The weather forecast was good and after the 230 mile trek to Brands on Thursday evening I found Andy Bates and got the gear cable. After a pleasant couple of beers with Paul Rogers, Tony Gaunt, Gary Goodyear and their wives on Thursday evening it was back to the first night in the motorhome this season.

I got up early and got the gear cable swapped over to find it no better. The first session was hopeless, I was really having to fight to go up the box using the left hand to pull and the right pushing the other side of the paddle. By the end of the session my fingers and wrists were aching like mad. And then I pulled into pit lane to find smoke billowing out of the engine cover air intake! Ian Baldwin was handily placed with a fire extinguisher but when we got the cover up there was no fire but plenty of oil that seemed to be coming from somewhere up the top end of the engine and clearly had gone onto the manifold.

Before the next session I rerouted the cable to get a much smoother run but it seemed little better. I thought the oil leak was from the cam cover and found one of the rubber washers under a cam cover bolt missing. I tried a couple of copper washers and some ATV. The second session wasn’t really much better, the gear change was a little better but still too bad to allow me to concentrate on actually driving the car. At the end there was more oil in the engine bay

I was tucked in the corner of the paddock, Kawasaki Korner in fact as I was parked next to Gary Goodyear who has a ZX10 engined Contour and on the other side of him was Tony Gaunt with his ZX10 engined Wolfe. Tony was very helpful during the build and is a font of knowledge where the Kawasaki engine is concerned. He was very helpful on Friday too and after the two of us had fiddled about with the gear cable for ages we concluded the main problem was that the actuating arm on the gearbox shaft is probably just a bit too short. Although you can compensate for this by attaching the cable nearer to the pivot on the paddle it does mean there’s far more force going through the cable. With a 3.2 metre cable this means it binds up where it goes rounfd corners. We ended up moving the cable mounting at the paddle end as close to the pivot as we could to give maximum leverage and decided that was the best we could do. I still couldn’t work out exactly where the oil leak was from but suspected top end – the trouble is it tends to get blown all over by the air flow in the engine bay. So I cleaned it all up and frantically tried to get the car back together to get out for the session after lunch.

I got out with less than 10 minutes to spare and thankfully the gear shift was still far from what I’d like it to be but was quite a bit better and was certainly drivable. so I managed to bimble round for a few laps then came in again and checked on the oil leak. This time there was just a little tiny weep around the suspect cam cover bolt. Tony found a fibre washer to add to the copper washers and I was then pretty confident that the problem should be sorted.

I decided not to go out for the final session and let Austen have it. Amazingly enough despite his extra 40 horsepower he managed to avoid the Paddock Hill gravel. The car got a clean and it was time to chill for the evening. It was a pretty stressful day and I really hadn’t had a chance to even think about trying to go faster. To be honest my main goal for the weekend was to get some more seat time and try to take the car home intact, after my disastrous spin at Llandow I was consciously being pretty tentative and deliberately avoiding exploring the limits of the BDN’s adhesion.

On the positive side there had been no issues with fuel pressure during the day, I downloaded the DigiDash log to find the pressure had stayed rock solid throughout, so that was one teething problem out of the way. And of course the engine had been singing away all day with no issues so my fears on that front appear to have been unfounded. It had been a warm day but the cooling system was doing its job well with water temperature only getting to the mid-70°s and oil temp up to about 95°

Saturday morning arrived a little overcast but pleasantly warm and with no rain forecast. I went off to scrutineering not really expecting any problems but was somewhat surprised by the scrutineer (who’s usually fine) deciding to pick on my harness eye bolts. It was pretty much the first thing he checked – he poked a pen up into the boss from underneath and he reckoned I had the wrong eye bolts fitted as they weren’t long enough. I have to admit I didn’t feel terribly stressed because I knew he was wrong! I assured him they were the ones that came with the harnesses from Demon Tweeks but it wasn’t good enough. So I borrowed a screwdriver from one of the interested bystanders, unclipped the harness and unscrewed the eyebolt. It’s a UNF thread and therefore quite fine, so it actually took quite a lot of revolutions unscrewing it by which time I could see that the scrute realised he was wrong. I got it out and showed him the full inch of thread and he commented that it was “right on the limit”. After checking my wheel bearings and the master cylinder locknuts he bailed out and went to get my ticket. Back in the paddock Brian was flabbergasted of course! We speculated that if the boss had been 2 feet long we’d have needed a 2 foot long eye bolt to satisfy him

