Sorting the car out … again

I did quite a bit of phoning around on Monday. Lots of things to sort out and only one weekend to sort them out if I don’t want to miss Cadwell:

• Clutch slave cylinder needs replacing along with hose and master cylinder.
• Engine needs to come out to swap alternator rotor over, switch to 2007 throttle bodies and change loom to incorporate electrics and ECU from 2007 loom.
• Need to change fuel pump as old one is integrated into throttle bodies, later one is in bike tank.
• I spoke to Phil Alcock about his airbox at the weekend and it turns out there’s a spare one lurking about currently in the possession of Josh/Darcy Smith. This is to improve performance as well as reduce noise levels as I suspect the reason I’m struggling is induction noise.

I first of all spoke to Darcy as I thought he might have useful advice on both the clutch and fuel pump stuff – he runs a Hayabusa engined Radical and is a professional mechanic/engineer. He was very helpful and gave me a few pointers, I also arranged to pop over to him to pick up the air box.

I spoke to Jack Frost at Holeshot Racing but he uses a separate pump and pressure regulator and this works out at about £300. It’s really aimed at turbo applications and is overkill for my car. It does avoid the issue of fitting a pump inside the tank so I didn’t discard it completely as an option.

I spoke to Powertec who agreed the clutch slave seal was the likeliest culprit. I ordered a new one at £8 along with a whole new slave at £100. They said I can send that back if I don’t need it but frankly after this weekend I’m beginning to see the merits in having at least two of everything!

I also spoke to Andy Bates for a quick discussion on the fuel pump issue. One cunning plan that emerged from that discussion was the possibility of fitting the bike fuel pump inside my existing swirl pot which has the huge attraction of changing none of my existing plumbing! He also suggested something that had crossed my mind – that I check my cat! This may well be the explanation for the misfire. Apparently Rob Grant’s started to fail yesterday.

Having decided to go with a bike pump I had a search around eBay then rang Malc Curnin at Yorkshire engines. He offered me a GSXR fuel pump at £55 delivered which was a better deal than I could find on eBay so I went for that.

After unpacking the tools and stuff from the motorhome I made a start on the car. First job was to have a look at the cat – I was actually hoping it would be a mess as it would mean the engine could stay as it is, but it looked pristine. Not so the packing though – the fibreglass matting adjacent to the cat had clearly got very hot and had melted and turned into glass that tickled as it fell on the garage floor. Further forward in the can (the cat’s at the tail end) the packing had been nowhere near the perforated tube, being just a thin looking layer around the outside of the silencer. No wonder the noise testing was touch and go. I lent Derek my box of packing on Saturday so I’ll need to order some more.

I made a start on the engine by getting the sausage filter off, disconnecting all the fuel injection wiring and hoses and lifting the throttle bodies off the manifold. Getting the engine out’s a bit of a pain but it was going to have to be done at some stage anyway, at least I’ve got along weekend ahead to crack on with it.

Tuesday morning I made a start on the loom, identifying and labelling each spur on it, the new clutch slave cylinder and spare seal arrived from Radical/Powertec. During the day I did some ordering from Demon Tweeks, Rally Design and Merlin Motorsport trying to get as many bits in as I can before the weekend. I also called into JT’s Motorcycles to get a seal for the fuel pump (a shocking £18!), a set of spark plugs and an oil filter stub to use as an extractor for the alternator rotor (don’t ask – even more shocking than the seal, and I have a feeling it’s just an M18 bolt I need).

I rang the 750 Motor Club and spoke to Robin Knight who is happy to let me wait till next Tuesday to withdraw my entry if needs be which makes life easier. Otherwise I’d need to cancel now to guarantee getting my money back but take the risk of not getting in if I subsequently find the car’s OK for then. He currently has 25 entries with a maximum field of 28 cars.

It was almost 8pm by the time I got out to the garage to continue preparations for getting the engine out. I removed the bonnet completely to improve access and then was pleased to get the coolant out without spilling any Off with the exhaust manifold, then drained the oil and undid the dry sump hoses, again managing to avoid making a mess. The engine’s almost ready to come out now, just need to disconnect the prop and gear linkage and the last couple of bits of wiring loom. I think I’m starting to feel a little more confident of making it to Lincolnshire in 10 days time

On Wednesday the engine came out. I slipped the alternator cover off to find that the thread in the rotor isn’t M18. As a quick reminder, to make a 2007 engine work on a 1999 loom/ECU/throttle bodies you fit the alternator rotor from the 1999 engine, which has a different number of ‘teeth’ as crankshaft sensor pickups. I pulled the oil filter off to see if I could remove the threaded spigot it’s screwed onto but there was no obvious way of getting it out (Jack Frost had said he uses the spigot from an R1). I scratched my head for a while, tried fitting a 3 legged puller onto it to no avail. I was about to give up and wait till I could get something to screw in as an extractor but decided to have al go at just levering it off with a pair of screwdrivers. Being careful not to damage the crankcase mating surface I put a bit of pressure on it, gave it a couple of taps with the rubber hammer and it popped off! The 2007 rotor (which Andy and I had installed into the 1999 engine for safe keeping) also came off easily so I was in business.

