On Saturday morning I decided to do the cutouts for the aerocatches on the front cover while it was still detached from the car. After cutting out a cardboard template it didn’t take long with the die grinder and files to have the holes sorted. My cunning plan was to fit the front cover first, then the sidepods followed last by the rear cover. The front cover is actually very straightforward, it’s a very good fit and when pushed back onto the hinge plates sits in exactly the right position with its rear face flush with the chassis rail along the dash. Once that’s bonded on I can use that to align the sidepods.

I took the plates off and drilled a few holes in them and stuck a few score marks in with a scribe then replaced them and loctited the two small nuts at each side. It was time to bring out the acrylic adhesive. This seems pretty unpleasant stuff and RS sent about 10 ages of dire health warnings with it. The little gun works really well and when I came to actually use the stuff it was actually a little more liquid than I was expecting. It’s in a twin cartridge and the gun uses clever little nozzles that mix the stuff as it comes out. After carefully applying the adhesive to the aluminium hinge plates I lifted the cover into place, checked the alignment then used some wood blocks to pack under it pushing the cover onto the hinge plates then went for a coffee while I waited for it to go off.

Most of the rest of my morning was spent sorting out the trailer. The brakes have been going a bit wonky – initially locking one of the wheels under braking last year which seemed to clear up after some adjustment but recently the handbrake hasn’t been working on one side. Last weekend I whipped the hub apart to find a pair of rusty shoes with no pad material in sight at all! A visit to Bank Farm Trailers in Swansea elicited much sucking of teeth and “they’ll be very expensive if you can find any at all”. They eventually reckoned £66 a pair which sounded ridiculous. Great. I rang Brian James and after 3 days they got back to me with a price – £89 per axle set, plus Vat and carriage. Phil reckoned the hubs are made by Avontrie and a bit of Googling for Avonride brake shoes and I found these at a much more reasonable £66 including VAT and carriage per axle set. So only £91 cheaper … Anyway, I ordered these and managed to get both wheels on one side of the trailer done. Only one wheel had decent shoes in, the other two both had shoes with detached lining material.

Before heading off to Stratford-upon-Avon for the 750 Motor Club dinner I lifted the front cover up and applied some PU sealant around the hinge plate to beef it up a bit.

Saturday evening was very pleasant in the company of most of my RGB mates, I also had chance to have a chat with Ian Baldwin about the remaining work. After a late and very large breakfast on Sunday I hotfooted it back to Wales to get on with the bodywork. Before fitting the sidepods I wanted to get the rear cover hinge plates in place, these fit in slots cut through the cover and bolt onto the ends of the aluminium frame. It seems I got my measurements for the slots right as they fitted very nicely.

The first pic here is of the bracket that supports the front of the nearside sidepod, the one below it showing the rear bracket. I gave them a clean with some acetone, then did the same to the surface on the sidepod and stuck a new nozzle on the little glue gun and applied the glue to the brackets and put the sidepod on. Once I was happy with the position of it I stuck a couple of weights on there and went off to do the brakes on the other side of the trailer. Yes, I know the wiring needs tidying up but until I know exactly where the sidepods and air ducts under them sit I can’t really get it clipped.

Once that had had a chance to go off I did the sidepod on the other side, here’s a pic of that held down with my improvised weights. In case you’re wondering the sidepods are a different colour because Brian didn’t laminate them himself, he’s subcontracted that out. Brian sprays the inside of his mould with white primer before laying up the GRP but the company who have done the sidepods have used a dark grey resin.

Once that had had time to set I applied some adhesive to the rear hinges – these aren’t so straightforward as I’ll need to create some blocks of wood that fit inside the rear cover and screw onto the hinge plates, the wood is bonded onto the GRP. Brian suggested applying a bead of the acrylic adhesive around each side of the hinge plate both above and below the GRP, the idea being that this should hold it in place so I can take the cover off again and sort out the wooden blocks. Brian had warned that the acrylic stuff’s pretty nasty but I hadn’t really noticed it before, however lying underneath the rear cover trying to make sure I squeezed some of the adhesive into the actual joint it was making my eyes water a bit! I got a nice bead into and along the joint on top and propped the plate in place with a block of wood while it went off. And that was pretty much the end of the weekend, early finish as work beckoned in the evening.

