Building, racing, crashing race cars with the 750 Motor Club
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…
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.
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.
It was Brands time again. One of the best circuits on the calendar and a real challenge for a driver. Problem was, the weather forecast was pretty poor. I’d booked a half day testing on the Friday before the race and we went down on the Thursday evening and set up camp in the burgeoning RGB village in the middle of the outer paddock. On the Friday morning we seemed to be just about the only people there. The clouds were lowering above us threatening us with doom and despondancy.
Yet again, it’s back into the garage with a few things to sort. However, before that, here’s something interesting. You will remember that I was in a real race at Silverstone with a certain amount of position swapping going on. It seems as though the action was actually a little closer than I’d thought, as here’s a small battle wound…
So, last weekend we returned to Silverstone for the start of the new season. Traditionally RGB races at Silverstone (which up to now have been held on the August bank holiday weekend) are held in climatic conditions that more resemble the depths of winter than a summer, even an English one. However, this weekend was to work out well. It got a bit gloomy on a couple of occasions but that was it. Amazing…
Well, it’s really close to the first race of the season now, so it’s time to make sure the car’s ready to go. To be honest I feel very unprepared but we’ll see how the Silverstone test day goes. As you’ll know the only test I’ve done this year was the trackday at Rockingham (see the photo above courtesy of Charlie). I really should have put more time into it but haven’t managed to find the time.
Time for the first track outing of the new season. I booked a track day with Bookatrack at the Rockingham circuit which isn’t too far away from us. I went to Rockingham many years ago in the Fury, when I was first learning to drive it. So, although I could just about remember the way round there wasn’t much in the way of knowledge; especially as the circuit we were using this time was different.
Rather amazingly, I seem to have reached the end of the winter mods and reconstruction of the car. I’ve done all the suspension setup, although as usual I might do it again. I’ve also done the corner weighting.
So, all that’s left before the start of the season is to test the thing.I did drive it from the garage onto the drive again which worked. I then used the reverse to get back into the garage, which didn’t work. However, I’ve now fixed that. (Some dozy pillock had wired the motor wrongly.)
To get myself finally set up I trudged up to Harrogate today to get the car dynoed. This is the same place I took the J15 in its earlier CBR1000RR07 incarnation so, even though the actual numbers from the dyno are not relevant, the comparisons are.
I managed to find a bit more time to get onto the car at the weekend. And, as you can see from the photo and jumping ahead a bit, I’ve got the car down on the ground and all the bodywork back on. Addmitedly I’ve now taken the bodywork off again but that’s in the nature of the racecar beast. Bloody hell, though, I’d forgotten how horrible the roll cage looks…