I removed the clutch slave cylinder and found that the new one is slightly different. This meant I had to cut down the aluminium spacer bushes. The whole job was dramatically easier with the engine on the floor – it’s a busy area with the clutch slave, dry sump scavenge pump and gearbox output flange/propshaft all bunched tightly together. With the bolts torqued up I clambered into the engine bay and started sorting out the loom. This was a bit of a pain, installing the ECU between the scuttle and the dash is nice and neat but compromises the wiring as the loom only just reaches. I’d also integrated stuff like the oil temp sensor wires into it, so I needed to un-integrate a few wires and ran out of time.

I’m off tomorrow (but working overnight instead) so I’ve now got 5 days to get the car sorted. So long as the fuel pump arrives and I can get that fitted into my swirl pot I should be OK.

DNF second Brands race

Andy Bates and I were working on the car early on Sunday morning – with the race scheduled for 12.05 we had quite a bit of time. Andy was beavering away welding rods and brackets etc. and we had a cable Phil Alcock had donated and eventually we had a linkage we could test. Sadly we realised it just wasn’t going to be beefy enough to operate the Hayabusa clutch. So we quickly reinstalled the old system back again and bled it for ages to make sure thee as no air in there.

Next job was to deal with the misfire. It was on cylinder 3, so we sapped plugs round which made no difference, Swapping the plug cap which is actually the coil on these engines however did. So we borrowed a coil pack off Paul Rogers and it sounded much better but Andy reckoned it sounded out of balance. So he fetched his box of electronic trickery and we connected it up to the manifolds and he spent 10 minutes tweaking it with the result that it did indeed sound much smoother.

I then got the car ready for the race and eventually trundled off to the Assembly Area. On the way there I was suspicious she still wasn’t running right. We formed up on the grid, went round our green flag lap during which I realised she definitely was still missing. We reformed on the grid and were quickly on our way. I initially bogged at the start but soon dipped the clutch, gave her some more revs and dropped it again. We all got safely round Paddock Hill Bend and although she felt and sounded like she was only running on 3 cylinders I was able to keep up OK. I decided to keep going to see if the clutch held up, but the misfire got worse and worse and my pace was really slow. After a few laps I felt the clutch was going away again so I pulled into the pitlane at which stage it seemed to work again so I went down pitlane and rejoined the circuit. As I rejoined the red flags came out and I passed John Cutmore’s Spire half buried in the gravel at Paddock Hill Bend. Checked the clutch out again coming into Druids and it was definitely gone so I went back into pit lane and back to the paddock.

I walked back up in time to watch the restart. It actually looked a cracking race with Paul in his new car first of all moving from 3rd to 2nd with a great move up the inside of Duncan Marshall’s Pheonix on the brakes into Druids. He then closed the gap an Steve Robinson before inflicting the same move on Steve at Druids. He then comfortably kept his lead to take the chequered flag for his first ever overall win. Not bad for the car’s first weekend out!

So, I’ve got a clutch to sort out although I think it has to be the slave cylinder seal. I also have a misfire to sort out but I think the best way to deal with that is to bring forward my plan to migrate the car over to the ancillaries for the new engine. At Oulton when we swapped the engine we ran the new engine on the old ECU, throttle bodies and injection system. Jack Frost had at the time said I should swap over ASAP as the fuel injection pump on the early ones is known to be iffy. This will mean I need to:

• Get an in-tank FI pump
• Get a new tank to fit the FI pump into
• Stick a new fuel line in
• Alter the loom for the new ECU and wiring

This will effectively mean I’m replacing all the suspect parts – coils, ECU, injectors etc. Andy checked the compression on the engine and all 4 cylinders were fine so I’m not too worried about it mechanically. Can I get it done before Cadwell in 2 weeks though?

At the post race awards presentation I was the clear winner of the wooden spoon. I’m not too disheartened – on the plus side I actually did quite a lot of laps in the car without making any real mistakes and feel I’ve learned a bit more, with 2 more race starts under my belt. The car’s also coming back with no damage which has to be a good thing.

Racing at Brands Hatch

The main goal today was to complete both qualifying and the race in one piece. I did get there but with lots of frustration on the way.

While we picked the bonnet up last night Andy made up a new clutch hose. During the night I had a thought come into my head. It surely couldn’t be coincidence that the clutch was OK before the crash but not after? I suddenly wondered if Andy/Steve had heated up the braided steel clutch hose while doing all that welding? If so my problem’s surely fixed.

