This year doesn’t seem to have been exactly peaceful on track, does it? Especially considering the catalyst debâcle that’s still rumbling on underneath RGB. That lost me the first two races of the season and it all looked as though I was going to lose another one this weekend.
It all started on the Friday when I went down to Brands for a relaxing bit of testing in the morning, intending to spend the afternoon doing some minor fettling and possibly car washing. I even had some assistance there as Tom had come along to Brands to help out which was great.
Not knowing what was to come, we got the car ready and trundled over to the pitlane for the first session of the day. I just wanted to get into an early groove and then we could try a few setup things. Out I went. I have a bad habit of taking too long to get up to speed so in the first part of the session pushed on. So then they red-flagged the session. I came in and went out again and did a 53.2 which was a way off my fastest lap of 52.8 but at least it was in the vicinity.
So, I came in an Tom checked the tyre pressures, which it turned out were pretty much correct. Nice having someone who can do this, though, while I was sitting in the car. I, of course, was wearing my new HANS device. I felt a bit like a turkey trussed up for Christmas but it’d probably be OK.
Then I was off again and in the exit lane, the car stuttered. And then it carried on doing so for a couple of laps. I’ve had misfires before and they’re frustrating to find. I came in and we tried the obvious things, looking at electrical connections but still the misfire remained. In fact, at the end of the session I had trouble driving back to the paddock through the exit tunnel, which has a bit of a hill in it.
Back in the paddock and we couldn’t find a problem, and the car was fine driving around the paddock, even in quite a brutal fashion.
So, to cut a long story short, that was our day. We tried one thing after another trying to find this misfire, which only seemed to happen under load and at highish revs. I made a large number of forays onto the circuit to do just an out lap. Along the way we changed all sorts of things even including the fuel, all to no avail.
At the end of the day, with a race meeting the next day, we moved the motorhome over into the pits area, which RGB had been allocated for the race, and say and wondered what the problem was. To be honest, I felt pretty down about it all; it all seemed very reminiscent of a lousy weekend in Snetterton back in March. At least this time I knew it wasn’t the cat.
Saturday morning dawned bright and clear, it looked a good day for racing. At least it would if your car worked. I had signed up for the BikeSports races as well and went out for an early qualifying with them, having changed a few more things overnight. Rats. It still didn’t work. So, I struggled through my three laps which you need to do to get onto the grid without having to go cap in hand to the Clerk of the Course. FL was a 62.27, good enough for last place on the grid. Sigh…
So, we changed a few more things before RGB qualification and I went out again. And, again, it was still useless. Mind you, I managed a significant improvement to 59.98 in this session, again good enough for last spot on the grid. Mind you, my qualifying time for my very first race back in 2004, which was on this circuit, was 63 seconds and I seemed to be whizzing along. I got lapped twice in the race though, even though I got the time down to 59 seconds.
Enough of the reminiscence. Back in the garage, we looked again. Things seemed to have got worse in that the engine wouldn’t run properly even without load in the garage, at least not above 8000 RPM. Then Tom noticed something, I knew it was useful having him here. He noticed that smoke coming out of the catch tank. That is, the crankcase must have been being pressurised which is really very bad news as it means something seriously awry inside the engine.
Sod it, that was my weekend done.
However, as has happened before, I got set on by others. Andy pointed out that he had another engine on his truck which I could relieve him of, in exchange for a quantity of my Earth pounds. Ah, umm. Surely we wouldn’t have time to change it would we, especially as they’d just announced that all the races had been brought forward by 30 mins?
However, there was probably no problem trying. We had loads and loads of offers of help and decided to get stuck in. Tom drove over to the paddock and arrived back with the tailgate on his car open and Andy sitting inside with a new CBR1000.
Essentially, we all, and there were lots of us, worked like buggery for hours taking the engine out, swapping all the ancillaries over like the sump and the specially modified water pump. The biggest problem was the prop bolts which are always tricky and were even more so this time due to the copious quantities of loctite on them. Tom and I were helped in all this by lots of people but special mention must go to Colin, Roger, Tim and the two Andys. Miraculously, the Locost race took ages to get going having been red-flagged and then Stock Hatch did their usual service too. So, things were looking up.
We finally got everything back together and spun the engine round to try and get some oil pressure. That just about flattened the battery but it did arrive and we tried to fire it up. The flat battery wasn’t helping but it managed it and burst into life! What’s more, all of the electrics seemed to be connected and there weren’t any fluids whizzing out. Most gratifyingly, the cooling system hadn’t needed any bleeding at all; we’d just bunged in the coolant and put the lid on it. The addition of the bleed tube had clearly been a good idea.
The RGB race had, by this time, already been called and all my co-racers were sitting in the assembly area. In the fact the assembly area marshall came along to see if we were going to make it! (This is why I like the 750 club…) I had just had time to clean the grime off my hands and get my race gear on. So, I climbed in an drove off to the assembly area, taking a rather unorthodox route with the permission of the marshall mentioned. When I got to the assembly area there was a huge cheer and beeping of horns from all the other RGBers! I was really rather touched.
I sat there for about 2 mins with the car idling. Andy was even heard to mutter that we’d had two minutes to spare and we could have done slower. And then the engine stopped!
A posse of helpers descended on the car and poked and prodded everything and, for some reason it just started again. Andy reckons that the flat battery couldn’t handle the engine just idling which is a possibility, I reckon. Finally, having promised Andy faithfully that I’d take it careful, I trundled out to my grid slot.
We got a green flag lap because there was lots of oil, and cement dust, on the circuit from the previous race. The car seemed to go OK on that and, when the lights went out I took it easy, as instructed for about 80% of the lap. After that, I though, I might as well go for it. So I did and had a ball! This was the second race from last on the grid and I passed loads of people along the way, like I did last time. So much so that the edited highlights are probably worth looking at:
I equalled my previous fastest lap in the race, which considering that I’d left off things like the undertray, is pretty good. (Or, perhaps the undertray makes no difference at all?) I ended up 2nd in class and 7th on the track which was pretty good from essentially last at the end of the first lap. In the RGB presentation later I got awarded the driver of the day award which was very gratifying, and again very touching.
Later on, I did the second BikeSports race having decided that it’d be rude not to. To be honest it was pretty boring after I’d hunted down David Wale and passed him. (David, you will remember, is the car that I spent all of the last race at Anglesey trying to get past.) Interestingly, my FL in the BikeSports race was 52.5 which is another 3 tenths faster. Mind you, my theoretical fastest lap is now 51.7 to which it’d be nice to get nearer.
But then we won’t be back at Brands now until next year. Be nice to start at the proper place when we do come back…