The BuildPreparation RacingAnglesey June '08 |
Click here to receive automatic notification when the site gets updated. Friday 5th September, 2008In fairness to Malc Curnin he did ring me back on Wednesday to say he had the bike and he'd have the engine ready as soon as he could. I rang him back and let him know I'd got aother one - he'd said it was originally earmarked fir soneone else who will have a car ready in a few weeks anyway. I got home from work Thursady evening and started packing the tools and stuff into the car. I had a bit more to take this time as I wanted to make sure I had everything I needed to swap the enigne if needed. I hadn't really unpacked everything form Silverstone so the tools were mostly in the portable toolbox and I was pleasantly surprised to find I was done within an hour. I then stuck the Fury onto the trailer and put my feet up for the night. I got a text from Jack saying his ferry was cancelled and he was catching a different one and expected to be at the circuit at 9am. So we needed to leave earlier - not a problem for me but David's not too keen on early starts! I decided to plan to leave at 6am. The drive up there was atrocious, it rained the entire way and the M6 at that time of day isn't pretty. I can make decent progress towing with the Cayenne but when it's busy you keep getting blocked by lorries overtaking. Lorry A is doing 59.8mph and lorry B is doing 59.9mph and decides to move out into the middle lane to overtake. I sit behind lorry B for 5 miles while he completes his overtaking manoevre - you can't use the third lane when you're towing so you just have to be patient. Jack texted me at 8.00 to say he was there! It was about 9.45 when we eventually got there. the engine looked very shiny and we just stuck it in someone else's pit garage while I got mine sorted out. Jack went on his way - he was off to Stoke then Ipswich where he was due to attempt to break the bike land speed record he already holds at 257mph on his turbo 'Busa. He told me he's actually done 279 on it but it wasn't officially ratified. Mental! Lots of the RGBers were there and Al Boulton arrived at about the same time as us and asked if he could share my garage. I got signed on for the testing and got the car off the trailer, into the garage and ready to go out. Having seen the weather forecast I'd stuck my shiny new set of wets on before loading the car up at home. The rain just didn't stop and when the first session went out it looked terrible out on the circuit - the start/finish straight looked like a river! Our slot came round so I followed Al out into pit lane and we queued at the end. It looked like they were noise testing cars from coming from the main paddock entrance as they went out. They obviously failed Adrian as he came back up pit lane. We couldn't see much more but were kept waiting for what must have been 10 minutes or so sitting in the rain before they let us out untested. Bit of a shambles really, at Cadwell we were told at signing on to go and get noise tested, it seems silly to delay getting out on the circuit like that. Once I got out it was truly horrible - I couldn't see a thing for spray, my gearbox was terrible and there was standing water all over the place. I never got anywhere near full throttle, coming out of the chicanes in 3rd gear the car was going sideways with anything more than a featherlight touch on the gas. Even on the straight in 5th it was stepping out at anything more than about half throttle. When I set off I had my visor open by a few millimetres to stop it fogging and I thik spray had got inside it. Water was streaming into the car via the top of the footwell and over the sidepod. My right boot was full of water and my whole right side was wet through. It was even more scary than that first session testing at Anglesey and I was actually glad when I saw the chequered flag! I got back into the garage and compared notes - it had of course been the same for everyone, they all had boots full of water and had been aquaplaning everywhere. Most were in agreement that the cut tyres were better at avoiding aquaplaning than the normal ones but that it was very slippery out there. My fastest lap was 2:46 which is really awful but I really wasn't making any effort to go fast, just trying to find my way round. Attempting any kind of deceleration in 4th gear was disastrous - it just clattered and banged, occasionally locked the rear wheels and was difficult to get back into any gear. The second session came around and it was still raining and the track was even wetter! I stuck my visor down straight away and my visibility was much better although still pretty awful when behind another car. It really is just like it looks in the on board F1 footage in the wet. I did go quicker and got to the stage where I was keeping up with some of the other drivers. I was following Tony Carpenter for a while and coming into Old Hall at the end of the start/finish straight I thought 'Ooh, he's missed that apex by a mile'. I took a nice neat line clipping the kerb to discover why Tony had avoided it - there was a lake there! The whole car just sidestepped which really got my attention. I eventually summoned up enough courage to do a couple of overtakes and came off feeling generally better about the whole thing. I'd only got 3 clear laps in as the session was red flagged partway through - cars had been spinning everywhere but I think an MR2 had had a particularly heavy coming together with the barrier at Druids. My fastest lap this time was 2:53! This mainly reflected the worsening conditions and I wasn't too disappointed, I at least felt I now knew my way around the circuit. When I came in Andy had arrived and we had a chat about the engine. He was willing to help out swapping it but it was my call. Firstly it was clear that the problem had got worse and not only