Preparing for Mallory

The last race of the RGB season is coming up so the car needs a bit of preparation.

Most important is the oil cooler. I took this off before Oulton as it became apparent that something was leaking from somewhere. However, the oil temperatures at Oulton were back to being alarmingly high (as in the output from the logger just on the right.) As you can see, the oil temperature was up to nearly 160°C before the end of the race.

So, I dug the cooler back out and cleaned it up carefully to see if I could see what the problem was. To be honest, I was hoping that the unions were just loose but that didn’t appear to be the case. So, I carried on and changed the oil anyway, something I thought I had to do after molesting it as in the graph above. With it back together and the engine running again it became clear where the oil was coming from, as in the photo where you can see the oil leaking out of the connection between the hose union and the body of the cooler.

I did wonder about trying to weld this up but I’d probably ruin something so I’ve just ordered a new one from Rally Design.

Suspension again

Back to the suspension, which I’ve been wittering about. Since I last wrote I’ve re-measured the car to check that I wasn’t missing something, and it appears that I wasn’t. The upshot is that if I’m going to get anywhere with this I’m probably going to have to remake the upper wishbones for both the front and rear suspension. As a knock-on effect that’s going to need to modifications to the chassis itself to change the pickup points. I’ll look into doing this after I get the car back into the garage for the winter which should be, assuming I don’t break it again, after the Birkett which should be the last race of the year. I’ve got to take the engine out anyway so I’ll probably strip a good deal of the bodywork and suspension off which will make getting at things to modify the chassis rather easier. In fact, thinking about it, I’ll probably want to turn the chassis upside-down at some point.

The biggest problem with remaking the suspension is probably the front rocker arms. Firstly I need to find out how to fabricate the bearings that are inside the rocker mounting tube. Secondly, I can’t find anywhere to make the tapered adapter that goes onto the top ball joint. I might have to smile nicely at a man with a lathe… Or, perhaps this is the time to purchase one of my own? Problem is I don’t really have anywhere to put one…

CBR 1000RR

I’ve been reading about the new engine a lot, having purchased a couple of workshop manuals. One obvious issue is that it’s much more complicated than the CBR900RR with all sorts of injection/electronic things. Clearly, I’m going to have to look into this carefully. Luckily both Andy and Adrian know what’s needed to be done so I’m going to be using them a lot I suspect.