The Big Tidy - still no bits

There's not been an update to the website for 10 days or so, mainly because there has not been very much going on on the car, I've been away quite a lot working and neither Pace nor HI-Spec have delivered the parts that are really beginning to get very urgent now.

However, what has happened is that my Blue Genesis has been away for a week getting some minor respray work done on the front so that she is nice and shiny and I can advertise her for sale. This has left a nice big hole in the garage.

Now as many of my friends will testify I am a horrendously untidy person it's one of my many faults, I'm aware of it and I try to combat it...... but nonetheless I AM untidy and this extends to my Garage. So since the racer arrived I've been tearing old parts off it and working on it... these parts along with the tools currently in use have become scattered all around the garage and you can't walk across it without tripping over something. I was now spending 40% of my time just looking for the tools before I could start any job and this was beginning to annoy even me :-(

Additionally I have a couple of other issues. I have a very large, very quiet compressor which I bought from Machine Mart and which I currently cannot even fit in the garage, so it's residing in a mate's hallway some 30 miles away and I can't use my airtools without using my backup compressor thatis bl**dy noisy. Secondly my pillar drill is perched somewhat precariously on the beer fridge in the corner of the garage and rubbing the ali swarf off your beer cans is not a fun experience. So a mammoth tidy is required and the extra space afforded by the Blue beastie being away is an ideal time to do it.

First job was to put a new worktop on my bench. the 6x3 inch timber that it's made of has shrunk over time and now small parts and drills often fall through the gaps This took most of last Saturday to do but with Duncan's help, and a 8x4 sheet of chipboard it now looks like this. The pillar drill is in it's correct home and there should be space below for the compressor monster.

Over the last five days I have been collecting, tools, organising cabinets, making trips to the dump and generally sorting the place out. Now I can say for the first time that all my tools are in their correct places and not scattered all over the garage, house and car.
This has not been the most interesting of diary entries I'm afraid, but I have been asked by several people why there has been no recent updates. Still it does prove that my site gets some attention :-)


*****STOP Press*****
Hi-Spec have promised me the outstanding parts next week. Oh hang on that's April Fools week isn't it?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHa Oh how I laughed :-(

Watching RGB racing at Donnington

Well I had a very interesting day at Donnington today, I had a good chat with several of the RGB boys and the racing was very entertaining.... these things are so fast!
Tim Harmer won the RGB race yesterday by a country mile in his Genesis EVO Mk II, after qualifying in pole position with a time 2.4 secs clear of the field and an AVERAGE speed of 90+ Mph, Blimey! The start was quite interesting as Tim put Andy Charlesly on the grass as Andy tried to sneak up the inside from the second row to steal the line for the first corner. By contrast the other Genesis driven by Doug, a novice driver who didn't know the track came dead last (I think, I apologise If I've got that wrong) so they book-ended the field. There was one fab moment when Harmer lapped the second Genesis right in front of the main grandstand with not another car in sight, they could have been first and second! It had to be the one lap when I was chatting to Duncan and hadn't got the camera ready so I didn't get a pic :-(Still it was an interesting day with sleet, hail, torrential rain, lightning andthe RGB boys went out 2 hrs late, having been sat in the holding area for anhour. They must have been frozen. The RGB boys stayed on the track very nicely given the poor conditions. The new A048rs were described by Harmer as "Erm very interesting" in the wet. A top day and it was nice to meet some of the other drivers in RGB

More Ali Welding

Today In the couple of hours I had spare before going to fit some new taps in my Mum's kitchen I welded up this bit of ali pipework. It's the top hose connector that links the coolant pipes at the side of the car to the radiator at the front, all I need to do now is too drill and tap the bleed boss on the top and then it can be fitted. My ali welding seems to be improving :-)
Although I am a little concerned the the joints may stress fracture, but I guess we'll just have to see what happens.
I'm off to Donnington Park tomorrow to watch the first race of the RGB series.

Delays.... Delays

Today I talked to both Hi-Spec and Pace and basically the delays continue. Pace apparently are working all the hours god sends to try and catch up and I might get my dry sump next week, but the promised 3 week lead time for their dry sump system is now approaching 7 weeks. And in the wonderful make believe world of Hi-Spec "We'll call you back" actually translates as "We'll ignore you indefinitely!" If only both companies products weren't so good I'd be taking my business elsewhere by now.