Oh yes, we love working with fibreglass, don’t we! Having received the drawings showing the exact trimming dimensions from Ian on Wednesday night I made some more progress with the bodywork on Thursday evening. I cut out the dash area but left it about 10mm oversize to be safe. I couldn’t really try it properly till the sidepod was in place so I then got on with the nearside sidepod. It didn’t take terribly long to mark it up and trim it using the die grinder and cutting wheel and it was of course no surprise that when trimmed it fit into place perfectly For now it’s propped on some blocks of wood to give it the correct height, Ian hasn’t finalised the sidepod floors yet I think because he’s still thinking about IVA issues. Having got one sidepod trimmed and the edges filed down it was time to go in.

On Friday morning I braved the cold and carried on. I got the offside sidepod trimmed and fitted in place. It was then time to get on with trimming the front cover so it fitted properly. This was a bit fiddly but pretty easy to do and once it actually fitted in place I could stand back and get an idea what the car was going to look like.

I could get the lower edge of the dash sanded so it fitted nicely above the chassis rail. Here’s a shot of the dash – I’ll need to cut out a section to get at the switches, I’m hoping to do this so they’re just out of reach of the IVA tester’s sphere of doom.

The brackets the sidepod will be bonded on to are screwed onto the chassis and the holes are slightly oversize allowing some adjustment. After a bit of fiddling about I was happy with the positions of both sidepods and the front cover. Here’s a shot of the shut line between sidepod and front cover.

Time next to get on with the rear cover. The first step was to trim all the returns back to what Ian has specified in the drawings, then it was time to see how it aligned with the sidepods. It was at this stage that I confirmed that the standard Kawasaki airbox won’t quite fit, so I had to whip it off so I could carry on with the bodywork. I’ll need to either lop a centimetre or so off the top of it or turn it round. I also needed to notch the front lower edge to clear the swirl pot bracket but apart from that it just dropped into place. Next was the slightly trickier job of cutting the slots for the rear hinge plates. Again exact dimensions are provided so I just took my time and did plenty of measuring and marking before doing any cutting. Once they were cut I also cut out the aperture in the air inlet and popped the bodywork onto the car.

She’s now really looking like a race car! That was close of play on Friday, the next job will be actually bonding the panels onto their brackets. Following another chat on the phone with Brian I think I have a fairly clear idea of a reasonable sequence to do it in.

The bodywork on the BDN is bonded onto the mounting brackets using a combination of both the usual polyurethane adhesive (e.g. Sikaflex) and an acrylic adhesive. I called in on Monday lunchtime to my local motor factors and got a tube of the PU sealant and a new gun since I broke my last one. The acrylic sealant is from RS Components and isn’t cheap at £12 a go (with 2 tubes required) and I had to order the gun to dispense it along with some of the mixing nozzles as well, so all in all quite expensive. It seems to work well though so I had no plans to risk alternatives.

I only got out to the garage at 8pm having worked late, so didn’t get much done. Brian had explained how he fills his coolant system so I drained what was in mine and swapped the plastic modular Y piece from Car Builder Solutions for my fabricated aluminium one then set about refilling the system. This involved filling via the top hose, filling the system backwards as it were. It turned out to be a bit of a PITA as the coolant only seeped in very slowly, at first this worried me but I guessed the water pump impeller was slowing it down. With a bit of lung power assistance I finally started to see coolant in the swirl pot having filled both radiators and once it was near the top I reconnected the top hose onto the swirl pot and filled it up. This worked a treat and although Brian had warned me I’d need to be pretty smart topping it up when I ran the engine in fact it didn’t need much more in there. With the engine running there was a good flow into the swirl pot from the top hose and pretty soon everything was warming up nicely.

