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.

So, I made those components and re-setup all the suspension, yet again. I must admit, I’ve no idea why I didn’t do this originally. It’s much better like this. So much so that when I next get a break in proceedings, I’ll do the same thing for the front suspension components. In many ways those will be easier. The rear ones are a bit tricky because of making everything articulate properly with respect to driveshaft and so on. Mind you, all this is giving me some very good ideas on how to completely re-build the rear end of the car. At the moment I’m trying to resist that though.

I wanted to remake the rear spoiler as it was rather gruesome. What’s more, I’m not at all sure that the middle part of the spoiler, behind me and the intake gubbins, is actually doing anything. So, after a while experimenting with a large adjustable device I gave up and reverted to what I’d done before, albeit without the central component and with added adjustment. The adjustment comes because the spoiler flaps can be moved up and down and bolted in different positions. (That is, I can’t adjust them as I’m zooming down the straights.)

Of course, I have absolutely no idea whether this is going to work or not, I’ll have to see. What I’d really like to do is to put some sensors on the suspension so I could know whether there’s any down (or up) force in various situations. There never seems to be the time to do things like that though.

You may notice that I’ve cut a couple of big holes in the back. This is because it’s getting pretty hot in there and it seemed a good idea to try and let some of the heat out. If nothing else it reduces the car’s weight a bit!

Finally, as the next race is a Snetterton I want to make the rear axle ratio a bit taller. Now I’ve got sprockets this is a lot easier than it used to be. So, I bought a new 48-tooth sprocket from B+C components and cut it in half as I did before. (The yellow bits are some paint I put there so it was easy to see the cut marks.)

I did change the 52-tooth sprocket I’d used at Brands for a 50-tooth one prior to going to Daytuner last week. However, revisiting the calculations showed that I’d probably still be running out of straight line speed. It could, of course, be too tall meaning I end up changing it again. If nothing else, I’m getting quicker at changing the sprocket although no-one could say it was slick.