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2009
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Anglesey June '08
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Snetterton March '09
Wednesday 28th January, 2009
Little activity to report really - I haven't sorted out the cat yet as I haven't actually had a full weekend at home since before Christmas. We went on hols over New Year and I've been running courses the weekends since returning. I have to admit that I'm not exactly feeling pressurised as the car's all set to go apart from getting a cat welded into the exhaust.
I did go to see my GP for my medical which was fine since my vision is now fully restored which has been a huge relief. It's interesting how hobbies/interests can become obsessions - I remember when I had the detachment that my main concern was my racing! In reality if the worst had come to the worst and I'd lost useful sight in the eye I could carry on working and doing most of the other things in my life, the one thing I'd lose completely (for 5 years at least) would be my race licence. Anyway I got my paperwork off to the paragon of efficiency that is the MSA and my shiny new 2009 National B Race Licence was here within a few days.
The entry form pack for the 2009 750MC season arrived in my email inbox yesterday. Fortunately the organisation of the 750MC is very slick and the pack included a single PDF form that can be filled in to enter the whole series, so that's what I've done. They also listen to grumblings from members too - the draft 2009 race fixture list had quite a few single races and single days with 2 races. This makes for a pretty hectic day as it also has to include the qualifying session and you don't have much time to sort cars out between sessions. The final fixture list includes more of the 'double headers' where we qualify on the Saturday, race one is on Saturday afternoon then the second race is on the Sunday. Most of the RGB boys prefer this as it gives more time for car fixing in addition to making for a better weekend from the social side of things.
There's a test day at Snetterton on 6th March but Snett's about 290 miles from here and seems a bit of a long trek just for a test day so I think I'll give that a miss and try to get some track time at Pembrey or even Llandow for a pre-season shakedown. The first race is a double header at Snetterton on 14/15th March, so quite a long way off, the next one after that being Brands 6 weeks later at the end of April.
There's been no movement on the motorhome front. The government and media made sure the Cayenne was pretty worthless even before the recession struck and it isn't worth even thinking about selling the Ferrari in the current climate, so any purchase will have to be made without any equity coming from either of those sadly. Given that there's such a long gap between the first 2 races what I might do is try to hire a motorhome for the Snetterton weekend and look at trying to buy one before the end of April. That will have the added advantage of me actually trying one out and seeing which features I think might be worth looking for.
I've been making considerable efforts on the fitness front. Being 6' 5" it's pretty clear to me I'm never going to get within several 10s of kilos of Derek but I was definitely at my heaviest during last season due to a lack of physical exercise. Veteran readers of my previous build sites will be aware that I've done quite a lot of triathlons and cycle racing in the past, including a few Ironman races. I've no plans to do another Ironman any time soon but I'm sure that, weight loss apart, being physically fitter can only benefit my racing. So I've been training most days, swimming, cycling, running, gym etc. and despite a blip when I had a series of three rather nasty viral infections over Christmas it's all starting to come together nicely. I actually bit the bullet this week and posted off an entry form for brother Andy and myself to do a cycling time trial on 1st March. It's a 2-up team time trial over 25 miles and we've done it a couple of times before together. I think Andy's taking the preparation even more seriously than me and is doing cycling-only training whereas I'm doing a bit more of the all-round stuff so there's a considerable risk he might rip my legs off. Again. And it's only four weeks this Sunday ... better get back to the training!
Saturday 28th February, 2009
It's been a hectic few weeks - quite a bit of time away from home including 8 days away from home at the CSA part of the Membership exam for the Royal College of GPs. This turned out to be more challenging than usual on 2nd February when 8" of snow fell in the London area bringing the whole of the south east of England to a standstill! Our exam centre's in Croydon and although some candidates made it along with most of the examiners we only had 2 role-players out of the required 39 so we had to cancel. At the end of my examining stint I met Jen and Chris at Heathrow and we went off to Mammoth Mountain in California for a week skiing. 7 feet of snow in the first 3 days then 3 days of brilliant sunshine meant we had some great skiing. Never been in powder snow before, great fun. Apart from the bit where I lost my skis ... and the heavy cold I developed on the last day meaning my bike race is out :-(
Anyway, as soon as we got back last weekend thoughts turned to motorhomes. One kind reader had been helpful enough to warn me that most hirers can't/won't supply motorhomes wth towbars (thanks Nick!). I was hoping he was wrong but he wasn't. He did suggest a couple of places that might but they were too far away. So I resorted to plan B which was to bite the bullet and buy one. I've just paid a nasty tax bill at the end of January and have no money but that's never stopped me before! I spent hours and hours scouring the internet looking through ads, forums, reviews etc. I nipped over to Bridgend and eyeballed a couple of motorhomes which did help me focus on what my needs were. Since David usually comes with me and Andy occasionally comes along too I decided I needed a 5 or 6 berth one. I also want one with what they call a garage which is actually a pretty big storage space at the back which is great for tools, spare wheels, bikes etc. And of course a towbar. There were none that were really suitable in Bridgend so I hit the web again. I found a couple that fitted the bill but both had just been sold when I rang up about them. Then my father-in-law suggested a place in Cross Hands which is only about 10 miles from here, so I gave them a ring. Nothing suitable second hand but suggested I come over to look at a new one that was reduced as it was a 2008 model.
