a little conjested with the reverse i decided to run 2 new pipes down the outside of the chassis. Obviously this is covered by the side pods so hopefully protected from damage.

This is the swirl pot return line. luckily there was an extra inlet on the top of the tank that was blanked off, so i just had to screw in a fitting

The one thing i haven't mention, or even photographed, is that during a brief holiday away from the garage for the Fury, it had an exhaust system built by Tony Law Exhausts. which looks excellent. I'll get some pics once the engine is all back in.

Big ears and thumb slice

2010-12-03T08:35:00.001Z

With the top bracket complete I just needed to weld in the lower ears before finalising the bracket design. The snow and cold wasn't making spending a few hours in the workshop particularly appealing, but wrapped up and the blow heater being left on for an hour or so meant it was actually not too bad, although the cold must have clouded my judgement as i ended up grinding my thumb rather than the plastic coating!

Its amazing how quickly a thin cutting disk slice into a finger!!! Getting dressed. texting, writing plus numerous other things are a little uncomfortable at the moment to say the least!

After wrapping it in rag and electrical tape i returned to grinding and finished removing all of the coating around the welding areas. With the engine and MDF brackets back in place i clamped up the mounting ears in place and tacked welded them in position.

While everything was in place i made some final marks on the MDF brackets were i required small modifications in readiness to transfer them into CAD for the waterjet cutting company.

With the engine out again i welded up the brackets.

To transfer the rough MDF brackets into CAD, i traced the shape of the brackets onto 1mm squared graph paper and used the grid to create reference points in AutoCAD. After getting a rough shape i squared everything up and smoothed all the curves and radii to get a nice neat shape. It had been a while since i had used AutoCAD in any real anger so took me a while to remember how to do a few things, but after a couple of hours i had a set i nicely curved brackets. The 2 smaller brackets are the prop/reverse mounting bracket and starter motor spacer.

Ear we go......

2010-11-25T08:44:00.000Z

The posts are coming thick and fast at the moment!! With the MDF brackets bolted up to the engine we lifted it back into the car so i could fabricate up the mounting ears. After some head scratching and cardboard cutting i ended up with various shapes that then needed to be cut out of steel plate. After half an hour of spark generation, 2 thin cutting discs, lots of little burns and a melted hole in the crotch of my tracksuit bottoms i had transferred the pile of card board bits into a pile of steel. Another 30 mins in dads workshop on the grinder and sander and i had a pile of smooth brackets and lovely manicured nails. By the end of the evening the top bracket was welded up and completed, although i may add a gusset to the forward most ear.

Meanwhile Dad was busy with the front prop. After measuring, remeasuring and then rechecking dad put the front prop in the lathe to cut it down by 60mm. He then turned the weld down off original joint to remove the plined end from the 60mm off cut prop tube. After facing everything off in the lather again to ensure everything was square the prop tube and splined end was tapped back together.

Dads business requires him to weld up cylindrical joints on prop shaft viscous couplings, so basically an identical type of joint required on the prop, therefore i trust him to weld up the prop rather than send it away. You can see in the top left hand corner of the lathe photo a rather large motor and pulley, this is dads modification to the lather to allow him to rotate the chuck very slowly at a constant speed, while the mig weld gun is mounted stationary applying the weld to the joint.

In, out, in, out and back in

2010-11-24T08:13:00.000Z

Rear part of prop shaft is now in, with the reverse motor, bearing and mounting plate positioned. Now we know it all fits we need to fine tune the position and angle of the mounting plate. According to prop manufactures, the front prop flange and engine flange need to be as parallel as possible, with an angle, but of no more than 1.5 degrees on the joints, this ensures minimum vibration and the angle ensures the needle rollers in the hardy spicer rotate.

With the engine back out of the car the MDF patterns for the brackets were checked for clearance, trimmed down and the spacings set. There is still some final trimming required before i draw them up in CAD, but before i can do that i need to weld the mounting ears in place on the chassis

Naked at home

2010-11-22T08:34:00.001Z

With the Fury safely returned from Sandown I stripped all the body work off and dumped it in the bus until further notice, the bus seems to be turning into a glorified storage container at the moment! I'll start to worry when Dad puts the lawn mower in there!!

As the engine needs to be mounted no lower than the chassis (so does not compromise ride height or be the first thing to hit the kerb during an "off track" moment) we clamped a board in place to rest the engine on while making the mounts. The round hole is so that the weld on the sump for the water pump leak outlet pipe that passes through the sump.

Modified sump from Andy fitted, you can see the water overflow pipe at the bottom.

With the engine sitting flat on the sump plate we started to work out where the mounts are going exactly. We have decided that a full cradle is not practical and would be very complicated, so the idea is to use 2 aluminium plates hanging the engine from the 4 main mounting points on the rear (righthand side of car) of the engine, and then 2 stabilising bars from the top 2 lugs on the head. In order to hang the aluminium brackets the chassis required a new member running from the footwell to the front rearward cross member. Initially this cross member was a weedy piece of 1/2" box section and was a contributing factor to the chassis snapping back last August at Silverstone, but during the front end rebuild last winter it was replaced and is extremly strong,made from 2.5mm walled box section as it is the main stay for the front lower suspension pickups (and we ordered the wrong stuff!!). Although i never intended to use this cross member to mount an engine when i installed it, it has worked out very handy!

The overhanging box section that covers the access hole to the pedal box will be removed once the mounting lugs for the plate have been positioned

You may wonder why i have bolted it in rather than welding it in place, there is a good reason for this..... Whilst coming up with the plans it occurred to me that i can make the mount on this side as an assembly that will be bolted to the engine as a sort of cradle. The aluminium plates will bolt to the engine and this steel member will bolt to the aluminium plates, the engine can then be lowered into place and the 4 bolts on the member fitted. There will obviously be another 2 bolts holding the bottom of the aluminium plates to the lower chassis rails. Hopefully this will make more sense when you look at the pictures below....

With the engine in place we needed to stop it moving about, so I knocked up a quick "restraining system", don't worry they will not be in the final design!!

With the engine held in place i made up some cardboard templates, then transferred them onto 8mm mdf (8mm 6082 T6 plate will be used for the real plates)

A few trail fits and some "smoothing" off and they dropped into place and could be bolted up to the engine.

Next job is to remove the engine and check the plates fully clear everything on the engine and remove the non necessary areas. I'll probably then remake the templates to include the mounting points for the lugs that will be fitted to the chassis and new member. I'll then transfer the design into CAD to tart up the radius's (whats the plural of radius??) and add some fancy holes etc. I'll the send it off for waterjet cutting.

Dad has also been busy with the reverse again, its now all mounted up to a dummy MDF plate (which will again be replaced with 6082 T6), and some lightening holes drilled out of the flange.

Prop shaft reverse gear

2010-11-15T11:54:00.000Z

After sourcing a gear of the correct size and tooth design dad set about mating it to the prop. The supplied gear was 25mm thick and weighed 3kg. Obviously we dont need the gear to be anywhere near this thick, so after turning the centre out to the correct side to slid over the hardy spicer (which was alos turned down to give a mounting sleeve), dad split it into 2 gears. I now have a spare and a lighter gear. Rtaher than welding the gear onto the prop, dad used a flange off a Freelander Viscous coupling unit, turned it down and welded it to the hardy spicer. With the flange welded on, it was put back in the lathe and faced off again to ensure it was true. A small recesses was also machined out of the gear so it fits perfectly onto the new flange. The gear was then simply bolted in place.

On sunday i picked up the sump and we dropped the engine in place and have decided that we can mount the engine using 2 aluminium plates, hanging the engine off the 4 main engine mounts and then use 2 stabilising bars from the top lugs of the engine (copied from Bobs BDN design). The engine was then pulled out again and all the body work fitted ready to be shipped off to the Mechanex show at Sandown park on Tuesday. The car will be back on thursday, and hopefully the chassis mods started on friday, watch this space......

Moving forward with reverse

2010-11-08T08:51:00.000Z

While waiting for the sump we can't go much further with the install as we need to mount the engine in the exact position. But we have got hold of a few parts required for the reverse.

I have ordered a reduction starter motor from a Honda civic, and also got the replacement centre bearing for the prop. The idea is to mount the bearing and starter motor on a plate, and then mount this plate via some small rubber mounting to the chassis. This way the prop will still have some compliance with the bearing, but the relationship between the motor and the prop is fixed. That sounds as clear as mud, but all will become clear once the bits are joined together.

Engine laid in, sump despatched

2010-11-04T07:34:00.000Z

Just a quick post, dropped the engine in last night to see how it all lined up and to try and work out how to make the mountings. I want the engine to sit flush with the underside of the chassis, so to make things easy we G clamped a sheet of wood to the under side of the chassis, allowing us to slide the engine around. There are 8 mounting points from the engine, so plenty of areas to build off from, its just unfortunate that they require lots of intricate shapes to get in and around to them if i was to make a cradle. After looking at it for some time we have come to the conclusion that rather than a single cradle that lifts in and out with the engine, the easiest option is to make 3 separate ones. I have removed the sump and pick up to send off to Andy Bates for modification, so until that returns we can't go much further.

Out with the old, in with the new

2010-11-02T23:18:00.000Z

The plan is to get the R1 motor in and running before christmas, leaving plenty of time fro new year testing. With this in mind and the fact that the buyer of the engine setup is supposed to be coming over in the next few days, the day after the Birkett was engine removal day.

From left to right: Engine just removed, new R1, spare engine

R1 motor - 175BHP of fun!!!

Heartless

Prop adaptor has been ordered from AB Performance, so next job after a good clean is positioning the engine and fabing up some mounts. Although i do need to decide exactly what i am doing with the sump, some people say leave it as standards and mount sump flat, some say mount sump/engine flange flat, but Andy Bates recommends mounting as per angle in bike, extending sump and modifying pick up. Andy knows what he is talking about so i may pay him a visit to get the sump mods done, last thing i want is a blown engine during the first test session!!!

Birkett 2010

2010-11-02T22:51:00.000Z

The long awaited Birkett relay had arrived! RGB pups now consisted of 4 myself, Bob, Ben and James (not forgetting the background team of support and Tim as team manager). With only 4 cars running this year we really needed the cars to behave themselves as there wasn't room for cars to start dropping out. Last year all 6 cars started and finished the race without a hitch, we may have been faster in a boat, but we had all finished unscathed! This year we hoped for the same, but not in the weather department. Last year was miserable, but this year the forecast was good, and when we awoke on saturday morning it looked very promising! This year we were on the old GP circuit, not many, if any of the RGB'ers competing had ever done this circuit before, meaning most of us tried to get some sort of testing in on the friday. A final BBQ of the year and a nice social evening followed and sums up the great atmosphere within the RGB paddock

Although the weather was looking better than last year, car behaviour wasn't. Bob had suffered a suspected fueling problem in testing on Friday and although he thought he had found the problem wasn't able to try and replicate the problem in practice as the damp track meant he couldn't push on, this meant that although the car had worked ok, he wasn't confident that it would be ok in the race. Then as Ben went to pull out of the garage for his practice session, the oil filter o-ring decided to make a bid for freedom, resulting in lots of oil being dumped onto the garage floor!. After lots of mopping up, a new oil filter, more oil and some discussion about the possibility of the oil pressure relief valve being stuck Ben managed to get out in a later practice session (thanks to Tim for sorting that out seamlessly), taking it easy for 3 or 4 laps just keeping his eye on the pressure gauge rather than the track ensuring he was allowed to race (you have to complete 3 laps to be allowed to race).

Bob is a great starter, so again was unanamously voted to be driver number 1 and line up on the massive 60 car grid!!! As usual bob didn't disappoint and got a flying start, but after a couple of laps, as he came up to speed the engine problem returned!!! Luckily Dan (who was out trackside watching and photographing) spotted him slowing and called back to the pits so we knew bob was coming in and i got straight out without losing much time. Whilst Bob tried to diagnose the problem with Andy, myself, Ben and James held the fort, doing a 35-40 minute session each. I think its safe to say that we all returned with grins bigger than a teenage boy upon finding his first "girlie" magazine in the bushes!! The GP circuit is simply fantastic, fast, flowing, technical, loads of room for overtaking and very safe, this coupled with a field of 60 cars with massive speed differentials makes an amazing racing experience. You are constantly involved with a handful of cars, overtaking, being overtaken or scrapping for position! If you could bottle the Birkett, it would be the essence of fun!!!!

