The car that is. This is the second update in as many weeks, I’ll have you know. This one is really about controlling the car and I’ve now finished running control cables. in this photo, if you look carefully, you can see the gearchange cable (along the top rail) and the clutch and throttle cables (snaking up from the floor). I’m adopting the sort of strategy that you see in proper race cars and trying to avoid drilling any holes in the chassis by the copious use of tie-wraps. The chassis is such a nice thing that it’d be a shame to start drilling holes in it. Continue reading “Slowing down”
Slow progress
So, after a couple of weeks, I got the chassis back and put it up on stands in the garage although, as you can see, there’s rather of lot of junk in the garage as well.
The floor of the chassis has been bonded in, as well as riveted with some rather natty flush rivets. Now, all I’ve got to do is to put it together. The only problem at the moment is that the grey semi-shiny finish seems to upset the camera I use and quite a lot of the photos look bizarre…
A-coating we will go
So, as promised, I took it all apart again, painfully aware that there were lots of things that perhaps I should have done but haven’t managed to get around to doing. All the same, I put it on the chassis all on my own (the last time I did this I got Anthea to help and she ended up with 8 stitches in a slash to her knee). Here it is sitting on the trailer ready to be dragged over to Thetford where Andy Bates preferred powder coaters are. I’m getting it done in a colour often used by Andy which is sort of mid-grey. They call it anthracite but it isn’t as that’s essentially proper black.
Driver positioning
So, it’s been a bit quiet hereabouts, but I have been getting on with things slowly. I’m now just about at the point where I need to get the chassis powder coated. So, this is a bit of a catch up post. One thing that is worth mentioning is that I’ve decided to skip this year’s Birkett race so as to get properly prepared for next year’s race season. I’m also in the process of losing my responsibilities as RGB formula rep which should mean I can concentrate on just racing for a change; which will be nice…
As a bit of catching up on a previous post, Nick at AB Performance managed to get the recalcitrant bearing cup out of my diff, with the aid of a 30 tonne press! I’m just hoping that the diff itself is OK.
Sabrenaut
So, it’s full on to build a new car. I got the vast majority of the bits last week when Andy drove over with everything he’d got. Well, that was the intention but he left one vital box behind… Here’s the chassis sitting on my (newly swept!) garage floor.
Fit the Fifth
…in which our intrepid hero sets out on his fifth quest to slay some unperceived dragon, albeit starting by avoiding a trip to Pembrey in the land of the dragons.
Back in the real world I took the J15’s bodywork off to have a look at the damage as a consequence of the CV joint. As you can see a goodly quantity of CV joint grease was scattered about and I found a single one of the balls out of this tripode joint skittering about on top of the floor pan. The rest of them must have escaped captivity in Snetterton.
100, 200, 300
Yet again, another late update. I’m perhaps slightly better this time that usual though. And, of course, the usual excuses apply. This time, it was a new circuit in that we were racing on the Snetterton 300 circuit. I’ve tested here two or three times so it wasn’t as alien to me as it was to others though.
Blands Hatch
So, it was finally time for the first RGB race of the season and we headed off for the delights of Brands Hatch. Last year we’d had a spectacularly wet race here, followed by a dry one the next day. This year the weather didn’t look too good for the weekend either.
Snowed off
Well, that was the complete opposite of a race weekend. The car is still sitting on the trailer in the garage having not moved a millimetre. The club called off the meeting at Donington due to the weather. Having seen the odd photo from Donington that seems entirely understandable.
I wonder what happens next?
Here we go again
The first race of the season is now just a few days away and it’s going to be a really busy day. We’ve got two races in a day and, because Donington operate what seems to me to be a completely unacceptable testing regime, there’s no testing on the friday before the race. My view is that the club shouldn’t give the circuit our monies if they aren’t prepared to accommodate us for testing but I don’t hold much sway and so I’m going into two races on a new circuit (we’re on the GP circuit) pretty much blind.
The one slight saving grace is that the club have managed to get a test session into the start of the programme. This means that I’ve got two practice sessions and two races to fit in on the day, which is going to be a bit pressed, to say the least.