A very good day

Today was a very good day, I completed several jobs that have been hanging around for a while. I didn't get every thing done that I had planned, but then I never do.... still it was a very productive day.
First up was to complete the handbrake installation. I connected the calliper to the pull cable using an M6 bolt and a nylock nut, and then repositioned and adjusted the cable in it's mounting bracket near the handbrake lever. Ok it's time to pull the brake on. A quick test shows that it's having no effect at all.... hmmm. Ok, I'll adjust the pinch lever and have another go...Hmmm, I can still move the car but the brake disk next to the diff does appear to be locked solid... what's going on?
A quick inspection shows that the OS drive shaft hadn't been inserted fully into the diff, and wasn't engaging with the splines, therefore without both wheels attempting to turn at the same time , the diff was allowing the connected NS wheel to rotate freely even though the diff itself was immobilised by the handbrake. Of course the disconnected OS wheel was rotating freely anyway. Unfortunately despite my best efforts the OS drive shaft refused to inset correctly into the diff. As is usual with drive shafts the CV joints were simply "plunging" rather than transmitting any force to insert the inner joint into the diff. In order to get the joint inserted I had to remove the wheel and disassemble the OS suspension, whereupon the CV joint went in very quickly with a nice satisfying click. The hand brake should now work, but I'll test it when I've finished the next job.
While the car was on the quick lift jack, I thought I'd complete the installation of the rear rear studs to convert from wheel bolts to wheel nuts. This I did without incident and half an hour later the car was on it's wheels. Time to test the handbrake. Whoo Hoo the wheels move about 3 degrees and then the diff locks up and the car is held on the handbrake. Wonderful a completed system!
No doubt it will need some further adjustment, and the bracket near the handbrake lever is a bit rusty so that'll need some paint but for all intents and purposes the handbrake mechanism is done. :-). Oh it'll need a return spring too, but these are just details.
S
o I bolt up all the Diff mounting bolts and make sure it's in it's final position, and nice and solid.
Before I can leave the diff and drive train I need to make a mounting bracket for the Digidash's speedo sensor. The sensor works by sensing two magnets that are epoxied to a rotating part of the drive train, I elect to fix the magnets to the NS inner CV joint, as this will allow me to fit a mounting bracket to the NS chain tension adjustment plate. As the CV joint and mounting plate are effectively fixed together by the diff this should mean that I shouldn't have to adjust the speedo sensor when I change the chain tension or alter the final drive ratio by opting for a different chain wheel. The sensor is a threaded nylon rod supported by two nylon nuts and fits an 12mm hole.




So I set about for some sparky fun with Mr Angle grinder and Mr MIG welder and a while later I had fabricated the the required bracket. Here you can see it positioned on the NS diff adjuster. I had to be careful with the positioning to ensure that there is enough room for the both the securing nut, and the sensor magnets between the bracket's inner face and the CV joint.




I also had to make sure that the sensor will point correctly at the CV joint surface and be in the correct radial orientation.
So here's a pic of the completed unit, the bracket is now trimmed and welded to the NS diff adjuster plate. The whole unit has been repainted and I'll fit it to the car tomorrow. Once it's on the car I can also epoxy the trigger magnets onto the CV Joint.

I actually found making this little bracket very satisfying.... at last I'm starting to actually "build" this car.










So now I turn my attention to coolant pipes. The old pipes had included some steel sections, these had corroded and I had removed them. I had also decided that all my coolant pipes were going to be aluminium just like on the original bike, that way the engine should be protected from corroded steel in the coolant.
So I set about cutting 32mm OD Ali pipe to run from the engine bay to the front of the car, it's only when I come to start fitting it that I realise that the mounting P Clips I've bought for this purpose will not hold the pipe snugly and it will rattle around, despite the fact that I've bought 32mm P clips. Hmmm I need to think about this for a while.
While I'm pondering the coolant pipe runs I remember Tim Pell warning me to put air bleed points in all the coolant hoses as he had real problems bleeding the air from the system. What Tim has done on the MK2 Evo is to weld M6 nuts to his steel pipes, drill a hole in the centre and fit a blanking bolt. With aluminium pipes I don't have this option (as you can't weld steel nuts to aluminium) but I do have a TIG welder.... so time for some more sparky fun.

By the end of the afternoon I've fabricated a couple of Ali pipe runs for the front of the car. The pipes are made from 32mm OD tube for the main pipe and 18mm OD tube for the bleed reservoir. The end of the bleed reservoir is capped with some 4mm Ali plate, this I will drill and tap to take a blanking bolt to act as a bleed valve. The short section of narrow bore pipe will be positioned vertically above the main pipe run. It's function is to act as a reservoir and catch any bubbles that are circulating with the coolant. Any bubbles should be moving along the roof of the main pipe and should therefore rise up and be caught by the reservoir, where they can be easily bled away.
I'm quite proud of the welding on these, TIG welding is hard, and TIG welding Ali is harder than a very hard thing. So by my standards these are very presentable, and have given me a lot of confidence that I can fabricate the more complex plumbing required in the engine bay. Hopefully tomorrow I can get the plumbing completed at the front and sides of the car.
Actually I think Citroen BXs are fitted with some nice brass bleed bolts, I might just have to use these in my quest to remove any steel from the system.
So there we are quite a successful day, now if only I had some brake callipers, and a dry sump system..........

