Silverstone

I woke up to blue skies and after a wander round saying hello to folks I went over to sign on and add my name to the entry list for the BikeSports race. I also took my front wheels over to George Polley for a pair of nice new (and round!) tyres, the old ones were pretty knackered – the nearside one was pretty worn out with a bit of flat spotting but the offside one had a huge flat spot on it.

After that I just had my usual routine prepping and scrutineering at 10 o’clock was without drama. Qualy was at 11 and as I got into the car to head off to Assembly the dash was displaying a coolant temp alarm, telling me it was 149°C! I knew this was a lie and after checking the water pump was working and there was enough coolant in I decided to ignore it and set off. In Assembly I disabled the alarm as it was preventing the dash displaying my gear indication. After a little time in Assembly we headed out onto the circuit. The track seemed pretty slippery, especially while the tyres were still cold and I ran wide a couple of times at Copse – I knew this was a corner that I could improve my time on as last year I was bottling out and going too slow round it. I wasn’t really sure whether I was sliding round because the circuit was a bit slippery or because I was just going a bit faster. The car was going well although my alternator light came on after a couple of laps. Grrrrr! The water temp sensor started to behave normally, not sure if maybe I’d had an airlock. I saw a low 1:07 on the dash although I didn’t really feel like I’d hooked up a good lap, there were loads of yellow flags. I was managing to stick with Tony Gaunt which I usually can’t and when he let one of the BikeSports through he let me through too. Eventually there was a red flag and I soon found out why as I slid my way round Copse on a trail of oil left by an unfortunate Phil Alock whose engine had blown. That ended the session and back in the paddock most seemed to think it was a bit slippery. I was fairly pleased to have taken almost a second and a half off last year’s fastest lap time at 1:07.1 (1:08.5 last year).

I stuck the battery charger on the car and Brian Baldwin came over and we had a chat about the fuse blowing. He was surprised a fuse could stop the alternator charging. In the end I decided to just make up a small cable to bypass the fuse although this wasn’t without some trepidation, something was causing it to blow. Brian came over again and had thought about it again and we wondered it it would be better to wire the rectifier output direct the the battery – this is apparently how Derek’s ZX12 is wired. By now time was getting short. Richard had arrived and as I connected the new wire to the battery they noticed smoke coming from under the scuttle. I disconnected the wire, lifted the rear body off to discover the ballast resistor from the FIA master switch to earth was melting. I then realised that with the switch off the bike loom positive was connected to earth via this, so this was actually correct behaviour! So back to plan B, the wire bypassing the fuse. It did give me an idea though – at Cadwell the engine had been cutting out due to a dodgy master switch and I now wondered if the master switch could be momentarily connecting the bike loom to earth while switched on. So I disconnected the connection from switch to earth. A quick check revealed that it did still kill the engine when switched off. Although I had a high degree of suspicion that this was the culprit (as nothing had changed in the wiring otherwise) I still left the wire bypassing the fuse.

In Assembly us RGBers made up at least half of the grid. I was in the row behind Tim although he’d qualified almost 3 seconds quicker than me and I had a shiny yellow Radical behind me. It turned out that this was Nick who had been a visitor in the RGB forum, nice to put a face to a name. It was his first ever race, although he’s done kart racing before. As the Bikesports are on slicks it meant we had a green flag lap, so we all made our way round trying to get some heat into tyres. When the lights went out I got away nice and cleanly and drove round Mr. Hoverd. Again As expected he soon barged past although on this occasion he didn’t leave much room and there was a small risk of him gaining a bit of blue paint on his red car as he came around the outside then dived in front of me into the apex at Becketts. I was right behind Doug Carter in his Busa engined Genesis Evo and I was a bit surprised to be hanging onto the back of him all the way down the Club Straight and into Luffield. I seemed to get a better line out of Luffield and got ahead of him down the Pit Straight. A BikeSport came past me on the way into Copse, but both of us ran wide over the rather slippery astroturf and Doug came past me. There was loads of oil all the way down the Club Straight, round Luffield and half way along the Pit Straight and I found it really off-putting. It was all on the racing line so you were always a bit uncertain of the grip and the clouds of dust coming up made for very poor visibility. Doug slowly eased away from me but nowhere near as quickly as usual. I could see Nick in my mirrors until I made a mistake running wide coming out of Copse again and he went through. He then got away from me until about 2/3 of the way through the race when I got some quicker laps in, I saw a 1:05.89 on my dash although the official timing says my fastest lap was 1:06.99. I suddenly found Nick coming back to me quite quickly as he had caught Judi but couldn’t get past – as I had found previously although Judi’s fairly slow into the corners she’s quite quick out of them and along the straights. I’ve learned you just need to be fairly aggressive and brake late and go up the inside, which I duly did the next time we came into Becketts, passing both of them. I wondered if Nick might get past her and come back at me but this was the penultimate lap and I took the chequered flag with clear mirrors having started 11th out of 16 I finished 9th (2 of the faster boys DNF’d).