When i came in from my 2nd session after having a fantastic battle with Tim from RGB east, we were 5 seconds ahead of them and were runinng in 19th place, 2nd in class B and the highest pure RGB team, things were looking good and far exceeding my wildest dreams!! I suddenly became very competitive and was transfixed on the positions table being broadcast over the TV's. This was soon shattered by a catalogue of car problems and mistakes. Bobs car was till playing up, James's car had developed an oil leak and his brakes were not good. This started diverting our (mainly Dads who was previously on pit board and pit wall spotting duty) attentions to garage repairs, which then lead to Ben not being ready when James came in, then shortly after sending Bob out on track thinking that Ben had gone AWOL, when infact we had just missed him coming past, twice, so ended up with 2 cars on track. After getting Ben in, Bobs car started missing again and this time stopped, resulting in me having to go out again, but in doing so having 2 cars on circuit meaning another lost lap. And just to finish the day of car troubles off, Bens clutch arm snapped leaving him stranded out on circuit and not being recovered until after the end of the race, and another lost lap, then james's non existent brakes resulted in a restyled nose cone after a brief meeting with a clio cup!

We ended up 50th on scratch, not very good really and disappointing after a very very promising start. But on a positive side it was bloody good fun and i can't wait to do it all again next year!!!!!!

Oulton Park 2nd October 2010

2010-11-02T21:59:00.001Z

Oulton park was probably my favourite circuit in the UK when i was a regular trackday junkie, but i had never raced there before, something i was really looking forward to! Something i wasn't so sure about was the engine i had just fitted to the car. It all fired up fine in the garage after fitting, but it needed a good ragging to check everything was in order before the race. I managed to squeeze in a test session in on friday as i was working up in Liverpool, and apart from a short trip to the gravel, everything seemed in order and the engine and box felt strong. We had to remove the under tray to rake out the the 10kg of gravel i had collected and while there gave the the car a check over of the car which again showed no problems.

So with the car tucked up under its own awning, now fitted on the otherside of the bus to the human rain shield, we headed off for a RGB social at a local restaurant i booked. The Alvanley Arms nearby was excellent, great service and very good food, definitely better than our usual BBQ road kill. After returning to the paddock i had the pleasure of tasting (well necking about 3/4 of a bottle) of John Cutmores dads home brew cider, this ensured a late night and a fuzzy head in the morning!!

Friday had been wet, but saturday was forecast to be dry, and although the circuit was still damp for the first few practice sessions, by the time we were out there was a good dry line. As we were queueing up for qualifying Paul Rogers came over to tell Dan and I not to wait for him that Derek to go out (they were in front of us in the queue) as they were going to wait for 2 minutes before heading out onto track to ensure a clear road. I decided to do the same, hoping that i could try and tag onto the of them for as long as possible. As it turns out they soon disappeared off into the distance, but the result of waiting for clear track meant that i had a virtually uninterrupted practice session. This also meant i qualified 2nd in class for race 1 and 1st in class for race 2, result!!!

I had a good start to both races, but then a catalogue of driving errors ruined both my races, culminating in spinning in both races on the last lap! I know i can drive fast enough to be competitive, but a mixture of racing inexperience, red mist and plain driving mistakes keep letting me down. Hopefully as time goes by i can minimise these and get the win i hanker after!!!!

To finish the day, and season, i got awarded driver of the day, but for all the wrong reasons, nothing to do with good driving, but just because its entertaining to watch as i am now almost expected to go spinning off the circuit at somepoint!! All in all another great day of racing, if a little frustrating.

Race 1:

Race 2:

Pictures from the day:

Q20 Sponsorship for 2011

2010-10-21T16:38:00.001+01:00

Great news (for me anyway) is that Q20 have agreed to sponsor me again next year. So its a big thankyou to Q20, especially to Chris and Lee for all their hard work to make this possible!!!

This has encouraged me into getting some better video recording and data logging equipment, so the current plan is to get a a Video Vbox from Racelogic. I'm currently in negotiation with them to get some sort of deal , so watch this space for some seriously fancy footage

Oulton Prep

2010-10-21T16:33:00.000+01:00

As i mentioned in the snetterton race report the car had started jumping out of 4th at the bombhole, this left me with a big decision to make! RGB regs are changing next year, pushing the formula into a simplier class structure and hopefully boosting the grid numbers for the classes. From next year there will be 2 main classed F (front engined) and R (rear engined) using any 1000cc motor prdoduced before 01/01/09. So this means there is still a class for my fireblade, but i would be competing directly against the late CBR's and R1's with 45BHP more, meaning absolutley no chance of a top 3 finish. Initailly i decided that over the winter i would upgrade the engine to a later type, but with Andy Bates introducing a prize (a 919 blade engine) for the highest finishing 919 (919 cup) in 2011 i decided i would stick with the blade for another season. I love the engine, its bullet proof (apart from the gearbox) and creates some great racing against identical cars. But the need for a gearbox rebuild threw this decision up in the air again. I have a spare engine which had completed less than 2 seasons so not a problem just to throw that in for Oulton (rather than rebuild the box), but it leaves me with no spare unless i rebuild it for next season. Also the engine will have completed 2 seasons since its last refresh so probably could do with a full strip down if i'm going to start putting new gears in etc. Another option was to take a punt on an ebay special and keep that as a spare. Trouble is with all this is that the plan was to upgrade at the end of 2011 anyway, so i'd be spending more money in the long run. So i decided to take the plunge and upgrade this winter.

Next decision was which engine. Initially i was going to go for a 2008 R1, but after seeing and hearing of a fair few all failing the same way in car installs (cylinder head melts between 2 and 3) i decided against it. I then turned to the new CBR, but was put off by the height of the engine. I'm only short and worried that the huge airbox sticking out the top of the bonnet would reduce my field of vision too much. So i finally decided on an 04-06 (RVY) R1, its nice and compact and tried and tested in RGB. The gear ratios of the R1 are also slightly better suited to the live axel than the CBR, so all in all it was the best choice. After some hunting i eventually plumbed for an engine off Malcome from Yorkshire Engines. The engine is now sat in the garage awaiting the start of the transplant. Luckily the sale of my current engine and spares will virtually cover the cost of the new engine, so all in all i'm glad i've done it sooner rather than later and can't wait to get started on the install over the winter.

Anyway, back to the oulton prep,over the 3 evenings Dad and I took out the old and fitted the spare engine, filled with fluids and gave the car a good check over. The need for the engine removal also meant i could remove the bodged up engine mount repaired at snetterton and sort it out.You can just see the web and plate added by andy, but can see the extent of the crack from underneath.

I was going to make a new mount, but seeing that it only has to last for Oulton and the Birkett i opted to fill the crack with weld and add another web

It looked so nasty i had to spray it black to try and hide the offensive material, it didn't really help!!!

Q20 at The Mechanex Show at Stoneleigh

2010-09-30T10:54:00.000+01:00

The car was used as the main display on the Q20 stand at the Mechanex show at Stoneleigh on the Tuesday and the Wednesday. Luckily there was no external damage to the car at Snetterton so she was looking her best, especially after a rub down with petrol and a quick application of polish :)

As an extra visual and stand attraction i created a movie of all the TV highlights broadcast by Motors TV featuring my car, plus added some extra onboard footage, slides and questionable sound tracks!!

Snetterton 18th September 2010

2010-09-27T09:54:00.003+01:00

I gave the car a real good shake after Silverstone and didn't find a single nut, bolt or wishbone loose. What could go wrong??

Snetterton is a long old drive so i entered the extended invitation from Bikesports to join them for an extra race. This meant 2 practices and 2 races. Upon arriving at snetterton we were informed that due to a lot of bikesports entering late we would now be having our own non championship RGB race, sorted! :) After arriving at 7pm and pitching up to Bob, the usual BBQ and beers were had while having a good chat with the RGB crew.

1 extra Stella resulted in a slightly fuzzy head when i woke up on sunday, but a shower and a cuppa sorted that out for scrutineeering at 8.15am. With only 1 session between bikesports practice and RGB practice it meant that a full tank of fuel was required so i could go straight to holding after the first practice had finished. As it turned out we had a bit longer as the marhalls had to peel a radical out of the tyre wall at russels after it had collected Andy Grant while making a completely unnecessary lunge to get past him going into Russels. Why some of the bikesports drivers feel these types of moves are necessary is beyond me, they can get past our cars where ever they like with ease, so why try doing it it tight places, especially in practice???

Practice went well, and i was 2nd in class, and only fractionally behind Al and in a pack of class C cars, so had high hopes for the race! The non championship race didn't really matter, but i was 8th on the grid alongside James W and would definitely require some kind of heroics to improve upon due to the straight line disadvantage my class C car had over all the A's and B's infront of me.

While calmly preparing for the race and with an hour to go i was looking round the car and noticed the driver side "H" engine mount had cracked. Further investigation showed that it had virtually gone all the way around the tube. Luckily Mr Bates was standing close buy and after 20mins with the oxy torch i had a a bronze splattered, dog eared looking bracket that supported the engine:-

The non championship race was great fun, trying to overtake james on the brakes and using his brick shaped car as a towing aid was great racing but also taught me where i could push the car harder and deeper and take liberties!! Bens dive up the inside at the end of the revitt was exciting, and also makes a good video, thankfully with a happy ending ;):-

I also managed a 1.18.92, which i was over the moon with as non of the other class C cars broke the 1.19.00 mark in either practice or the race.
The only downside of the race is that the car had started to jump out of 4th, which was not good going through the bombhole!!!! I had my fingers crossed it would hold for the RGB race!

I got off the line well for the RGB race, but by the time we had got down to the Esses Colin and AL had managed to get get a couple of cars in between us, and then over the next couple of laps Phil and a few class A and B went past me down the Revit. It took me a few good laps to finally get past James, Dan and Neil and back up the chuff of Phil. Phils car gives very little tow down the straight and is bloody quick, meaning a slip stream move was probably out. By now the car would not stay in 4th around the bomb hole and becoming increasingly difficult to get into gear, meaning on a number of occasions i either missed 4th gear or it popped out. The bombhole was the worst place, as when it popped into 3rd it would lock the rear wheels, and was something i was constantly thinking about while doing 95mph around Riches!! I started trying to drive it in 5th around here but i just couldn't get the acceleration, i tried holding it in 3rd for longer, but it either meant i hit the limiter, or the at the point where i needed 4th the car was becoming unbalanced at which point i couldn't wrestle to get it into 4th. I was right behind phil coming into the bombhole with a few minutes to go and decided to try it in 4th so as to get the best run on him, unfortunately it popped out just as the car was squirming around, this locked the rears and i ended up spinning off!! I got going again and finished the race, but it was the worst result of the season (well apart from the not seen at cadwell), although it had been a bloody good race and infact i recorded fast lap in class!!! The fastest lap cheered me up as i hadn't managed that before and at least means i was pushing it and could have stayed up with Al if i had had a better start!

On the downside the gearbox was shot and would need to be sorted for Oulton in less than 2 weeks

Photos of the day:-

New bit of white fibreglass

2010-09-27T08:38:00.000+01:00

Well off white! I picked up a cheap little GTM with 1275 A series off piston heads, its a bit of an impulse buy, but always wanted to try one and thought it would give a little project while waiting next season. I suppose i ihave the bus aswell, but hey ho i've bought it now. It won't run at the moment and initially though it was carbs, but now thinking its something to do with the spark, even though we have changed all the plugs, leads, dizzy and coil.

Once its running and cleaned up she'll be on ebay so if you fancy it give me a shout.