The motorhome in question is a Chausson Flash S3 and is a fairly compact 6 berth with a garage based on a Transit chassis. It was actually cheaper than some of the similar spec used ones with almost £4k off the original price. It also has such luxuries as cruise control and aircon, the latter not seeming to be a common feature in motorhomes. When I asked about towbars I was fairly surprised to hear that they send them up to a place in Stafford to have them fitted! They quoted about £600 plus transport costs. I did some ringing round and basically couldn't get one done in Swansea within the timescale required, the only place that would do it was quoting an eye-watering £750 + VAT! So I rang the dealer back to discuss further and it emerged he'd discovered they had a lorry delivering vans the next day that was going back up north and could basically take it up there free and to get the sale they were offering the towbar fitted for £500. So I went for it and I should have it next Saturday :-)
Back to the Fury ... back at the beginning of February I ordered a sports cat off eBay for £90 delivered and that's been sitting in the kitchen since. This morning I ventured out to the garage to make a start investigating the best way forward. There have been various installation configurations discussed and displayed in the RGB Forum, my main problem is a lack of space - I can't simply stick it in front of the silencer inline. Looking more carefully I could actually move the silencer back by up to 3" and there's about a spare inch on the manifold that could be chopped off. I did a bit of dismantling and took the silncer off, then drilled out the rivets and removed the packing. This was pretty stuck in places and didn't want to come out neatly so I ended up with a big heap of glass fibre wadding on the floor:
With the wadding out of the way I discovered that the long perforated tube running the length of the silencer is removable which should make getting the cat in there more straightforward. I decided a while ago not to tackle doing the welding myself so I stuck the can, the cat and the perforated tube in a box and headed off to the guy I've used before to weld crankcases, steering wheel bosses etc. He had a look and reckoned he could do it without increasing the length of the silencer at all - the inlet tube sticks through the first 'cone' at the front of the silencer by a cm or two then the perforated tube sticks into that. He plans to chop the front cone off, weld the cat onto the protruding tube inside then weld it back up again. I'll then need to chop the perforated tube down to length. It should be ready to collect on Friday. Potential problems include the fact that the cat won't be visible, so I'll need to document it with some photos; also I'm potentially removing a few inches of silencer and there's a risk it might increase the noise slightly but I'm hoping the cat itself might compensate a bit for that. If not then I reckon my best bet will be to take the car to a guy called Charlie at ProSpeed Exhausts in Cardiff who has a good reputation for fabricating custom exhausts. The left hand sidepod's now ooking a bit empty and forlorn:
So I'm due to collect the exhaust on Friday and can hopefully get the car back together during the day, then I collect the motorhome on Saturday morning. I can then spend a happy weekend kitting it out ready for the weekend after at Snetterton :-) Pretty excited about getting the motorhome, it'll really transform race weekends having somewhere comfy to sleep, being able to boil a kettle and cook, have power for a radio/TV/laptop etc. I think I'm getting old ...
Wednesday 4th March 2008
The final instructions for Snetterton were published on the 750MC website yesterday and I am indeed listed on there. For some reason they've given me a different number this year, 32 instead of 33, presumably by the time I entered for the season they'd already allocated someone else 33. Pity but at least I only need to change one number. I've also rung and booked a test session - I hadn't booked it earlier as I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it and at this stage they only have morning sessions left which is a pity as Snett's almost 300 miles away. I did toy with the idea of scrubbing testing and just travelling up on the Friday but I haven't driven the car since Oulton and decided that really wouldn't be wise, especially since I've never driven Snetterton. The timetable for the race weekend is pretty good with qualifying on Saturday morning at 11:20, race one at 2:55 and race two at 11:25 on Sunday so I should be able to get home at a sensible time.
