Another one bites the dust

Why, you may ask? Well, today’s my birthday and the years seem to be going by quicker and quicker. Long term readers will know that my race number was chosen as a consequence of me reaching a particularly auspicious age since when racing has become rather an, errr, obsession. Still, it’s better than watching the TV all time.

I must admit that I’m feeling rather mortal. An old University friend has popped up on Facebook recently. He was another member of the same group of people who put on and supported all the social activities in the “Guild of Undergraduates” there. He’s been digging out a load of photos of old photos which are rather alarming. One is of the poster for the Christmas ball in 1973. I clearly remember doing the lights for this when top of the bill were a little known band called Queen. Entry fee was 35p; luckily I got in for free…

Anyway, enough of all this and back to the car. As you can see I’ve got my traditional number again which is now attached to the car. Well, it is to the sides of the car. I haven’t put a roundel on the front yet as I’m not sure whether I want to cut a socking great hole in the bonnet for ducting air out of the radiator.

You will remember that I’ve been fretting about the induction. In fact, I reckon this is the last actual thing I’ve got to make for the car, although I suspect that I’ve thought this before. All the same, I have now come up with a way of doing this, although it is rather Heath-Robinson; I may well go back and change things, even if it’s only to splash some paint around.

You may remember that I’ve been looking for a way of attaching some ducting to the holes in the top of the airbox above the filters. I had been wondering about bonding some ducting directly to the polypropylene airbox. However, that didn’t seem to work. the final (well, the current final) approach to this is to use some sockets from pipe guttering (honest!) to make some ducts on the top of the airbox. You can see them in the photo above; the grey stuff is some PU adhesive which hopefully will seal things up a bit. I used these sockets because the 65mm ducting I’ve got is a snug fit into the top of them. That meant I could put a support for the inlet ducts that I’ve got above the airbox, which now looks like the next photo.

The obvious problem with this is that it’s rather ugly, especially because of the box bit which is required to cover up the injectors to save me from the wrath of the scrutes. I quite like the purposeful look of the ducts themselves so I think I’ll arrange to paint the ally bits, apart from the ducts themselves, matt black as I think that’ll make them a bit less forward. In fact, when I do that I’ll probably try and arrange to do the same thing to the roll cage. I’m pretty sure I know someone who has a supply of matt black paint…

I reckon with that I’ve essentially finished the construction of the car. There are, however, a whole lot of little things to do which are going to take some time, but hopefully will involve less staring at the car trying to work out what to do and rather more doing. My current plans are to try and go testing at the start of February, weather permitting.

So, what’s on the to-do list? Here’s the current version. You may well note that I’ve put on a couple of little things that weren’t there before. I’ve also realised that I’d forgotten that I need to make a head-restraint. That’s particularly stupid as it’d ideally be welded to the roll cage. I’ll have to arrange some sort of clamp mechanism instead…

Pre test:

1. Mount a camera somehow.
2. Do a mega bolt check.
3. Setup the suspension. This’ll have to be a guess at first but it’s a start. One issue with this is that I think I’m going to have to modify the little gadgets that extend the track rod ends as I think they’re a smidge too long.
4. Adjust master cylinder pushrods and throttle pedal.
5. Fit mirrors.
6. Make head restraint.

Pre race:

1. Think about adding additional triangulation to the engine compartment.
2. Add some yellow.
3. Get a lambda boss welded into the exhaust system. While this is being done, get the little fitting on the exhaust that I damaged re-welded.
4. Add catalytic converter to tail pipe.

Long term:

1. Duct radiator out of  bonnet top.
2. Come up with some way of making cockpit adjustable ARBs.