A while ago I fixed the other silencer in the same way. (A self tapper rammed
into the bottom.) It certainly makes a big difference to what the car rattles like. However, I am going to have
to restuff at least one of the silencers, as it's making more and more odd noises.
I also did a few other bits and pieces today. First of all to try and stop the driver's seat bashing into the ground when a) the road is bumpy, b) the car's being driven spiritedly (that's all the time then!) and c) there's two-up I raised the rear ride height slightly and fitted some bits of steel to the bottom of the seat to act as skid plates. At least that means that there should be sparks rather than a stink of resin...! I also softened the rear dampers slightly. They're still in the position that I arrived at for track driving and it's clearly too stiff for the road. I keep wondering what would happen if the spring rates were raised slightly?
I've been wanting to make some head restraints for a while and today I started
a bit of fabrication. Having thought about lots of ways of doing it I've ended up back at the original idea, which
was to make some sort of brackets that would attached to the rear harness bolts and allow the slotting in, or out,
of a head restraint. The ability to take it out is important for being able to do up the tonneau cover.
So, as a start I got a plate of steel that would bolt into the boot and welded some pieces of steel bar to it so that they would allow another piece of bar to be slid in and out. This ended up looking like this.
I painted this and the next job will be to weld some bar together to act as the "stick" part of the head restraint. After that I'll need to get a lump of plywood to act as the backplate and arrange some sort of padding.
Today was the day planned for the cam7 trip to the coast, colloquially known
as a Fish'n'Chip run. We assembled at the usual start, the World Famous Comfort Café in the morning and,
after bacon butties, set off for the coast. The one problem was that the weather didn't look absolutely wonderful.
All the same, we're made of sterner stuff than that, and set off by a slightly back-streets route that I had devised. It was the usual start, stop, lose people, form up again sort of trip. The photo here was taken just after Brandon, I think and the cars are, from the front, Jim's Westfield, the Rush, Clem's Xtreme, Alex's Caterham, Adrian's Genesis, Matt's Caterham and Steve's Fury. The Fury's the one with the bonnet up and, at the end of the day, the Fury had to be trailered home due to the bottom crank pulley falling to bits.
Still the rest of us made it and a fine day was had at the seeside with lots of silly games.
On the way back, though, we went through a huge downpour that soaked us all. However, by the time we were home the rain had stopped, the sun was out and we were all smiling. Still a bit damp though.
At one point in the heaviest of the rain there was a very slight hesitation in the Dax which went away as soon as I felt it. I guess that's probably due to some water getting on the electrics. It was certainly everywhere else. Interestingly, the oil temperature in the wet weather was very low. I suspect the water sloshing against the sump served to cool it rather.
in case you've got to this frame directly and can't get out, go here.