Author: Tim Hoverd

Missing Mallory

For those of you wondering what happened at Mallory, in the end I didn’t go. Although, it was apparently a carnage-strewn race that was good to miss.

I didn’t go to Mallory because Anthea ended up in Papworth Hospital undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t feel like going to Mallory. She seems to be on the mend now, though, which is great. It’s a long way back to fitness though, apparently about 3 months.

The big issue now is, will she be well enough for me to do the Birkett?

Preparing for Mallory

The last race of the RGB season is coming up so the car needs a bit of preparation.

Most important is the oil cooler. I took this off before Oulton as it became apparent that something was leaking from somewhere. However, the oil temperatures at Oulton were back to being alarmingly high (as in the output from the logger just on the right.) As you can see, the oil temperature was up to nearly 160°C before the end of the race.

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Suspension of disbelief

I’ve carried on using Susprog3D on the suspension and it’s really rather interesting, or alarming depending on your point of view. All I’ve done with the suspension in the past is just calculated the roll centres and used that, along with a nifty spreadsheet, to calculate the roll stiffness distribution. That was fairly successful. However, the current investigation is producing all sorts of odd things.

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A winter programme

As usual, just as the weather’s about to get cold, I’m planning what to do whilst frozen in the garage.

Needless to say I’ve got a list of things as long as my arm to look at, notwithstanding the engine issues discussed in the previous post.

So, as much as to help me get everything sorted, here’s the main things I’m looking at at the moment:

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Oulton Park again

Finally, we’re back racing at Oulton Park. I came here first in 2004, in my first season and I’ve been waiting to come back ever since as it’s a truly great circuit. However, as it’s been so long it seemed sensible to do some testing. So, I signed up, as did lots of other RGBers, for the testing that was running on the Friday afternoon before the race day on Saturday. (You might wonder about the odd dates; I think it’s a result of yet more noise problems at circuits like this. After all, it’s only been there since 1948 so you can understand how people who move 5 miles away in 2005 are going to be surprised and dismayed to find the distant whine of racing cars disturbing their peace.)

The photo here is nicked from Buzz’s photo site. Buzz is supposed to race with us but has had such a bad run of luck that he licking his wounds at the moment. I think he might have said that he’s planning on getting out at Mallory though.

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I wonder if it works?

Well, after all that faff at the weekend I’ve actually got the car back together now. It started first time too, at which point I turned if off immediately because I realised I hadn’t actually put any coolant in it. Miraculously, it didn’t even take that long to get the oil pressure up. Normally when you remove the pressure relief valve in the bottom of the engine and allow the main oil gallery to empty then it takes ages and ages of spinning the engine to get the pressure up again. This time it happened almost immediately!

I just need to put it on the floor and do the obligatory bit of suspension alignment checking (why does it move all the time??) before I’m ready for the next race weekend. Of course, the only problem is that I don’t really know if either:

  • I’ve actually fixed anything or
  • it doesn’t leak oil out of one of the many places where I’ve had it in bits.

But, I can’t really see what I can do about that. The next meeting is at Oulton which has got a good deal of tarmac for driving about on so I should be able to try it to some extent, at least, before taking it on the circuit.

Gearbox repairs

So, after Silverstone I had a couple of problems to fix. However, I remembered that I didn’t write up what I did before that race. Most importantly was that I modified the seat slightly so that I sit ever so slightly more upright. I think that I’m a bit too laid back and it makes my neck hurt over the length of the race. So, I thickened the top of the seat very slightly. It certainly seemed to do the trick at Silverstone but we’ll see a bit more in the long run.

As you can see, I’m running short of red gaffer tape…

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Racing at Silverstone

Well, it was back to Silverstone again for the club’s annual August bank holiday meeting. At this meeting all the club’s formulae are racing so it’s pretty packed and hard to see how they could run it anywhere other than at Silverstone due to the amount of space available there. Problem is, it’s a completely awful circuit for spectating at. I did rather well here last year so it’d be nice to do reasonably well again.

This photo was taken by Mark <something or other> who’s talking about coming racing with is. I’ve shamelessly nicked it off his on-line photos, I hope he doesn’t mind. 🙂 (You might also be able to tell that I washed the car before the race!)

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Another weekend in Anglesey: 2

So, after the first race I was set to start the second. I didn’t really have anything to do with my car although Colin needed a bit of support as he was pretty hacked off about the attack of Mondeo man.

On the grid I was right behind Colin who was behind the Mondeo. Unfortunately, Chris Allanson pulled off on the green flag lap. There was clearly something wrong with his car but I didn’t manage to catch up with him to find out what it was.

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