Here’s what footage I’ve got of the Bikesports race – my camera switched off after 4 minutes or so of the race:

Back in the paddock I refuelled the car, cleaned my visor and decided to try sticking the fuse back in for the RGB race. We were called to Assembly early and I was parked up alongside Austen – I hadn’t really seen the timesheet and was slightly surprised to see that I was 14th on the grid, my best result ever. It wasn’t just the newbies behind me either, I’d out-qualified a couple of drivers who were normally quite a bit quicker than me – Richard Wise, Tony Gaunt and James Walker. On the grid I had a good start and made up a couple of places and surprisingly didn’t lose them on the run from Copse to Maggots, indeed I was able to hold my own. Unfortunately there was a crash on the exit of Becketts – David Wales’ car was stranded sideways in the middle of the circuit, someone else had gone off left and there were cars swerving everywhere. I managed to nip round the back of David’s car and got back on the gas but as we arrived at Luffield the red lights/flags were out. It was too late to reform on the grid so we all trooped round for another lap and past the stricken cars at Becketts. David’s car seemed to have lost the whole front offside corner including the wheel, Andy Cunningham’s Riot was parked where he’d gone into David and the marshals and medics were everywhere. Everyone seemed to be OK and we went back to the grid.

At the restart I had another good start and was diving into the same gap as Austen so I backed out as I know he’s a tad aggressive As it was I was tucked right behind him coming round Copse and I just drove past him round Maggots and was in front turning into Becketts. I had a look up the inside of Colin Chapman coming into Brooklands but backed out on the brakes and followed him round Luffield, Woodcote and up the straight then round Copse. I was very tight up behind Colin coming out of Becketts and got good drive and the car just accelerated much faster than him. I found myself coming up behind Al Boulton quickly and went up the inside into Brooklands but was carrying just a tad too much speed. I didn’t dare try to change down so just concentrated on avoiding running too wide and into the gravel. I was just on the kerb and though I’d got away with it but the right rear must have gone into gravel and I spun round. As the nose of the car went back into the circuit Austen collected me. Bits of fibreglass flew everywhere and there was a big spray of oil from the front end with a brief puff of smoke. I hit the kill switch, unclipped my harness and got out of there. The marshals recovered the car under yellow flags and I watched the rest of the race from behind the barriers. I was rather gutted to say the least, but this crash was all my own fault.

Once the car was behind the barriers I could inspect the damage. The new bonnet was a real mess and the spigot on top of the oil cooler (that I’d already straightened twice!) had let go hence all the oil. The left hand steering rod had a slight kink and the bonnet mounting hinge was trashed (again!) but apart from that everything else looked fine, the radiator was untouched and the chassis hadn’t been hit. The marshals of course were very helpful, with lots of suggestions involving gaffer tape, T-Cut etc. Once the race finished they helped me gather up all the bits of GRP etc. They did say I had to go the the medical centre after the race but frankly I forgot.

So, that was the end of my weekend. On reflection, I do of course feel fairly stupid. Having said that it’s inevitable that if you’re trying you’re going to make the odd mistake and have some spins, everyone else does. In the past I’ve been accused of not trying hard enough and being too conservative (I know you’re reading this Bates!) and I was starting to worry that I’d never get up to speed. Had I maintained my spot behind Colin and Al and kept Austen at bay I’d have finished 8th overall, a bit of a change from my usual 22nd or so.