Qualy was OK but no more. I was right at the back so within a lap or so the quicker boys were lapping me which compromised my laps. I was just happy to get a bit more seat time in. The session was uneventful – the gearchange was definitely better, the oil leak was cured so I was a pretty happy boy. I was somewhat crestfallen that despite feeling I was going OK I was over a second slower than on Friday! Tony then spotted that I had a load of play in my throttle cable – the locknut on the adjuster had vibrated loose meaning I was only getting about 80% throttle. Ho hum …

The weather was still fine for the first race early afternoon and I was 19th on the grid. My first dry start in the BDN. It was a bit off-putting that I was on the downhill part of the grid so as soon as I took my foot off the brake the car started creeping forwards. I got a good launch initially then let the clutch up completely just a little too early and bogged the motor slightly. It was still a pretty good start but then I b*****ed it up by missing second gear! I had Dan Bromilow behind me in his Fury but he was clearly quicker than me and soon got past me. It was then a bit of a lonely race. The car was fine and seemed to be handling nicely although I still wasn’t really pushing terribly hard. My fastest lap was about the same as my previous fastest in the Fury and just over a second faster than the morning qualy – having full throttle available did seem to make a difference!

The car was fine and needed nothing other than fuel and a quick look over. Our second race was the final race of the day, the weather was still holding and it was a nice warm afternoon. I was 19th on the grid for the second race too and this time got a better start and got past Paul Rickers and almost alongside Dan but was pretty tentative into Paddock Hill and Druids and Paul got through followed by Tim Gray who was racing the AB Sabre from the back of the grid. As the race settled down I was tucked up behind Ben in the ex-Cutmore Westfield. This turned into a fun race – Ben’s driving has come on no end and he’s pretty comfortable in the Westy now, the big difference was that he was comfortable sliding it around whereas I was being cautious in the BDN so he was opening a gap every time we came out of Druids and was considerably quicker than me round Clearways. I had more power and better aero so could gain on the straight and with an overdose of brave pills could have overtaken him into Paddock Hill on a few occasions. I was getting very confident in the BDN’s braking which gave me plenty of opportunities into Druids, as I got more confident the BDN was better round the fast left hander at Surtees. Eventually I got past Ben on the brakes into Druids and then got away from him with a couple of quicker laps before easing off a bit. I did lap a few of the back markers as there are a few new guys racing this season but it wasn’t long before the leaders caught and lapped me so the rest of the race was spent watching mirrors.

Here’s a video of race 2. Apologies for the lack of sound – the video worked flawlessly all weekend but for some reason it’s completely dropped the audio.

As I came slowly down pit lane after the race there was a horrendous noise coming from the engine bay, I initially thought it was the top end but decided it sounded more like an exhaust blowing noise. So I headed back to the paddock and parked up. Listening to it again I wasn’t sure but Tony Gaunt came to the rescue again, he gave the engine a good blip and declared that it was exhaust. So I either have a loose or cracked manifold which isn’t the end of the world.

So, after a rather frustrating and stressful Friday testing Saturday went well. OK, so I was Captain Slow but my goal had been to do the qualy and 2 races without any incidents and to learn a bit more about the car and I’d accomplished that. Last year when I started to improve in the Fury I was generally gaining a couple of seconds a lap from previous visits to circuits, in fact at Oulton Park last October I’d improved my PD by a massive 5 seconds. I’m confident that I just need to drive the BDN more and start to gradually stretch its legs. I also don’t think I’m getting anywhere near full power form the ZX10 yet, apart from lack of a decent airbox and the fact that it hasn’t been mapped it’s probably running on an ignition retarded map – when I swapped the engine over the wiring coming from the gear position sensor has been bodged presumably where someone fitted a TRE and there are a couple of wires dangling in the breeze. So I now need to sort these and fabricate an airbox then get it mapped. Gearing’s also an issue, I could almost do the whole of Brands Indy without using above 4th gear, it was only when I was getting a bit quicker that I was needing 5th at the end of the straight. I’ll leave the gearing as is for now because the next race is at Snetterton which has a longer straight and hopefully I’ll need the taller gearing.