Paul was out not long after 6am finishing off his engine swap. He fired her up about 6.55 I got the cover off the car and bled the clutch and checked that was OK, then checked the tyre pressures and made a note of them so I knew what the correct hot pressures equated to when cold. I plan to swap the wheels over today anyway for today.

Lots of stuff to do then – as haven’t raced here before I had to go to a driver’s briefing. Then go and sign on. After that David was up so we had some breakfast, then I got my kit on to go over for scrutineering. I pitched up a bit early along with all of our guys and we all formed a big queue. This moved incredibly slowly and we were all worried that if the scrutineer found anything that needed sorting out we wouldn’t have time. By the time I got out of there they were already calling RGB to the Assembly Area for our qualifying session. So I dashed back into the paddock, stuck the fuel in the car and taped over the bonnet catches and made sure I was all set.

On the way out I stalled a couple of times – the clutch pedal was biting much lower than normal which made me worry me that I hadn’t bled it properly Noise test on the way into assembly then into the queue. As we headed out onto the circuit I reminded myself that the plan was to take it very steady for at least 3 laps – if you don’t get times in for 3 laps you don’t get a place on the grid. So I got the tyres warm then picked the pace up a bit. Not a lot cos I soon didn’t have a clutch again which frankly made me stop pushing. As it’s a short circuit at just under 1.2 miles I was getting lots of the quicker guys coming past me too which tends to mess up your corner where you let them through. I stayed out of trouble and my fastest lap was 2 seconds slower than Friday at 58 seconds. This put me 3rd from the back for the first race and 4th from the back in Sunday’s race.

Back in the paddock Andy and I decided that since the pedal had felt wrong to start with we’d try just bleeding it again. I took my bent wheel over to George Polley who swapped the tyre (one of the new ones I got at Snetterton) onto one of the wheels from the ‘wet’ set that I’d been using so far this weekend. I then had chance to go through my new checklist, including all the suspension rose joints, prop bolts, diff bolts etc. I also added a bit more negative camber to the right front wheel after looking at the tyre wear pattern. The race was at 3.45 so I had plenty of time for all this.

We were held in Assembly for quite a long time – David was up in the grandstand and told me later the Formula Vee race before us was carnage! He said there was a big stack up on the pit straight and there were cars out due to two other incidents elsewhere on the circuit at the same time. It’s always a bit sobering sitting there in your race suit and helmet belted in ready to go as the recovery truck bring car after car in with corners missing, nose cones missing etc. We eventually got out onto the grid and again I must admit I felt fairly calm, the game plan today was to try to get away cleanly but to desperately try to avoid any first lap incidents. We weren’t held long on the grid before the various 5 minute, 30 second and 5 second boards all appeared (all within about 15 seconds as usual!). The lights came on, I got the revs up and as the went out I was away super sharp. Lots of the guys dial in a specific amount of revs but I just tend to play it by ear, drop the clutch to light up the rears then use the throttle to manage the wheelspin. I seemed to react a bit quicker than a few in front of me and my car tends to be quick off the line so I was passing people early on. I then saw a yellow flag and soon saw why, Derek was going off into the pit wall on the right. I backed straight out of the gas straight away and promptly lost a few places as those behind me streamed past. I frankly didn’t care, I just wanted to get to Paddock Hill Bend in one piece, preferably in a bit of space. This actually worked out well, and I was able to pick my line into the corner with no-one troubling me in my mirrors and was travelling at a speed that gave me options if things went pear shaped in front of me. Which of course they did. Austen Greenway had a spin on the way down the hill so yet again I was faced with a yellow Fury parked sideways across the circuit! I had plenty of time though and remembered not to change my line till he stopped moving. He actually ended up inside of the racing line so I went outside him and got hard on the gas in fourth gear up to Druids. Austen later said that Paddock Hill seems much steeper than it looks when you’re parked across it sideways with a load of race cars coming down it towards you! As usual a few quicker guys had made bad starts and were coming through quite fast so I let them through and tried to keep up with the car in front. Once things settled down I had Neil Constable-Berry (another yellow Fury!) in front of me and I was all over him because he was all over Judi. After a couple of laps my clutch pedal disappeared again which was really disappointing but I’d mentally prepared for it. Neil eventually got past Judy then I was right behind her coming into Paddock Hill and could see I could get a better line out than her and out dragged her on the inside on the way up to Druids. Neil was a little way ahead of me by then but I managed to not let him get further away.

Midway through the race the leaders started lapping us and I then dropped back from Neil, only to gain on him as he let them through. From then on I was letting people through for most of the rest of the race and just trying to stay out of trouble. I wasn’t pushing terribly hard as there was really no point, I couldn’t get any decent lap times without the clutch working. For the first time ever I actually saw the ‘Last Lap’ board and made a mental note to myself not to bin it for just one more lap! I made it round and was really really pleased to get past the chequered flag and cruise round the cool down lap. Sadly by then the car also had a misfire which was worrying.