would it really compromise my race the next day but there was always the concern that it could let go big time lunching the rest of the gearbox. It was still raingin heavily and I also reckoned that I wasn't going to gain anything at all by going out for the final session. So the decision was made. We first spent a bit of time doing a reality check making sure there were no show stoppers. The first thing we identified was the oil cooler outlet from the oil filter housing - on my old engine I'd tapped it and blanked it off with a bolt and copper washer. We asked around but there were no taps to be had. The next cunning plan was to cut the flexible hose off and block it off with a bolt and some jubilee clips. Tim had a 1/2" bolt and a couple of clips and once we were happy with that we made a start - car up on stands, bonnet off and start disconnecting everything. As I've mentioned before Andy's handier with a spanner than me and we made a pretty good team. It was only about 6pm before we were ready to try to lift the engine out. I lifted it as high as I could with the jack and with Andy and I on the nearside and Al lifting the gearbox from the other side it was surprisingly easy, easier in some ways than using the hoist. We now had quite a bit of work to do:
Teamwork was key - I did the fiddly stuff that either had to be done in a particular order or needed prior experience. One example is the oil pump and clutch slave cylinder - you have to partly dismantle the oil scavenge pump to get at one of its retaining bolts. Andy beavered away at the more generic stuff. My 2 main areas of concern were getting tight things off - the alternator rotors and output sprocket and flange. They turned out to be a doddle thanks to having the right tools, in particular the new Clarke battery powered impact driver. This thing was fantastic removing the alternator rotors and output shaft nuts in seconds. I'd borrowed the Suzuki tool from JT's, it apparently costs £171 + VAT but is basically a pressed steel spanner and an 18mm bolt that screws into the rotor and pushes it off the crank which is held with the spanner. Jack had said he uses the threaded spindle the oil filter screws onto on an R1 which is a good tip for the future! The engine really was immaculate and definitely looked like it had only done 300 miles. The exhaust ports were still clean and everything was nice and shiny and untouched with none of the bolts having been touched. The gaskets all came away cleanly which was a bonus - I'd bought a set of new ones along with a new oil filter but didn't need them. One snag we hit was blocking off the PAIR valve ports - this is the air injection system used for emissions with a steel pipe runnning to a little port just above each exhaust port. On my old engine these were threaded and I'd just stuck a 5mm screw in there. The new engine was differen and they weren't threaded so we had to improvise and chop off the tubes and flatten them with a hammer. It's a quick and dirty fix and I'll get some billet aluminium ones to do the job properly later. We took a break for a while to go out to a pub for a meal - the food in the restaurant at Oulton had been pretty dire at lunchtime and we hadn't felt like trying it again. It was pretty late by the time we were ready to drop the new engine back in. The main problem was the slippery floor in the garage - it's lovely smooth but not very level concrete and loads of rainwater had run in. We'd done really well at minimising oil spillage but with all the dry sump plumbing and about 8 litres of oil it was impossible not to spill a bit which mixed in to the water to produce a nice skating rink! Teamwork again as we set to connecting everything back up. By the time we were getting to the end it was nearing midnight and having had a steady stream of visitors throughout the evening we had a small but select audience. I forgot to do up the bottom hose where I'd drained the coolant so it all ran straight out when I filled the header tank! I fixed that then was reminded there's a small outlet on the back of the cylinder black that needed blocking. We transferred the short length of hose with a bolt jubilee clipped into it from the old engine and that was done. 8 litres of nice Silkolene 15/50 race oil into the sump tank and I was pretty sure we were ready to go. No point faffing about so I just stuck the ignition on, made sure the senors were reading the oil pressure and oil/water temps then hit the button. She just started. For some reason I'd had no doubt it was going to be fine but it was a great feeling listening to her idling away in the garage. There was still a load of tidying up of wires etc. to do but we were there and I had a manageable task list for the morning before I took her round for scrutineering. We cracked open a beer each and reflected on what had been a tremendous evening. We'd abandoned all thought of sticking tents up on the grass as it was still lashing down. Andy slept in his car and David stuck the tent up in the garage and we slept in that. I use the term 'slept' loosely - my airbed had fully deflated itself by 2am so I was just lying on concrete :-( Saturday 6th September, 2008Apart from the slight problem of sleeping on concrete and having forgotten a pillow the other problem in the night was the noise the rain made on the garage roof! It seemed to be tipping it down all night and I'd pretty much resigned myself to the racing being cancelled - I couldn't see any way they'd let us out in the conditions we were in yesterday. I woke early unsurprisingly. I tottered out and the sky was looking better. I wandered across the pit lane to see what was a normal wet track, i.e. without the lakes/rivers of yesterday. Adrian was up and about and he and I walked down as far as Cascades. There was a thin rim of water round the apex kerb at Old Hall and a very shallow