OK, I’m back. It’s been a while but we’ve been on holiday and I spent a week away at a conference which explains the lack of progress.
In fact, if I’m honest there isn’t really much to say anyway. After the Snetterton race I’d decided that I needed to sort the exhaust system out. I spent a while phoning around a few builders without any joy. I’d imagined that they’d all be twiddling their thumbs at this time of year. However, that appears to not be the case. So, after discussing it with Andy I thought I’d try something that I’ve been meaning to have an experiment with for a while. This is making my own exhaust. After all, it’s just a pipe and as Andy manages to make them out of a collection of mandrel bends, why can’t I?
So, I’ve bought a load of bends from Andy on a sale or return basis, there’s some of them at the top. I took the existing exhaust off and started looking intently at it to see if a solution emerged. The problem is, it’s a bit like a 3 dimensional jigsaw with no picture on the box and where you have to cut your own pieces. However, after a quite stunning amount of time I got a start on things as in the next photo. This is just the primaries for cylinders 3 and 4 but, trust me, it’s a good start. As you can see, if you look hard enough, this is just tacked together. In an ideal world I’d be able to TIG these properly but, of course, I don’t have a TIG or the ability to use one. I’m working on that…
However, it’s now getting closer to the next race so I’m going to have to take this off and re-instate the old exhaust and put the car back together. Along the way I’ve had the fire extinguisher re-inspected so that’ll stop the scrutes whinging at me. I’ve also replaced the handbrake cables which, as I mentioned, were binding slightly. I hope they’ve stopped it…