Back in the paddock after a conflab with Andy the next plan was to try to fabricate a conversion to a cable clutch. We decided it must be the slave cylinder causing the problem and we had no spare for that. So the rest of the evening was spent grubbing round under the bonnet doing that until it was too dark to see at which point beer and food moved their way up the priority list as David and I joined the tail end of the RGB Barbecue.

A testing day at Brands Hatch

After a fairly long but uneventful journey and a decent night’s kip in the motorhome in the Brands Paddock we woke up to blue skies and a lovely sunny day. After the signing on and noise test I drove the car back from the pit garage to the paddock where the motorhome was parked. Brands is slightly odd in that the paddock is actually outside the track while of course the pit garages are alongside the pit straight on the inside. There are tunnels between the two but with a max height on the exit of 2.2m it’s a no no for motorhomes. So we were effectively based in the paddock despite having a pit garage for the day. It was obvious on the way back that the speedo wasn’t working. Which also meant no gear indicator and no meaningful data logging.

So the first job on the car was replacing the speedo sensor. On the way back up for the first session all was well again – speedo and gear indicator working nicely. So off I went out on track for the first session. At just under 1.2 miles Brands Hatch Indy is a short circuit but it certainly packs plenty in! Lots of contours, some interesting corners and Paddock Hill Bend spooked me just like I knew it would! For those who’ve never driven here in the FuryBusa I was coming into it in 5th gear at probably about 110mph, you’re coming up to a brow with some marker boards, you know there’s a right hand corner coming up but you can’t see it. You know it’s off camber over the brow with a big dip followed by a big compression. And a huge gravel trap all along the outside. So brain is saying to get on the brakes early. And you realise you’ve scrubbed off loads of speed and get to the brow to find you haven’t reached the corner yet. So back on the power before the apex. I think I got to do it twice before the session was red flagged.

After a short wait we went out again and I was slowly finding my way round when after a couple of laps I found I had no clutch. The clutch was working fine, my pedal however wasn’t. It was offering minimal resistance to my foot and not disengaging at all. So I limped my way back round the circuit to the pits, let David know what the problem was and made my way back to the paddock. First thoughts were that my newly installed bolt had probably fallen out again. On lifting the bonnet I was pleased to find that wasn’t the case. I decided to try bleeding the clutch and discovered there was lots of air in the system. After bleeding it all was back to normal. By now of course the session had finished although it had been red flagged again almost immediately after I came off so in fact having done a total of about 6 or 7 laps I only really missed 1 or 2.

The second session came along and off I went, trying to go a bit quicker. Trouble was that just as my tyres started to come up to temperature the clutch went AWOL again So back to the paddock again. This time I just hopped out of the car, bled the clutch and managed to hop back in again before the 30 minute session ended. It was great. For a whole 2 laps. Then no clutch again.

Time to call in Andy Bates. I really didn’t believe I hadn’t bled it properly, so air was finding its way into the system and apparently only once the engine got hot. We pulled the clutch slave cylinder off, had a good look at it, decided it looked OK with no signs of a leak or any cracks etc. We stuck it all back together, re-bled it and I was just about ready in time to get out for the first session of the afternoon. All was fine until lap 3 when I again had no clutch. I decided to carry on regardless as I really needed firstly to get to know the circuit a bit and secondly to give the newly rebuilt car a bit more of a shakedown. I managed to get down to 56 seconds despite not having a clutch. The upshifts are of course fine, also the change down form 5th to 4th for Paddock Hill Bend always seemed to slot in smoothly but the shifts down from 4th to 3rd at Druids and on the transition from Surtees to Clearways were very unsettling. In both corners you’re changing down as you’re hard on the brakes and turning in. You just have to keep pressure on the shift paddle until it eventually decides to slot in. Not terribly sympathetic to the gearbox but I really needed to get some laps in. I managed to stay out for most of the session, I did come in once to check my tyre pressures after losing the rear end both on the way into and on the power on the way out of Druids but Paul’s helper had mistakenly tidied my stuff up out of the garage and taken it back down to the paddock (Paul had unfortunately hit mechanical gremlins in the first session). So I got David to give me a push to get me rolling and went out to complete the session.

Back in the paddock the next step was to replace the master cylinder. Phil Alcock helpfully provided a spare and I managed to swap it over and re-bleed the system in about 40 minutes. Sadly the problem recurred but I again completed the session. This time David took the tyre pressure gauge up to the pits and I came in half way through and sure enough the rears were at 23.5 psi. David dropped them to 22 which was probably still a little higher than optimal. I carried on going till the end of the session but never really got a lap together and my best lap was again 56 seconds.

