Finally, I seem to be making a bit of progress on the car. Mind you, precious little of this progress has translated to this website. I have, though, been doing stuff on two other sites. The new 750 website was produced with a good deal of help from me and I’ve also been putting together a new site for RGB to go with the existing forum. Note that even if you’re not an RGBer you can now invest in some RGB teamwear to make you feel more a part of the action. Perhaps, though, the RGB umbrellas will be a better choice if we have the same sort of summer as we had last year.
Painfully levers himself back into the saddle
It seems quite likely that you’ve all been wondering where I’ve gone. In a nutshell, a lot of things have been happening one of which has just about stopped all work in the garage. More of that in a mo’ though.
After the Birkett, which I think was where I left you all, we went to Hong Kong for a week with Tom which was great. Just so you realise that there’s rather more to Hong Kong than all those photos you usually see here’s a rather different one.
Continue reading “Painfully levers himself back into the saddle”
And so to Silverstone again
It’s only just occurred to me that the 2012 season was bracketed by two trips to Silverstone. The first, back in March, was the start of the RGB season and the last was the final race of the season, the annual Birkett relay.
Season’s end
And so it comes to a sputtering end. It’s not been a great season, to be honest. I don’t seem to have been focussed enough and there’s been a lot of other things going on that have rather taken my eyes off the ball. Still, the last meeting of the season was reasonably good, almost a race…
A-Mallory we will go
We’re getting close to the final RGB meeting of the year and I need to drag myself away from the daily grind, which seems to last all week long these days, and get the car ready.
Race preparation
I’m sure it’s not like this at McLaren. In the limited time I’ve had since the Anglesey disaster (see Austen’s video in the last post for reference) I’ve essentially been patching the car back together. I’ve re setup it all up, after having the rear wheel knocked seriously astray and now I’m onto the bodywork.
Grovelling…
I know. Sorry to one and all but I just haven’t had the time to write this. Actually, if I’m honest that’s probably not true as I have found some time to do other things as you’ll see below. However, I should have found the time somehow or other.
A tardy Caddington Park
As seems usual these days, I start with an apology. Since the last post I’ve been racing at both Cadwell and Doningon. It’s the usual excuse, I’ve just been too busy, although I did spend a welcome weekend tramping around the Peak District. All the same, despite the tardiness, I did go to Cadwell and Donington and completed four races without major mishap.
Wasn’t quick enough though…
Setting up again
Yet again, and extremely tiresomely, it’s time to set the car up for another race meeting. For some time now, I’ve been thinking about making it possible to mount a setup frame on the car, much like the one described in the Pashley book. Essentially this allows you to construct a rectangle around the car from which to take measurements to the wheels.
Dashing along
Well, hardly that to be honest. Dawdling would be closer to the truth.
After Brands one of the immediately obvious issues was that the airbox had fallen apart. The top panel had been completely ripped off which is slightly alarming. I think I might have precipitated this; at some point before the Brands race I was doing something around the head restraint area and managed to nut the airbox rather firmly. Although leaving me rather dizzy I did recall an ominous cracking sound. At that point I found that the aluminium support brackets at the top of the ‘box had fatigued into two parts, which I put down to making them in 1mm sheet so I remade them with 2mm sheet. However, perhaps I fatally wounded the airbox at the same time, as well as nigh on fatally wounding me.