Wheels, Studs and the Crack of Doom!

My other two Superleggies turned up on thursday, and despite requiring a signature on delivery Mr Link Express just left them parked outside my house (I was doing the school run). Luckily (for him) they were still there when I got home.

Well I've had my shiny new RIMs fitted with the A048rs that are mandatory for the RGB series, I've gone for 195/55/R15s for the fronts but on the advice of George Polley I've gone for 205/50/R15s for the rears as he thinks that the wider tyre can help counter any tail happiness in the car. Although as I later found out they also lighten your wallet by an additional £20+ quid per corner :-(.

So in the interests of completeness I've weighed both of the different tyre sizes.




The 195/55/R15s ft weigh in at 13 Kilos complete, the 205/50/R15s tip the scales at 14 Kilos. Given that the rims weigh in at 5kg each that puts the tyre weights as 8Kg for the 195/55s and 9Kg for the 205/50s.



This is one expensive stack of rubber and alloy.

The other things that arrived today are the conversion studs for the wheel hubs.

One of my pet s are wheels that are fitted with wheel bolts rather than studs and wheel nuts. I've trapped my fingers between rims and suspension units more than once while rotating a wheel on the central hub boss trying to line up the bolt holes.

The EVO hubs are designed to take Wheel bolts that screw into threaded holes. So I've sourced these special conversion studs that screw into the bolt holes and are thread locked in place. You can then use normal wheel nuts to hold the wheels on, and the wheels sit safely on the studs while you get the nuts started hopefully avoiding trapped fingers.



The Studs are M12x1.5 and are 50mm overall length. I got them from http://www.trackstore.co.uk and they are 80p each. They are also available from Demon Tweeks but are 1.60 each. So now we're ready to sit the EVO on her own wheels and Clam can have his alloys back. Thanks Clem.

So I sat the car up on the quick lift jack, removed the front offside wheel and started fitting the conversion studs. Basically I just locked two wheel nuts together onto the stud, added a generous portion of lock-tight and simply wound the conversion stud into the hub. The unthreaded central portion bites into the threads and helps tighten stud. While I wheel bolts, I'm also aware that wheel studs are normally splined into the hub, so I'm a little concerned that the conversion studs may loosen and undo. I've therefore marked an indelible line across the face of each stud, the lines all point to the centre, so any loosening will be instantly visible as the lines will move.

Next I moved on to the front OS hub and discovered this horror. The OS hub carrier is ed :-(. It looks like the has been developing for some time and is circumferential around the outer edge of the bearing housing. It looks like I'm going to need a new upright, Ho Hum. So rather disheartened I fitted the conversion studs and the SuperLeggara.

Oh I forgot the other thing I managed to do today was degrease and spray paint the diff carrier.


At this stage I was called to help my friend Duncan fit a new cambelt to his Carlton so there will be no further progress today.

2 Wheels for my wagon

Mr Link Express has just delivered 2 of my Super Leggaras. Shiny shiny things of beauty they are and not as black as their "Anthracite" name would imply.


They do seem really very light indeed and the bathroom scales confirm that they come in at between 4 & 5 Kilos per corner. Nice..... very nice indeed.

Cleaning & Rebuilding the Drivetrain

Well having invested in a new can of Tetraclene I set about cleaning up the last 20% of the car, This basically meant the rear suspension, the rear half of the engine bay and the diff carrier, all of which were covered in a thick layer of lithium grease and chain lube. The car came up very nicely. However I was having difficulty getting at the areas around the diff and chain wheel carrier, so I decided to remove the entire unit from the car. This was a fairly radical decision, as it meant removing the drive shafts from the diff, and If I had a problem I wouldn't be able to roll the car back in the garage very easily, but taking the diff out has a number of advantages.

1. I'll learn how the drive train is put together, nothing teaches you this better than a disassemble\reassemble cycle.
2. I'll also learn how to remove the drive shafts and how the rear suspension goes together.
3. It will give me a chance to check and paint the diff carrier, fit the handbrake calliper, and lubricate the Quaiffe ATB diff unit in the centre of it all. And I get to do all this at a comfortable bench height.

All good reasons to bite the bullet, besides as I'm used to car diffs with crown wheels, pinions and oil baths I was intrigued by how the unit went together when the drive was provided by a chain rather than a propshaft.