A frustrating day, and I still didn’t know what the problem was, but on the plus side the car was driving fine, nicely balanced with nice turn in, no obvious tendency towards either under or oversteer. And I suppose I’ve learned the new skill of driving the car without a clutch! David and I nipped off to Fisher’s 30-odd miles away to pick up the new bonnet that I now don’t really need while Andy planned to make up a new clutch hose on the basis that we’ve looked at the slave which seems fine, we’ve replaced the master cylinder, so all that’s left of the system is the hose. Hopefully it’ll be OK in qualifying tomorrow, if not we’ll then have 4 hours to try to make a Honda slaver cylinder fit …

The final Brands countdown

After the fairly major issues of getting all the front end of the car back together and the bonnet reconstruction it was really disappointing to end the weekend with a couple of problems, one of which makes the car undrivable! I ended up with quite a few car related errands to try to get done on Monday amidst the hurly burly of a normal Monday in a busy general practice.

I called in to Swansea Fasteners and had mixed success. They had some nice long 6mm bolts that would be fine for the clutch slave cylinder but no joy on the diff bolts, they only keep standard metric thread bolts and I need M12 x 1.5 pitch. After some web searching I discovered that size is standard wheel bolt for Mark 2 Escort which probably explained why Dillwyn used it in the first place. I eventually found a place that sold them online and ordered 4 so I have spares.

I rang Andy Bates about my replacement wheel to find that it isn’t actually imminent and that it won’t be made until at least the beginning of May. So I need to decide what to do about wheels/tyres for the weekend. What I might do is test on the spare set with the ‘wets’ fitted (it seems they’re no better than the normal ones really and no slower in the dry either) and get the front tyres swapped over onto the good wheels for the qualy and race sessions. The other option is to just get the tyre swapped onto a good wheel and use my new set of tyres for the weekend – the forecast’s looking OK.

In the evening I wanted to get the clutch functioning. I cut the bolt down to length trying to make sure I had the maximum amount of thread engaged. I then hit another snag – the spacer I have is too short. I have no suitable aluminium tube to make another so I drilled a 6mm hole in a block of aluminium and cut it to rough shape then filed it roughly round so it’ll fit in OK. I then kept shortening it till it snugly filled the gap. This actually worked nicely and I got the bolt in with loads of studlock on it. Hopped into the car for the moment of truth – fired her up, clutch in, pull on gear shift paddle and … bingo, nicely functioning clutch

Tuesday evening I made a new aluminium clamp for the ARB – the original had split in 2 when I tightened it at the weekend – it must have been stressed quite heavily in the impact so I wasn’t exactly shocked. I had a good poke around the clutch pedal and slave cylinder making sure it was releasing properly – although I came to the conclusion the clutch almost certainly hadn’t really been slipping at Snetterton I thought it was worth reassuring myself. It was of course fine.

I checked out my video kit – although I’d retained the presence of mind to switch it off at Snett (rather than just allow the master switch to cut it off) it had still somehow only created a zero byte file. Presumably the impact had upset it in some way. I couldn’t get it to come on and it turned out to be because the remote wasn’t working properly. After a bit of fiddling with the battery it worked fine but I’ll get a new remote battery tomorrow.

Last job of the day was to connect the fly leads for my battery charger/conditioner to the battery terminals. I don’t have a bike to keep plugged in now so I thought I may as well use it on the Fury. The battery’s never terribly happy, the alternator’s working pretty hard to keep up with the water pump, especially if it’s kept sitting round for a while resulting in the rad fan also running, so in the garage I tend to leave it hooked up to the conditioner.

On Wednesday the bolts for the diff didn’t materialise so I rang the company I’d ordered from to be told they were on back order. Not amused that they hadn’t contacted me especially since they’re charging me more for delivery than the bolts cost! My next cunning plan was a visit to our local garage. I know the owner and his mechanic pretty well and as soon as I said I was looking for an M12 bolt the mechanic turned round and picked one up that he’d clearly put down recently! Sadly it was standard pitch thread so no use, but he pointed at a 25 gallon container full of bolts, nuts etc. After a short rummage round he turned it upside down and tipped them all on the floor! Within 2 minutes I had a pair of dirty, oily M12 x 1.5 pitch bolts

So, in the evening I slapped the bolts in with plenty of stud lock, swung on them as hard as I could then stuck paint marks on them. I swapped my wheels over to stick the ‘wets’ on. The only other job to do on the car was take the laptop out to clear the log files off the DigiDash and set it up for Brands by telling it how long a lap is and what minimum time to use as a lap blank (that’s in case there are more than one infra-red beacons out there to give it a fighting chance of getting sensible lap times). After that I got on with packing my tools, loading up the motorhome etc. I think I’m ready