A couple of people have in the past commented that my car didn’t seem as powerful as it should have been, most notably Derek who did a sort of drag race at Snett early in the season and was able to easily out accelerate me. I’ve not wanted to labour it as it sounded like an excuse but at least after this weekend I know my car can go fast and be competitive – the airbox has had a dramatic effect and has proved well worth the effort. It was noticeable how much more I was seeing the shift lights as the engine was revving out much more cleanly. I haven’t had the car mapped on a rolling road as I knew there was little point with the PiperCross foam filter, but now I have a decent induction system (and once I’ve fixed the car!) my next job is to take her to PDQ to get the Power Commander mapped properly. I can then get accustomed to driving her as a proper Class A car.

Here’s the footage of the RGB race:

Final Silverstone Preparations

With Friday testing abandoned and my session sold to Phil Alcock a bit of pressure was lifted – I now had all Thursday evening and Friday morning. Still lots to do but the rest was now pretty routine, the only real problem solving still to be done was sorting out why the main fuse was blowing.

On Thursday evening I got the new ally cover and bonnet drilled ready to rivet together and finished prepping the bonnet ready for some paint. Thursday morning I cleared the other side of the garage, swept it up and hung my tarpaulins and polythene sheet to create a spray booth. One the bonnet and airbox were propped up and cleaned of dust using a cloth with some thinners followed by a tack rag it was time to start spraying. I managed to get a coat of the high build primer on before toddling off to work.

At lunchtime I nipped to the paint suppliers as I discovered this morning that I had no cellulose thinners. I also picked up a couple of cans of black satin spray for the airbox. I did manage to nip home to find the primer nice and dry so I gave the airbox a quick blast with one of the spray cans and gave the primer on the bonnet a bit of a rub down – it tends to get a bit rough feeling in the middle where you’re spraying from further away and get a bit of overspray. It looks much better now it’s a nice even grey.

As soon as I got home Thursday evening I sprayed the top coat on the bonnet. Once the fumes were cleared I got on with a couple of other jobs. I put the rubbers in the airbox and rivetted the air filter in and fittede the airbox on the car. After blowing all the dust off and getting the rags out of the throttle bodies it was time to start her up – I hadn’t run the engine since the crash. She turned over fine but didn’t fire. I remembered she works better with the ECU plugged in – I’d disconnected it to weld the radiator bracket. She then started fine and sounded in rude health. I stuck the airbox lid on and was pleased with how much quieter it was, I’d expected a noise reduction but didn’t really expect it to be so marked.

The front tow eye I’d fabricated was still sitting on the bench and I’d decided to come up with another plan as I really didn’t want to hack a load of bonnet away again. I decided to try using one of the Schroth strap I bought and wondered if it would fit OK on the lower mounting for the bonnet hinge trellis. It did indeed so once the bonnet’s on I can just tape it to the bonnet hinge so it’s visible in the aperture.

Friday morning was a hectic time getting the airbox sealed and fitted, cleaning all the dust, checking out the electrics (didn’t find anything obvious), fitting bonnet hardware and number etc. Then it was time to grab a spot of lunch, tidy up the garage and get the motorhome ready and the Fury on the trailer. I’d wanted to try to get away by 2pm but as it was it was just gone 3pm and I was feeling slightly frazzled by the time we left.

Fabricating an airbox

With only 2 weeks to go now to Silverstone it was make my mind up time – either replace the Pipercross foam filter, buy an airbox or fabricate a new one. Since the intention is to have an airbox at some stage and I’m sticking the new bonnet on it would be a pity to modify the bonnet now for a Pipercross sausage then do it again when I replace that so I quickly rejected that idea. The Pipercross airbox got a bit of a thumbs down from Andy Bates and I’m also worried I might need to chop a lot of bonnet away to fit it in, so I decided to have a go at fabricating one.

