Out with a whimper

Cracked discWe left it at the end of the RGB season and looking forward to the Birkett. Before that, though, I went off on the usual checklist of things to look at. In the process of checking the brakes I found this cracked brake disc. Luckily, I’ve got some spares so it was easy to replace but it’s a bit alarming really…

One of the other reasons I had everything in bits was that for some time I’ve been fretting that the wheel studs on my car are not quite long enough. This only applies when I’ve got the wets on (as the wheels are different) and then only by about 1.5 mm but it was enough to worry me. I’ve been trying to find some longer studs for a while. Luckily, someone in the RGB paddock (Ian Mittell) pointed me at some ARP studs which would do the job nicely. As they’re ARP products they’re bound to be of very high quality and also expensive. However, it’d ease that nagging worry.

Long wheel studsSo, I looked around for a distributor and after not getting too far just typed the part number into Google and up they popped on Amazon, although from somewhere in Chicago. All the same I ordered 4 sets and they arrived in a few days. Annoyingly, they come for 5 stud wheels meaning that I that I’ve actually got enough for 5 hubs. Still, a few spares is no problem. In fact, you can see one at the top right of the photo at the top of this page.

Of course, to fit the studs I had to take all four uprights and hubs apart which was a bit of a pain. All the same, probably useful as a sort of extended bolt check. In fact, it was while doing this that I Mirrorsdiscovered the cracked disc so it was clearly useful. As you can see from the photo, they are actually looong. However, that’s not such a bad thing.

Another small modification before the trials of the Birkett was that I changed the mirrors, hopefully to ones that would allow me to see behind me a bit better. However, although these are better, I’m not convinced that they’re really that much better than the out and out race mirrors I had before. I may well revert to those over the winter.

So, with that it was off to the Birkett. To cut a long story short, it was a bit of a damp squib because it was an absolutely soaking wet, unbelievably wet race. It just poured down with rain for the whole day, right up to about 2 mins before the end of the race when a rainbow appeared and the sun came out.

The biggest positive news, though, was that the Avon wets that I’ve been lugging around all year actually worked pretty well. The Birkett cateringbiggest problem that I had is that the wet got into the electrics on the car and I eventually came in because I was worried that the engine was about to cut out. If you look at the videos below you can see that the brake light connection to the data logger was failing, as was the connection to the wideband lambda which drives the AFR reading. In fact, in the Shelter under constructionsecond session there’s effectively no sensible data from the AFR.

The best things we did, really was to sort the catering out properly this year (see above) and build a half decent shelter on the pitwall for the timing crew. The latter turned out to be nigh on essential given the way the weather turned out. You can see the shelter under construction in the photo, and there’ s a pretty decent view of the final thing in the videos that follow. We made it out of some timber that arrived as a palette one day, some nails, screws, tiewraps (of course) and some spare awning side panels. Luckily Matt, who’s a structural engineer, was on hand to assist with design and stress analysis.

So, not much to write about really. Here’s a video of my first on-track session. The main things to note are how bloody wet it is and, rather alarmingly, how poor the rain lights are on some of the cars. What was nice, though, was that the Avons allow you to push the car a bit, even though it’s still the case that an RGB car’s relative pace is poor in the wet:

The second session is, to be honest, much the same as the first. The only issue is that engine started sounding very odd, and was really unhappy trundling around behind the safety car. I was really concerned that it was just going to stop. I think that there was just too much water sloshing around the electrics. I probably need to pay some attention to water proofing as one of the winter jobs.

So, that really is the end of the season. It’s now time to do all those things that I’ve been putting off…

 

3 thoughts on “Out with a whimper”

  1. Hi Tim
    I’ve been following you now a few years. Ispoke to you a long time ago when you were racing at Oulton Park. yes its years ago.
    Any way I now rave my self in the locost series it was my 1st season this last year and am loving it.
    Keep meaning to come and say hello a a race meeting but time fly’s as you know.
    Really enjoyed you blog
    question I have for you is what system do you use for your camera system.
    I am seriously considering the Vbox but just wanted to know what you use.

    Cheers
    Kev

    1. Hi Kev,

      Nice to hear from you, although I have to admit I’ve no recollection as it’s years since we were at Oulton. (We’re back next year though!)

      Video set up is fairly complicated, mainly because I’m too tight to buy something like a VBox…

      • Race Technology DL1 data logger
      • GoPro cameras
      • I merge the video files using Serif Movie Plus
      • Trackvision to add instrumentation, from DL1 export file, to the merged video
      • Reprocess in Movie Plus (I know, there must be a simpler way) to add fades, edits and titles
      • Upload to YouTube

      It’s easier than it sounds…

      Tim

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