Oh no it isn’t …

I actually had time to get on with other stuff today like tackling the lawns etc. Mid-afternoon I decided I’d get the fury out of the garage to give her a clean and get rid of some of the accumulated dust from all the GRP sanding etc. Started her up, clutch in, pulled on the gearshift to knock her into first and she lurched forwards and stalled. Then did the same again. Non-functioning clutch!. Grrrrr …

First thought was that I’d got something wrong when I took the clutch cover off to replace the springs but realised there wasn’t much to be got wrong! I got a light and got my Dad to press on the clutch pedal while I watched the slave cylinder which gave the answer – one of the 3 bolts holding the slave cylinder to the crankcase was missing along with its aluminium bush. It’s the longest of the 3 bolts and I remember that I actually cut it a little too short originally so that although it’s been threadlocked I couldn’t tighten it very enthusiastically as there wasn’t much thread there. The bolt needs to be over 100mm and I ain’t got one. I also don’t have a replacement bush so I feel a phone call to Powertec coming on tomorrow. (While relaxing watching TV later I vaguely remember getting 3 such bushes with the slave cylinder and only needing 2, so I toddled out for a hunt around the garage and sure enough found the spare bush. So all I need is a bolt.)

I decided there was no point worrying about it and pushed the car out for her clean anyway. I also stuck a new number background and number on the front. I even gave the aluminium panels in the cockpit a bit of a polish as they were really dusty.

Ready for Brands

Well, I’ve finally got it together. There are a few small bits and pieces to do but none of them are show stoppers.

This morning I took the bonnet back off and had a look at the front ride height which seemed to be pretty high. By the time I lowered both spring platforms to the bottom of the shock it was about 80mm which is about where I want it although I still need to corner weight it. Next job was the camber and I found I needed yet more camber on the left side. I’m sure in the rebuild the suspension mounts have shifted a bit over to the right of the car as the left lower wishbone needs pretty much full extension the ball joint on the right is screwed right in. Anyway, I got there in the end using my camber gauge – a length of square steel tube that just fits across the diameter of the rim along with a small spirit level.

With the done I got the rear bodywork off and set up my string box around the car to sort the front toe in. Once I’d done this I stuck one length of aluminium angle exactly 700mm in front of the front edge of the front rim (the rim diameter is 350 so it makes the trig easy if I need to calculate anything). Using the camber gauge and same spirit level but this time with its laser beam switched on I marked the projection of all 4 rims on the angle. This should make the setup easy to reproduce.

I’d been whingeing to Andy Bates about the problems I was having sith the speedo and he said having it on the prop was a bad idea. He suggested mounting it on a diff flange – this doesn’t move about as much as the prop and is running slower. He also said what he does is drill a small magnet sized hole in the edge of the flange so the magnet is retained better and won’t get knocked off. This all sounded like a good idea so I set about stripping all the tunnel panels off to free up the speedo sensor cable and get the sensor out of there.

Drilling the holes in the diff flange was fairly easy and here’s a pic of the magnet now embedded almost flush with the edge of the flange. It’s still araldited in for good measure.

I then made up a bracket to hold the sensor, painted it and got it securely bolted onto the chassis. I had to redo the settings in the dash but it seems to recognise all the gear OK with the rear up on the jack.

While doing all this I noticed one of the diff bolts had fallen out! It’s one of the lower ones that go into the helicoiled bosses and aren’t standard M10 thread so I’ll need to find a new bolt during the week. Apart from that and a good clean she’s good to go. Oh yes, and she needs a new number on the bonnet.

The work continues

On Tuesday I ordered a few bits and pieces – I can’t route my coolant hoses the same way as before as the newly fabricated pressed steel plates don’t have the same holes in them, so I ordered some 90° Samco bends. I also ordered new indicators, a rad fan fixing kit and new steering column bushes off eBay.

Tuesday evening I re-riveted the oil pressure sensor onto the chassis rail then made a start at getting the front wheels pointing roughly in the right direction. Both front wheels have an alarming amount of positive camber and toe out and I need negative camber and toe in. The top wishbone is fixed so the camber adjustment is just via the bottom wishbone – the two inboard rose joints and the lower ball joint. I started with the left hand corner and ended up with about as much thread sticking out as I dared on all 3, I can’t see that Andy would have stuck the bottom chassis mounts further inboard than they were but I don’t remember needing them screwed that far out before. I’ll give him a ring tomorrow. Of course moving the bottom ball joint out also naturally reduced the toe out but not enough and the steering rod ends were bottomed out on their threads. Mr. A. Grinder soon sorted that out and once I’d lopped about a centimetre off the end of the steering rod it was looking fine. I didn’t set it up accurately, I’ll need to set up my string box again to do that.

