Eeeek….

Last weekend was the annual 750 Motor Club awards dinner which is always a good night to chat to racing mates and always seems to me to be the startof the season. As such I seem to have an awful still to do.

Hence, eeeek!!!

There’s a bit of progress to talk about here, luckily. First up is that I installed the power commander just at the side of the battery, as shown here. I also had a play with the mapping software which looks pretty cool and fairly easy  to use. Essentially you attach a laptop to the power commander with a USB cable and it gives you a 2D set of sites (the dimensions being throttle position and RPM) in each of which you can adjust the fueling above or below the standard setting dished out by the Honda ECU, which is just the other side of the battery. You can also get an ignition module for the Power Commander but that is specially forbidden by the formula regs. It’d be interesting to try it though.

In the immediate term I’ll just leave the standard power commander map in there, which Andy reckons is pretty good. If I get a chance at some point I’ll take the car along to a rolling road and get it specifically mapped. I’ve also bought a wideband lambda sensor which is one of these which I bought from my good friends at Trigger Wheels. Once I get the chance to get the sensor plumbed into the DL1 I’ll be able to plot AFR (air fuel ratio) after I’ve finished a run. That should show me a bit of what’s going on.

I’ve refitted the bonnet, and in the process cut a big hole to clear the engine and airbox as you can see. This shows the view from low down and  you can see that the inlet trumpets are just about under the bonnet, although of course like this there isn’t any airbox. When I cut this hole my intention was to make the airbox stick out through the bonnet which I’d trim to be snug around the airbox.

However, I have now got the airbox and I’ve realised that this was a daft idea. Here’s the airbox in position and looking, if I’m honest, rather over-imposing.

The notion of making a snug fit with the bonnet would work if the bonnet just lifted off and on but the Fury bonnet is, of course, hinged and you just can’t get a very snug fit due to the angled approach. Hence, I’ve cut a rather larger hole here. At the moment the approach is, unless I have a brighter idea, to make a plate that goes around the airbox and attaches (after the bonnet is in place) to the bonnet with some Dzus fasteners. If nothing else, this should do for the upcoming trackday, I may re-address the situation after that. Of course, with the plate in position actually opening and closing the bonnet will be a bit of a pain. Perhaps I should just make a hump after all?

That can wait though, as I might want to do something else. I must admit that I nagged Andy unmercifully until I got he airbox but I’m not totally happy with the aerodynamic aspects of the ‘box. I’m pretty sure I know how to make one that’d work better than this. (For those interested, it’s all to do with that nice Mr Bernoulli, he said mysteriously.)

If I get the chance I may well have a go, later in the season, at making something else for which a bonnet hump might be more appropriate. In the meantime, though, I’ll stick with this.

One of the big problems with the CBR1000 is the second set of injectors which, in this case, are mounted in the top of the upper half of the airbox. This means that getting the fuel rail connected is rather a pain, as is getting the wiring to the injectors. Here you can see the secondary fuel rail and the wiring in the top half of the airbox.

Of course, this is all very well, but that airbox is in the way of one’s forward vision. So here’s a couple of photos of what it looks like from the driver’s seat. First impressions are that it’s actually OK. One observation, though, is that Andy’s airbox has a cover that goes over the top set of injectors. Frankly, there’s loads of wasted space up here, as can be seen in the second of the viewpoint photos where I’ve taken off the cover. However, I’ll leave it as it is for now. I can always experiment when at Snetterton to see what it’s actually like on the track.

(That is, for now I’ll just gaffer tape the injector cover in place!)