Head light covers fitted

2010-09-06T09:21:00.004+01:00

Got the first set of lightweight Fury headlight covers through from Andy Westgate at the weekend. First impressions were very good, lightweight, nicely made and more than sturdy enough. A quick trial fit showed they fitted like a glove and i decided they would probably be securely held on with just double sided tape, but if that didn't look secure enough i could add 2 or 3 pop rivets or self tappers.

I got some extra strength double sided tape from the local hardware shop applied it to the car then positioned the lense cover. It stuck down a treat, so much so that i cant get it off now!! So with it in place i decided to put some edging stripes around the covers to hide the double sided tape. with it all stuck down the lense cover is very sturdy with just a small amount of flex if pushed, which will be perfect to hopefully stop stones and debris cracking the cover.

The lense look great and will defo do the job, Andy is a top bloke and done a super job!!!

If you want some give him a shout as i think he is ready to start selling them :-

Andy Westgate
Westgate Creations Ltd
andy.westgate@btinternet.com
07733282947

Hopefully this mod will knock 2 seconds a lap of my lap times ;)

Silverstone 28th August 2010

2010-09-02T09:02:00.002+01:00

Now hold your breath, as the car was already to go i had a bit of spare time so ended up cutting back and polishing the bodywork! Apart from the cracked front from when she rolled of the corner scales back at Brands the body is still looking pretty fine, if i can keep out of trouble for a couple more races she will be looking good for the mechanex show (http://www.mechanex.info) at stoneleigh in September where the car is the centre piece for the Q20 oil stand! Its only 2 days after the Snetterton meet, so i really need to keep out of trouble there!!

I had entered the Allcomers race aswell as the single RGB race, so scruitineering was at 7.45am which meant an early start, especially as i had volunteered to join Amanda and Colin on their half marathon (8 laps) of the silverstone national circuit before hand, although i hadn't got time (or the fitness) to complete all 8 laps, so opted just to do a couple. If you want to sponsor Amanda and Colin in the forthcoming London Marathon, click here http://www.justgiving.com/amanda-chapman. The 2 laps managed to give me two huge blisters (i mustn't have done my trainers up properly) and have only just started to be able to walk properly again after filling my thighs with latic acid, that will teach me not to warm up or warm down!! My trips to the gym and quest to lose 10kg have now gone out of the window due to lack of time and moving jobs, but the short run (and my work trousers becoming tight again) has highlighted that i really need to get back on it!!!

Allcomers practice went ok, it was nice and dry and had a good clear track, although my lap times was down by almost a second from last year. After talking to a few people the track was seeming to be slower than last year, either down to the surface or head wind so wasn't too worried. The car did seem to be understeering a bit too much though so decided to go up a click on the rear dampers for RGB practice. I definitely need to stiffen up the rear springs a tad, as i was only 2 clicks off the hardest setting on the rear dampers, and really shouldn't be using the dampers to effect the spring rates this much. If i get chance i will get a set of 200lb rears to put on before snetts.

RGB practice went OK, qualified 3rd in class right behind Al and Colin on the grid. A good start was imperative!!!!

In the Allcomers race i had a great start and went past a few off the start line, but within a lap, everyone i had taken on the line was past me again, but that was always going to happen as they were 2 seconds a lap faster than me in practice. For the next 3 laps or so i had dan closing in down the 2 straights and was having to defend my line, his R1 powered fury is so much quicker down the straights than my old blade!! I managed to hold him off by taking the inside line and leaving the braking as late as possible coming into Brooklands!! I was managing to pull away from him on the corners, but every lap he would close in on the straights and we'd repeat the same manoeuvres, it was great fun!! Unfortunately Dan then dropped back and i was left on my own, i did actually contemplate slowing down so we could have a another go, but thought better of it!! So apart from a few back markers and couple of the front cars lapping me i had a pretty lonely second half of the race. At least i felt like i had learnt something about the lines and braking point going into Brooklands, ready for the RGB race!

So we waited round all day for the RGB race, slowly watching the lovely blue sky get blacker and blacker, until 10 minutes before our race when the heavens opened!! We were getting soaked in the assembly area and there was a mad dash by most to soften the suspension settings off. I'd not used the current setup in the wet, so wasn't sure what to do, the car is pretty soft anyway, but decided to drop 3 clicks off all the dampers and hoped for the best. As the track was now so wet we were given a green flag, which just confirmed the fact that there was no grip anywhere and lots of standing water!! It was the 2009 Birkett all over again! This was going to to be a slippy slippy race, and woodcote scares the crap out of me in the wet!!!!!!

In the end the race turned out to be lots and lots of fun, i had a cautious start, but didn't lose any places, and everyone made it round copse, maggots and becketts without incident. I managed to get a good line into and out of becketts and a good drag down the back straight, although this was terrifying as you could not see a thing due to the spray, the car was aqua planning and every time you up shifted the back wheels lost traction. I was alongside colin down the straight to Brooklands, he was on the left (either defending his line or just trying to find some visibility, and i managed to get a head of him on the brakes coming into brooklands. The next lap i was in a similar position with Tony at brooklands and we went round there and luffields side by side, excellent fun!!! Coming out of Woodcote, Colin got a great exit/line and looked to come down the inside so i moved over to defend, just to see him whizz up the outside of me and get past! For the next few laps we were tucked up together with Dave Wale, Daves cars
looked a real handful in the wet, and colin was all over the back of him with me too close for comfort sometimes!!! Colin managed to get past Dave out of Copse, but ended up having a small spin and Becketts which allowed me past and into 2nd in class. I thought that was 2nd place safe, but Colin pulled 3 excellent laps out (coupled with a 2 slightly slower ones by me) tp catch right up, and with a similar great exit from Woodcote he came up my inside at copse on the last lap and nipped past. I still had the back straight and brooklands to get the position back, Colin stayed far left up the straight, i slipstreamed him and pulled out to start going past him as we passed under the bridge, I left the braking as late as i dared as we came into Brooklands and actually had my nose in front, but colin must have let of the brakes slightly and we went round Brooklands and luffield side by side, i was on the inside at luffield and Colin managed to find slightly more traction to pull out into woodcote and beat me to the line.

It was a brilliantly exciting race (for me anyway) and i take my hat off to Colin for a great bit of driving and it just goes to prove i have a lot to learn before i can be as a wiley dog as him (i won't say old as he out ran me on the morning jog aswell!!) , its just a shame my forward facing camera packed in due to the rain!!!! New HD camera ordered in readiness for snetterton, and hopefully another exciting race!!!!

RGB Race Video:-

Photos:-

Silverstone Preperation

2010-08-25T09:35:00.000+01:00

Not a lot of time spare again, but just spent the evening out in the garage. Did the usual spanner and visual check, which i have got down to about 30 minutes, checking all the usual suspects nothing was amiss, but noticed the reverse mechanism bracket had snapped. Well when i say snapped, i mean the weld had come away from the steel. The welding on the bracket is terrible, this is the 2nd weld on the bracket that has broken, showing no sigh of penetration into the steel. Luckily the joint was easily accessible on the car and i didn't have to remove the horrible thing to repair it, an attack with the angry grinder and bit of max power mig welding has well and truly joined the bracket back together.

What i did notice was the state of the tyres, the rear outer is completely bald down the middle, and the 2 fronts (i had put my old wets on to try and increase grip at pembrey as the normal tyres where totally shot) handn't even attempted to melt during the race. They must be as hard as old leather now, so i'm binning the wets all together, and won't bother replacing them either, i think a good new set of standard A048's are just a good (or should that be bad) as the wets and definitely better than old hard wets!

So role on Silverstone, i'm not testing, but am doing the Allcomers to try and get in the right frame of mind. Last year wasn't terribly successful, with 1 snapped chassis, 2 collisions, and a broken wishbone, although i did finish the race 4th in class.

Pembrey 30/31st July

2010-08-25T09:23:00.002+01:00

Firstly sorry for the lack of posts recently, i've been mega busy at with a new contract at work which is seriously affecting the more important aspects of my life!!

There is no footage from Cadwell as the Flip camera footage turned out to be crap, there was lots of shake and it made the viewer feel sick. It was mounted well, so all i can put it down to is the lack of image stabilisation in the software, although i doubt very much my £10 MD cameras have these, so probably down to the physical size causing very small movements within the camera. I have now ordered the newer HD version of the cheapo cameras (£40 "big eye" off ebay) and awaiting its arrival from Hong Kong. I have some footage from Pembrey captured on the old Oregon, so will try and get this up as soon as i get chance to edit it, but hopefully a new and improved version will be available from Silverstone if the Big Eye arrives.

Due to work commitments and trying to hold down 3 jobs and a family i had absolutely no time to prep the car for Pembrey. I always said i would never do this and hated the fact i was turning up to testing with a car i hadn't even looked at since i wheeled it out of the bus from Cadwell. I was also convinced something wasn't right with the engine after Cadwells dismal performance, but the plan was to fit the newly cleaned Carbs on Friday evening when Andy arrived.

I arrived mid morning Friday after a lovely drive through shropshire and south west wales, it was a real treat to travel down cross country with next to no traffic and fantastic scenery rather than being stuck on the M40! Just a shame i wasn't on a motorbike, although i was still overtaking a fair few coffin dodgers in their micras which is very amusing as you see their double take as the 7.2m disabled van comes tearing past!! I had never been to Pembrey before, so when we turned up at what looked like a disused industrial estate it was a bit of let down compared to the norm. No electricity, pitched up on grass, 1 small toilet block and 2 shower trays for the entire male population! I must make it a priority to get the bus completely finished this winter!!! I pitched up at the end of the RGB stretch of grass, next to Ben and leaving a space for Bob so we could set up our usual camp. A nice touch was that as we were right next to the track we could actually view the circuit while sitting in the bus, very handy when it started peeing down!!!

By the start of the afternoon session the rain had virtually stopped and the track was actually dry, so at least i could get some dry laps in to learn the circuit. The afternoon went without a hitch, the car performed well, and i felt that by the end of the 3rd and final session i was getting to grips with the circuit. And what a great circuit, a good technical flowing section, 2 fats straights with a couple of balls out corners, and a couple of heavy braking tight hairpins. There are some massive curbs that the car really shouldn't be driven over, which i discovered followed by a fairly fast spins!! I do love going to new circuits and trying to learn them, wondering of you can actually hold it flat through a bend, discovering a slight lift rather than a dab of brakes is possible, or the braking point is actually 50 meters further back than you just tried, as smoke pours off your tyres as you're trying frantically trying to get the car round the corner rather than out of a tyre wall!!

The car had gone well and the lap times were ok so i decided that i would leave the carbs alone, if it isn't broke don't fix it!! The last thing i wanted to do was ruin qualifying on saturday morning!

Saturday was a leisurely timetable, 11am scruitineering, mid day practice and 1 race, mid afternoon, Sunday was set to be even more leisurely as we weren't racing until 4.50pm! Practice went ok, i qualified 2nd in class, but Al was over a second quicker. Colin had had problems involving underwear in his airbox so was at the back of the grid, but i was alongside super starter Bob, with Phil and Ben behind us. I got a decent start followed by couple of frantic laps involving a spinning car and lots of cars taking to the grass, followed by Colin out braking himself trying to get past me into the hairpin, spinning, resulting in Phil hitting his rear end. This destroyed Phils front end and ended his race. Colin got away with it, well apart from some flailing under tray and bodywork damage. After this lot I was 2nd in class with not that much around me, so sett;ed down to see if i could catch Al up, this never happened and he slowly pulled away. Al is going great this year and i just can't live with him, especially over the last few races. My car seemed to be going well but the shot tyres were definitely losing me time. I saw Andy Grants green Fury slowly catching me, i could hold him off in twisty sectiomn of the track, but his speed down the straights was impossible to live with. My biggest concern was i could see ben behind him, and if Andy got past me coming down the straight towards Honda it would compromise my speed down the main straight. This eventually happened and Ben caught right up with me, for the last few laps my mirrors were full of westfield and i was convinced i wouldn't be able to hold him off much longer as my tyres were seriously screwed and was struggling to get the power down early from the last hairpin before the main straights. For the frst time ever i had set the timer running omn the dash at the start of the race, so actually knew the next time past the start finish line the last lap board would be held out, but then i saw Paul, who was leading the race, passing Ben and about to pass me, this meant next time past the finish line would be the chequered flag! I have never been so happy to be lapped!!

