The Summer Break

With Brands out of the way it’s 6 weeks to the next race at Mallory Park. The season’s over half way gone already!

Although Brands finished on a bit of a low note it only took half an hour or so to swap the rectifier over and replace the fuse and she was pretty much good to go again. There are quite a few little things I’d like to get done though, some higher priority than others.

I ordered a few bits and pieces – a new mirror from Demon Tweeks (having cracked somehow at Anglesey a chunk of the glass flew out at Brands hitting me straight in the visor!), some stainless wool off eBay to see if it will make the silencer wadding last a bit longer, a Power Commander also off eBay (the old one isn’t compatible with loom since the swap in May).

On Friday 3rd July I returned to the garage to make a start on my list of jobs. I replaced the rear view mirror, tightened the gear shift pivot bolt and removed the fuel swirl pot. I made some modifications to the bracketry adding some rivnuts to make fitting/removal easier and removed the pump from the tank so I can take it to the ally welder to get the return spigot moved to the top of the tank. I also fitted the Power Commander mounting it inside the engine bay this time so it’s easy to access without removing the rear tub.

The next day I took the bonnet off to make a start on fabricating some new hinge fixings. At Anglesey Al Boulton showed me what he’s done on his Phoenix which uses a similar arrangement to the Fury. Instead of the bonnet pivoting on some tube with a rod running through it he’s made a couple of U shaped brackets so the U bit engages on the pivot bar and a small bolt then drops through and secures it with a pin through the bolt so it can be undone quickly and easily. After a bit of head scratching I used some of my fairly heavy duty 1″ box section steel as the internal width was about right for my pivot rod (it’s actually a tube). A couple of hours of hacksawing, drilling, filing, welding and finally painting and my brackets were ready to bolt onto the bonnet. I was pleased to find I’d actually measured everything correctly and they fitted perfectly

What this means is that the bonnet can now be either pivoted (which is nice and easy when you’re on your own) or by removing the pins quickly detachable to allow much better access to the engine bay, front suspension and the rad etc. I had considered making it just removable using bonnet pins but it’s a PITA then when you’re on your own with no-one to help lift it off. So, many thanks to Al for that idea

The other development this week is that the entry forms for the Birkett Relay were published. I went to watch this last year and it looked tremendous fun – it’s a 6 hour race with teams of up to 6 cars with only one car allowed on circuit at any one time. I think there are 55 teams meaning 55 cars on track at once with wildly varying performance meaning lots of overtaking. Having not received any offers from the existing RGB teams I’ve been discussing it with Austen Greenway and we’ve now managed to get our own team of 6 drivers together. The race isn’t till the end of October but we’re quite excited about it already.

I dropped the swirl pot off on Monday and picked it up Tuesday. Refitting only took half an hour or so. While the rear tub was off I checked the clearance for the speedo sender which seemed fine, the nuts on it were still tight too. With the fuel system back together I could check that the new Power Commander was working which it was. I need to upload a sensible map into it but will have to get a new 9v battery first.

With a week to go to Mallory I checked the map in the Power Commander confirming it was the stock European bike map. Till I get a lambda sensor or take the car to a rolling road I’ll make do with that. Looking through the map it seems to slightly lean off the mixture mid range which will presumably give a little more power, it’s pretty much unchanged up near the top end. The car ‘s now ready to go with just a couple of things I’d like to get done.

So far I’ve been running the car with about 5mm front toe-in. Straight line stability has been great so I plan to experiment with a little less toe-in to see if it improves turn in. So I reduced this to about 2.5mm. I also pulled the silencer apart to check on the wadding – I’ve got some stainless wool to wrap around the perforated tube which hopefully will preserve the wadding a bit better. As it was I discovered the wadding looked fine so I left it alone.

The next ‘desirable but not essential’ project is a rear anti-roll bar. An initial investigation with the rear jacked up and wheels off suggest that it isn’t going to be terribly easy. It’s tricky mounting it to articulate with the front of the rear wishbone as the diff’s in the way, mounting it underneath the diff would mean it would need to be underneath the wishbone roughly level with the bottom of the chassis and potentially therefore a bit vulnerable. Mounting further back is also tricky as the chassis is quite narrow low down and I’m not sure it would work properly as I suspect the torsion bar would bend rather than twist and so not provide much actual anti-roll. I think I’ll have a look in the paddock at Mallory and see what others have done.

So, that’s it, she’s ready to go! I haven’t driven Mallory before and unlike other circuits they aren’t running testing the day before the racing. Popping up to Leicestershire on a Wednesday is tricky for me so I’ll just have to go out and find my way round in qualifying. I’ll spend a bit more time on YouTube in the meantime having a look at the others’ footage, it really is very useful.