Although the fuel pressure regulator arrived on Friday the hose and fittings didn’t, nor the new gear cable, so I couldn’t actually get all that much done on the car. I replaced the oil cooler and fitted the fuel pressure regulator on the fuel tank cover near the ECU.

I’d been feeling anxious all week, it was almost certainly paranoia but I was worried about the engine. I missed a couple of gears last Sunday and going into assembly area for the race I thought the engine sounded a bit tappy. Granted the cylinder head is about 3” from my head so that makes it sound worse. It seemed to get better as it warmed up and it didn’t miss a beat during the race. But I was still worried.

So on Saturday I started stripping the original engine and got the cylinder head removed so I could swap it over if I decided my fears weren’t groundless. In the evening I had a chat with Andy who helpfully suggested I check the compression and the valve clearances. If I had buzzed the engine the main risk was a bent valve which would stick. So I nipped out on Sunday morning as soon as Machine Mart opened and got myself a compression tester. I then removed the fuse supplying the fuel pump relay and removed the spark plugs. I didn’t bother with the threaded adaptors and just used the tester with the rubber bung. This was reassuring – the pressures were 230, 220, 210 and 215 psi so not only closely matched but all in the upper range according to the Kawasaki manual (159-242 psi). So that reassured me a lot.

I then popped the cam cover off and checked all the valve clearances. These were all down at the lower end of the range specified in the manual. So that was that, I felt much better. Of course it could still go pop at Brands but there seems no particular reason for that to happen – the engine hadn’t run hot and the oil pressure had been rock solidt

I was undecided whether to try to book testing at Brands on Friday or whether I should get the engine mapped. In the end I decided I’m happy enough with the way she’s running and can log the AFR anyway – I’ve now worked out how to calibrate the software to show the correct readings. Also I plan to make a custom airbox so it would need remapping then anyway. So Brands it is. When I tried to book it there were no afternoon sessions left and I could only book the morning or all day so I went for all day.

The hose and fittings arrived from Think on Monday so I got the hoses made up in the evening then I could run the engine again. She was of course running very nicely and sounding like a sewing machine. I’ve no idea what I thought I’d been hearing previously but of course it had all become amplified in my head. Time to increase the medication i think. Anyway, I got the fuel pressure set up correctly then refitted the airbox. I still couldn’t refit the sidepod as I was still waiting for the gear cable – Andy B reckoned it was being sent out on Tuesday direct to me from the supplier.

I’d already cut some vinyl out on Monday morning so on Tuesday morning I started applying it. Martin had given me some advice on applying it and it wasn’t too difficult. The trickiest bit was the recess for the front cover latch but the heat gun made short work of it. That got finished off and the latches refitted in the evening. Time then to redo the ride height and corner weights. Brian had warned the suspension would ‘settle’ and sure enough I’d had to tweak the ride height upwards after Llandow especially the nearside rear corner, not surprising since on a clockwise circuit the left side will take the most strain. I’d noticed the ramp was a tight squeeze on that side leaving Mallory and sure enough that corner was low again. Once that was raised of course the corner weights were all over the place so I had to lower the opposite corner. Once I had the diagonals perfect again the distribution was 43:57 front:rear and 47:53 left:right.

Sadly the cable didn’t arrive on Wednesday. I spoke to Andy Bates who contacted the supplier and rang me back with the news they were waiting for something to come from Germany. Poor old Andy was pretty irritated as they’d confidently told him a few days ago it was being sent out on Tuesday. He’s kindly offered me the spare he keeps for the Sabre which I probably will take him up on although it’s a bit of a PITA swapping the cable over – removing the sidepod etc. Still, the first session on Friday isn’t till 10.30 so plenty of time to do it then. Wednesday evening I refitted the old cable and put the car back together again then loaded her on the trailer in the garage, filled the motorhome with diesel and got the tools etc. ready so I could leave as soon as I got home from work the next day.

Although the overall feeling after Mallory was very positive there were a few things to sort out. I’d had a bit of a traumatic journey home – having been flashed a few times by truckers I pulled over to find one of my trailer tyres looking slightly second hand! It was on the nearside rear axle so I took it off and put the wheel from the front axle on the rear and tippy toed home ever so slowly! Having got up at 4 and left the house at 5 I got home just before 11pm completely knackered.