Race 2 on sunday didn't go so well, after a nudge from Phil on the start straight the old red mist descended and i span out on the 2nd corner, trying to over cook it with cold tyres. AFter getting going again I was dead last, by the end of the next lap i had got past Judy, but over shot the exit at Honda and had an arse clenching trip down the grass trying to hold the car straight and edge it back onto the track. Luckily i got back on but Judy was past again. I managed to get past her again at the spot where i spun on the first lap and then noted Adrian spinning across the grass and rejoining with me. I had resigned myself to a 5th in class, but settled down to have a tussle with Adrian, which was great fun, his car was faster down the straights and he was quicker around honda than me, but i could gain round the twisty section, and he was also struggling to stop for the hairpin (as did i a couple of times), so a few good laps followed with the added bonus (for me) that Phil and Ben both spun putting me back to 3rd in class. I thought i should stop pushing to race with Adrian and take the points, but that lasted less than 2 seconds and we carried on all the way to the line.

So all in all decent results and some good racing! My tyres are screwed (and have been for a while) and a new set ordered for silverstone, so hopefully can get a bit closer to Al. And hopefully myself or Colin wont spin on the first lap and we can have a battle!!

Photos:-

Cadwell 10/11th July - Trials and Tribulations

2010-07-12T12:30:00.004+01:00

We met Dan on the M69 so he could experience his first road trip in the bus, which was made all the more interesting as it only has 3 proper seats at present, meaning the 4^th seating position was perched on top of my tool box! I did think of sticking a few black and yellow crosses on strategic positions would help us piece him back together after an accident ;-)

After a crappy run along the A46, and numerous stops for forgotten shopping and some food, we arrived at Cadwell at about 9pm and pitched up alongside Bob in the "paddock". The rather boring journey was at least brightened up by witnessing a most bizarre act outside KFC, whilst returning to the bus after our transfat feast, we literally had to step over the legs of a Sports Direct clad chav, who had parked his car next to the pavement, opened the passenger door, and was now lying half across the pavement with his head in the car, licking his larged gold hooped earring wearing girlfriends belly button!!! This was in broad daylight, with plenty of people passing by on foot and by car. The only conclusions I can come to is that he had dropped a piece of his zinger burger, which bounced off one of the 15 Halfords interior enhancements adorning the dash board, rolled into the cropped topped midriff of his cruising partner and was attempting to remove the last trace of the spicy colonels secret receipt!! I did also consider giving them a lesson on the birds and bees as they were never going to get very far using that hole, but I suppose at least it will stop them multiplying for a while!!

After a broken nights sleep due to William talking in his sleep, Dad snoring and Dan trying to creep out of his noisy airbed, it was off to early morning scruitineering for the Allcomers race. It was a busy day, with 2 qualifying sessions and 3 races, so I had ensured the car was 100% ready to go. The Allcomers session was just a procession, I couldn't get even half a clear lap, and the dismal qualifying time of 1min 44 sec proved this, but on the Brightside, the car seemed to run fine with no spluttering or misfire. I ensured I was near the front for RGB qualifying, hoping to get some good clear laps, but alas all my plans went pear shaped after spinning at the gooseneck due to locking up the rear brakes. I checked the bias and for some reason it was wound all the way back to the stop for the rear brakes!! I must have done this messing about, but seeing that I normally have it virtually all wound to the front it made for some interesting braking!!! Note to self, check brake bias on regular basis is locking up too much, and another good entry for the crap racing drivers excuse book! But things then got much worse, a couple of laps later the spluttering engine returned! I had a brief splutter before the mountain which cleared itself, but then a lap later it came back with a vengeance, and I had to pootle round back to the pits.

A visit to Andy B diagnosed a faulty fuel pump, so that came off and the points cleaned and refitted, then the pump worked fine.

I headed out for the Allcomers race, but as I pulled out of the holding area the car spluttered like mad and I had to come back to the paddock on the green flag lap. So we fitted another 2^nd hand pump, still spluttered, fitted a brand new pump, still spluttered!! We (myself, Dan, dad , Andy + lots of helpful RGBers) then set off on a hunt the splutter cause, changing and checking everything on the car. Over the next 10 hours and Sunday morning the following things were changed/checked/investigated:-

Coils and HT lead,
CDI
Entire Carbs changed
Earth points
Spark plugs (numerous times)
Carb float bowls cleaned
battery connectors
FIA master switch
rectifier
Carb balance pipes
Carb rubbers
Cams
Crank position sensor
Fuel tank vacuum
Compression test

I'm sure there was more, and we checked some of these things 2 or 3 times! At one stage after changing to the spare set of Carbs its started working again (and attempted to get into the holding area for the RGB race on Saturday but arrived 2 minutes too late), but once it had been jetted correctly (it was on the wrong jets for a car install) the problem returned!!! The car was now so bad you could hear the splutter just blipping the throttle in the paddock!! While hunting for the problem we discovered a few other problems that could have been the cause, but turned out not to be, including a positive battery terminal that fell off in dads hand, a half broken ECU earth and a leaking float chamber! None of these were the culprit and fixing them got us no where other than a car that had less potential reasons to fail in the future!!! In a last ditch attempt while dad was starting to remove the exhaust to check if it was blocked I decided to check the carbs again, this time finding a blocked jet in cylinder 3!!!! We had checked the jets when we swapped them over from the other sets of carbs, so wither this happened while refitting them or we missed it some how!!! Just glad to have found something we refitted everything and the car seemed to be running OK again, although it did seem to have a small amount of hesitancy low down.

With 20mins to spare was ready for the Sunday RGB race, I'd already missed 3 races so was just glad to be getting out there, although I was knackered and oily!! Cadwell is not the easiest of tracks to make any places up from the start, its very narrow and very little room for heroics going into the first corner. I was near the back of the grid, and in my worse grid position all season, but there were plenty of cars around me I could have a good race with so was looking forward to those red lights going out!! Thanks to Tim stalling on the left hand side of the circuit, the right hand side (where I was) got a far better start and I moved up a few positions and had fun alongside Ben all around coppice, Charlie's 1 and Charlie's 2!! There was a good group of us for the first few laps, and after locking up behind Ben going into the mountain Neil P managed to dive up my inside, I was hoping to slip stream him down the start finish straight, but sitting behind him I couldn't gain enough to get passed, but later on coming into the goose neck he either made a mistake or I managed to carry more speed and got up his inside going into Mansfield, which felt very satisfying!! The race continued with a pack of 7 of us, lead by Bob, closely followed by Phil, but as Phil came into the goose neck he span, causing cars to dive everywhere and fluid being sprayed around the track! Ben took to the grass to avoid the sideways Pulsar and I was up behind Bob. I'm not sure what was going on behind but I was aware of James gaining quickly on the straights so had to try and make the corners count to keep the gap. After some defending lines coming into Coppice and Park I missed gear through the hall bends or Barn and he managed to get me coming into Coppice. By this time we had caught up Doug who was obviously suffering some handling problems (turned out to be suspension damage) and the 4 of us lapped tightly together, I would lose them on the straights, which was now worse than before as the car would not rev out to 6^th down park straight so there was obviously something not right with the fuelling or breathing, but catch them up again on the corners. I could not see a way past as it was impossible to outbrake them coming into any of the usual passing places as they powered away from me too far down the straights. This is where my red mist descended, and convinced myself I could get my nose along side them coming into the hairpin, causing 3 fairly hairy moments! Looking back it was a very silly idea, which luckily didn't end in tears, although I do apologise to Bob and James for even thinking about it, let alone trying it!!! So that’s the way it stayed, well until the final time through Barn where Neil over took me under yellows (naughty naughty) on the final lap to nip another place off me. Although not the same kind of race I've been having so far this season, I really enjoyed it, and the fact that I got out after all the problems has ended in a weekend that I actually just about enjoyed. The car isn't right, but its 90% there so at least I can plan for Pembrey. Andy has my other set of carbs to strip and clean, so once there done I slap them back on and get them set up correctly and hope the vavoooom returns!!!

Video will be uploaded once i have sorted it, i have a new Flip HD, so quality should be a lot better now :D

Just a quick mention than on Saturday night there was the RGB Marshals BBQ, I managed to attend for some of the latter part of the evening, but usual it was a great affair, well organised with plenty of grub and beer to go round.

Bunking my ideas up

2010-07-01T08:13:00.002+01:00

The bus hasn't received much attention lately, and my dad is getting sick of sleeping on the floor at race weekends, so we set about getting the rear top bunk and storage shelf sorted. There isn't really alot to describe or show, buts its basically 2 pieces of 50x40 timber, clad in carpet and bolted to each side of the bus, and then another piece if 50x100 timber, again clad in carpet and bolted across the bus to make the support for the front of the 12mm MDF bed base. The picture shows the base loosely in position, next job is to trim it to size, cover in carpet and add 4 strengthening cross members.

Just had to post this picture

2010-06-29T08:39:00.003+01:00

Dan has been playing with the pictures, rather than himself for a change

Stuttering investigations

2010-06-28T09:14:00.000+01:00

After a post on the forum, speaking to Andy Bates and a hunt on the net, I took the car for a blast up a private road, and it showed no problems. It has to be fueling or electrical, but i'm not going to be able to test it properly until qualifying at Cadwell, so i need to investigate/repair as much as i can now. I have ordered a new set of plugs as a precaution which i will fit and have a spare fuel pump and set of coils which i will take with me to cadwell. I cleaned the fuel filters and removed the tank and cleaned it out, there were some small particles in there but nothing severe so doubt it was the cause. Dave (the old owner of the car) suffered something similar when he owned the car. It only happened when the car was hot, but that problem turned out to be a vapour lock in the fuel line caused by the pump being in the engine bay, so he moved it to the rear, so it can't be that again, unless the pump is on the way out. I tested the flow rate of the pump which worked out to be about 2 litres per minute, so that seems fine. Derek has suggested it could be rubbish in the float bowls as he suffered a similiar problem back in his class C days, so i'll have to whip the carbs out and have a look.

Brands Hatch 19/20th June

2010-06-28T08:59:00.002+01:00

With the car all stickered up i went to get to Brands early on Friday so i could get some good pictures of the car and meet up with Lee from Q20. It also meant i could borrow some corner weight scales and set the car up properly.

The journey down was easy and we arrived at 10.30am and set about unloading and setting up camp. The paddock was surprisingly empty and managed to get a spot on the edge of the paddock next to the power points and saved Bob a place next to us. I had 2 test sessions booked for the afternoon, but as this wasn't until 2.45pm we had plenty of time to set the car up. We took the car upto the flat area next to the scrutineering bay and borrowed a set of corner weight scales from Paul Nightingale (Spire sports cars). First off we went round setting the ride heights, i had been suffering a little understeer at silverstone testing so decided to up the rake from 20 to 25mm. After setting the heights we put it on the scales, this was the first time i had ever done this and was amazed that the diagonals were out by 20kg! After twiddling the spring seats i got it within 0.5kg, a quick check of the ride heights now showed it sitting 10mm too high all round, so i backed off all the springs seats 3 turns and rechecked the weights. This time it was very slightly out, so half a turn here and there sorted it out to within 0.5kg again. Just as we were finishing, we turned away and the car rolled off the scales and into some handrails!!! None of us wanted to look, the front of the bonnet had taken the full impact and there was now a 150mm crack, stress cracks and a big chunk out of the nose of the bonnet!!!! And guess where the damage was, right in the middle of all the stripes! BOLLOX!!!