Andy had given me a bit of advice over the phone, it’s clear he’d spent a lot of time optimising the design of his airbox for the Fireblade motor to maximise performance. The idea is that using a NACA duct in the front of the bonnet (i.e. in high pressure air) you maximise the ram air effect but you then need to slow that air down by having sufficient volume in the airbox and Andy reckons this needs to be 8 litres. You then want to get nice smooth laminar flow through the panel filter into the area just above the throttle body bellmouths. You can say ’8 litres’ quite quickly, but it’ll take you a lot longer than that to fit it into an engine bay! 8 litres is pretty huge and even allowing for a bonnet bulge or cutout there are other constraints, like the pedal box, the engine breather on top of the gearbox, gear shift cable etc. After some simple calculations I reckoned there was no way I’d fit 8 litres in there but that whatever I did get would be a improvement over my other options.

The first step was to make a cardboard mock-up in situ and once I stopped standing round scratching my head and got started on it it wasn’t actually too difficult. Here’s a pic of the completed model in situ resting on top of the throttle bodies. I’ve made sure there’s comfortable clearance above the bellmouths then dropped it down to fill the space above the gearbox.

And here’s another shot from the other side showing the bit that dips down above the gearbox.

Once that was finished I turned it upside down and poured some of the 2 part polyurethane foam I usually use for making seats into it. This foamed up nicely filling the box. It also made the cardboard slightly soggy and bulged it out a bit but that’s not a problem as it can just be sanded back.

Once that had set I pulled all the cardboard off and trimmed it back to shape. One problem with the foam is that it doesn’t like polyester resin much and tends to dissolve, also although you can sand it to a reasonable finish it isn’t good enough to use as a mould anyway, so the next part of the process was to apply filler to allow me to get it to the right shape and to get a decent finish on it. Here’s a pic of the airbox with its first coat of filler waiting to be sanded down. It now needs several fill/sand cycles to fill in all the low spots, get all the corners to reasonable curves and to the the flat faces reasonably true. One trick I used was using my surform before the filler has gone off completely to get most of the ridges etc. off.

Having browsed through M&P’s online catalogue of K&N filters I decided a 2001 FireBlade was the one for me and called in there to exchange 38 of my earth pounds for one. Sadly not in stock, same story at Buster’s Accessories. So onto eBay where I found a used one for a mere £20 + £5 p&p and that duly arrived a couple of days later and looks like it should do the job nicely. I’ll work out how to fit it into the airbox once I’ve got the outer shell completed.

A trip to B&Q yielded some 4″ aluminium extractor fan ducting for a fiver that should do the trick to duct air from the NACA inlet to the airbox, plus a couple of quid for a pair of matching jubilee clips. Also got some varnish to attempt to seal the airbox plug prior to taking a mould.

After lots of repeated filler/sanding cycles the plug was just about ready for action. My plan is to mould the airbox directly onto the plug, so the gelcoat side will be the inside of the box. The shape of it isn’t exactly designed to be aerodynamic but it’s probably better having the smooth surface on the inside, I’m not too worried about the outside to be honest. Main priority is to get this completed in time for Silverstone, I don’t mind having another go at it later if I’m not entirely happy. The next job was to slap some varnish on it – ideally it should be shellac but I simply didn’t have time to go hunting for some, by now I only had 7 days to go before heading off to Silverstone and only one day off work in that time. I also dug out some 4″ plastic waste pipe to use as a mould for the inlet. After some release agent it got a coat of gelcoat on the inside and once that was going off a couple of layers of chopped strand and resin.

Once this had gone off I then had the problem of getting it off the plug. I knew this was going to be difficult and to be honest was still wondering if I would have to abandon the whole lot and just stick either another sausage filter on for Silverstone. It did indeed prove pretty impossible, so I resorted to plan B which was to trim what would be the upper edge of the lower box level, stick a load of packing tape over the top of the plug and mould the lid with the bottom still in situ. Once this was done I did manage to get the lid off without too many problems. I then removed the plug from the bottom of the box by breaking it up. I now had a box with a lid and could see some light at the end of the tunnel. Still lots of work to do though – cutting holes for the rubbers to go onto the throttle bodies, somehow arranging for the incoming air to go through a filter and adding an inlet pipe. This all took ages but I did get there.