So first job was to remove the drive shafts, I guessed that it should be possible to withdraw them if the wheels were released from just the top wishbones, the wheels are mounted using a spherical bearing and a top hat threaded bush which pass into the top of the wish bone. These were easy to undo and the wheel could be swung away from the car at quite a sharp angle. But as usual all this does is pull the cv joints apart not withdraw the joints from the diff. At this stage I did notice one of the CV joint boots has a small split in it which probably accounts for all the lithium grease I've been cleaning off, that'll need replacing during reassembly.

The inner CV joint is held into the splines in the diff by a circlip. These are usually really really difficult to get out, because normally when your doing it access is extremely restricted. However in this case I had good access and using a large "Gorrilla Bar" crow bar I applied a little side was pressure between the CV joint and the diff and both joints popped out in seconds. Blimey!



So after a bit of manoeuvring and removal of some six mounting bolts and spacers I had the Diff carrier on the bench (or rather the top of the freezer).

In the picture left the unit is orientated as it is in the car. The front of unit is towards the viewer.


The four mounting lugs at the front are where the engine is mounted onto the diff carrier. Behind them is a starter motor, that provides the reverse gear that the RGB series regulations require. The starter motor drives on the ring gear of a flywheel that is on left of the aluminium chain wheel which, in turn receives it's drive via a bike chain from the engine's output sprocket.

The flywheel also acts as a brake disk, for a Willwood mechanical calliper that provides the handbrake required by the "Must be capable of passing an MOT" part of the regs. The calliper is missing from the photos.

In the centre of the chain wheel and flywheel is the differential, which is an Automatic Torque Biasing unit from Quaiffe. The differential is entirely enclosed and does not run in an oil bath like it would do in a car's diff casing, rather it is lubricated internally by grease.


On either side of the diff are two large aluminium blocks which house the sealed bearings that the output flanges of the diff rotate in. In this side view you can see the silver coloured adjustment plates which are bolted to the aluminium bearing carriers through slots in the diff carrier sides. These adjuster plates can be moved fore an aft by the adjuster bolt on the far left (there's one on each side), and when the chain is correctly tensioned and the chain wheel is in perfect alignment with the output sprocket the pinch bolts are tightened up.

You can also see the splined socket which the drive shaft's inner CV joint fits into.

I needed to remove the flywheel\chainwheel\ diff unit so that I could lube the diff, so I started by removing the pinchbolts and adjusters and I expected the whole unit to drop from the frame, sadly I was wrong and the diff output sockets are actually a little wider then the frame. So using the long threaded rod that is part of the mounting hardware I forced the two side plates slightly apart and out came the diff assembly.

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Here you can see the removed unit, including the bearing carriers. The bearings were a very very tight fit, and rather than badger something by persisting I decided that caution was the better part of valour. I'll ring Tim Pell on Monday for further instructions on dismantling and lubricating the diff.


In the meantime I can degrease and re paint the diff carrier. Although that'll have to be tomorrow. My good lady wife needs to get to the freezer to get tea out :-)

Today was anExpensive

Today was an expensive day.

OZ Racing Superleggara wheels are the thing to have in the RGB series because they are extremely strong and amazingly light, coming in at under 5 Kilos per wheel. Unfortunately they are also very rare in 15inch sizes, I have heard horror stories of people waiting for 6-9 months for a set.

It appears OZ have decided to make a wheel that is very desirable for club racers but only to make reasonable quantities of the 16 inch and above sizes which are too big for club racing.... typical. While chatting to Tim Pell I asked where he had sourced his wheels and he recommended Motorsport Wheels. So on the off chance I rang them and gave them my required size 15x7 Ford PCD ET42 offset, and miracle of miracles they had a set on the shelf in Anthracite colour. Needless to say I bit their hands off and ordered them on the spot, they even very kindly gave me a 20% discount. I had previously planned to leave the purchase to the end of the build but a bird in the hand etc. They should arrive on Monday.

The total still came to £450+....Gulp!

Now fired with a passion for all things round I thought I ought to get some rubber sorted out for these shiny new rims. The RGB series mandates the use of Yokohama A048Rs and guess what...... these are rarer than unobtainium too. In fact there has been an ongoing discussion on the RGB racers website on the subject, so it was with some trepidation that I rang George Polley motorsport.

