Building, racing, crashing race cars with the 750 Motor Club
When we went to Snetterton last the inside of the unprotected car got soaked. In order to stop this happening I need to make some sort of tonneau cover. I’d also like to make something that stops some of the whirlpooling of air inside the cockpit that these sorts of cars tend to make.
I made a tonneau for the Fury but it was a bit naff really. So I decided to do something a bit better this time. So, I made the thing in the photo on the right. Continue reading “Anti-rain”
OK, it’s been a bit long since the last post. Sorry about that but things were rather thrown off-kilter by rushing into hospital with Anthea in an ambulance; blue flashing lights and everything. Don’t worry, things are fine but it does make you think that when a surgeon says some procedure is minor, no problem at all, improve the quality of life no end, then you ought to think that he’s the bloke with the sharp dangerous looking knife and he would say that, wouldn’t he?
Consequently, not much has happened here really; apart from the fact that the season is rushing up on us with alacrity, Colonel Raeburn*. So much alacrity that Colin and I attended the first of this season’s Race Technical Committee meetings yesterday. Continue reading “Wishing well”
Well, the plan was that we would go to Snetterton on Saturday for the first test courtesy of a Bookatrack track day.
Well, that was the idea anyway. We wended our way up there earlyish on Friday with the intention of getting a time driving around the paddock that evening. As it happened it was too dark really. What’s more, it was throwing it down with rain. So, we went to bed. Continue reading “Drownded”
One thing I wanted to do was to improve the ducting on the inlet side of the radiator. I know from past experience that paying attention to this reaps huge benefit with respect to the cooling efficiency. First step was to bond some bits of Correx into the bonnet to constrain things slightly. If you’re not familiar with it, Correx is corrugated plastic sheet, most commonly seen as estate agent’s sign boards.
Famous last words, or so they say. All the same, disregarding all the tribulations, sometimes I catch a glimpse of some part of the car (well, the bodywork really) and I think how pretty it is. I just hope I don’t bend it too soon…
Still on the topic of the infernal driveshafts, I decided that it really, really, was the case that they were too long. I have absolutely no idea why this should be the case but it is. As such there really isn’t a choice other than to get some new ones. It may be possible to shorten the other ones, seen here languishing on the garage floor, if only for use as race spares. However, that would have to be done by either cutting and sleeving them or, if Icould find someone to do it, friction welding them.
I went to Mackay’s, Cambridge’s best shop, and bought the requisite 32mm socket and with that I managed to tighten up the hub nuts. Odd that the nuts seem to have gone on so far that I can’t stake them. Perhaps they ought to have a great thick washer under them like the Sierra ones on the back of the Fury had?
As discussed in the previous post in this apparently never-ending lurch through a tale of cock-ups and curiosities I had to modify the front suspension. So, I cut off the little “ears” that I’d welded onto the front spring mountings an eon or two ago.
This was actually spectacularly difficult to do and I only managed it with the aid of a cutting disc in a Dremel and going very slowly. You can just about see in the photo where they were.
Well, and it was all going so swimmingly. So much so that I finished off putting the roundel on the front.
After that it was really only arranging to point the wheels in the right direction. In order to do that I installed fake Tim, a collection of bags of sand, in the driver’s seat and set about starting the setup, which was going to take rather a while on this completely unaligned chassis.
As I sort of intimated last time, I was probably never going to be completely confident about the cooling system. So, I took the plunge and bought an ally radiator, exactly like the one I had in the Fury. Except cleaner. Here it is with the fan attached (with the aid of cable ties, yay!). The fan just fits which was lucky…