little river running across just after the apex of Cascades but we thought it looked eminently driveable if the weather stayed dry. I got back to the garage to find David up and I set about first of all tidying the tools up then geetting all the bits of loom etc. cable tied. I had to abandon that to go to the 'first time racing at this circuit' drivers briefing and to sign on. Once I got back I adjusted the front nearside wheel bearing that we'd noticed was tight, replaced the wheel and stuck the bonnet back on. I then ran the engine up for a little while to warm her up to check for leaks. All looked clear and I was ready for scrutineering. Driving to scrutineering the gearbox was noticeably much crisper and smoother which was nice. Scrutineering was very routine with no comments at all from the scrute. Back to the garage then to wait for qualifying at 9.45. The morning had stayed pretty dry and there were even a few patches of blue sky around which was encouraging. I waited till a lot of the others had gone so I was near the back of the queue so I could at least start the session without the faster guys buzzing around me. It was great to get out in a car with a fully functioning gearbox! I trundled my way round slowly until I caught up with a couple of guys even slower than me with a bit of a queue waiting to get past them. Tony Carpenter was in front with Stephen Griffin behind him. I decided a bit of bravery was in order and overtook Stephen on the run from Cascades to Island, then got past Tony coming out of the Shell hairpin up towards Foulstons. The rest of the session was really pretty unremarkable, I was slow but was getting a feel for the circuit. If nothing else I was consistent! After the 2nd lap my times were 2:30.38, 2:29.78, 2:30.69 and 2:31.20. My 4th lap put me 21st out of 24 on the grid, just behind Adrian while my next best time, lap 3 put me 19th, 2 places ahead of Adrian! We then had quite a wait before the first race and it was quite nice to have nothing to do to the car other than refuelling and minor checks. The weather was steadily improving and by the time we went to the assembly area it was bright sunshine and I was glad of the tinted visor but I'd left the 'wet' tyres on - the general concensus was that they work fine in the dry and I was worried there would still be wet patches. Before I ever raced I worried that I'd be a bag of nerves while waiting to go but I think I'm much more relaxed than lots of the other guys! I do feel nervous but mainly feel a sense of excitement and anticipation and want to get out there. Eventually we got waved out onto the circuit and because of the layout at Oulton got to do more or less a complete lap on the way to the grid. Unlike Silverstone I could actually see the front of the grid from my slot and could see the 30 second board. then about 3 seconds later the 100 second board, then 5 then the red lights were on. I got another good start but was then pretty cautious in the pack, I suspect had I been more confident I could have worked my way up past a couple but my game plan has 'keeping out of trouble' right up at the top of the page and I eased off the gas! I was passed by a couple more round Old Hall and The Avenue but just let myself settle in. I was behind Stephen Griffin and had a couple of opportunities to pass but stayed patient. Coming into Cascades one lap there was smoke as someone flew off and we passed Steve Robinson and I think David Wale in the gravel. I was passed going into Lodge by a black Caterfield-alike who then ran very wide on the exit kerb and I was able to stay with him along the stright then he was away and David Wales passed me into Cascades. On the run to Island Adrian sneaked through followed by Steve Robinson on the drop down towards Knickerbrook. They were all held up a bit by Stephen so I caught them all up again by the time we got to Lodge again and I got alongside Adrian on the inside but wasn't aggressive enough to take the place. There was a gang of 5 of us all going into Old Hall together then I passed Stephen on the drag from Cascades to Island. I passed Neil Palmer in the Fulcrum on the entry to the Shell Hairpin then I was behind Mike Allen's Class A Tiger. I got a good exit from Lodge and Deer's Leap and had a run up the left hand side of him along the start/finish straight but bottled out when we got to Old Hall - I should have gone up the other side of him! I stayed with him and was gaining on him fast over Hill Top and down to Knickerbrook and decided to stay on the gas as late as I could and go down the inside. It worked fine and I was alongside him well before it was time to turn in. I'm sure he must have seen me but he decided to turn in to the apex anyway and clonked into me. This was my first ever car to car contact and wasn't quite the cataclysmic event I'd feared it might be, it didn't seem to unsettle the car at all and I turned in and made the chicane as normal. It didn't seem to bother him much either, he was still in my mirrors coming out of it. I didn't know how long we had to go but figured it wasn't long and was really determined to finish ahead of him. I made no mistakes and saw the chequered flag as I passed the finish line. It might sound pathetic having finished 17th but I felt really elated - not only had I really felt like I was in the race, I'd actually made a couple of overtakes. In parc ferme I inspected the damage - a long streak of rubber marks down my sidepod and a ding on the front of my silencer where his wheel had clonked it but nothing to worry about. My fastest lap was 2:01.44. Here's the vid from race 1: Throughout the afternoon the weather gradually deteriorated so I decided to go with the wets again - my other set are decidely past their best and although they'd be fine in the dry I'm sure they'd be a real handful if it did rain. although it started spitting