As i was scrabbling round trying to patch up the bonnet Lee from Q20 turned up. Luckily she thinks the battered and scared looks will just enhance its appeal at the show as it proves its a real race car. We'll have to wait and see quite how scarred it is by September and reserve judgement on that ;-)

The first session of testing proved very useful, the rear end of the car was all over the place coming out of Graham Hill bend, and felt very squirrely when powering out of any of the corners. I suspected the rear suspension was bottoming out, so popped into the pits and added a couple of clicks to the rear dampers. This instantly settled the car down, but makes me think that i may be slightly too soft at the rear. The problem with the rear suspension is the lack of travel available due to the pick up points of the dampers, if you soften it off, you run out of bump, so its a trade off between compliance and grip at the rear and not hitting the bump stops. I may try a set of 200's at the rear and see how that goes. But with the dampers stepped up slightly the car was behaving well, the handling was a lot less twitchy and it inspired confidence. Rather than it feeling like it was trying to spit me off the circuit and kill me every time i tried to put the power down, it squatted down and gripped at the rear, although the front didn't feel quite as positive as before. The one place i felt a lot happier was Paddock hill, here i could really push on through the apex and knew that if i was running a bit wide i could back off the power slightly without worrying about a visit to the gravel. This meant i could use every inch of tarmac (including the green strip), so much so both Dad and Dan said they couldn't watch anymore as they thought i was going into the kitty litter! Personally i felt fine through there and never felt like i was close to going off. Laptime showed i was about he same times as before, which i was slightly disappointed with, but more significantly i was lapping at a constant time of low 53's. Consistency has always been my problem, i could put one fast lap in, but then the next one would be way off. So if the new set up has helped this then i've not wasted my money!

The 2nd test session went OK, i managed to get down to a 53.29 which was faster than my best qualifying time last time, although slightly down on my fastest race lap (53.12). I did have a couple of moments at surtees and clearways, and had to come in to try and sort my head out, but 30mins is a long time out there, and i'm now pretty glad we don't have the 28min races!!

I gave the car a check over and grabbed some photos of the car in the empty paddock before we popped out to get a chinese in readiness for the England game. Phil had generously given me a portable travel TV for the bus so we could watch the game, although i wish he hadn't as it was an appalling performance and I vowed to forget the World cup and only watch cricket in the future!! During the dinner and the game Bob arrived and set up next to us, with our new pull out awning and bobs gazeebo we had a nice little set up which if we repeat should keep us fairly protected and dry at future meets.

Saturday was a fairly laid back day with scruitineering not until 10.30, qualifying at 11.30 and race at 4.30. But somehow managed to ourselves very busy, messing with the car and Miles and Dan buffing up the paint work on the bus! The bus actually has a shiny reflection on the nearside now!!!

Qualifying didn't go great, i ended up at the back of the queue in the paddock so held back for a few laps to get some clear track ahead. Trouble was, within 2 fast laps i would start to catch people up again, so only really got 1 flying lap at a time, and only managed 3 or 4 quickish laps. I wasn't overly confident in my grid position, so when it came out that i was 2nd in class for both race i was chuffed but my best time was a 53.45, and Al was a long way ahead (0.6 seconds) of the rest of class C. Colin was suffering with some handling issues after his repairs post Anglesey crash and Matt was having engine problems, so it wasn't a great performance from me!

As we pulled into the holding area it started to spot with rain, and by the time the red lights went out it was raining properly and the track was wet. I got a decent start and held my position coming into paddock where i decided to tuck in behind Tony on the inside and try and hold the inside line up to Druids, but Paul Rogers decided that winning every race was too boring span coming down hill out of paddock, i backed off as i wasn't sure which way he was going to go, letting Matt and Colin come through. The track was slippy for the first few laps but it had stopped raining and dried out pretty quickily. I was tucked up behind Colin for the entire race, although dropped back from him a few times due to back markers or a mistake on my behalf. Dad had been telling me just to try and pressure Colin and hope he made a mistake, unfortunetly for me, he never did and i had to settle for 4th in class right behind him.

The camera stopped on lap 3, and the rear veiw camera was empty for most of the race, so heres the first few laps only.

The excitement of the race was nothing compared to seeing Bob pull up along side me at the bus, next to the BBQ gas cylinder with his rear calliper on fire! I panicked like a girl and ran into the bus to get the extinguisher, but as Bob pointed out, steel and brake carbon doesn't burn very well and it extinguished itself. The evening was spent with a few beers and a BBQ while watching Bob and Dad disassemble and rebuild the rear calliper several times, which was actually far more entertaining than the England game the night before!

Race 2 on Sunday was dry, and after slightly better start than the day before i ended up losing out to Matt and Colin again as i slowed for a spinning Tim coming out of Druids on lap 1. The rest of the race was again tucked up behind Colin, but this time we reeled Matt in (i think he had fueling problems at the end of the race again) and both passed him, i was also pleased that i constantly stayed with Colin, only dropping back once after getting stuck behind a back marker but quickly caught back up. I just couldn't find away past Colin he drover very consistently and took some good defending lines, i definitely could have been more aggressive, but after our history of collisions this year i didn't want to risk it! So i ended up 3rd in class again, had a fantastic race and really enjoyed myself, but next time Colin.... next time!!! ;-)

The car performed faultlessly again, until the last few yards of the race, as i was coming up the straight to the finish line the car started stuttering in 5th as if i was hitting the limiter, i tried to replicate it on the cool down lap but didn't manage it and it ran fine in the pits with no load on the engine. I'll have to have a hunt around see what i can come up with.

Transformations

2010-06-28T07:29:00.000+01:00

After spending a few more hours with the cutting paste, a sharp knife and a water spray gun, the car was finished. I am very happy with the outcome!!!

Winning one battle!

2010-06-16T07:55:00.000+01:00

Another evening, another unhappy wife, another apology for being in the garage all night!! If my wife reads this, i apologise again, and its nearly done so you will see me for more than a fleeting moment soon, well as long as i don't destroy it at Brands this weekend!! Last night i actually ended up eating my dinner over a 3 hour stint in the garden and garage. So to match the bacon fat on the camera lens i know have some chicken grease on the body work. But the hard work is paying off, she is starting to look the part now, the rear is complete apart from a few web address stickers and inserting a hamster bowl (i kid you not!!) around the filler neck. Its a good job there was a sale on at Pets 'R' Us! You can also see the lights poking through the body work, and the pig tail strap towing eye on the left hand side.

As you can see the nearly sprayed roll cage is now back on and really looks the business, another big thumbs up to dads DIY spray skills and his time and effort!!!

The front and sides are WIP, with just the red lines attached so far, its amazingly time consuming!!!!

Illuminating

2010-06-15T09:01:00.000+01:00

Just a quick piccy showing the rear lights now mounted in the brackets and fitted to the car. The body work is not square and impossible to true up to the chassis, the holes in the body work are not symmetrical and i'm not so sure the chassis is straight and true, so lining everything up is horrible!! To make it fit the bodywork, the bare chassis looks terrible, but if you square it up to the chassis it looks shite from the outside!! So in an attempt to make it look OK, I ended up doing neither, so now it doesn't look quite right in any situation!!!!

It wasn't a very good night in the garage last night, Dad came over to lend a hand (again) as we are getting tight on time now, but it took him all night to reconnect the the front lights up due to various reasons (wires too short, GRP resin on bolts, crap connectors etc). Meanwhile i had to tidy the garage up a bit as i couldn't find any of my tools as they were all over the place, and then attack the no oil pressure issue after changing the oil and filter. Its a known issue that when you change the oil and filter you can get an air lock in the system, so you should always remove plugs and turn the engine over until you get pressure. If you can't get pressure you need to unscrew the filter slightly and turn it over again and release the lock. Now normally this is simple, but i had bought one of the K&N filters with the socket on the end so i could tighten the filter up easily and lockwire it in place, but unfortunately when i went to unscrew the filter, the socket rounded off. No matter how much i tried by hand or with a filter wrench it would not come off, so in the end had to knock a screwdriver through it and twist it off. I had got a spare filter that day as i knew this was probably going to be the outcome. With that sorted i turned the engine over and pressure resumed. I cut a hole for the fuel filler in the body work, but at the moment don't have any more filler hose to extend the cap above the body work, so there will be just a hole for this weekend I also removed the undertray as its too small now due to the cut out in the body work, and i want to make a nice flat undertray anyway in the future, and finally i cut and glued the very fine mesh (under 1mm holes) i had sourced for the side and rear vents on the bonnet.

Bodywork Progress

2010-06-14T12:52:00.000+01:00

With all the bodywork now sprayed up and transported back home it was time for a trial fit!!

The stripes had be masked out off the car, so we were a bit concerned they wouldn't match up once back on the car. As it turns out its only the drivers side, side stripe that doesn't quite line up, so a quick airbrush in will be required.

I had trimmed the the middle tub to fit the rear but hadn't actually sorted out the fixings before spraying. To keep things simple i pop riveted 2 pieces of angle onto the rear tub and then dzus fastners hold the sides to these. The drivers side went ok, but passenger side required 3 attempts as the curvature of the panels didn't quite match and looked horrible. I have had to position the fixings to as to bend the side panels into more of a curve to match the rear.

Another thing i noticed is that the drivers side rear body work seemed to be sitting sligtly higher than the passengers, so redrilled and moved the bonnet pins to try and level it up. But from doing this exercise i am now aware how non symmetrical the body panels are!! It is impossible to get everything mirrored exactly due to the body mouldings being different shapes either side!! My job is BIW design and everything is nicely mirrored in CAD, meaning that you can make everything nice and symmetrical, so I find these errors very annoying, but have to accept its all part of the kit car and hand built nature of these cars!!

With the body now fitted, it was time to bolt all the nice shiney bit back on!! This is very satisfying, especially doing it on the lawn in the nice sunshine

Wheelarch extensions now fully fitted and trimmed. The edges are lethal, hopefully Tim can catch his leg on them as he walks past and we can have matching scars inflicted from each others cars! ;-) I have some rubber edging to glue on after this has been achieved!

The lights are being mounted to the chassis rather than the bodywork, so made up some mounting plates and strengthened them by bending the edges and creating a box. I have got to mount these in mid air of the chassi to line up with the holes in the rear body work.

Plastic Surgery

2010-06-10T12:02:00.000+01:00

During dads prep of the body he had filled all of the holes i had made for mounting the body, so after a bit of redrilling i got the back end inplace and set about fitting the aluminium closing panels i had made

I was worried these would be a bit flimsy, but now they are rivetted in place they are fine, and also help the loading/fitting of rear body as the return edges on help line up the wheel arch inners.

As i mentioned in my previous post the wheels stick out by about 60mm from the body work, so i need to address this with some wheelarch spatts. Making the off side one has pointed to something being different between the mouldings of the original spider type tub and the door type tub i now have. I am assuming the spider tub must have more flared wheel arches or they were modified, as the wheels never stuck out this far before and the spats were a lot smaller. Now the rules state that class C should be standard body work, which this obviously isn't, but i need to enclose the wheel so they will have to be fitted, or revert to a spider tub. I haven't got time to do anything else, and seeing that most other furys have extended arches (see Bobs car) i can't see why it would be a problem.

To make the spatts/extensions i bent a strip of aluminium in to a curve to match the wheel arch, lined it up on the outside edge and scribed the outline of the bodywork the aluminium. I then cut up to this line on the inside edge every 30mm so that i could bend the tabs inside the car and then pop riveted it through the body.