I initially had my fan switch set as low as it would go so the fan kicked on at about 56°. I let the engine warm up and kept adjusting till it came on at just over 90°. I then left the engine running to see if the fan lowered the temp, which it did rather gratifyingly, switching off again at 88°. So, another little problem sorted. I’ll probably adjust it a bit higher later as I don’t really want the fan running all the time.

I then made a start on the bodywork. The holes to mount the sidepod brackets are mostly pre-drilled in the gussets on the chassis but on each side there’s a hole in the side panel where it overlaps a chassis tube and they needed drilling and rivnuts inserting. With that done I temporarily mounted the brackets onto the chassis and had a look at how the sidepod fits on. It’s a nice fit but will need a bit of trimming to go into position and I don’t yet have all the dimensions for trimming the panels.

On Tuesday evening I investigated why the rev counter wasn’t working. This was fairly easy, it was mostly because I hadn’t connected it up – the DigiDash has several small sub-looms and the tacho wire isn’t in the same one as most of the engine related sensors. 15 minutes later and I’d soldered the connectors onto a small fly-lead and that was sorted. A 5k rpm idle didn’t seem right but setting the dash to 4 pulses per cycle sorted that

I can’t really get on with the bodywork properly until I get some more dimensions from Ian telling me how much to cut away and where to fit the hinge plates etc. but I made a start on trimming the front bodywork. I trimmed the return back all the way across the front, around the wheel arches and back to the dash part of the panel. I left the front corners to give as big a contact area as I could for bonding the hinge plates on, I also can’t trim back the dash area yet. Some time ago Brian recommended some tools for trimming the GRP and this was the first time they saw action. The first is a Perma-Grit cutting disk used in a 90° die grinder and it worked a treat. Previously I’ve used either a disk in the angle grinder which is a tad on the aggressive side and really makes a mess of the garage or a small disk in the Dremel type tool which is a bit the other way, too delicate and fragile and goes through disks like there’s no tomorrow. The Perma-Grit disk is great- minimal dust and has the advantage that the abrasive overlaps round the edge onto the face of the disk. The other tools I got from them were a coarse flat file and a coarse half round file and again these were both ideal for smoothing off the edges – they don’t clog up at all unlike a normal file.

I did manage an hour out in the garage before work on Wednesday. I tidied up a bit of wiring in the engine bay and drilled a hole in the undertray for the fuel tank breather to drop down through. I then removed the hinge plates off the rear mounting frame to try the rear bodywork in position for the first time. I was particularly interested in 2 areas. Firstly the clearance around the air filter box – if I can keep the standard ZX10 box it will make life much easier. Having tried the bodywork in place I’m not sure – until I know exactly what level the bodywork sits at it’s difficult to tell but I think it might be a problem. The other area is the space the exhaust sits in. I was pleased to see that there’s loads of room round the cat and it looks like plenty of space behind it for the rest of the system to sit in.

Having left the car in Cardiff for the exhaust fabrication I was at a bit of a loose end with nothing I could get on with. I spoke to Charlie on Friday 14th and he was confident of having the car ready to collect the next Friday. I’d initially been hoping to collect bodywork the weekend of the 15/16th but Brian hadn’t managed to get the aluminium frames welded up and the bodywork itself wasn’t done in any case. I had a chat with him on the Sunday evening and he was pretty hopeful that I’d be able to get it the next weekend.

In the meantime I collected some of the DID chains from On Two Wheels (M&P’s trade division), one for me and Brian wants 3 (one for their car and 2 for Rob’s car that’s currently being built), the other 2 are for Colin and Neil Constable-Berry.

Sadly the exhaust wasn’t ready for Friday so the plan was to head over on Saturday morning to collect it. I got up Saturday to find a text from Charlie at Pro-Speed had sent at 11pm – he’d had a problem with the pipes warping and it wouldn’t be ready. He was very apologetic and said he’d work into Saturday night to make sure it was done for Sunday morning. In fairness he’s a busy boy and I dropped the job on him at pretty short notice.

