Author: Tim Hoverd

Back to Brands

img_0084Hmm, an eventful weekend was had by all. The forecast was pretty rubbish but as it turned out it was fine, just a few drops of rain on Saturday morning and after that it was sunshine all the way.

The weekend started, though, in a rather bizarre manner. I had spent Wednesday through Friday in a meeting at UKC in Canterbury. So, on Friday afternoon I drove back to Cambridge, practically passing Brands on the way, packed up the bus and drove straight back to Kent. On the way we were parked in a curious long car park that is apparently called the M25. This car park stretched all the way from the M11 to the Dartford crossing and seemed to be caused by the toll booths. In a rational world, of course, the tolls would be reduced or eliminated at peak times.

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Back on track

090414-dyno-plotAs there’s a race coming up at Brands and it’d be really nice to actually make it onto track this time, I’ve been working towards that.

After having made the bump steer gauge I spent a day setting up the suspension very carefully. In order to do so I did something I’ve been meaning to do for ages and bought some bags of sand to make a fake Tim with in order to set up the car properly. With that in place I set the ride height, corner weights, camber, toe and stringed the car. I must admit that when I next  build a car I’ll arrange for a setup frame to be easily fitted to the car which will make a lot of this a lot easier.

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Normal service resumed

airbox_stay

I’m still working on the car with an eye to the next race, at Brands, and the upcoming rolling road visit.

I’ve added a small stay to the airbox. At snetterton a scrutineer leaned on the airbox and the throttle bodies came adrift from the rubbers that attach them to the cylinder head. This stay should stop this happening. I am, though, probably going to move the bottom end of so that it attaches to the engine mounting, rather than the top of the pedal box.

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Moving forward again

new_catCompared to the recent bout of doom and despondency, this post should turn out to be slightly more upbeat.

First up I took the remains of the shattered exhaust over to Andy’s and we welded in a new cat, as seen here. (I really need to get a TIG welder…) Apparently, the cat I had is one of the earliest batch produced by the company that Andy got them from and they now weld the cat canister into the housing. (If you look hard at the photo you can see where there’s some grinding on the top of the housing, this appears to be the end result of where a hole has been drilled through the housing and then filled with weld material after the cat was inserted.)

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A blasted cat

cat_failure_03I’ve now had a chance to have a look at the cat rather harder. Of course, this involves actually cutting up my nice new Tony Law exhaust system which is a bit alarming. Here it is in the vice just as  I set about it with a hacksaw.

You can see the lambda boss sitting here. When I took the lambda sensor out it was completely black, symptomatic, I guess, of the thing running incredibly rich and dumping carbon all over everything.

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CATastrophic failure

cat_failure_01Well, that explains it then. This is the view peeking down the inlet to the cat. The cat is not meant to look like that jumbled pile of bits and pieces.

I got up this morning having decided that the problem was either a) something to do with engine management or b) a blocked exhaust. As you can see it was the latter. This blockage would have reduced the flow of gas through the engine which effectively is what was causing the rich mixture.

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Thud… Thud…

That’s the unmistakable sound of me banging my head into a brick wall. At least that’s what I feel as if I should be doing after last weekend at Snetterton. To say the weekend was frustrating doesn’t come anywhere near it.

We got there last on the Thursday night and parked up in the area of the paddock nominally reserved for RGB. Mind you, we appeared to be a in Stock Hatch city. I was testing on the Friday and, apart from worries about the weather, looking forward to it all.

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