On Monday evening I had a chat with Brian who’d had a thought about my low fuel pressure. He and Ian reckoned it wasn’t due to fuel surge within the tank, partly because they’d run their car down to 3 litres without a problem and I probably had about 15 litres left at the end of Sunday’s race, but they’d also factored in that at no stage did I experience any actual symptoms of fuel surge, the engine ran fine. If your fuel pump suddenly isn’t immersed in fuel you end up with air going through to the fuel rail and engine hesitation as a result. So they wondered if perhaps there was a dodgy earth somewhere – the fact that the lambda was showing the engine run lean indicated it must have been a genuine drop in pressure rather than just the gauge. I’d also been thinking about it and come up with a different possible cause – the fuel pressure regulator.

I ordered a better quality gear cable from Andy Bates on Monday then in the evening made a start getting the oil cooler out of its duct. I also downloaded my log from the race – eventually as for some reason Windows 7 on my 64 bit laptop really doesn’t like it and I keep getting the Blue Screen Of Death Once I’d produced a few graphs I shared them with Brian and my brother Andy to get a few ideas. I also made a start on tidying the garage which looked as though a bomb had hit it after the frantic engine swapping activity at the weekend.

This first graph below shows a plot of fuel level (i.e. from the fuel gauge, green), fuel pressure (brown) and lateral G (purple) over a single lap. The fuel level sender is over on the passenger side of the tank so the level rises as expected around the right handed Gerrards and there’s a reasonable correlation between lateral G and fuel level throughout the lap. The fuel pressure drops however seem independent of this suggesting that Brian was right about it not being related to fuel surge within the tank.

The next one shows the same 3 parameters over a series of laps with engine RPM added in (red). You can see that the fuel pressure correlates quite nicely with the engine RPM. So when demand rises the fuel pressure’s dropping. This could still be due to either an inherent problem with the fuel pump itself failing to keep up, or due to a wiring issue. It could also be due to the fuel pressure regulator being unhappy at higher RPM, possibly due to vibration.

I already had one idea, the fuel pump and sender are earthed via the same spur off the loom and I had used a 2 into 1 bullet connector and a check of this confirmed that the fuel pump bullet is a rather sloppy fit into this. So that got snipped off and 6mm blade terminals crimped and soldered on instead. I’d also been a bit unhappy with the fuel pressure regulator from the off, it was a cheap generic item and I’d bolted it to a bracket on the engine mount plate. I decided to replace this and ordered an FSE motorsport regulator that I could perhaps have a bit more confidence in and bolt it somewhere a bit further away from the engine vibration. I may well take the fuel pump assembly out to have a look but I really think it’s unlikely to be an issue with that.

The other thing I was interested in from the logs was how the oil pressure was holding up. Of course I’m using a wet sump and baffle plate on the ZX10 and if there were going to be a problem I expected Gerrards to show it up. Here’s the plot of engine RPM, oil pressure and lateral G which shows the oil pressure holding rock solid at 70psi round Gerrards. The only dip is when the engine revs drop coming into the hairpin which isn’t a problem.

The other thing I was interested in was how the oil and water temperatures fared. Here’s the graph showing the fluid temps, since it was wet during the race the temps are lower and a bit meaningless. In qualy the water temp plateaued out at around 70° with oil temperature at 95°. Clearly a longer race with me pushing the car harder in warmer weather will increase temperatures a bit but I’m expecting that with the cooling system keeping the water temperature so well controlled I shouldn’t have problems with the oil temperature. In the Fury I used to see the water temp around 100° with the oil temp going to 110° and occasionally a bit higher. The BDN has twin radiators with fully ducted air flow through them and the oil cooler’s about double the size of the one on the Fury at 34 rows.

Having shopped around a bit I spoke to my local ATS who sorted me with 4 new tyres for the trailer for the princely sum of £80 I’m also investigating getting a new trailer as the BDN’s a very tight squeeze on the Minno. Finances are starting to recover a bit following January’s horrific tax bill and the Ferrari got sold this week so it could well be an option.

I spoke to BGC Motorsport about the oil cooler and Brian there was a bit sanguine about my chances of getting a replacement under warranty since he quite reasonably reckons the vast majority of oil cooler failures are due to either a poor installation giving insufficient support, ham-fisted tightening of the fittings or vibration. I then spoke to Think Automotive who make Mocal coolers and arranged to pay for a replacement pending their inspection of the failed cooler. This arrived the next day and I spent the evening getting the old cooler off, all the oil cleaned off the car and the new cooler fitted.