while we were in assembly it did actually stay dry for the race. We were held for ages on the grid, a marshall came and told each of us they were putting cement on oil down The Avenue into Cascades - turned out Tony Carpenter's Blade engine had let go on the green flag lap! I got a bit of a false start and was then caught napping when the lights did go out but I've learned that I'm fairly good at getaways in the Fury and I was a bit more confident this time round and really enjoyed the scrum down the straight and into Old Hall. Coming down into Cascades there was a huge white cloud which turned out to be the cement dust. It was pretty hairy coming flying into it in 5th gear and suddenly being able to see nothing! I emerged from it to see the abck of Neil's Fulcrum a good way ahead of mewith Stuart Tanton and Adrian in my mirrors. Arian got the better of Stuart then Tony Gaunt got past Adrian coming out of Foulstons up the hill and went past me on the drop to Knickerbrook. As he went round the outside of me just before turning into the right hander Adrian followed him through and I stayed wide of the second apex to leave him room. They all got away from me and I gradually caught up with Neil again who was behind Mike Allen. By this time my rear view mirror was full of Tim Hoverd's red Fury and although I know he's a faster driver than me I managed to hold him back for a while in Anglesey and I was confident my car's better set up now. I did have a look up the inside of Neil on the way into Druids but backed out and got him on the inside line into Old Hall. Neil then did a nice job of keeping Tim at bay for a little time while I got close to Mike. I had a look up the insside again at Druids and again it didn't work but I outbraked him and went up the inside at Lodge. Now I just had Mr. Hoverd to contend with behind me. I regard Tim as a good mate and really didn't want to trip him up or block him but I had no intention of letting him get past easily! He had a look a couple of times early on on the brakes into Knickerbrook, Lodge and the Shell hairpin but I think decided it wasn't going to work. I'd sneaked a couple of glances at my dash and each lap it was showing that my last lap had been the fastest, so I was going quicker each time. We both knew where I was slow - Cascades and the fast left hand kink of Island Bend before the hairpin - I just couldn't make myself go into them fast enough. On lap 5 I was aware of a load of steam or smoke in my mirrors on the way into the hairpin and I saw it again as we came back up the other way - Mike had lost it onto the waterlogged grass just after Island - later he said it was because I had slowed down more than he anticipated. Given that by this time we'd gone round there quite a few times together in both races and I do have a novice cross on the back of my car I can't say I feel too guilty about it. From my on board video it looks to me like he just got it wrong. Anyway, Tim had me all to himself from there on and continued to hassle me until he finally got past at Cascades. I was determined not to let him get away and was keeping up until Druids - I was right behind him on the same line but just lost the back end as I turned in towards the second apex kerb and spun sideways into the gravel. It seemed like it took ages at the time but I remembered to dip the clutch, bang the car down into first and get going again. On the video it's actually all very fast and I managed to get opposite lock on and straighten the car out and get first engaged before I'd actually come to a standstill and no-one had come past me. I thrashed the car through the gears and down the straight towards Old Hall but realised something was awry as the car was all over the place. I suspected something had gone wrong at the nearside rear corner, it didn't feel like a puncture and I suspected the wheel was probably out of alignment. I wondered whether I should just pull over but decided I only had one more corner to go to pit lane. The car then felt OK coming through Deer's Leap so I accelerated then it felt awful again. I decided to move off into pit lane but just as I was committing to it saw the chequered flag waving and hit the gas again! I limped my way around acknowledging the marshals who all clapped and waved us all as they usually seem to. Here's the video: I'm pleased with my lap times:
I drove back to the garage and straight onto the trailer and got out to inspect the damage. The nearside rear wheel was at a horrible angle with about 10 degrees of positive camber and I tentatively diagnosed a bent upright - I know it's happened to Tim before. The wheel rim's also got a lot of gravel rash and loads of the gravel has forced its way between the tyre bead and the rim, I was a bit lucky the air didn't all get out. The speedo wasn't working but the logs say I was at about 7k rpm in 4th when I spun which makes it just over 70mph. So, a bit of disappointment at the end but all in all 2 very enjoyable races and I feel I've made some progress. The car was handling really well this weekend - I didn't really have a clue what it was doing in the wet but in the dry conditions of the races the balance felt nice, no understeer at all that I was aware of and the only time I had oversteer apart from the spin was on the gas in 3rd gear and that was quite manageable. I've still got a long way to go - my main problem is getting the courage to go into the faster corners fast enough, but I'd rather work up to it than find out the other way by going in too fast and falling off! Certainly I'm confident in myself and the car on the brakes and I'm getting used to being in close proximity and alongside other cars in corners. I'm also starting to get a feel for working out where to overtake people. And I like my new engine :-) | ||||||||||||||||
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