Dad had also been busy prepping up the front end ready to mask out the stripe. The tricky part of the stripe is where it passes over the bumps, and at the same time keep the line straight and an equal width. To do this, rather than just trying to get the edging tape to look straight by eye, we stood the bonnet up on its rear edge, and ran a laser from a parallel piece of wood in front of it and marked the line ever few centimetres. This worked a treat and line has come out looking very neat. Unfortunately the hole for the air intake isn't central so is offset compared to the stripe, but hey ho, i'll probably destroy the bonnet next time out anyway ;-)

The Brand new lights took a bit of a battering last time out, and at £35 per corner i was happy just to bodge them back in. But Dad wasn't happy with this, and to be fair the rest of the car looks so good they would ruin it, so he took it upon himself and surprised me by making these out of a stainless steel dog bowl and a cheap large torch!!! The bulbs in the torch have been replaced with proper headlight bulbs and a side light added. OK, these wouldn't pass an MOT as stated due to the beam pattern, but they still have the side, dip and main beam required, and more importantly cost about £3 and are extremely lightweight. So next time Colin destroys one i won't be that bothered about running round the marshals trying to find who picked it up and hoping it is still in 1 piece ;-)

So i've still got plenty to do, but from one of the ugliest, scruffiest looking cars on the grid a beautiful white, blue and red swan is emerging!! No doubt I will ensure it returns to the dog like looks within 30 seconds of driving it!!!!!

Forwards, backwards then slowly forwards

2010-06-10T11:29:00.000+01:00

After getting back from holiday I realised i don't have that much time left to get this lot finished!! Dad had been busy while i was away spraying up the body, which again he has made a excellent job, especially considering he isn't a painter or have a spray booth. So here's a sneaky peek of the mid tub tub and rear

The initial idea was to have a wider centre stripe, but due to the lumps and bumps on the bonnet, applying the red and light blue stripes would have been impossible, so opted a narrower strip that only goes over relatively flat surfaces.

The recent TV coverage from the last Brands race featured a lot of my onboard footage (mainly because only 2 of us submitted any), so i thought i'd make the effort to improve the stability of the cameras hoping to recieve further good coverage and please Q20! So i weld a couple of brackets on for the cameras and while its off, we decided the shabby looking roll cage would look a lot better if sprayed up in white.

So the car is looking pretty bare at the moment and further away from completion than before i started!!! I have at least now checked the car over mechanically, changed the oil and replaced the rear pads so other than body work the car is actually ready top race.

Low rider

2010-05-26T14:40:00.000+01:00

No i haven't pimped the Fury, but now that the rear body is fitted in place i wanted to check i had enough clearance between the wheels and arches, so i removed the rear springs and let it sit on the bump stops. The nearside was fine, but the offside, although clear, needed a small amount of fettling resulting in a nice even gap at full compression, and hopefully no clouds of smoke during cornering.

The wheels stick out about 60mm from the body work, so next job is to make some easily replaceable spats. The old bodywork had the remains of some spats, but they are prone to damage being the first things to come into contact with the outside world, so this time i will make them disposable and easily replaceable.

There was now a gaping hole between the body work and arches through to the wheel due to the aluminium panelling having to be removed.

I'd never liked the way the panelling meant the return lip on the tub had to be cut away, thus making it very week and cracking all the gel coat. So this time i have ensured the mating surface between the chassis rail and tub is uninterrupted.

Look at the arse on that!

2010-05-20T09:47:00.000+01:00

With a lot of help from the angle grinder and lots of yellow itchy dust i cut the new rear bodyto shape, including cuttign away the rear wheel arches as the wheel rub when using the lowered chassis. I have allowed about 50mm clearance between the tyres and body, this may be a bit close and could rub on full compression, so i think i'll pop the rear springs out and sit it down to double check before i fibreglass the planned aluminium wheel spats in place. The rear body is held on as before with 2 bonnet pins at the rear, 3 dzus fasteners across the top and a over centre latch both sides just infront of the wheels. I have also added a 8mm vertical pin in the side pods that slots into a hole on the return flange of the rear body to stop it flaring out. You may be wondering what the 2 big holes are in the rear, well they were originally 4 holes for the old lights to be fitted in, but as i'm using my existing lights which are smaller, and also plan to fix the lights to the chassis of the car i just joined up the holes. The lights will be attached to the chassis and shine through the holes in the body work, which alleviated having to disconnect the lights every time i want to remove the body work and one less connection to cause my usual lighting issues at scrutineering!

Once the rear body was in place, i could cut the old tub in half to create just the front section. I measured this a few times and left a good amount of extra body that i could trim away slowly to ensure it fitted, the last thing i wanted was a 50mm gap in the sides!!

The panels almost lapped over each other which would have been a great way to join them, but it would have left a gap at the bottom or unmatched section at the top, so i decided to stick to the original plan of rivetting a aluminium lip to the rear body that the front tub will fasten to with dzus fastners.

Q20 Oil Sponorship deal

2010-05-19T11:00:00.003+01:00

You may have noticed the new banner at the top of the screen and wondering what i am up to. After about 9 months since answering an initial post on www.locostbuilders.co.uk and numerous emails and lots of hard work by Chris Lomas, we have managed to secure a sponsorship deal from JV International who are now marketing Q20 Oil across Europe.

WWW.Q20OIL.COM

Q oils is a South African range of products new to the European market. The range of oils currently enjoys a market share of 70%+ in its home markets and is the standard issue of the South African armed forces. The Q20 product displaces moisture, prevents rust, protects and lubricates all household and industrial products.

The car bodywork will now have to be finished for Brands in June and the shiney new Q20 livery plastered all over it!! I must also try harder not to smash the thing up at every meeting!!!!

Testing at Silverstone

2010-05-19T09:29:00.001+01:00

Initially i was going to enter the extra race organised by Colin at Pembrey within the WRDA, but decided it would be far more usesful to do a bit of development on the car. I had received the new dampers from Procomp, had a set of softer springs for the front and rear and had fitted a front ARB all ready for the day

Existing set up:
Front springs 275lb/in
Rear springs 225lb/in

New set up for testing
Front springs 200lb/in

Rear springs 180lb/in

16mm front ARB connected to inboard damper pick up point

The venue for testing would be a trackday at the silverstone Stowe circuit, which is very twisty as thought this would give a good test bed, plus it was cheap! Rather than making loads of changes at once, i decided to fit the dampers and softer rear springs, but leave the front ARB and springs and do these during the day.

For the first session out i left all the damper settings at total soft, just to see how the car felt. Straight away the rear end grip, even on acceleration felt vastly improved, but the car was too soft and wallowed all over the place, and the front felt like i was driving a bus, so i came back in and started upped the damper settings all round. Doing lots of short sessions and lots of tweaks to the dampers, by lunchtime i felt as if i got the dampers set up as well as i could with current spring set up. I was very happy with the dampers as they are mega controllable and can really feel a difference by just adding single clicks here and there! Coupled with The softer rear springs, it was mega grippy at the rear but front end was a bit too loose.

At lunch time I fiitted softer front springs and the arb. But straight away it felt wrong, with loads of understeer. And an observer came over to tell me they had a good picture of the inside wheel lifting high into the air! This backed up the horrible feeling the car had mid corner, I stiffened rear and softened front dampers slightly and went out again, but could actually see the front corner lifting! It was obvious the ARB was far too stiff for the setup, so I disconnected it and went out again. Instantly the car felt better and had the turn in it had with the old set up, but was far more controllable and less flighty at the rear, after a bit more playing with the damper settings got it gripping to the road like a carpet grippy thing! The rear is very very stable now and it turns in as well as before, the only negative is that the car now pushes wide after the Apex as it understeers slightly. I am gusessing this is partly down to the fact the car is rolling more, and the front tyres are going into positive camber due to the geometry not having enough camber compensation. But it could also be that i am now putting more power down with the rear end grip coming out of corners so pushing the car on. But then again i could have just screwed the handling up!!! But there has to be a trade off somewhere, so i'm willing to give this a try at Brands and see if the rear stability and better transfer of power from the right foot can get me a quicker lap time. If not, i can always put the old springs back on!!!

Post Brands repairs

2010-05-19T09:27:00.000+01:00

Considering what had happened at Brands i felt rather lucky to only have the following minor repairs to complete!!

Fibreglass, filling and painting of bonnet
Straightening out bonnet hinge/radiator A frame
Headlight mountings

On the wayback from Brands I picked up a new (to me) rear tub for £20 from a nice chap off www.locostbuilders.co.uk. It is a tub from the Fury with the doors, so actually stops just infront of the rear arches, so the plan is to cut the front of the existing tub off (as this is in pretty good nick), mount the new rear body, then create a joining method between the 2 just infront of the rear wheels. I like the ide of this as it makes removing the bodywork a lot easier for 1 man, and future damage will hopefully just require working on smaller mouldings.

Room in the bus was a bit limited, plus i had to get the new rear up to the house from the end of the road (as the bus doesn't fit p the lane to my house), so i invented the first double decker Fury

You can see the front A frame is a little off to one side

And the (new) aluminium rad ducting is a little bent

The bonnet has been sent away to the bodywork doctors (dads house), and an evening with a vice, hammer, 2 lumps of wood and welder sorted out the wonky A frame.

Brands Hatch 24th/25th April

2010-05-12T12:36:00.006+01:00

Firstly, I apologise for the late update, work have been very inconsiderate and ensured i have been too busy to post my ramblings, luckily normal service has now returned.

Well Brands was a great weekend overall recording my best class finish to date, although slightly tarnished by controversy in both RGB races. We (myself, Dad and William) arrived on friday night at about 9pm, after a great clear run all the way down. A quick unload (thanks to Bob for saving us a spot and supplying 240v) , a guided tour of the bus followed by a swift pint at the bar with Bob and we settle down to the first night in the bus with the new fold out beds/sofas.

I had entered the Allcomers again for a bit of practice, so it was an early start as scrutineering was at 7.45am. I also wanted to have ago with bobs Pace corner scales to see if i could get the corner weights sorted, so i had an early shower at 6.15am and got everything prepared. The PACE corner gauge is a nice simple bit of kit, that in principle should work very well, but Bob had already expressed his concerns about its repeatability and accuracy. After going round the car a few times the corners didn't seem far out, and definitely less out than the repeatability of the gauge. The problem with the gauge is that it is very dependent on the way it set against the wheel, i.e. its position and upright position, just trying the same corner over and over again gave quite large discrepancy's. So we ended up leaving the set as it was, as it didn't seem that far out. I've not discounted a PACE gauge as its a great, portable simple device, and i have some ideas on how to make it more repeatable that involves some more steel and a welder, so i'm keeping my eye open for one on ebay.

Scrutineering went without a hitch, which was less than could be said for David Wale, whose scrutineer decided to pick up on a black box in the cockpit that could be deemed to fail outside of safety requirements, reading the bluebook it didn't really break any rules, but he did at least say it was ok to race this time with it.

Qualifying for Allcomers went OK, and i felt my way back around the track. I also used the session as a testing to run softer settings on the dampers to try and settle the rear end. My plan was to go out very soft then come in after a few laps a dial in changes, as it happens the session was red flagged after a saxo decided to go for a dig in the sand at Paddock hill. The car felt alot more grippy and settled at the rear but was very wallowy and understeering a fair bit, so we stiffened it up all round but added a couple of extra clicks to the rear. Once the session was restarted i went back out and instantly the car felt a lot better, although still a hint of understeer. There wasn't time for another return to the pits so decided just to add an extra click ready for the RGB qualifying. I had qualified 5th for Allcomers with a time of 53.86, which was slower than last years best time and needed to be as close to the 52's as possible, but i never had a good lap once i'd changed the settings and knew there was definetly more to come off

RGB qualifying was busy, 29 cars entered, and i was near the end of the pit lane and could also see Al and Colin at the front of the queue so wasn't expecting a great class C grid position. I managed 2 or 3 clearish laps towards the end, and managed a 53.12 and a 53.34, which what not only over 0.5 seconds quicker than last year, but also put me in 2nd in class C for race 1 and 1st for race 2. Result!!!!!

