Building, racing, crashing race cars with the 750 Motor Club
…I’ve had a few.
“You’ve not updated your website”, they say. Apparently the fact that I’ve done nothing is insufficient excuse. So, I thought I’d cobble something together anyway.
First up, here’s a smidgeon of video from that day. I’ve also updated to the new version of Trackvision which makes producing videos a bit easier because it understands the MPEG-4 files that the camera produces. The eagle-eyed will notice Colin and Adrian too in the clip.
 Well, at last it was time to press on with the CBR1000 fit. I went up to Andy’s last weekend to look at how it fitted in Rob Grant’s striker. It didn’t look too difficult although I already knew I was going to have to make some brand new engine mountings.
First thing, though, was to take the CBR900 engine out, as seen in the picture here. This should, I hope, be the last time I take this engine out. |
I know, I know. It’s been ages since I posted here. I’ve got the obvious excuse, though, that things have been rather frenetic with respect to Anthea. However, she seems to be slowly on the mend now so my thoughts are turning back to car things. Inevitably, I didn’t do the Birkett. It might have been just about possible but, to be honest, my mind was on other things.
Essentially, there are 3 things I want to do to the car this winter, as in the following list. I’ve given myself a target for getting the car done by booking up for a track day at Snetterton on February 14th. That will probably be about a month before the start of the season proper and should give me a chance to see if the car actually works.
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.
As usual, just as the weather’s about to get cold, I’m planning what to do whilst frozen in the garage.
Needless to say I’ve got a list of things as long as my arm to look at, notwithstanding the engine issues discussed in the previous post.
So, as much as to help me get everything sorted, here’s the main things I’m looking at at the moment:
Apparently, Paul’s been doing some calculating and he reckons that it’s Derek‘s championship this year. That’s good news really as Derek’s a great guy and he’s a superb driver. It’s only a pity that he’s had so little competition this year, let’s hope it hots up in class A next year.
Well, after all that faff at the weekend I’ve actually got the car back together now. It started first time too, at which point I turned if off immediately because I realised I hadn’t actually put any coolant in it. Miraculously, it didn’t even take that long to get the oil pressure up. Normally when you remove the pressure relief valve in the bottom of the engine and allow the main oil gallery to empty then it takes ages and ages of spinning the engine to get the pressure up again. This time it happened almost immediately!
I just need to put it on the floor and do the obligatory bit of suspension alignment checking (why does it move all the time??) before I’m ready for the next race weekend. Of course, the only problem is that I don’t really know if either:
But, I can’t really see what I can do about that. The next meeting is at Oulton which has got a good deal of tarmac for driving about on so I should be able to try it to some extent, at least, before taking it on the circuit.
So, after Silverstone I had a couple of problems to fix. However, I remembered that I didn’t write up what I did before that race. Most importantly was that I modified the seat slightly so that I sit ever so slightly more upright. I think that I’m a bit too laid back and it makes my neck hurt over the length of the race. So, I thickened the top of the seat very slightly. It certainly seemed to do the trick at Silverstone but we’ll see a bit more in the long run.
As you can see, I’m running short of red gaffer tape…
It’s time to get the car ready for the next outing, so I spent a good while cleaning all the gravel out, of which there’s a goodly amount. Mind you, nothing like the amount that was in the car when I stuck in the gravel trap at Redgate a couple of years ago.
Well, I’m finally getting there.
I finished off unbending the right rear and put it all back together again. I keep thinking I ought to get some new hubnuts one day. They’re great big nylocs and are the original ones I got from the the Kit Car Workshop back in 2004. In fact, the originals that they supplied were all bashed up and I got some new ones from them. These have now been on and off so many times that they could really do with replacing.