By now of course it was close of play on the Sunday before Silverstone I’m in work every day and have meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. The to do list is pretty long:

• Cut out headlight apertures
• Cut hole in bonnet to allow airbox to poke through
• Fit NACA duct to bonnet
• Modify headlight recesses to avoid fouling front wheels
• Fit bonnet latches
• Prep and spray airbox
• Prep and spray bonnet
• … and then try to work out what was causing that pesky fuse to blow!

After work on Monday I set to on the bonnet. Before removing it to sort the headlight apertures I cut the hole for the airbox and the holes for the headlights. I wasn’t planning to make a hump for the bonnet this time, hoping to make the aperture a snug enough fit around the airbox. Sadly that’s not to be – the throttle bodies themselves are just above the bonnet line so there’s a gap below the lower edge of the box, also as the bonnet arcs down, to clear the top edge at the back this leaves quite a big gap between the airbox and the rear edge of the opening. I did start thinking of ways of solving this that might be manageable in a couple of days (clearly making another mould isn’t on) but decided to leave that for now and move on.

I whipped the bonnet off, marked for the NACA duct, set to it with the flapwheel on the angle grinder to make it fit the profile of the bonnet where I planned to fit it. I also chopped a chamfers off the headlight recesses. I could then bond the NACA duct onto the bonnet and glass the headlight recesses. By now it was pretty much time for bed. If it weren’t for the need for some sort of bonnet hump I’d be feeling optimistic. My current thinking is that the easiest solution is to fabricate one from aluminium. It might well look pretty bad but it’ll get me out there and shouldn’t compromise me making a proper GRP one later. I have a feeling I might have to give up on the Silverstone testing on Friday morning to get the car ready

My early morning start on Tuesday was botched by being on call and having to go out just after midnight. Of course then couldn’t get back to sleep. so the morning’s activities before work were limited. I stuck the bonnet back on and cut out the bonnet to open the NACA duct – this has worked nicely and looks neat and tidy. You’ll have to trust me that it looks better than in the dusty picture opposite! I fitted the new bonnet latches to the sidepods and drilled the bonnet ready to fit the catchplates after it’s painted. I got these latches from Protex and am quite pleased with them, they’re nice and solid and have a positive latch. I also drilled the rear edge of the bonnet for the bonnet pins and plates for those.

Tuesday evening I got the airbox ready for some paint and prepped the bonnet. Plan B is to come up with something just to seal the hole around the airbox, at least temporarily, the easiest something being a piece of ally sheet. When I had a careful look at it I decided this was going to be quite difficult to implement and would look like a dog’s breakfast. So I then measured up to fabricate an ally cover all from one piece with folds. This sort of worked but looked awful and didn’t fit very well. So I threw that away and started again, this time with a curved bend in a sheet with shaped pieces front and back. I ran out of time and resumed Wednesday morning. I was eventually happy with the fit of the end plates and drilled/riveted it together with the result you see here – this is just resting on there at the moment. This has actually worked out a bit better than I’d hoped.

<
a href="http://www.furybusa.org.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Airbox09.JPG">I removed the throttle body rubbers from the airbox, sanded it all down ready for some paint, took it into the house and gave it a good wash ready for painting. Trouble is I won’t be home from work till about 9 this evening and am due in work till 6pm tomorrow, so very little time to sort the rest of the stuff out. Time to call it a day and abandon the Friday morning testing That means I’ve got Thursday evening and all Friday morning to get it sorted.

Post Mallory Repairs

I hadn’t tried to inspect the front end of the chassis too carefully at Mallory, it’s difficult to see it all clearly with the bonnet on. Once I got the bonnet off on Monday I could see a bit more clearly and apart from the mangled radiator brackets it all actually looked OK. The front wheels look to be aligned normally although when they’re straight the steering wheel isn’t. Andy Bates had suggested the rack might have slid in its mounts but that didn’t seem to be the case. I lifted the front end and moved the wheel lock to lock which was nice and smooth with no tight spots or clunks etc., so internal damage to the rack seemed unlikely. I suspect the lower steering column has slid round on the pinion on the steering rack – I remember when Andy was fitting it prior to me bringing the car home that he commented it was a poor fit.