Brian had emailed me on Friday saying the bodywork and mounts were ready, so I called Phil and we headed off up to Hereford in his Transit. As expected the parts all look immaculate, the mounting frames for the bodywork are incredibly light and beautifully fabricated. The bodywork (front and rear covers and two sidepods) need trimming but the finish is very good. Brian pointed out one small blemish but he was of course being picky, he’d develop acute chest pain if he saw Fury bodywork as it came out of the mould!

What’s really striking about the bodywork is how light it is. My Fury bodywork started out quite light but this is much lighter. And yet it’s much more rigid. Apart from the fact that the GRP has been laid up very carefully I think this is largely down to the actual shape and contours of the panels inherently making it stiff.

Brian spent some time showing me how the mounts and hinges go together – the design is updated from their car so the hinges are completely concealed. There are also laser cut aluminium undertrays for front and rear, along with an aluminium panel which makes up the adjustable gurney flap at the rear. These panels all need folds but Phil thinks he knows someone in our village who has a folding machine. If not I’m confident Clive could do them for me as he fabricates lots of sheet aluminium and stainless steel stuff. It all looks a bit daunting but Ian was going to send me the drawings and instructions on Sunday.

A text arrived at 8pm from Charlie with a photo of the completed manifold it certainly looked pretty shiny and I was looking forward to seeing it in the metal – we’d arranged collection at midday on Sunday.

After an overnight shift in work I didn’t feel like sleeping so I got some space cleared in the garage then headed over to Pro-Speed Exhausts in Cardiff. Charlie clearly takes pride in his work and was keen to show me the fruits of his labours. It’s certainly shinier than I expected and looks absolutely stunning. He’s taken the system back as far as the cat, we daren’t take it any further back until I’ve got the bodywork on and we know exactly how much room we’ve got. The manifold pairs together cylinders 1 & 2 and cylinders 3 & 4 – neither Brian nor I can understand this as with a firing order of 1-2-4-3 we thought it should be 1 & 4 and 2 & 3 but I’ve stuck with what Tony has copied from his learned friend, and indeed what Mr. Kawasaki and Mr. Akrapovic have done on their ZX10 systems. They’ve spent rather a lot of R&D money getting where they are. This pic is taken looking backwards through the cockpit – the bulkhead panel is off.

Here’s a view of the secondaries as they sweep round the cylinder head, Charlie’s got them pretty much equidistant between the chassis rail and the engine.

Here’s a view of the dreaded cat. Charlie’s mounted it with flanges so it’s easy enough to pull it out and keep an eye on it. It also has a lambda boss welded into the upstream end of it. The tricky bit is done now so far as the exhaust is concerned, once the bodywork is fitted I’ll take the car back and Charlie’s confident he can complete the rest of the system in one day.

And here are closer views of the manifold along with a shot of the 4 into 2 collector. It’s all made from sections of pre-formed stainless bends with some straight pieces where needed. I asked Charlie where/how he produced the flanges – they were all made in house with a plasma cutter. The welding’s beautiful and it’s a pity the manifold won’t be visible really, it’s a work of art. I guess this manifold won’t get as manky as the one of the Fury since that gets exposed to all the bits of gravel etc. off the nearside front wheel. I plan to work out some form of heat shielding – Charlie’s kept it as far away from the fuel tank cover as he could but there isn’t much space and it’s likely to get quite warm around there.

Of course now it’s got a manifold I can run the engine more It sounds great now although still of course a bit on the noisy side and quite ‘poppy’. It looks like I’ve got an airlock in the cooling system somewhere as the indicated coolant temp rose quite quickly without the rads warming up. I know Brian said he had a system for sorting this so I’ll give him a bell later.