No further progress with the car yet but I did nip to Machine Mart and buy a tool chest yesterday. I've got a nice big one in the garage but every race weekend I have to take a selection of tools out of it and stick them in smaller cruddy toolboxes to take with me. The cunning plan now is to keep all the ones I need for weekends away in this smaller chest which will easily fit in the garage of the new motorhome. This will make life much easier not only in terms of the packing/unpacking process but also being able to organise tools so I can find them when I need them. I had enough of the rubber matting left over from before to line all the drawers to make the tools rattle around in there a bit less.
I also rang Brian James Trailers and ordered a box to stick on the trailer that will hold a pair of jerry cans of petrol. I've never been terribly happy having 40 litres of unleaded sloshing round in the back of the car, this will be much more satisfactory.
Friday 6th March, 2009
I picked up the silencer yesterday. The guys have made a lovely neat job of it but as I suspected the cat takes up a good deal of space in the silencer and it was obvious I'd be losing a lot of the length of the perforated tube, perhaps as much as about 40%. So I guess I'll find out how much of the silencing is down to the length of the perforated tube and how much is down to the actual volume within the silencer - I know that for a given length a bigger diameter silencer gives more noise reduction. I didn't have time to repack and fit it yesterday. They also welded a ring on the perforated tube to stop it pushing into the cat matrix.
Although today's a day off I worked overnight last night and didn't actually get any sleep at all so when I came home I went straight to bed and got up at lunchtime. I was keen to get the exhaust back together and see what it sounded like so after taking a couple of pics to try to reassure the scrutineers that there is a cat in there I headed off out to the garage. I remembered to put some latex gloves on this time but it still didn't stop the glass wool stuff prickling my arms. I managed to get all the packing back in OK then refitted the end cap and rivetted it. I must get some stainless rivets for this some time.
With the exhaust refitted it was time to start her up. Reassuringly she sounded just the same as before, the main noise, especially with the bonnet up, is the induction. I left her to idle to get up to temp then set my noise meter up a couple of feet away from the exhaust and hopped into the cockpit. It's difficult with such a sensitive throttle and inertialess engine to smoothly increase the reves but she seemed to hit the limit (105dBA) just around 6,000 rpm. Although I'll need to be below 105 at about 7,500 at the circuit the current test was of course inside the garage which makes a huge difference. Even with the engine idling the noise level was touching 80dBA over by the bench 3 or 4 metres away.
So, I think she's OK. What I plan to do is order a baffle insert I found and take that along just in case. Having measured my perforated tube it looks like this will just fit in there and should reduce the noise further although at the expense of performance.
I then refitted the sidepod cover and extinguisher and re clipped the bullet cam wires along the edge. The next job on the list was to change the race numbers, whcih involved peeling off a 3 and replacing it with a 2 on all three of the circular number backgrounds.
The last job before calling it a day was to refit some of the roll cage padding. I'd taken it all off as I thought it looked a bit silly but when in the car my helmet does occasionally bang against the back end of the top side tube. I used some cable ties this time instead of insulating tape which looks a bit neater.
Sunday 8th March, 2009
I haven't touched the Fury since Friday but we collected the motorhome yesterday morning. And very spiffing she is too. I've not had chance to take any pics yet as I've either been busy or it's been p***ing down but I'll try to get some during the week. The handover took quite a while as there's quite a lot going on aft of the cab! There are basically 4 different systems in there:
- 240v system for when it's hooked up on mains supply
- 12v system running off the leisure battery
- Propane gas cylinder to run the hot water boiler and fridge (which is very natty and can also run of either 240v or 12v)
- Diesel which provides the calories for the blown air heating system
It's based on a 2.2TDi Transit and to be honest the cab's not a bad place to be, plenty of room, quite comfy and has aircon and cruise control, radio/CD with aux input for iPod/iPhone. I was a bit nervous setting off in it but it's fine to drive, not really much wider than the Cayenne although of course it's a bit longer and there's no rear visibility out the back. The motor seems plenty powerful enough to keep up with cars out of roundabouts etc. and the gearbox is a really slick 6 speeder. It's pretty buffety on the motorway especially as it's been a very windy weekend but it's quite happy at 70mph chugging along at just over 2k rpm.