I spoke to Andy about a few things – radiators and airboxes mostly. Although the radiator looks as if it’s actually serviceable it’s been knocked around a bit and I plan to replace it. It’s apparently a VW Polo rad and Andy suggested trying a local radiator supplier. Andy sells a very nice GRP airbox for the Blades but not for the Busa. I as thinking of getting a Pipercross airbox as they’re relatively cheap at about £200 (Andy’s are £400+) but Andy reckons they’re quite restrictive and that I should consider making one myself. He suggested he might tackle producing one over the winter. I wondered whether it was a ploy – put me off buying the Pipercross one, get me to try making one and fail so I come back to him. But I’m being cynical I did order one of his NACA ducts since they’re the only ones I can find with a 100mm outlet.

On the radiator front the one Andy fitted after Snetterton is actually narrower than the previous one, and I thought it would be best to fit as wide a rad as I can. After lots of searching on the net I reckoned a 1991 VW Polo Mk3 rad fitted the bill, so I rang a local supplier for a price. Not only was it a very reasonable £37 + VAT but they had one in stock. So I got that and will just have to modify the brackets on the chassis to fit it.

With the radiator off I could inspect for damage and failed to find any. When Andy fixed the chassis after Snetterton he beefed it up quite a bit, using heavier gauge steel for the pressed plates and adding more triangulation and gussets in and it seems to have done the trick. All the wishbones look undamaged, the suspension mounting brackets all look fine. So I straightened the steering column on the rack and set up my measuring stick to check the front alignment – I use an aluminium angle at a pre-measured distance from the front wheel rims and stick a laser level on each wheel in turn to see where the beam points on the angle. When I measured my 5mm toe in last time I set up the strong box I marked where the laser hit the angle so it’s easy to replicate it. I’ve also measured some graduation marks so I can adjust it to give a bit less toe in. The main findings were that there had been some movement from about 2mm toe in each side to about 2mm toe out, also the camber on the offside wheel seemed slightly increased. I had a careful look around again for any damage and still couldn’t find any so I set about readjusting the alignment.

Once that was done I could make a start on the radiator. I made some additional bits of bracket and welded them to the offside rad mount to extend it outwards by 50mm to match the new rad. Once that was cleaned up and had a lick of Hammerite on it I fitted the fan to the rad then stuck the rad on. Next up was making a new bracket to fix the oil cooler to the front of the rad. Once that was done I could connect up the rad hoses again, sort out the oil cooler hoses and reconnect the rad switch and fan.

I then got the new bonnet down from the garage loft and made a start on fitting that. The impact had pushed the bonnet back into the scuttle and the aluminium strip that’s riveted along the top of the scuttle was quite damaged so I drilled the rivets out and removed it, then cut a new strip of aluminium and fitted that. The new bonnet needed a bit of trimming – some of the returns needed cutting back and the rad aperture cutting out. With the bonnet propped in position it was easy enough to drill for the hinges. I need to order some new catches and transfer the lights over from the old bonnet but the bulk of the crash repairs were now done.

Of course I now have a foam air filter with a 2″ hole in it. The plan has always been to get a proper airbox to both improve cold air supply as well as to reduce the intake noise. Now seems as good a time as any to get on with that, so I’ve made a start – I’ll give the airbox its own page.

Mallory

No, I'm not in Guantanamo Bay, they're marshals!

It was my first time at Mallory – last year I went along and spectated having just got over my eye surgery. I didn’t have chance to test first as they only do it on a Wednesday morning there and I just couldn’t fit that in. So the plan was to pitch up on Saturday evening and just go out for the qualifying session to learn my way around. I did get out onto the circuit early Sunday morning for a couple of laps, fastest lap was about 11 minutes, I can’t run as fast as I used to! It gave me a chance to see all the kerbs etc., as well as all the goose crap on the track!