On Wednesday evening I got the right hand front wheel roughly aligned which didn’t take long. I remembered I hadn’t fitted the rad fan so I fitted that with the little plastic ties I’d ordered yesterday. The anti-roll bar got refitted too.

The frame that functions as the bonnet hinge was unsurprisingly damaged and Andy had reckoned I needed a new one. I reckoned the old one just needed straightening out! It wasn’t too bad actually and 15 minutes with the vice and rubber hammer saw it roughly back into shape. I did refit it but it needs taking off again for a few tweaks. Definitely will be OK though. I do have a cunning plan to modify the bonnet mounts at some stage, I’d like to be able to make the bonnet easily removable. I did order some additional bonnet pins for this purpose, but have since decided I’d also like it to remain hinged too so it’s easy to lift on my own. Once it has to be lifted off entirely you’re a bit stuffed when you’re on your own. Especially now it’s put on a bit of weight! What I plan to do is convert the bolt on fitting to a sort of peg in tube slide on fitting but it’s realy going to have to wait till after Brands.

Thursday the hoses arrived from Think Automotive – excellent service again and cheaper than Demon Tweeks and Rally Design. I just hope I’m not on the phone to them tomorrow ordering a new oil cooler! I’d pretty much sorted out in my head the layout for the hoses but it still took quite a while getting them sorted. Coolant header tank then needed refitting and of course the mounting points are in Andy Bates’ skip on the old chassis so I had to do a bit of drilling and make up a new bracket. I then remembered that the water pump, which sits in the bottom hose and inhabits the space behind the steering rack on the left side, was swinging in the breeze. So I removed some of the hoses I’d just fitted to get the pump out to pop-rivet the little plate the water pump’s bolted to onto the chassis.

Today I made a fairly early start. I got the newly painted bracket fitted to the coolant reservoir then started sorting out the front loom. Within an hour or so that was all tied back in place with connections remade to the rad fan, rad fan switch. I also refitted the lap time transponder. The fuel injection swirl pot needed a new rivnut as one of the tubes it was bolted onto had been replaced. I double checked all the dry sump hoses and the coolant hoses then got some coolant and oil into her. I didn’t have any anti-freeze and decided just to stick water in for now in case I need to drain it again. I reconnected the ECU and battery, removed the spark plugs and gingerly switched on checking for any signs of a short anywhere. No obvious problems so I spun her up until there was a visible oil pressure – the DigiDash was showing 14psi so I was happy. I stuck the spark plugs back in, plugs caps on and fired her up. She still sounds noisy but lots of it’s from the engine bay, the new exhaust sounds quieter. Well pleased.

One problem was that the rad fan wasn’t working which turned out to be cos some numpty hadn’t connected the front loom earth. Next job was to stick some brake fluid in and bleed the brakes. I always seem to make a mess of this no matter how careful I am, brake fluid everywhere. I also bled the clutch as the feed tube for the clutch master cylinder comes off the fluid reservoir halfway up so there was a risk of air having got into the system.

Andy Bates had queried some play in my steering column and reckoned there was a plastic part missing from the bush at the lower end of the top steering column. I’d ordered a new bush set off eBay and sure enough it contained a part I didn’t seem to have before. I spent a while getting that fitted and sure enough the steering felt much better.

By now the chassis was pretty much finished and it was time to bite the bullet and get the bonnet refitted. For some reason I hadn’t been looking forward to this but once I got round to it it didn’t take long at all. Refitting the headlights and fitting/wiring in the new indicators took quite a while though. Once that was done I jacked her up again and tightened up the lower ball joints, track rod ends and all their associated locknuts etc. And there she was, back in one piece again!

Tomorrow I need to slip the bodywork off again and stick my lengths of aluminium angle to set up a string box and get the geometry right.

Less than 2 weeks to Brands …

I again expected getting the mould off to be difficult and I was right again After about 10 minutes it gave in and I was able to inspect my handiwork and I have to say I was pretty pleased. Here’s the view of the inside of the reconstructed bit.

Once that was done I cleaned the black paint off the inside of the bonnet under all the other broken areas then patched over them with GRP mat and resin. Again it took ages to go off cos it was cold again.

I then tackled the oil cooler which might be intact – I was amazed it didn’t leak any oil at the time of the crash, despite being in front of the radiator it was in surprisingly good shape. One of the spigots was a bit wonky but seems to be intact. The whole thing had a slight twist on it which was easily corrected by sticking one end in the vice and giving it a good tweak at the other. I had to remake one of the brackets as it wasn’t in the box of bits Andy gave me and altogether it was about an hour before it was fitted back into place. I’ll give it a good check over with the engine warmed up, there’s a risk of a leak but I’ve got time to order a replacement if needs be.

