Having given the broken off bracket a good clean yesterday to get rid of the crud off it I set to with the angle grinder and flapwheel to cut back the edges and clean the powder coating off it. I then cleaned up the chassis with a wire brush and got the bracket wedged back into position. I could then get it welded back on. Although my welding has definitely improved a bit the trouble is I don’t do it often enough to get very proficient. The wled looks crappy in a few places but along the two important edges I’m very happy with it and don’t see why it shouldn’t be OK. I was thinking of making a sort of inverted U shape piece to go over the bracket like a saddle to reinforce it but decided against in the end.

Once that was cleaned off I slapped some Hammerite on it and left it to dry. I was wondering what the alignment on the nearside upright bushes would be like but all I had to do was undo the bolts and push the new single one through without disturbing the sequence of washers etc. and the job was done in a few minutes. With the paint dry I got on with sticking the offside corner back together. This went slightly better than I expected and pretty soon the car had 4 wheels again. One of them wasn’t pointing in quite the right direction though so I then had to spend a couple of hours getting the alignment reset. Here’s a pic of the offending bracket with wishbone reattached.

Once that was sorted I could refit the fuel tank and refill it with fuel. With the battery and ECU reconnected I fired her up and was happily blipping the throttle to warm the engine until I realised I was standing in a pool of petrol Quickly switched off and realised it was just cos I had forgotten to refit the tank breather and FI swirl pot return. Doh …

Anyway, she’s now pretty much ready for Mallory next Sunday. Couple of little jobs I want to do but nothing that can’t wait.

Having been away for a week’s hols in Florida I came back today and despite being a bit jet-lagged decided to make a start on fixing the Fury. Andy Bates sent me some long hardened 1/2″ UNF bolts that he had in stock and after a bit of long-distance nagging via phone Chris at BGH Geartech sent my replacement upright out.

I whipped the rear tub off, jacked the rear up, got the wheels off and started to remove the offside brake caliper. You can see the rather inappropriate amount of camber from the pic on the right. Removing the caliper proved to be rather tricky because as soon as I tried to loosen the first bolt the whole suspension was flopping around! A quick inspection revealed that this was because the rear mounting point for the inboard end of the lower wishbone had broken completely off the chassis! So the observers who’d said it looked like the rear wheel was flopping round completely weren’t exaggerating at all. I’d assumed the broken upright was sort of flipping from a convex shape to a concave shape but it was clearly much more impressive than that Here’s a brief (and dimly lit) clip demonstrating the floppiness:

Here’s a pic of the inboard end of the lower wishbone swinging in the breeze. You can just about make out the bent bit of chassis tubing where it’s been ripped out.

The next pic shows the hole in the chassis tubing where the bracket once belonged. I guess the amount of movement allowed by the broken upright allowed it to place a lot of stress on the other wishbone mounting points eventually leading to failure. Although the wishbone mounting brackets themselves are pretty chunky my lightweight chassis is made of pretty thin tubing and of course any joint is only as strong as its weakest component.

Once I’d done a bit more dismantling I could inspect the damage a bit more closely. All the other suspension mounting points looked OK, of course if the wishbones had been bushed rather than rose jointed I suspect it would have been much worse. As it is it looks like I just need to clean up the edges of the hole and the mount bracket and weld it back on.

I then turned my attention to the new upright and the new long bolts Andy had sent. After a bit of cleaning up with a file I could get the bolt in the hole but then encountered another problem. The upright is essentially a more or less triangular piece of steel plate with 3 bushes welded at the top corner and each bottom corner. Sadly as you can see from this pic the lower bushes aren’t even terribly close to being aligned, not a problem when you’re using separate bolts but a problem when I want to use one long one. This took me the best part of half an hour with the vice and lump hammer. I’m still not confident the bolts are as long as I’d like but I was by now running out of time and had to abandon for the day. Plenty to get on with tomorrow …

Sunday morning saw some motorhome preparation action – at Llandow on Saturday I couldn’t get the water heater to work and was worried that the hard frosts had damaged it despite me winterising it. A quick check over and I remembered that it doesn’t work unless the cover’s taken off the flue. Doh! After that it was just a case of cleaning everything up and checking what needed restocking in there.

Monday evening I printed off my pre-race checklist and got everything on there ticked off, including checking all the prop and diff bolts etc. I also took the silencer off and checked the packing which seemed fine which I was a bit surprised about as it did 4 or 5 sessions at Silverstone and 5 on Saturday. I also had a sudden thought and checked the date on my fire extinguisher to find it needed servicing in September 09! I’ll see if I can get that done locally, I do know a fire safety place as they also for some reason sell scuba diving gear.

