Category: Uncategorized

What’s he doing?

I know, I know. It’s been ages since I posted here. I’ve got the obvious excuse, though, that things have been rather frenetic with respect to Anthea. However, she seems to be slowly on the mend now so my thoughts are turning back to car things. Inevitably, I didn’t do the Birkett. It might have been just about possible but, to be honest, my mind was on other things.

Essentially, there are 3 things I want to do to the car this winter, as in the following list. I’ve given myself a target for getting the car done by booking up for a track day at Snetterton on February 14th. That will probably be about a month before the start of the season proper and should give me a chance to see if the car actually works.

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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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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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Nearly time for another race

Well, I’m finally getting there.

I finished off unbending the right rear and put it all back together again. I keep thinking I ought to get some new hubnuts one day. They’re great big nylocs and are the original ones I got from the the Kit Car Workshop back in 2004. In fact, the originals that they supplied were all bashed up and I got some new ones from them. These have now been on and off so many times that they could really do with replacing.

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