Once the GRP was hardened I took the bonnet outside again for the laborious process of filling and sanding. I spent about 3-4 hours on this, the trouble is you could go on for weeks. As it is I’m confident lots of the cracks will immediately propagate through the paintwork as soon as it flexes so I just tried to sort out the major defects.

By 2.30 I was ready to clean it off and get it onto the trestles in the garage for some paint. I got some 2 pack high build primer which is nice and easy to use as you can daub it on quite thick without too much risk of runs or sags. I used up about 2/3 of a gun full, probably about half a litre in total. Lots of the tiny cracks in the gelcoat are still visible but that was always going to be so.

I’d toyed with the idea of just using cellulose paint this time round but brother Andy had poo poo’d it as he reckoned the 2 pack is much easier to use. He was right of course. I was pretty cautious applying the first top coat – with cellulose this would have given a fairly poor and very non-shiny finish but this stuff just levels itself out nicely. No 2 ways about it, the bonnet still looks decidedly second hand, but it’s certainly turned out better than I’d hoped for. The main thing is it’s back in one piece, is fairly solid, looks the right shape and is all the same colour!

The final top coat went on at 5pm then I had to wait till it had dried before I started clearing up. The weekend’s over but I feel I’ve got a lot done. The to do list is starting to look a bit more manageable – I need to refit the coolant header tank, refit the lights to the bonnet and fit that, then sort out the front alignment.

Easter weekend in the garage

I was out in the garage about 7am yesterday. I made a start on sanding down the filler from Saturday but couldn’t use the power tools as I didn’t want to make any noise. So I decided to get going with the GRP repairs around the nose. Apart from the obvious damage the 2 vertical ribs that the bonnet hinge is (was!) bolted onto are in need of some work. The left handed one is just delaminated off, the one on the right has been ripped out completely. My other problem is the black underbody paint I applied to reduce the transparency of the bodywork. I spent quite a while with some cellulose thinners getting off what I could to make sure the GRP will bond properly.

Once that was done I cut up some of the woven glass mat into strips and a few squares and set to with the first layer of repair. I started with the mounting ribs, the bonnet was naturally pulling slightly out of shape so once they had some resin on them I tacked them in place with a couple of pop rivets each then reinforced them with some glass mat. I also added strips of mat round the intake aperture. Although it was a nice morning it was pretty cool in the garage so the resin took quite a long time to go off. I’m using the woven mat I bought rather than the usual chopped strand stuff – it just seems intuitively that it should be a bit stronger although I’m not sure it actually is. Certainly it retains its shape a bit better while still being easy enough to drape around complex curves etc.

Heavy duty clutch spring

Once the GRP had gone off I added another layer around the inside of the nose and around the mounting ribs. Then it was back to the chassis again. Andy had cut off the main copper pipe from the front brake master cylinder to the T junction up front so I needed to remake that. I already had a length of the tubing from when the rear line had got damaged so I flared one end and spent a while fiddling about getting it the right length and shape then fitting it and pop rivetting it in place with plastic P clips.

The GRP was set and the bonnet seemed quite a lot more rigid up front now so I took it outside to rub down the filler around the front right corner. I was quite pleased with the end result. I propped it in the garage doorway and masked off around the area I was making the mould from. I just used some wide masking tape then painted a load of the release agent on. I wasn’t terribly optimistic about how well it actually would release since the surface is pretty porous, especially where I’ve rubbed down just to the foam.

Next step was a layer of gelcoat and since it was much warmer outside this was going off quite a bit quicker which made life easier and quicker. I then laminated on 3 layers of glass mat then left it to go off. Here you can see the final result.

Once that had had time to harden it was time to see how easy it would be to get the mould off. As I suspected the answer was ‘not very’! Firstly it had bonded quite nicely to the filler in places and secondly the shape of it meant that it needed springing out quite a bit to get it off at the top/back end in the wheel arch. While this made it a pain to get off it did mean it would be quite easy to accurately locate it when I came to actually use it. After half an hour breaking the foam up from the inside and using brute force I eventually prevailed and what you see in the pic is the end product after I’d trimmed it down. It needed quite a lot of filled chipping/sanding out of the inside of it so the gelcoat finish isn’t exactly going to be concours but the primary aim was always just to get the basic shape. Overall I’m pretty pleased with my mould.

By now it was getting pretty late in the afternoon as you can see from the longer shadows in the pic alongside. I spent quite a while next using the flapwheel and the drill with an electric brush cleaning all the GRP up including some of the other bits on the bonnet that’ll need patching up. It really is quite a mess and there’s no way it’s going to look very pretty after all this but it’ll do.

I decided to crack on and get the corner finished so I slapped in a layer of gelcoat then a couple of layers of mat on top before clearing up for the day. I’ve still got plenty to do to it before it’ll be ready for any paint but I’m getting there and am now confident that the bonnet I once thought was unsalvageable will live again!