The only other semi-essential job I hadn’t got round to was sorting out my front anti-roll bar. The little aluminium blocks I use to connect the bar to the wishbone via small rose joints keep breaking, they split where the slot has been cut to allow the bolt to clamp them onto the end of the bar. I had an ill formed cunning plan involving similar aluminium blocks but this time with a tapped hole perpendicular to the hole the bar goes through allowing me to simply lock the block onto the bar with a screw as shown in this pic. They’re pretty rough at the moment but when i have more time I can tidy them up and chop a bit of the excess meat off them.

I’ve been thinking about the engine. At Silverstone last August after I’d made the new airbox it was like driving a different car – loads more power and I was hitting the limiter going through the gears which didn’t happen previously. Of course that meant I started overtaking people who normally lapped me and ended in tears At my abortive trip to PDQ in September Nick there had not got chance to do any mapping but had noticed that the map I’d uploaded to the Power Commander had quite a few negative numbers in it and warned me to reduce them a bit until I could map it. The map was one I’d downloaded and I think was for a stock bike, the negative numbers mean that the map actually fuels the engine slightly less than the stock ECU map, and without knowing the air:fuel ratio there’s a risk it’s running a bit lean. This of course will give good power till the engine goes pop. So after that I did edit the map to richen it up a bit and frankly I think I can feel the difference. I don’t really have time to get back to PDQ any time soon and it’s another 350 mile round trip, so over the winter I’ve been thinking about fitting a wideband lambda sensor so I can see for myself what sort of state the engine’s running in. I bit the bullet on Tuesday and rang Demon Tweeks again and ordered the Stack kit which includes a Bosch sensor and controller and dash gauge. It does also include an output for a logger for if/when I upgrade my dash. I figure that it’ll at least enable me to check that I’m not running the engine dangerously lean and I can maybe tweak the map back towards what it was before and regain a bit more top end.

Wednesday was a bit of a hiccup preparation-wise. Meeting in London meant leaving the house very early, I left London at 3.30pm to get back to a meeting in Swansea, left that at 9.15pm, got home, tried to get an hour’s kip then off to an overnight shift at 11.30. Finished that at 8am then off to surgery for the day. After that I slept for 9 hours then went out to the garage The stuff came from Demon Tweeks on Wednesday – the lambda kit, some more race numbers and a couple of packs of exhaust packing. The lambda kit was pretty straightforward to fit, I already have a boss in the manifold collector so just unscrewed the bung and screwed the sensor in, couple of riveted clips to fix the cable and that end was done. 20 minutes with the stepped drill and dremel saw the gauge fitted to the dash then another 20 minutes saw it all connected up – fortunately I already had a spare ignition switched 12v supply behind the dash.

With it all connected up I switched the ignition on and checked it was displaying the little dashes that meant it was heating itself up. I fired the engine up and was pleased to see it working great. As you can see from the pic it displays the air-fuel ratio in the centre to one decimal place and the little bar graph of coloured LEDs give a nice at-a-glance display – obviously yellow is rich, it goes red if it gets lean. It was idling while pretty cold when the pic was taken. It has a function to store the peak reading with a wire to control it – the instructions show a switch connected to throttle linkage to actuate it at wide open throttle but I’ve just go it earthed at present so it just records the peak since it was switched on. You can reset this at any time via one of the buttons on the gauge. Overall I’m very pleased and look forward to seeing just how useful it is. It also has a pair of wires to connect it to a datalogger, you can also configure the end-points for both the bar graph display and the logger output to narrow the range down if you want.

I also managed to pick up the fire extinguisher yesterday. It cost £11.95 + VAT and now has a nice new sticker saying it needs a complete service in 3 years. The guy said it’ll need to go back to the manufacturer for that unfortunately as it includes refilling it. So all that’s left to do is refit the extinguisher, slap my race numbers on and get everything loaded up for the trek to Snetterton this afternoon – I rang the club earlier in the week and am booked into the All Comers race on Saturday.

I was going to make an early start this morning but it was -4° so I bottled out and sorted out my race suit instead. I’d been planning to send it away to have it dry cleaned and to have the velcro on the belt and collar replaced as all the hooks had fallen off the old stuff. In the end the company I spoke to said it was OK to stick them in the washing machine so that’s what I did. I managed to buy some fireproof velcro as well so this morning I spent an hour unpicking the old stuff and sewing some new velcro on.

By 10 o’clock I decided it would be tolerable in the garage so off I went outside. I go the front shock refitted then replaced the brake fluid and bled all the brakes. After that I stripped, cleaned and regreased the front hubs and bearings.