New Front Uprights Arrive

My replacement front uprights have just been delivered, shiny objects of desire they are too, with no visible cracks and nice chunky mounting points for the callipers. I shall feel much more confident with these than I ever would have with the old ones.
A quick visit to the bathroom scales shows them to weigh 2Kg each, it will be interesting to see how much more or less they weigh than the old ones.

So fitting coolant pipes, adjusting the handbrake and replacing the front uprights would seem to be the plan for tomorrow.

Tonight, I only had about an hour to get something done on the car. So I set about doing a trial installation of the newly modified handbrake calliper.
Step one was to weld the actuation lever that I broke last weekend, 10 minutes with my trusty MIG welder resulted in this which I've also sprayed with chassis black paint. The cranked lever should nor clear the mounting bracket nicely. I then reassemble the calliper to it's mounting bracket and started fitting it to the car.



Whoo hooo it fits! The clearance between the mounting studs and the bike chain is not huge but it should be fine!



Right I'm out of time, so there's little more I can do tonight. But the calliper appears to be working fine, it might require a narrow shim to get the non actuated pad to "float" correctly over the brake disk. The last jobs to get this thing working will be to connect and adjust the actuating cable and fit a lever return spring. Hopefully I can get that sorted out by the weekend.


Lastly I talked to Hi-Spec again today about my callipers, and guess what? I was promised a call back with some details.... but none materialised :-(, although in fairness I was out of the house for 5 minutes today.

Some 32mm rubber pipe turned up today, so I can now start to run the coolant pipes from the rear\mid mounted engine to the front mounted radiator. Or at least I can make a start on it this weekend.

Finalising the Calliper Mount

Today my Mini Wheel studs turned up, they are of the correct length but very slightly oversize in diameter, in that while the threaded section of each stud will fit through the mounting holes in the handbrake calliper the shank will not. So I eased the holes a bit in the drill press using a 10mm drill and also put a shallow countersink in the mounting face to take the head of the stud.


Now the bolt passes nice and snugly through the mounting holes until it reaches the splined section where it jams solid. This is why the stud in the picture has ali marking around the base of the splines... it's from a test fitting. So it's time to take my courage or rather a big hammer in hand and knock the studs permanently into place. This goes surprisingly well and you can see from the picture on the right, it looks like a "Riiiight Proper Job!" to use a phrase from a well known UK scrapheap based TV programme.
A quick test fitting on the car shows that the calliper now clears the drive chain by about 5mm... wonderful. Unfortunately I don't have time to complete the fitting tonight as I'm off out to a CAM7 meeting, but I'll finish it tomorrow, and I can at last say that I've completed at least one system on the car .... Wooo Hooo

Fixing the Handbrake Calliper

I've had a brainwave about my calliper mounting bolt problem. While doing the 3 hour drive to the office I was musing on the problem of finding a bolt with a very narrow head that would allow me to clear the drive chain. And then I had a light bulb above the head moment... What I need is not a bolt but a wheel stud. Wheel studs have a very shallow but wide cap instead of a bolt head and are splined to grip the base material, so you don't need to put a spanner on one end when you do the wheel nuts up. I knew that the existing bolts were 80mm long and 3\8th inch wide (9.???mm). Hmmmm....can I find an appropriate stud?
So I had a look on Trackstore's Website and blimey they actually do an 80mm*3\8ths UNF wheel stud designed for Minis. So I ordered a couple up and hopefully this problem is solved.
I also had another fruitless conversation with HI-Spec today, I be called back tomorrow I'm told, but in Hi-Spec land tomorrow never comes :-(

Wiring + General Faff

Firstly here is a picture of the of the new dashboard taken in the daylight. I'm not sure you can see much more detail than the night time pictures above, but you do get a better impression of how it nestles neatly under the lip of the front bodywork.

Right on with the day's work.

I had such plans for today but commitments elsewhere reduced my available time substantially so much so that I only got a couple of hours work done on the car.