Well it looks like the rubber famine is over, George can get me 4 195/55/15 A048Rs for next week. So again more biting of hands followed and my wallet was another 350 quid lighter. I think I need a lie down, but by next weekend the car will be rolling on it's own wheels. I just hope I get the car finished in time to use them in action this year

Tim shows me up - again!

Today or rather tonight, I was around Tim's garage. Tim is a fellow CAM7ner who is also building a RGB racer for the 750MC series, although he is building a Fury powered by a Fireblade engine and will run in class C. I was there to return his engine hoist and help him to fit his drive shafts into the Freelander diff on the Fury. Tim's only had his Fury chassis for about two weeks and he's already nearly at rolling chassis stage, I've had my rolling chassis for nearly two months and I seem to making very very slow progress, a salutary lesson in "get ya finger out" for me and a great achievement for him.

Anyway on the plus side I did manage to have a squint a Tim's Fireblade exhaust clamps. Tim Pell supplied me with an exhaust with my car the but the clamps which hold the headers into the ports on the cylinder head were missing. It turns out that these things are quite difficult to source because on the original bike down pipes they are integral to the unit, or at least can't be removed without cutting up the pipes.

Therefore bike breakers won't cut up a good set of pipes so that I can have the clamps, but if the pipes are damaged they just get stuck in a skip. Either way I can't have the clamps. I've been having such problems that I'd even started to produce a DXF drawing so I could get some laser cut by a local engineering shop. Well I took the opportunity to measure the clamps on Tim's exhaust and it turns out that a Fireblade's exhaust mounts are identical to those on a ZX12R. So I've placed an order with Martin at the Kitcarworkshop and hopefully I can start thinking about fitting the exhaust next week.

Also today I received the entry forms for all the RGB races this year from the 750 Motor club.... now it's really starting to hit home I'm going racing!

Finishing the Tank

This morning I completed fabrication of the endplate for the new fuel tank. This included cutting a 30mm hole for the fuel sender that is mounted in the inboard side of the tank.

The end plate was then TIG welded in place, and although (as can be seen from the pic) my TIG welding is not always pretty, it is functional as later successful tests with pressurised water were to prove. The welded seams on the radically reshaped tank are leak proof :-).

The fuel sender is a 6 hole Lucas type and was supplied in the kit of parts that came with the DigiDash. The float arm is located in the shorter left hand side of the tank as you look at the picture above, and doesn't access the "Sump" at the lower right of the tank, this means that there will be a "reserve" of fuel left even when the gauge reads empty.... but how much?

So in a rather nice closure to the two current projects I powered up the Digidash with a 12v battery, connected the fuel sender to the appropriate input and started filling the tank with water. After about 6.2 litres the gauge moved off empty and it read 100% full when I had poured in 18 of the tanks maximum capacity of 19.5 litres. Fab! now I know that I have just over a gallon in reserve when then gauge hits zero, and 19.5 litres of fuel in the tank when it's brim full plus about another 1-2 litres in a swirl pot should give me a fuel capacity of 21L. That should be more than enough for a 15 lap sprint race or a 25 minute testing\trackday session

Finishing the Dash + Fuel Tank Mods

Today and in fact earlier in the week I have sprayed the new dash satin black and permanently fitted the switchgear and DigiDash unit.



I've even labelled the switches so that the unit now looks like this, it's now ready for the wiring to be installed, and then to be fitted to the car.







Much of this morning was spent stripping the bodywork off the car again, and then going over it with a big bucket of Tetraclean in an attempt to get rid of the greasy oily film that covers it from front head to toe. This has been 80% completed (I just need to do the rear suspension and diff carrier as I ran out of Tetraclean at this stage.

This afternoon, however was spent on a much more fruitful activity.


You may remember this! Which is the remains of the old fuel tank after I had cut it in half and removed it from the car. It was much, much too big and had a hole it which connected directly to the engine bay, and through which ran the gear change linkage .


Well it now looks like this. After leaving the fully rinsed out tank outside in the garden for a couple of weeks to vent any remaining petrol vapour it was time to convert to a more appropriate size. As can be seen from the pictures I basically cut the tank in half and removed the section with the gearshift hole.


I then cut,shaped and fitted a new plate for the left hand end, by this time I was getting a little tired so I decided to call it a day and complete the tank's transformation on Sunday.