The Allcomers race was abit of a none event, to start with anyway, as not really any racing to be had as i was on my own, but then after a spin coming out of graham hill, i was near the back and had a bit of a battle to get past Judy

The 1st RGB race was at 4pm, the weather was great and the car was running fine. I had a game plan in my mind that involved just trying to stay with Al in front of me around Paddock for the first time and hopefully Colin wouldn't get inbetween us, then letting the dust settle for a couple of laps before trying anything. As soon as the lights went out, that all went out the window, I followed Al towards Paddock who got ahead of Richard Wise in his new Sabre, but new RGBer Gary Good year came up the gap on my inside and was rubbing paintwork with Richard directly in front, and also had Tony coming up my inside corner. I kept my distance and concentrated on holding my line around paddock, not cutting the track off to Tony behind and not wanting to get untidy or scrub out wide and cause a collision like ii did at snetterton, but as we reached the apex, Colin who was coming round the outside at paddock turned in and left me no where to go, we ended up touching which caused Colin to spin off into the deep gravel and i was also on the way into a spin, but as Tony came past me my nose clipped his rear end which actually straightened me up and kept me on the track. Luckily it didn't really affect Tony, although it gave his wife Heather some polishing to do so in the paddock later. I lost 3 or 4 places, including 2nd in class C to Matt Rowe. Within a few laps i had caught back up with Matt and managed to pass him and then caught up with Al with Tony infront of him. But as we came out of Graham Hill Tony went into a spin, causing all the cars following to take some serious evasive action, I followed Al onto the grass, but had to run a lot wider as Tony was rolling towards me, and ended up losing a lot of ground on Al. It also allowed Matt to catch back up with me, with whom i then had a great clean battle with for the rest of the race, including some very exciting side by side racing through Paddock, surtees and clearways! On the last lap i knew Matt was always gaining on me coming into Clearways and i knew i couldn't let him past me up the inside there as i would never get past him before the finish line, so i just concentrated on hugging the curb of clearways all the way around with Matt tucked right up behind me and powered through to the finish line. So this gave me 2nd in class, my best class finish to date!! I was ecstatic, as was William who gave me a massive thumbs up as i drove past him on the way to the paddock.

The glory was all a bit tarnished when i arrived back at the bus as i was being blamed for the collision with Colin. My mistake at Snetterton caused us to collide at snetterton, but didn't rule either of us out of the race and which Colin went onto win, but this time i really felt as if i had done nothing wrong. I reviewed the video and still believed i wasn't to blame, but still went to see Colin to apologise if he thought i was to blame. After a public viewing of the video evidence in the "Bus Cinema" i was cleared of any wrong doing and felt a lot happier.

We spent an great late afternoon and evening drinking and eating BBQ'd meat with fellow RGB'ers before retiring to the bus for a warm and comfortable nights sleep, i love the bus!!!!

After waht happened in Race 1, the last thing i wanted was any controversy in the 2nd race, so took it really steady at the start, and through that lost a few places and was back to 4th in class. I spent the rest of the race catching back up, and seeing Colin spin off and rejoining just behind me after druids meant i was upto 3rd. With a 3 laps to go i was back up with Matt and on the last lap made a move on him coming into paddock, i was well past him after getting a great exit from clearways and good drag up the straight, i was on the inside and really didn't want want to run wide and close the track off to Matt, so backed off so i could hug the inside curb around paddock, this allowed Matt to start coming past me on the outside, but as we came to the apex he turn in across me leaving me no where to go, we collided and both spun, Matt ended up in the kitty litter but i managed to keep it on the tarmac and the engine running and facing the right direction, as i got going i realised i was in 2nd, but Colin came shooting past me into Druids. The bonnet of the car was severely bent off to one side now and as i came into graham hill the car leaned over and locked the wheel on the bodywork, causing me to run very wide onto the grass, but luckily it was the last lap so managed to get over the line without having to go round a sharp left hander again!

Returning to the paddock i was not a happy bunny, the last thing i wanted was any kind of contact, and again felt as if i hadn't done anything wrong, i had legitimately over taken the car in front and held a conservative line around the corner to try and ensure no incidents, This time we were called into see the clerk of the course, who after listening to our version of events and stated that the observers comments agreed with my statement. It was put down as a racing incident caused by the driver (Matt) not realising where i was as he turned in, and no actions were to be taken.

So all in all a very eventful weekend, and 2 trophies!!!

There is a 7 week break until the next race, back at brands, so hopefully get some time to repair and develop the car, and also get some more work done on the bus

Bathroom scales are rubbish

2010-04-22T07:45:00.001+01:00

Ok i never expected them to be accurate, but thought by calibrating them to each other they would be good enough to set corner weights. But the repeatability accuracy seems to be about +-4kg!!! So thats scuppered that cheap plan. So the car is ready to go apart from the corner weights are not setup, i'll just have to put up with it for this race as i don't have the time to get it sorted before Brands

Brands Prep

2010-04-21T14:20:00.001+01:00

Other than the suspension/handling concerns i had there was actually nothing to repair on the Fury after Mallory!! Not one scrape, crack, dent or bent thing!!! Well not until i checked the car over and discovered oil all over the front of the chassis, steering rack and engine bay under tray. My initial thought was it was just the annoying drip from the sump plug has some how found its way forward, but i couldn't see how on earth that could happen. Some more investigation revealed oil had been passing through the radiator fins and spraying the inside of the engine bay, a quick look at the oil cooler showed a rather big dent in the front of it. With the engine ticking over and cold there was no apparent drip or spray, so i concluded that it had to be seeping out of a small hole in the cooler only when under high pressure and temperature.

A quick search on the web and i found nice looking oil cooler for £40, half the price of the equivalent Mocal item!! It was a simple job of undoing a few nuts and pipes and hey presto, a new oil cooler in place. Hopefully this was the problem and i won't be treating the chassis to more rust prevention at Brands!

I noticed that the rear nearside tyre has had it, so have ordered one from Polley Motorsport and will have it fitted saturday morning in the paddock. I may splash out on 2, as the other looks like it probably only has a few laps left in it aswell.

The last check i wanted to do was on the rear axle input flange, i had noticed a very small amount of up and down play in it before Mallory so wanted to check it hadn't increased. Now i'm not sure if it had increased or not, but I wasn't too happy with the amount of play and decided i'd check the centre nut holding it on. Most diffs have taper rollers, so you can soak up some of the play by nipping the nut up, and on this occasion it worked a treat. 1/16th of a turn on the nut and all play was gone. Its something i'm going to keep my eye on, a rebuild of the rear axle is definitely on the wish list when i could hopefully replace the nearside bearing again and cure the small leak i have suffered since changing it at Cadwell last year.

So Roll on the weekend, i have busy weekend with 2 practice sessions and 3 races (Allcomers and 2 x RGB) over 2 days, the forecast is good, the BBQ is packed, the entire disco bus crew are attending, what could possibly go wrong.......................

Post Mallory Musing (not as a big a muse as Bob though)

2010-04-21T13:53:00.001+01:00

I've always felt the rear of the fury was rather lively, but put it down to it being live axle, but now that i am pushing a bit harder i feel its really starting to hamper my progress. Now i know the biggest limiting factor is me, and apart from getting as much practice in as i can and planning on some driver training later on in the year, i have also embarked on a weight reduction plan and fitness campaign to try and improve my racing (and health) Putting that aside, i'd also like to improve the car if possible (just incase i get back on the sofa and scoff pies), I'm happy having the car sliding around underneath me, but i feel its just to snappy and find myself constantly fighting and backing off to keep it on the tarmac. I have definitely changed my driving style to try and become smoother (and maybe slower) but watching videos of the car from behind and observations from the pit wall show the rear of the car hopping about and constantly suddenly stepping out. The car definitely never feels like the back is in a controllable drift, its either gripping or letting go violently, which isn't confident inspiring or a particularly quick way to negotiate a corner.

Considering i wrote my dissertation on rear suspension design, you would think i would know exactly what i was talking about or what to do, but the reality is, the subject was completly home taught by myself, i looked at the subject it in a very 1 dimensional way, basing it it only one authors view from a book in the university library, I didn't bother reading all of the book as it was too long, there was beer to be drank, i only had 6 weeks to complete the project (as i'd left it to the last minute due to the previous point) and as i discovered the day before i handed it in and the prototype was sitting at the Stoneleigh kit car show, i had made a rather large error in the formula, so obviously had no idea what i was on about, which is still true today!! I understand all the terminology, and a lot of the theory, but turning that into reality and diagnosing problems really is new ground for me.

The rear of the car doesn't look settled so i decided to strip the dampers off and have a look at what was going on with the suspension. But before i did all this i measured everything up and took the corner weights (using 4 bathroom scales) so i had a starting point to revert to if needed and check the current setting/ride heights etc. Once this was done I removed the dampers and springs and the suspension seemed to move around correctly and had no slack in it, so that all looked good. I sent the dampers off to Procomp Motorsport (who i used to finish off setting up the ST last year) who have a dyno to see how the dampers are performing.

The results are shown below:-

The results show that the valving had been adjusted for the lighter car and that it was working as intended, but apparently the 2:1 ratio between rebound and compression are not correct as the dampers are ramped up. I also hadn't realised that 1 way adjustable dampers actually adjusted both rebound and compression, i thought they only controlled rebound, i now realise that i had been very stupid and must hang my head in shame. So with the compression increasing too much per click coupled to the fact i was running 11 clicks (out of 12) at the rear and also running 225lb/in springs at the rear it looks as if the car had virtually no suspension at the rear, which would back up why the car was so lively at the back and hoping around so much. I maybe barking up the wrong tree here, but my plan is to now drop the clicks right down (front and back) for Brands this weekend and see if it helps things. Ok i may have problem with rebound, but i will have to try and find a compromise for this weekend. Yes i should have played with the settings more before this, but the last thing you want to do is try new settings for a race with no testing as you can't do anything about them, plus i have been that engrossed in trying to improve myself, i have tried to the leave the car in one state as much as possible as a bench mark.

I have booked a track day in May and ordered a set of new protech dampers and 180lb/in rear springs, so i'll fit these, and swap over the current 275lb/in fronts for the 225 lb/in i have on the rear at present and see if it improves things, watch this space!

Bed time in the Bus

2010-04-15T16:02:00.001+01:00

With the first full weekend and 2 night stay looming i thought i'd better get the beds sorted, especially as there will be 6 of us at Brands!!

The bus came with lots of seats, 6 of which were the rather useful fold out ones with built in seat belts. I bolted 2 of these in for Mallory for seating, but also to start working out what i needed to do to turn them into a bench seat/bed. I had 2 right hand seats and 4 left hand seats, this meant that i could bolt the frame works in as if the seats were facing each other and retain the seat belts. I toyed with the idea of leaving them like this and just dropping a board on them to convert into a bed a night, but it would be a bit messy, plus the wheelarch means that you sit at an angle. I therefore reverted to my original idea of hacking the backs off the seats, removing the base cushions and welding a framework up to connect the 2 seats. The back of one the chairs has been left in place as to show a reference to what i was doing, or it may have been because my grinder disintegrated while i was doing it ..........;-)

With the framework complete (and new grinder bought to remove seat back) I fixed some 12mm MDF to the framework as a base for the cushion

Now that the seat backs were removed there was no pin for the locking mechanism to hold the seat up whilst in transit, so using some more MDF i made an end panel to hold the cushions in place, but also to mount the pin

With some matching backs for the cushions this should make a fairly nice sofa to lounge around on when its peeing down with rain outside. I now have to do the same to the otherside, paint the frameworks and cover the MDF in carpet

Mallory Park 4th April 2010

2010-04-15T15:58:00.000+01:00

I thought i'd split the posts up as i started waffling in the last one!!

I had entered the Allcomers race so as to get some practice in before the RGB main event, this meant an early scrutineering session, which went without a hitch, and out on circuit for 9.30 for practice. We headed out for practice to find a drying, but still greasy track. Some places were a lot wetter than others (The Esses we very slippy at the apex) and there were patches of damp dotted around the dryer areas. I took it fairly easy and never felt like i got a great lap in, there were lots of yellows and a restart. I went to Mallory worrying about the place as i had a very near miss last year and just found it very intimidating on both visits last year, if you make a mistake it usually ends up in big one at Mallory. When the times came out I was surprised to have qualified 7th with a time of 55.29, looking at the other times people were putting in i wasn't too disheartened with slow time as it was obviously slippy, although i did see Colin was nearly a full second ahead of me, which did put me off the pace i needed to be in class C.

