It’s coming up to the final on-track extravaganza of the season in the shape of the annual 6-hour Birkett relay. This is a huge race at Silverstone with about 60 teams each with 5 or 6 cars. Luckily not all trying to get on track at once. Once that’s out of the way—and assuming I don’t bend the car too seriously—it’ll be time for putting car away and retiring in front of the TV with a cup of hot cocoa.
Tag: J15
A watery end
And so, after a season of frenetic car building, engine swaps and sundry other excitements the RGB year ground to a halt at Cadwell at the weekend. It was, yet again, a wet weekend although a very enjoyable one. That the club managed to get 26 races on track over the 2 days, along with all the qualifying sessions, is a testament to how well organised it is. For something that only has two paid staff (and lots and lots of volunteers) this is pretty miraculous.
Waterlogged
So, it was time for another race. I decided that I could take the weekend off finishing my thesis (which I have since finished, yay!) and make the loooong drive to Pembrey for two RGB races. Problem with Pembrey is that it’s a long way and it has a bad habit of raining. Rain as in absolutely pouring down, not that sort of pathetic English rain but the full-on Welsh variety.
Recombobulated
It’s getting back to normal service here. especially as I’ve just finished the first final draft (yes, I know that doesn’t make sense) of my thesis. So,I thought to myself, “I’ll update the blog before I go to bed”. See? I really care.
After all the stuff I’ve done recently, a sensible person would get the car to a dyno to set it up properly. However, I just won’t have time for that so I decided to fit the wideband lambda sensor on the car. When I designed the wiring loom I included wiring for this sensor, which I had installed on the Fury, but I never got around to installing the sensor. As I’d put the boss into the exhaust it seemed that now was a decent time to install it.
Shine
I’m still in a bit of a quandary about what happened to the chain and sprockets. I spent a while measuring it as accurately as I could tell and I think the driven sprocket was translated about 0.9mm to the right of where it should be and was at an angle of 0.3° to the drive sprocket. I’m not an expert at chains but that doesn’t sound horrendous.
Working on the chain gang
Hmm, I think I’ve found a bit of a problem, which might just explain the problems I’ve been having with the new engine.
After the first outing at Snetterton I’d noticed that the chain had needed adjusting quite a lot. That seemed a bit odd but I didn’t think too much about it. However, I’d noticed that the same thing applied after the Silverstone race. At first I was wondering why the chain was stretching so much, or perhaps the sprocket was moving slightly. However, I think I’ve found the problem…
Exhausted, completely knackered
After all the faffing around with the exhaust I put the old exhaust system back on again, feeling bad that that wasted a set of header seals which are some alarming price. Like that I could get the car ready to go to Silverstone. This was the annual club August bank holiday weekend meeting where all the formulae get a race, meaning that everyone gets just one race.
Exhausting work
OK, I’m back. It’s been a while but we’ve been on holiday and I spent a week away at a conference which explains the lack of progress.
In fact, if I’m honest there isn’t really much to say anyway. After the Snetterton race I’d decided that I needed to sort the exhaust system out. I spent a while phoning around a few builders without any joy. I’d imagined that they’d all be twiddling their thumbs at this time of year. However, that appears to not be the case. So, after discussing it with Andy I thought I’d try something that I’ve been meaning to have an experiment with for a while. This is making my own exhaust. After all, it’s just a pipe and as Andy manages to make them out of a collection of mandrel bends, why can’t I?
Not quite what I intended
Oh well, that didn’t quite work out as I intended. We went to Snetterton last weekend for the next race in the RGB championship. I was hopeful that the new engine would do something useful, although wary that the bodged around exhaust wasn’t really going to help. Also, the car hadn’t been been on a dyno which wasn’t going to help.
Electrification
So, on with the tale of the engine upgrade.
As a couple of people suggested to me, I made a support for the standard-sump equipped engine as in the photo here. This allowed me to support the engine in position to see what I was going to have to do to make some engine mounts.
Note that I’m using a motor sport magazine to get the support at the right height.