I also dismantled the fuel lines. Most of the fittings in the engine bay are push on but I’ve ordered a pressure regulator with -6 JIC fittings and a -6 JIC tee piece so the only push on connections in the system will be the one onto the fuel rail and the return hose from the fuel pressure regulator onto the tank.

With all that done I got the car outside and washed all the grime off then got the rubber marks and oil off and here she is basking in the early evening sunshine on the drive

Well Llandow was a disaster. First 2 sessions were fine so I made a couple of adjustments to brake bias and dampers. On the 3rd session I started pushing a bit harder and discovered I had too much rear brake bias when the car swapped ends when braking hard for the chicane at the end of the back straight. I spun across the grass and came back onto the tarmac backwards. I know to keep the clutch in as bad things happen running bike engines backwards, and indeed always managed to do that in the Fury, but I must have got it wrong in the heat of the moment and the car wouldn’t start. Inspection in the paddock revealed a wrecked starter motor so I took the car home.

I was pretty confident I could just swap the starter over from my spare engine but when we came to compare (my mate Phil was helping me out) we realised the idler gear wasn’t turning smoothly so swapped the sprag clutch that’s on the end of the crankshaft. Put it all together, started up fine but with a mechanical sort of whirring noise. After 3 hours of swapping idler shafts and gears I was suspicious the problem was with the crank. Turning it with a torx socket on the end confirmed my fears, the end of the crank was ever so slightly bent resulting in the timing rotor and starter clutch rotating with a slight eccentricity.

It was decision making time. Either crack on and swap the engine or abandon the weekend. The engine was going to need changing anyway so I decided to get on with it. To cut a long story short I had the replacement engine running by 6pm on Saturday evening. By the time I’d got the car back together and on the trailer it was 8.30 so I decided to have an early evening and head up to Mallory early on Sunday.

I got up at 4, got all the tools packed and was on the road just after 5am. I got to the Mallory paddock at 8.10 and unloaded. Great to see everyone again and the car was attracting much interest. My brother Andy pitched up followed later by Brian. Ian also popped over, he was on the Recovery truck for the weekend – he hadn’t seen the car before of course. The car was attracting lots of interest – of course it looks pretty but with the covers up the knowledgeable folks in the race paddock were interested in all the clever and neat mechanical stuff.

I signed on and collected some of the 750 Motor Club stickers for the car. Scrutineering was very uneventful and the weather was bright for qualifying. After Friday’s cock-up I was very conservative. I went out pretty much at the back of the grid and was in traffic letting people through for most of the session. The car felt fine, the only glitch was the fuel pressure warning alarm coming out of the Devil’s Elbow onto the start/finish straight. I eventually got a couple of slight quicker laps in right at the very end and I think just about got down to about the same time as my previous fastest lap in the Fury. I was 17th on the grid but knew I could go a lot faster. I was actually within 2 seconds of Tim Hoverd who was in his new J15 so I was fairly happy.

It was a bit odd having nothing to do for the afternoon but stick fuel in. No crawling under the car checking diff/prop bolts etc. Excellent! I put quite a bit more fuel in the tank hoping to cure the fuel pressure problem – a look at my logs confirmed that it coincided with the fuel level from the tank sender. This was odd since Brian was confident they’d had no fuel surge problems with their car – it has a foam filled tank but the integral fuel pump has its own little sump and the return hose from the fuel pressure regulator flows directly into this. Rather worryingly although the car had felt fine the log showed that the AFR from the lambda was spiking at the same time.

I had a chat with Derek about the gear shift and we compared his (although it’s a shorter one) and Tim’s (which is longer and routed a little more awkwardly than mine) and confirmed that my cable’s crap. There’s lots of springiness in it so it it feels very vague and not crisp at all.

The weather took a turn for the worse though and a very heavy shower struck during the Formula Vee race preceding ours. They of course got red flagged (experience tells me they usually do!) so we were delayed a bit. It had stopped raining by the time we went to the assembly area but the track was very wet. We had a green flag lap and then all got away pretty cleanly. I was tucked up behind the traffic but saw Austen (who’d started from the back row after a gremlin ridden qualy session) come charging up the outside as we approached Gerrards. He sat on my outside all the way round there but couldn’t make anything of it and settled in behind me into the Esses. It really was very wet with loads of spray everywhere, a lot of the track has been resurfaced and you’re never quite sure how much grip you’re going to have on it when it gets wet.