By the time the RGB session started the track had completely dried, and after 5 or 6 laps really started to enjoy the circuit and pushing the car a lot harder. I was struggling to get the hairpin right, either out braking myself and missing the apex, or spinning the rear wheels as i came out, or sometimes both! Near the end of the session the red flags came out and i assumed we wouldn't be going out again, especially as the marshal directed me into the paddock, but i noticed a couple of cars lining back up again (Colin and Al), so drove straight down to investigate. They were going to let us out for 4 minutes, so that meant 3 or 4 flying laps to try and put a good one in, it was 3rd in the queue behind Colin and Al and knew they wouldn't hold me up and i could try and gauge if i could stay with them, which is my aim for this year, and maybe pick up some faster lines. On the 1st flying lap i was being held up by Al, which i couldn't understand, and out dragged him down the main straight, i now had 2 laps of clear track ahead to try and get my best time. I managed a 51.54, which i was pleased with, until the results came out, i had qualified 1st in class and was bloody ecstatic!!!! I bounced around the bus for a few minutes before colin stuck his head round the door and called me a "bugger", i've never been so complimented or elated by a derogatory name in my life!! So in the first 2 races of the season i have qualified 1st in class for both, i just need to do the same in the race!!! Its one thing to bang in one good lap, but you need to repeat that for every lap in a race and be able to actually race against people, something i'm still trying to learn!

Lining up for the Allcomers race i was stuck right behind the great big Marcos, meaning i couldn't see anything ahead, and started to panic as i didn't think i could see the lights, but this turned out to be because i was looking in the wrong place!! As they turned red i noticed they were on the bridge. I got a decent start, but within a couple of laps or so there was daylight a head and no one behind so just settled back and tried to push the car more and get a better lap time in. A red flag stopped the race, and there was a lengthy stop while the marshalls rearranged us before the restart. After another reasonable start i could see Colin ahead, so i set my sights on catching him, which to my surprise i did!! I realised i could catch him coming out of Gerrards and made a move coming into the esses, the first time he held me off and got the inside line and we went around the esses side by side, but this gave him the better line for the hairpin, but on the next lap i managed to just sneak up the inside, on the following lap he got passed me at the same point, then again on the next lap i passed him. I was looking for the last lap board, but again was looking at the wrong place! I keep thinking the bridge is the finish line and marshal post, but obviously its on the otherside of the track 100 meters closer. As we came into the Esses again i managed to just hold the inside line and get to the hairpin first, then as we came around the Elbow i saw the chequered flag. I was well chuffed that for the first time i had actually had a race with Colin and beat him (only just, and another lap later i could well have been behind him as usual).

As the RGB race approached i kept reminding myself not to throw it away on the first lap again, being at the front of the class really doesn't help me, the thought of actually winning whilst driving ruins my driving!!! I just had to keep my head, but still push hard! I was on the grid behind Tim, who himself admits is not the best off the line, so i had a plan to try and pull past him to the right which would also stop Al, who was behind me, coming up my inside. My master plan all went to pieces as soon as the lights went out, Tim had a rubbish start and i got blocked in besides Tony to the right, Al swept up the left past me and Tim and Colin shot of down the far right of the circuit. After a couple of laps i was behind Al, and Colin with Matt Green in his class B Spire behind us. I could stay with the Al and Colin round all of the circuit except for the hairpin where i was losing loads of time, and started making more mistakes there trying to go faster through it, but inevitably losing even more time until eventually. Eventually Al and Colin were a good few car lengths ahead and Matt came past me, i then hoped that with Matt being tangled up with Colin and Al it would slow them all down and i could close up the gap. But suddenly there was the Green pulsar of Phil behind me, who swallowed up big chunks of the gap between us at the hairpin everylap, until i ran very wide at the hair pin causing me to come into the main straight slower, Phil took the outside line down the main straight, where i accidently pushed him wide onto the grass as i couldn't see him and thought he was on my inside, it was only the sight of dust that made me realise he was there!! I moved back over to allow him some more track and we went round Gerrards side by side, which was highly exciting!! Phil had the outside line so i had to keep in tight and he managed to out accelerate onto the straight and got infront of me for the esses. The next few laps I fought to try and get passed him, and again had a fantastic side by side drive around the Esses, which he won, and an interesting moment coming into the esses where i tried to go down the inside but ran out of tarmac and put 2 wheels on the grass!! On the final lap we came round the elbow and i had the run on him, and crossed the line side by side!! Unfortunately i was 0.07 seconds behind Phil so came in 4th, but I had had a fantastic time racing with Phil, and importantly had not exchanged any paint or rubber in the process!! Phil seems to have picked up his pace this year, his now seemingly full time pit monkey (due to his lack of car), Tim Grey, seems to have passed on some of his speed to him!!!!

I can't wait for Brands in April!!!!

Pictures of Mallory

I have 3 cameras on the car now, but some of them packed up so only got these 2 videos of the mallory race

Waffle before the race at Mallory Park 4th April 2010

2010-04-15T14:41:00.000+01:00

After being very well behaved at the wedding and looking after the kids all night and putting them to bed, i managed to sneak in 1.5 hours heavy drinking . Unfortunately the bar shut soon after i started so had to go mine sweeping for half drank bottles of wine and finally half drunk glasses of wine!! I was ordered to bed at 1am and was very impressed that when i awoke at 8am pm saturday morning i had given myself a hangover in such a short period! So after a nice breakfast and a walk around Bakewell, William and I set off in the bus for the main event of the weekend, Mallory Park (Family members please note that was a joke)!

We arrived at Mallory before the gates opened to allow us into the paddock, this was all planned though so we could queue up and grab one of the few 240volt hook ups. OK the bus doesn't have 240 volts (yet), but as the forecast was for a cold night i wanted to plug my portable electric heater in (you can see it hiding behind the one fold out chair). I hadn't done any work on the bus other than bolt 2 of the seats in which i intended to use as the base for the fold out sofas, and acquired some cushions (for the sofas) to sleep. Ok its not a luxury motorhome like a lot of the others have, but to me its a 5 star hotel compared to the tent!!!!

After a bit of faffing and chatting a group off us went out for a bite to eat and a couple of drinks at a local pub, The Windmill Inn, which was very nice. A big thanks to Dan for ferrying us all about (5 runs between the pub and Mallory in total) in his big Lexus!! Everyone disappeared off to bed so William and I settled down in the bus and quickly fell asleep. I was woken about 2 hours later sweating my ****** off, i had gone equipped with 2 sleeping bags and PJ's as i would have done in the tent, but with the heating and distinct lack of only nylon sheeting protecting us from the torrential rain i felt like i was in an oven! After ditching some layers i settled down again, and although woke a few time due to the rain, I probably had my best nights sleep at a circuit!!! Bus 1 - Tent 0!! When i finally surfaced for a shower, the rain had stopped, and we all had our fingers crossed for a dry day!!

Pre wedding/race weekend fun

2010-04-06T13:32:00.000+01:00

It was going to be a hectic extended bank holiday weekend! I had the sister-in-laws wedding up near Bakewell on the friday and rather than driving 2.5 hours home on the saturday to pick the car up, then drive another 2.5 hours back to Mallory I decided to get everything packed a ready for mallory and go up to the wedding in the bus. I had a lot of things to sort out for the wedding as i had to sort out the kids, their suits and more importantly i was in charge of collecting the flowers and bringing them up to the venue in the morning. This worried me as i had visions of the bus breaking down or there being some other disaster on the the way up on Friday morning, meaning that not only would the ring bearers (the kids) would not be there, the flowers would also be missing!! Little did i know at the time, but the in-laws also shared my concerns!!! I also had to get all the stuff required for the weekends race packed, and then fit it all in the bus.

Thursday day started well and i was getting my jobs of lists completed and actually realised i was going to get it all done without too much rushing. That was until the wife phoned from her parents, she had managed to lock her car keys in her car and block her parents car on the drive, and all this about an hour before they were all due to go up to the venue!! I didn't shout, kept very calm and drove over with the spare keys, but this obviously buggered up my plan for the day as i lost 2.5 hours!!!

I quick clean of the car was required as i wanted to show off her newly painted side pods! I just need to get that rear rough bit of fibreglass (the rear tub!!) rubbed down and repaired now and she'll be looking very impressive (for a race car)

Next job was to get the car into the bus, but the suspension wouldn't lower and the car wouldn't go up the ramp as it was too steep, after some faffing with wiring and relays i was completely stumped, but came up with the idea of driving it up a steep driveway so the back would be low to the ground. I did this and thought i'd give it one last go to see if the suspension would drop, which to my delight it did! So i reversed back down the slope to load up as normal, but this time it would drop again!!! So back up the drive and went, and low and behold it worked again!!! It then clicked, the handbrake had been interlocked with the air release valve on the suspension!! What a duffus, another hour wasted!!!

Anyway to cut a long story short, i got everything done by about 9pm and the flowers were picked up and safely stored in the garage ready to go in the bus for the journey up to Bakewell early the next morning.

2 Tone

2010-03-31T15:59:00.001+01:00

Just a quick snap of the 2 tone colour scheme currently sported

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Post Snetterton Repairs

2010-03-22T11:54:00.001Z

Nothing major to repair after Snetterton, just a bit of bent aluminium and broken fibreglass. Its just so annoying that the brand side pods and new aluminium panels i made lasted 30 seconds of racing!!! But it could have been so much worse, so i'm counting myself lucky! Plus it gives me the excuse to paint the side pods white now!!!

If Colins wheel had impacted 30mm forward or rearward it would have missed the chassis outrigger and his wheel wouldn't have been destroyed, i must try harder to point the soft parts of the car at him next time!!

The fibreglass has been getting very hot near near the exhaust, even after cutting a lot of it away after the test day. The top edge of the pod has lost its shape as it was obviously very hot and soft after the race and as it cooled it was all out of shape due to the collision. and set hard again in the wrong shape. I wanted to try straighten it out as much as i could before laying up the fibreglass repairs so heated it up with a blow torch and reshaped it as best as possible. I really need to try and stop it getting this hot!!

After a bit of reshaping i screwed the pod to the work bench ready to lay up the patches

The rear tub had lost its shape quite badly due to the lump of body missing and the cracks, so before laying the GRP up i clamped the side against a straight piece of wood, hopefully the patch of GRP used to repair the hole will hold the tub back to about its correct shape. I forgot to take any after GRP'ing shots, so you'll have to take my word for it that its all finished.

I didn't have a piece of aluminium larger enough to replace the panels, so a bit of panel beating got them back to a roughly the correct shape!

While i had the spare time i took the opportunity to check the car over ready for Mallory. The one front pad was completely shot, luckily i think there is about 1 micron of pad material left so it didn't damage the disc!! What did concern me was that the 3 other pads had at least 4-5mm left on them, and they had all worn at an angle. At least i got my moneys worth out of the one pad ;). I decided to try a different pad this time, as the RS-14's fitted are the most expensive pad you can fit, and i'm not convinced the extra money is worth it as the car is so light. I'm trying some EBC yellow stuff this time, they may turn out to be crap, but the brakes have very little feel now, so i can't see how they can feel much worse. If they turn out to be rubbish, i just chuck them in the box as spares so nothing lost.

I found a small amount of up and down play in the input shaft to the rear axle, there shouldn't be any so i think its getting nearly time for a rear axle rebuild. I won't get this done for mallory, but its something to put on the the to do list. The play may have been there for a long time and i've just not noticed it, so i'll keep an eye on it at Mallory.

So other than filling and rubbing down the repaired areas and refitting the body the car is all ready to go to Mallory, which all seems a bit too prepared!!! I'm sure something will scupper it!

Busted!

2010-03-21T21:12:00.000Z

The wife is currently reading my blog!! She has also offered to "decorate" the side of the bus with what she considers suitable and deserved slogans! Keep your eyes open for "W@nker Racing" coming to track soon!! LOL!!