Yesterday evening was spent working out how to use all the stuff on it. Like a pair of saddos Jen and I sat in it on the drive and christened it with a bottle of red :-) Today we went over to IKEA in it - the garage is truly cavernous and fits loads in there! Ah well, only 4 days now till I head off to Snetterton with the Fury in tow.
Monday 9th March, 2009
I wasn't really planning any car-related activity today but that went out the window. When I rang Brian James Trailers last week the helpful fellow on the other end of the phone said if he had a storage box in stock he'd send it out, otherwise one would be fabricated and sent out in about 10 days. Either way he said he'd ring me when he was sending it out. I hadn't heard from him so had assumed I wasn't going to have it in time for Snetterton but I guess he must have had one on the shelf cos it arrived unexpectedly in the surgery late morning. He had tried to explain how it fitted on over the phone but you know how it is - till you've got the thing in front of you any explanation might as well be in Martian.
I had to work till 6.30 so it was pretty dark by the time I got home but I decided I wanted this thing fitted so I stuck the halogen floodlight on and got on with it. It came with 2 substantial lengths of angle iron, a pack of bolts, nuts and washers and no instructions. It was easy enough to work out how to fix it, the main thing was deciding the position. Clearly not in the midline as that would prevent me using the winch, and I decided I needed it as far forward as possible to avoid it limiting the forward position of the car.
Once I'd sorted the position out actually fitting it was easy enough and after a load of drilling and hacksawing I was done by about 9 o'clock. I've gone for the one that fits two 20 litre jerry cans as that's all I take. I'll need to do something about the cut ends of the angle irons and find a padlock to fit it but it's on, is nicely rigid and having the jerry cans in that rather than in the motorhome will be good.
I spoke to Andy in the evening who pointed out that he hadn't had any of the email updates for a while. I had noticed I wasn't getting any of the messages myself - I wrote a PHP script ages ago with a cron entry to send out update emails to subscribers when the site's updated. After ages of debugging I eventually found the problem, a single '&' where it should have been a double '&&'. Apologies ...
Wednesday 11th March, 2009
It's been a pretty hectic week, worked till midnight last night so got nothing done at all. This evening has seen much frantic activity getting all my stuff together. The garage on the motor home really is quite cavernous ... but I still seem to have pretty much filled it! It's made me realise there's a lot of room in the Cayenne. All the tools, spare wheels etc. are loaded up, I've made the beds ready, the fridge is stocked and all that remains is to pack my clothes and the rest of the food etc. then get the car onto the trailer tomorrow. I'm really hoping to get it all ready in the morning before work as I don't finish work till 6pm and want to get off as soon as I get home as it's going to be a 5 hour plus drive.
The little baffle tube arrived from Car Builder Solutions yesterday and I trial fitted it into the off-cut of the silencer perforated tube this evening. To find it didn't fit. It was a close thing however and after 20 minutes with the flapwheel on the angle grinder it gave up the fight and slid in nice and snug. So if the worst comes to the worst and I do fail the noise test this should get me out of jail.
It's finally hit home today that I'm going racing again with the mixed feelings of excitement and trepidation. I've been studying the Circuit Guide and watching Tim's laps from a couple of weeks ago and it doesn't look too tricky to find my way round although of course pedalling round quickly without tripping either myself or anybody else up is another matter. All of a sudden I'm feeling like a complete novice again and wishing I'd been able to test earlier.
Monday 16th March 2009
The Aftermath :-(
My weekend's report is here, the abridged version is that I crashed heavily and my car's fairly badly damaged.
The car's at AB Performance in Norfolk for Andy Bates to perform surgery on it. As promised he rang me this afternoon with a preliminary assessment of the damage having made a start by getting the rather sickly looking front wheel off. As suspected there's a bit more chassis damage than was immediately apparent and the lower wishbone is also damaged as is the wheel. On the plus side folks near him run a glass fibre outfit and had taken a look at my bonnet. They reckoned they could take a partial mould off another Fury in Andy's unit and make a section to repair mine. Apart from that it was mostly bad news and frankly it's going to cost a goodly sum to put right. No good crying over spilt milk as they say though and at least the car's with someone I trust to fix it properly and I really can't see me getting it done cheaper anywhere else.
I've also now bitten the bullet and installed a Wordpress blog on the site for future updates.