After lunch I got the wheels back on and lowered her onto the ground and set up my string box around the car to check all the wheel alignments. I was now confident of getting the car ready so rang Llandow and booked onto tomorrow’s trackday. The front wheels were fine for both toe and camber but the rears unsurprisingly weren’t. It then took me a couple of hours to get the rear end sorted, I wanted just a couple of millimetres of toe-in and about 1.5&deg of camber. Once I was happy I could tighten up all the rose joint lock nuts etc, stick the wheels back on and tighten the hub nuts.

Now running out of time (as I’m working this evening) I got the car outside and got David to sit in it to measure the corner weights. After a bit of tweaking I was happy with that and got her back into the garage and refitted the bodywork. The harnesses need refitting in the morning and I need to pack my stuff up but the car’s otherwise ready to go

The stuff from Demon Tweeks arrived on Tuesday morning. Everyone moans about them but to be honest I’ve had nothing but good service from them, whenever I’ve rung they’ve been very helpful, the stuff has arrived the next day and with the 10% club membership discount they’re cheaper than the alternatives for most of the dedicated motorsport stuff. I also had an email from the MSA to say my licence is on its way back to me. Since I only sent my application last Thursday that’s pretty good too.

At the end of the season I wasn’t sure how I was going to cope with 5 months without a race weekend but as time went by I started to feel a bit can’t be bothered, especially when it was just too cold to be in the garage. Other priorities started to take over until the first race started to loom. But now I’m starting to feel enthusiastic again and am really looking forward to the Snetterton weekend. Some of the guys are testing at Snett this Friday but it’s simply too far for me, 300 miles and at least 6-7 hours in the motorhome. There is however a trackday at Llandow on Saturday and seeing as that’s only 40 minutes away and for the princely sum of £80 it would be rude not to unless the weather’s awful or I hit some unforeseen snag with the car.

Tuesday evening saw the propshaft refitted – plenty of loctite on the nuts and all marked with paint. I also fitted the new mirror.

On Wednesday I received confirmation that the club have received my entry. It turns out the All Comers race is on the Saturday, which makes a bit more of a weekend of it which is good given the distance. You can usually get into the All Comers quite late (usually on the day in fact) so I’ll wait till I’m confident the car’s sorted (i.e. after Llandow if I go) before entering. I also sorted out the motorhome insurance – I haven’t looked at the motorhome since Christmas when it was press-ganged into providing accommodation for some of the family visiting. So far as I know it doesn’t need much doing to it apart from a spring clean and restocking of cupboards. I also knocked the plastic wheel arch trim off while manoeuvring it and that needs a bit of tidying up and refitting.

Wednesday evening got the reverse motor refitted – it’s got some fairly serious duty bracketry so as a rather futile gesture I’ve drilled some holes in it. The whole lot could do with some paint but it’s a bit of a thrash dissembling it all and I couldn’t be bothered. Once that was refitted I could refit the tunnel panels. Next job was swapping the springs on the front suspension. A bit of a PITA job but with the assistance of my trusty Lidl luggage straps I managed to compress the springs. With the springs off I could give the bodies a good clean and some lubrication then reassemble with the 200lb springs.

Right, I’m back in the groove now Yesterday morning I sent off my application for the RGB series, there’s a rather nice single form on which you can enter all the races so that’s what I’ve done. I also rang Demon Tweeks and ordered a couple of bits and pieces – a new tinted visor (the last one was iridium which looked nice and worked well but ended up horribly pock-marked quite quickly as the stone chips damaged the surface coating). Also another pair of nomex socks as using a single pair for a whole weekend of testing and racing turned out not to be a terribly good thing! And a replacement mirror – this will be the third of the nice curved Longacre mirrors, the first one cracked spontaneously and the second one when the guy at PDQ caught it when climbing into the car on the dyno last year. Not cheap at £17 but a real godsend.

I also rang Fisher but still no sign of the new uprights – apparently they had a batch made up by their fabricators that were all out of alignment so they’re waiting for more. They sounded reasonably confident of getting them within the next week or so but I’m not too worried about running with the repaired one at Snett.

In the evening I made a bit more progress. I swapped the rigid rear towing eye for the Schroth strap I used previously as the Blue Book now prohibits bits sticking out of the bodywork. I painted up the bolts on the diff and drive shafts then it was time to refit the fuel tank.

Refitting the fuel tank didn’t take long and pretty soon it was connected up and the rear end was back together apart from fitting the return and vent hoses back onto the tank.