Yet again, another late update. I’m perhaps slightly better this time that usual though. And, of course, the usual excuses apply. This time, it was a new circuit in that we were racing on the Snetterton 300 circuit. I’ve tested here two or three times so it wasn’t as alien to me as it was to others though.
Tag: transmission
New season coming rushing up
Finally, I seem to be making a bit of progress on the car. Mind you, precious little of this progress has translated to this website. I have, though, been doing stuff on two other sites. The new 750 website was produced with a good deal of help from me and I’ve also been putting together a new site for RGB to go with the existing forum. Note that even if you’re not an RGBer you can now invest in some RGB teamwear to make you feel more a part of the action. Perhaps, though, the RGB umbrellas will be a better choice if we have the same sort of summer as we had last year.
Fettling again
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…
Rocking On
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.
Back to work
OK, I know I’ve been tardy about posting lately, but not very much has been going on. However, I’ve been re-invigorated by a trip up to the Autosport International show this week, along with Adrian. I didn’t actually buy anything but it was great looking at all the bits and we bumped into loads of fellow RGBers.
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.
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…
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.
White car man
As discussed, I bit the bullet and remade some of the suspension components. First up is the rather short rear upper wishbone, as in the photo. It’s the iridescent white component. (I’ve got fed up using POR-15 which always goes a weird non-grey colour so I’ve decided to start spraying things like with rattle cans. As, oddly, Halfords don’t sell rattle cans for grey cars I settled on white as a decent light colour. Black would be nice but I’m paranoid about being able to see cracks appearing.