Coolant Tube Arrives

A whole bunch of aluminium tube has just been delivered. It is 16 gauge 32mm diameter and will be used to run engine coolant from the engine bay at the rear of the car to the radiator at the front. I just need to find a supplier of suitable hose to make the connections and I can start work on the cooling system.

Starting Work on the Dash

Having received my Digidash in the post this week I set too and started to build a new dashboard panel for the racer, the old dash had the distinctive triangular hole for a Stack data logging system in it, which as they cost nearly 2K was not surprisingly being replaced by the much cheaper DigiDash unit. I briefly contemplated making the new dash from a carbon fibre sheet, this would certainly look vary nice and might even save some weight, but it would probably cost 30-40 quid for the carbon, and as I had a sheet of NS4 Ali lying around the garage from previous projects I had effectively got the raw aluminium for free. Carbon fibre pimpy goodness may come next year.

So using the old dash as a templ
ate I marked out and cut an ALi blank from the NS4 sheet using an electric jigsaw and a fine metal cutting blade. Using a panel beating hammer I beat a "reverse" onto the top edge of the dash to give it some rigidity. Now it was time to cut the mounting holes for the Digidash. In the manual that accompanies the unit is a nice 100% life size mounting template which identifies the unit's mounting holes and their position. So I sat in the car and after making some silly engine noises I stuck the template onto the new dash in the most appropriate mounting position. In this position I can see the complete instrument cluster through the spokes of my steering wheel. The two strips of tape to he left of the template mark the limit of the area visible inside the wheel rim, I intend place the Oil pressure and ECU warning lights in this region.


So after marking the position of the mounting holes and the central clearance area that needed cutting out to clear the connectors, I once again set too with Jigsaw, File and Drill. (isn't that a 70s glam rock band?).

Anyway after about 40 mins of making noise I could actually mount the Digidash unit onto the ali plate. Now it was time to lay out the rest of the lights and switch gear, so using the time honoured method of sticking down some masking tape I began to lay out the rest of the instrumentation.


I will be racing the EVO in the 750 Motorclub's RGB series. RGB stands for "Road Going Bike Engined" and the regs state that cars "must be able to pass an MOT" although they don't actually need a valid certificate. This adds all sorts of requirements to the car that are unnecessary on a race car (but does create a level playing field that allows people to bring along their road cars to race). Extra equipment includes such nastiness as a mechanical handbrake mechanism and a need for all the normal lights that you have on your road car.... plus things like a horn!

So I need switchgear for, indicators, hazards, main\dip beam, side & head lights, fog lights, headlamp flash and horn in order to meet the MOT requirements. In addition to this I also need switch gear to arm my electrical extinguisher, to turn on the electrical reverse mechanism and racing rain light, and lastly for the main ignition and fuel pumps. All of which are mandated by various club or national regulations. If your wondering where my FIA cut off switch is in the layout ...well the simple answer is that it's not on the dash board but located low down on my right and side in the cockpit.

So after much drilling, filing and cursing the dash looks like this.

Dry Sump - Initial Enquiries + Oil cooling

I spent a long time on the phone today with Pace products about their ZX12R dry sump system. it really is a very neat bit of kit. Apparently you remove the existing water pump and oil pump assembly from the side of the engine and simply slide the new 3 stage (2 scavenge and 1 pressure stage) dry sump pump into the existing housing. The pump is even driven by the engine's existing oil pump drive shaft so no external drive belts are required. All that remains is to remove and blank off the existing pressure relief\control valve and dial in the required pressure using the adjuster on the pump. Of course you lose the mechanical water pump, but I had been pre warned that this was the case and ordered and EWC electric one via a BEC list bulk buy back in November. The dry sump pump is quoted as outputting 80+ PSI at full chat and 25+ at idle. Needless to say I ordered one and hopefully it will be with me by the end of February.

Pace also advised that a secondary benefit of having the oil reservoir in a remote tank rather than in the sump is that oil overheating is not a problem so I've decided not to fit an air\oil cooler and see how it goes temperature wise.

Only one thing left to do and that's find a suitable location, size and mounting point for the dry sump tank and then order an appropriate one from Pace. I must remember to ask them to put in a 1\8th NPT boss for the Digidash's oil temp sensor. Talking of which.......

Not a Good Start! - Data Loss

Some data seems to be missing from my original build diary which I'm using to populate this blog. So I'm afraid we're jumping in about two months along.