My next job was sorting the reverse mechanism – since we shifted the engine to the left a couple of mm the reverse isn’t disengaging from the gear very well so I removed the reverse motor and the plate it’s mounted on and took the gear off the sprocket. It then went in the lathe and I took a couple of mm off the face of it. It then had to be refitted and re-lockwired of course. Once that was done I fitted the front bodywork frame, followed by the rear. The hinge mechanisms are of course nicely made with turned bushes so the pivot bolts can’t bind.

Here’s the rear mounting frame with the hinge mechanism about to be fitted. You can just make out that there are end stops on the mounting plates to stop it going beyond 90° and multiple holes to adjust the angle of the gurney flap.

With the plumbing completed I wanted to get the fuel gauge calibrated. The instructions with the ATL sender seemed fairly simple involving powering up the sender with the calibration wired grounded, disconnecting the calibration wire, filling the tank then connecting it again for 3 seconds. Sadly it didn’t go to plan and although it seemed to work the dash was showing 100% when the tank was empty and 14% when it was full. I decided to remove the sender so I could dip it in and out of a glass of petrol to calibrate it which was a little easier than getting 32 litres of unleaded in and out of the tank.

With the sender out it was indeed much simpler. I also realised that although the DigiDash does support this kind of sender (240Ω empty, 33Ω full) it wasn’t set up for this one. So I had to connect up the laptop to get into the DigiDash setup and select the correct sender. Once this was done it worked great, showing zero to 100% as it should.

Once this was sorted I refitted the sender and emptied the tank. I could then refill it half a litre at a time and record the gauge output on the dash. This then gives me a nice graph so I can fuel the car accurately.

I didn’t get any more done mainly due to work being very busy. On Wednesday though I did get to speak to Charlie at Pro-Speed Exhausts in Cardiff. I’d heard him and his company mentioned quite regularly in the Pistonheads South Wales section and knew he had a good reputation for custom fabricated exhausts. He did indeed sound very helpful on the phone and we discussed my needs – a custom fabricated manifold, a cat that’s free flowing but will get me through IVA, a lambda bung and effective silencing that isn’t going to strangle power. All in stainless of course. The quote was in fact less than I’d budgeted for at less than £400 for the manifold and less than £300 for the silencer(s). The cat is of course the fly in the ointment adding over £200 but silly MSA regs aside I need an effective cat for IVA. The plan is to take the car over to him on Friday for him to measure up etc., I’ll also take my spare engine which I can leave there if it makes life easier for him, certainly it would make the business side of the engine more accessible than it is in the chassis.

On these highly tuned engines manifold design is critical. The consensus is that a 4 into 1 system gives better peak power at the expense of the torque curve lower down while a 4 into 2 into 1 gives better mid-range and is therefore probably better. Even in a race car far more time is spent accelerating through the range than at maximum RPM. The lengths of the primary and secondary pipes are also important. This sounds great but of course I’m clueless as to what these lengths should actually be! I know a man who isn’t though so I emailed Tony Gaunt who’s run a 2006 ZX10R engine successfully in his car for the last couple of years. He’s had advice from a British Superbikes racer who had experimented with different manifolds on a dyno and helpfully supplied me with the numbers required.

I also spoke to Brian. The good news was that Bob of Concept Racing sounds like he’s improved more than expected and the outlook isn’t as gloomy as it was. In addition Brian’s made some progress in finding someone else to weld up my ally bodywork mounting frames and hopes to get the rest of my bodywork laid up next week so long as the weather stays mild.

So, on Friday morning I strapped the BDN onto the trailer with the car cover on top strapped down as best I could as the weather was foul and headed off to Cardiff. I left the car with Charlie after we’d had a chat about what was required, where it would run and how far he could progress before we have the bodywork. He’s going to get the manifold done and will fit the cat behind that, this will take the system pretty much to the back of the engine bay. Depending on space he may well also add on the first of two silencers. He reckons he’ll need the car for about a week and a half as he has quite a bit of other work on. By this time I’m hoping I’ll be close to having the bodywork and its mounting frames. Not a lot I can do till then.