Early on in the race I was getting the fuel pressure alarm exiting the Devil’s Elbow which was quite distracting. As the race settled down I was chasing the cars in front and slowly gaining, my mirrors were full of Austen’s white Fury. His R1 engine is probably at least as powerful as my ZX10 and he was much more confident than me. I did briefly think I was holding him up and should let him through. But not for long I got past David Wale who seemed to be going very slowly, then eventually caught Jim Fowley in his Fury (although I’m not sure if he had a problem – he’d had clutch woes in the morning). I caught up with Ben Butler and got alongside him up the inside on the entry to Gerrards but had to back off and he went in front. I got another look up the inside approaching the Esses but that was pretty tentative. Next lap and I went alongside and past him approaching Gerrards and sort of made it stick except I was going in too hot and ended up running wide and horribly sideways! The BDN was tremendous though, I had loads of feel and it just allowed me to correct and get slowly back onto the gas. I ran around the bend on the outside of Ben but was easily able to out accelerate him on the run to the Esses. I had Austen breathing down my neck for the rest of the race and it got a bit trickier when we started getting blue flags for the leaders.

After a couple of laps the fuel pressure warning was getting worse and I was getting it coming out of Gerrards too. It wasn’t noticeable in terms of the way the engine was running so I carried on but it did make me cautious and was quite a distraction.I had no idea it was the last lap but exiting the Devil’s Elbow I missed a gear badly and Austen went through to take the place.

The thought of going out in a brand new car in the wet at Mallory (those in the know will be aware this is one of my least favourite circuits having buried the Fury in the tyre wall at Gerrards when the throttle stuck open in 2009 and spun it when the suspension collapsed last year) filled me with dread but the reality was that I actually felt comfortable in the BDN, the engine’s wonderfully progressive and the car just has so much feel. I’d really enjoyed the race, which is what it’s all about.

There was a slight setback when I got back to the paddock when it was pointed out that I had quite a bit of oil coming from the oil cooler. It didn’t seem to be coming from the unions but from the matrix itself somewhere. Some of this had been going onto the rear wheel so I was fortunate it hadn’t spat me off. With the wet sump setup the oil cooler circuit is at full oil pressure, so about 70psi while running, unlike the low pressure scavenge pump pressure on the dry sumped Fury, so problems are far more likely. I’d also messed up the camera – while sitting in assembly I’d accidentally switched it on while adjusting the front ARB, I’d then got confused about whether it was running or not and had clearly switched it off.

Another plus that took a while to appreciate as I hadn’t noticed it till someone asked me was that I got out of the car bone dry! In the Fury my feet and right leg/trunk would have been absolutely soaked. Also no neck problems – the aeroscreen works very nicely too.

I had a pleasant surprise at the presentation when I was awarded the Driver of the Day award! I think it was mostly the shock of me turning up in a car and finishing qualy and the race without wielding the spanners but there were also some nice comments about the racing between Austen and I. This capped what had been a really successful season opener, particularly after all the hard work over the weekend getting the engine swapped.

I know my own camera didn’t work but I was fortunate to have Austen along as cameraman – his whole video seems to have my car in it! Sadly his overtake at the end is missing cos the oil from my cooler messed up his camera lens.

So I need to sort out a few things:

• Investigate and sort out the fuel pressure issue
• Sort out the oil cooler
• Upgrade the gear cable

There are also a couple of minor things I hadn’t had time to sort out, like finishing off some aluminium ducting around the oil cooler, sorting out the shut line between rear cover and trim panel on the nearside and sealing up the light units a bit better. Oh yes, and maybe it needs top be a bit more green

On the plus side the response from everyone to the car has been incredibly gratifying, I’m especially pleased with Ian and Brian’s approval as I know they’re a pair of perfectionists! I’m very grateful for their fantastic support and the amount of effort they’ve put in to producing such a great race car. As a driving experience the car’s fantastic and will be even better once I haven’t got alarms going off and have a crisper gearchange. And maybe develop a bit of talent.