Moving on

Well, I’ve managed to do a couple of small things but hopefully over the next week I can manage to spend a good deal of time in the garage. We’ve not got too much on over the next week, probably mainly because we didn’t arrange too much because of Anthea’s operation; a couple of months ago it was hard to think about Christmas. Mind you, she’s much better now which is great. We’re starting to talk about the next racing season which puts the pressure on my to actually get on with getting the car sorted.One thing that needs doing for the new engine is the inlet. The CBR1000 engine has two sets of injectors. The primary ones are in the normal place on the throttle bodies; you can see them on the right of this photo of the airbox. There is another set though which are positioned above the inlet trumpets and squirt directly into the trumpet when the ECU decides that a huge dose of fuel would be useful. You can see the secondary injectors on the top of the airbox here. The problem with all this is, of course, that the standard airbox ends up with being really tall. This isn’t a problem on the bike but in a car it’s a pain. Most of the modern bike engines end up needing quite a bonnet bulge. Dan’s car has a positive skyscraper for example. However, Andy says he’s making a new GRP airbox which will be better, although it’s still going to be tall.

In order to start working out what I had to do with the inlet, I took the standard airbox to bits. This photo here is looking down the throat of two of the throttle bodies. One odd thing is that each of the butterflies has got some rubbery gunge on it. I’m confused about this as I’m not sure what it is and whether it’s supposed to be there. There are stringent warnigns in the Haynes manual about not cleaning the throttle bodies in any solvents so I’m wary about squirting a load of carb cleaner in here. Very odd though.
In order to see how high the throttle bodies are I fitted them to the engine. One other goodie I’ve got is some spun aluminium trumpets to replace the standard plastic ones. Supposedly, they’re better than the standard ones and are also all the same length. The standard ones are of two different lengths, as in the photo. According to Andy this is just to make them fit in the airbox, but I must admit I wonder if it’s to spread out the torque curve slightly.One consequence of looking at the throttle bodies is that it’s clear that a better airbox would be a load better from the height point of view than the standard one. One thing that has occurred to me is that I shouldn’t sort the gearchange until I’ve worked out what the airbox is going to look like, as they’re likely to be in the vicinity of each other.
I’ve had the chance to look a bit harder at the water pump problems whereby the pump bashes into the propshaft. This photo is of the pump out of the engine. The problem is the inlet sticking upwards, which is I think is the thermostat bypass.In order to check how problematic it was, I re-attached the prop to the engine and fitted the pump back in place: luckily you can get it in and out while the engine’s in the chassis.
Miraculously, the pump fitted OK. I think the problem was just that when the hose is connected to the pump then the hose and/or the hoseclip bashes into the prop. In order to check what the clearance really is I took some photos. This is one of  the them here. It’s a bit washed out as I processed so that you can see what the problem is. The round thing in the middle of the picture is the top of the inlet pointed out above. You can see how close it is to the yoke on the propshaft’s front UJ. (Note that the aluminium clutch standoff is much nearer the camera than the water pump so that isn’t in the way.The pump is close but it isn’t actually making contact. It would be a different thing with the hose connected though. So, as far as I can see there are four possibilities for fixing this problem:

  1. I could cut off the top bit of the connection, grind it at an angle and weld it back on at an angle to move it away from the prop. Unfortunately it’s aluminium, at least I assume so, and welding it is beyond me. Dan, though, is getting to be a dab hand at aluminium welding.
  2. I could weld a tube into the inlet to lift the place that the hose connects up a bit, and therefore away from the prop. Again, though, it needs some welding.
  3. Find some sort of hose connection that fixes with a thread and an O-ring that I could tap the inlet with, again to raise the hose slightly.
  4. Plug up the hole entirely and make do without a thermostat and the bypass. This is actually what’s recommended in the HRC “race a CBR1000” set of instructions. Mind you, I’d rather leave the engine as standard as I can for now, if only initially.

Currently, I’m not too sure about which of those to do. However, it’s clearly no insurmountable.
Finally, I got the new tank. This is pretty much the same as the original tank. However, it’s got the pump mounting flange welded into the bottom of it and it’s also a bit wider than the old tank, mainly to increase the range of the car slightly. Hopefully this should make the car able to longer runs at things like the Birkett. Mind you, I have no real idea of how far it will go on any amount of fuel anyway. My current plan is to run the fuel in some 5/16″ cunifer tubing from the rear of the car to the front and I’ve got some injection hose for connecting to the cunifer. If possible, I’d like to keep this out of the tunnel to keep it a bit cooler. I need to look at the Blue Book though to see what the regs are for running fuel lines in the “passenger” compartment.