Yesterday, Colin said I’d not updated this blog for “years”. This is a slight exageration as it’s nearly been three weeks. However, it is too long. There’s been lots of other things on, you see. Just to make you realise how hard we pseudo academics work I was even at a conference for all of last weekend so I didn’t get any time at all to go in the garage then.However, I’m back now. Not that there’s much to talk about. One small thing is that I finally got some 205 section tyres for the rear of the J15, a sample of which is in the photo above. However, it doesn’t seem to be that much larger in the wheelarch. Oh well…
Most recent progress, if that’s the right word, has been around the Fury. Since I had such a torrid time at Pembrey with starting I decided to strip the clutch out of the Fury in case there was something obviously awry. However, there was nothing obvious. The friction plates were all worn about 50% so I decided to change them anyway. However, the only other issue is that one of the steel plates had had a small groove worn in it by the anti-judder spring. If you look hard, you can just about see this on the left most steel plate in the photo. However, according to Andy this is normal. So, I put the clutch back together. This time using some new Barnett springs and after 30 minutes persuading my tube of RTV to work properly. (Eventually it did; I should have picked all the bits off my skin soon.) We’ll see how it goes at Silverstone.
Just in case the 
aforesaid RTV hadn’t worked I ran the engine for a short time. Well, I had intended to but it wouldn’t start as the battery appeared to be flat. Odd. I charged it with the Optimate and left it for a couple of hours at which point the Optimate said it was fully charged. As the Optimate is just a trickle charger then it seemed likely that the battery was duff; I had thought it was dying a while ago. So, I fitted the spare (that is, I nicked the one from the J15) and now the engine turned over. However, I didn’t run it because liquid was running along the coolant bleed hose to the header tank. Bugger…
So, I took the airbox off. In the process, I disconnected the fuel hose to the secondary injectors as in the photo above, expecting it to go Pftttt! as the fuel pressure was released. However, all it did was go drip. At that point I realised that the fluid I’d seen was clear, not coolant coloured and therefore was probably fuel. So, I took airbox off further. On the way down (it’s really in three layers) I discovered the the fuel filter had fallen out and was sitting on the floor of the airbox, as in the next photo . Things were going from bad to worse.
Down at the bottom layer it was clear that the original problem was that the main fuel connection wasn’t connecting properly. I fixed that and put everything back together. Luckily, this time it was fine and fuel didn’t piss out all over the place. Phew.
Now I had to repair the reverser, again. At least this time it was still pretty clean as it had only done a few laps since I fixed it last time. Again I replaced the main shaft on which the idler gears run, the broken one which has been sawn into by the gear on the nose of the diff is shown in the photo, and put it all back together. Again.
Hopefully, it’ll work here and I won’t have to take it out again, although I’ll doubtless have to adjust it again. Then I might be in shape to go to Silverstone for another RGB race. Wonder if I’ll get any time to look at the J15 before then?