Upgradeitis

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.

Hmm, probably not. If nothing else I’ve got to decide what to do with the rest of my life, again with the significant caveat that I get through my PhD viva with my reproductive organs mostly intact. (They never just accept these things, they always want some changes.) The choices are really about the academic/industry dichotomy…

All the same, I’m going to want to do some things to the car, so I thought I’d tell you what’s on my over winter to-do list. I’m good at making lists, but not so good at actually doing them…

Anti roll bars

I’d really like to re-engineer the bars, or at least the front one. What I’d like is to be able to adjust them from inside the car; if only because that would make it easier to see what the effects were. I’ve got an idea for how to make the front ARB, but I have a suspicion that I’d need to get hold of some spring steel and I’m not totally sure how to do that, or how to weld it to something come to that.

Covered trailer

For a long time I’ve been lusting after a covered trailer, just so that I don’t have to get to a race circuit and faff around making the car weather tight. This isn’t too hard, it just involves making a frame and getting a company to make a cover for it. Not sure what it’d look like in front of the house though…

Redesigned rear end

You will remember (I’m sure!) that I spent a lot of time faffing around with the suspension at the rear of the car. The end result of this is a collection of bits welded to the chassis that I don’t really like. So, I’d like to sort all that out and do it properly this time. However, if I was to really do it properly I’d cut the entire rear of the chassis off and completely re-engineer the engine mounting, the transmission and the suspension. For example I could easily get some much longer wishbones in there. Not sure I’ve got the time to do this though (see above about sorting out my life).

Rear aero

It’s clear that I need to move the aero balance of the car rearwards. I need to do something, probably on top and underneath the car, to promote that. Not entirely sure what at the moment though. I’m not sure I want to make a Spire like whale-tail (this phrase included for Paul Nightingale’s delectation!) but it might come to that.

Reduce weight

Inevitably I could do with taking about 20kg off the car. Obviously the driver’s a target here but I’ve got a bunch of other ideas, including persuading Jeremy Philips to make some lightweight bodywork for me. He’s gone all quiet on my at the moment  though. I do have a few other ideas about weight savings though including:

Remodelled roll cage

You will have noticed that the front of my cage is too high. As such I’m strongly tempted to cut off the front hoop and “roof” rails and remodel it slightly. That would have the effect of reducing the weight by a small amount but could also make the car look a lot  nicer.

An appointment with a rolling road

..is well overdue. At some point I’ll do that over the winter.

Improve mirrors

This is probably part of the same issue as sorting the roll cage, but I’d like to make the mirrors work rather better. If nothing else, getting the main mirror in the aero shadow of the roll cage would reduce the car’s drag and might also make it a but clearer to look out of.

Remove clutch hydraulics

After I changed the engine I didn’t completely remove the hydraulics for the clutch on the ’07 engine. With a bit of time I could take off various panels and finish this off properly.

Remake rockers

I’d like to remake the rockers in the front suspension so that I remove the Delrin bearings and replace them with something like some spherical bearings. Given that I had to lengthen one end of the rockers, perhaps I should make completely new rockers that would be swappable, and therefore give me some spares.

Sort out trim pieces in rear bodywork

These, which blank off the slots through which the rear roll cage struts go, have always annoyed me. They need doing properly.

Remake seat

After a season, I think I know where I really want to sit…

Redo pedal box

You will remember that I’ve faffed around an awful lot with the pedal box. Well, I think I want to do it some more, especially to get rid of those horrible OBP pedals…

 

There, that shouldn’t take too long, should it?