Sorry, I’ve been a bit busy the past few days to update the site. However, I’m back again now to blether on about things for a while.
Most importantly, I got stuck in on the bodywork while there was a bit of space in the garage. So, there’s been rather a paroxysm of filling, rubbing down, priming, flatting and spraying going on. And, of course, the house smells of cellulose.
However, all of the bodywork is now painted. This, of course, means I’m now going to have to be much more careful with it while fitting it to the chassis. And, of course, there’s no room in the house to contain it all which is why some of it is now outside getting rained on, as in the photo above.
The bit in the photo, which is part of the engine cover, makes it look as though my spraying is quite good. Trust me, though, I’ve chosen the photograph quite carefully. Still, it’s a race car, and 
as Adrian keeps saying it only needs to look good from 100 metres away at 100mph.
The next big event is that I’ve got the car back now, complete with an exhaust system as in the photo. As you can see, I made the decision to fit the silencer in the sidepod, pointing forwards from the engine. This has the advantage that it keeps a lot of the gubbins out of the engine bay. It also pushes the weight forwards a bit which I think I’m going to need. The problem with this, though, is that the Blue Book says that the exhaust exit from the bodywork has to be no further forward than the centre line of the wheelbase. Heaven knows why that’s the regulation but it is. As such it makes the packaging a bit tricky.
Mind you, on trying the engine the exhaust blowing like a blowfish on a very blowey day. This appears to be coming from the header gaskets which, as usual on the CBR1000RR, are a pain in the bum as it’s absurdly easy to get the header to tighten up out of line, meaning it leaks. Consequently, I’ve just bought some more gaskets (at £7 a go, no less!) to have another go at sealing it up.
You can see on the photo that in order to fit the silencer in one of the support members had to be removed. Andy replaced this with a bent strut that’s also used as the place to mount the silencer which is quite neat. And, since I took the photo above, I’ve POR15-ed the new strut.
I’ve also re-routed a couple of the water lines which were a bit close to the headers. I also intend 
putting a small heatshield above the brake lines you can see at the bottom of the engine bay. I don’t think it’s really needed but better safe than sorry.
Next up is going to be fitting the bodywork. I’m going to need at least a couple of aero bits for this and in particular a splitter. I looked at what it would cost to buy a large carbon-fibre sheet for this and had to sit down for a rest when I saw the price. Hence, I’ve made one as I had some carbon fibre and some epoxy sitting around. The resin, was nearly two years beyond its sell-by date so it seems sensible to use it up.
So, I’ve made a big flat lump of carbon fibre. It’s not the most briliant moulding in the world, in particular it’s got a couple of creases in the surface as the film I was using managed to crinkle up somehow. However, it should do fine. I may well make another one of these, in case it gets nerfed at some point. That will have to be made out of glass and polyester, though, as I’ve run out of carbon and I hate laminating with epoxy resin. I can see why the professionals use pre-preg for everything as they don’t end up sloshing litres of nasty sticky resin all over the place.