The car was fully prepped before leaving home, so all I needed to do before qualy was sort the tyre pressures. As I arrived in the assembly area the battery light came on. I decided it was likely the main alternator fuse had blown again. I thought of running back to get another but the bonnet was taped up, I’d get all hot and bothered and the chances were if I replaced it it would blow again anyway. So I decided to just press on and hope the battery could sustain the car for 15 minutes.

Qualifying was uneventful but to be honest knowing there was a problem with the car again was distracting. Gerards is a very fast (5th gear) very long right hander and frankly for someone like me it just takes a lot of laps to gradually increase entry speed and to get used to the car sliding at such high speed. Also the Esses at the end of the next straight took time to learn, because of the fast exit from Gerrards (near the limiter in 5th) you’re coming into the Esses very quick and can actually carry quite a lot more speed through there than it initially appears. The hairpin was straightforward but I never really felt I got the hang of the Devil’s Elbow, there seemed to be about 30 different lines you could take through there.

The car hadn’t conked out by the end of the session so I got back to the paddock and started investigating why it was blowing the fuse. Andy Bates and Tony Carpenter came over and we all stuck our heads together and tried a few things. We tested out both the rectifier and the alternator using a multimeter and the Haynes manual, they were all fine. We swapped to a different battery and it still blew the fuse. We tested out everything we could and found no faults but after sticking all the connections back together it seemed OK so we wondered if it was just a dodgy connector that was better now we’d remade it and after charging the battery I was ready to go again.

The fuse made it all the way to the grid and I felt optimistic we’d solved the problem. The red lights went out and I made a good start but there were no gaps to get through so couldn’t do much and had to back off the gas a bit. The first couple of laps were uneventful, the battery light came on again on the first lap and I was struggling to keep in touch with Phil Alcock. I came round the hairpin to find Adrian Moore stationary and facing me but not on the racing line, so no difficulty avoiding him as he got going again. I could see him in my mirrors chasing me down the straight as I headed towards Gerrards in 6th gear. I came off the throttle and hit the brakes to find the car not slowing down much at all. By the time I realised it was because the throttle was stuck wide open I was already way off line and headed for the edge of the tarmac. I hit the clutch but it was too late and I was reminded again that the coefficient of friction of grass is much lower than tarmac. I just kept my foot in the brake pedal, tried to grab the kill switch (but failed) and hoped the strip of gravel would do its job in slowing me down. Sadly it seemed to do bugger all and I emerged the other side of it still going way quicker than I liked with the tyre wall looming. As the car hit the tyre wall slightly obliquely it slewed round to the right. I shut off, undid the harness and climbed out over the wall.

Pic courtesy of Derek's Dad

The car was in parc ferme being inspected by the scrutes. I was keen to find out why the throttle had stuck as it’s not common with throttle bodies. The cause was easy to see – a chunk of the Piper Cross foam filter had got sucked down into the front throttle body clearly jamming the butterfly wide open! The scrutes seemed to find this of huge novelty value and went to get all their friends to have a look. I told them off for laughing and tried to get them to believe that it wasn’t funny but failed miserably. I couldn’t see any obvious chassis damage and neither the radiator or the oil cooler were leaking so I remained cautiously optimistic.

We eventually got the car on the trailer, watched the last race and headed home. Mallory had taken it’s toll not just on me:

• Paul Robinson DNF spun into barrier at hairpin
• Henry Car DNF spun at hairpin race red flagged
• Tim Hoverd DNF lack of connection between engine and rear wheels somehow
• Andy Cunningham DNF engine overheating
• Derek had sustained some damage in race 1 when he spun and someone collected the corner of his car
• Al Boulton didn’t start race 2 as his diff had come loose and broken the diff carrier
• Steve Robinson limped round 2 races with a horrible misfire

We were home quite late so I just stuck the car in the garage. Monday morning I whipped the bonnet off to have a look – the rad brackets are mangled as is the bonnet mount but the chassis, wishbones etc. all look intact and straight which is encouraging. As soon as I get chance I’ll start stripping it down and inspecting a bit more carefully.