My main aim was to get the dash and all the front looms interconnected and permanently bound up and p clipped in placed, along with the main feeds from the battery, the FIA ignition switch and the feeds to the engine management loom. Erm No it wasn't going to happen, firstly I discovered I hadn't got the right size connectors for the FIA switch, then I can't bind up the dash looms as I haven't yet got all the sensor wires in place for the ECU loom and I can't put the ECU loom in because I haven't yet got the mounting brackets sorted and I need to check the regs for appropriate positioning. It was one of those days when you just get lost in a big trail of dependencies that prevent you doing the jobs that you had got planned. Faff, faff, fafffing about and thinking about what needed doing..... not the most productive of spannering time.

From memory the ECU cannot be in the driver's compartment, but must be in a position that allows easy inspection by the scrutineers to ensure it is the correct unit, this means in the engine bay, but away from the exhausts, and also largely protected from water..hmmmmm.

Anyway what I did succeed in doing was to wire up the dash to the front bodywork loom. So when I now turn on my headlights they come on, or rather one of then comes on. And when I flip up the main beams, they come on, or rather only one of them comes on too!. There are some bulbs missing.... which made checking their operation with good Mrs M a bit comical. Still all was working nicely.

I also managed to finish painting the diff carrier mounting bracketry so that it can go back in tomorrow, and in the evening (on the Kitchen table because it was too damn cold in the Garage) I put the diff back into the diff carrier. Sorry Mrs M

Fitting the Handbrake

Today I had one aim. I was going to complete one system on the car, I was going to get one entire system finished and operational so that I could say I had completed something and that the build was progressing, just one system. (Dammit Tim has already got the engine in on his Fireblade Fury!).

And that system was going to be?........ The handbrake :-)

The handbrake operates via single Willwood mechanical calliper which bites onto the reverse ring gear on the diff unit. So this meant that the diff had to be rebuilt back into the car. I'd fully cleaned it up, lubbricated and reassembled it back into the carrier last night. So it was ready to be plonked into the car. It's a two man job so enter my willing assistant Duncan.

Before you can mount the diff you have to remove the driveshafts and the easiest way to do this is to remove the camber adjusters from the top joints on the rear suspension wishbones and pull the wheels out like this.

For some reason I think this picture is rather comical, either the car is a "she" and this is a strangely "take me now" moment, or it's only halfway through it's transformation into a "Back To The future" style hover car.



The brick BTW is the current handbrake mechanism, you jam it under a wheel to stop the car rolling.

The diff is mounted in the car using a series of m10 bolts, mounting plates and spacers, it's a bit of a jigsaw really, and after about an hour of finger trapping, diff shuffling, swearing and bracket fitting madness we decided that next time it would be a really really good idea to make a drawing of the installation before removing it :-).

Still it was in now and the lesson was well and truly learned. Erm "what about the drive chain?" says Dunc. B*gger! So another 10 mins of repeat faffing follows and we get the drive chain in place and the diff bolted up for a second time. Incidentally wherever possible we used new bolts and nylocks as the old ones were a bit "munged." (technical engineering term)

Right, so now we are ready to fit the handbrake calliper

T
The calliper is fitted onto the side of the diff carrier using this bracket

The width of the calliper jaws are controlled by two machined spacers, one of which needed to be removed, (in the picture below I've already removed it.)

Here lay the first challenge of the day, the clamp bolts are cap head bolds and take an Allen key of some uncertain imperial size. Certainly none of the standard metric or imperial Allen keys I posses fitted (And I've got more than a few!) Fortunately I managed to get the things apart to remove the spacer and trial fit the calliper to the Diff, but the bolts will need to be changed, because at the moment I can't tighten them up. They've got to be something really odd like 13/32nds

So it was time to bolt up the calliper to the diff, connect the handbrake cable, and hey presto a complete working system.... and I can get rid of the brick!

er No!

As can be seen from the two pictures below (which were taken later without the mounting bracket because I forgot to take them at the time) the mounting bolts on the calliper foul the drive chain!. I'm going to need some bolts with very thin or countersunk heads to mount the calliper and avoid fouling the chain. So the handbrake isn't going to get completed today :-(




The other thing that became apparent is that the actuating lever will foul the mounting bracket and needs to be bent away from the calliper slightly, so I removed it, mounted it in a vice and gave it a solid biff with a hammer...... PING! Bejeezuz it's like Bagdad in here! There's a bit of shrapnel flying all around the garage in true cartoon style..... Ping, bing, , rattle.. the broken bit of lever is really doing the rounds. Duncan an I are protecting our eyes and trying to track the broken bit of lever with our ears so we can retrieve it from my clinically clean garage floor.

The lever must have been hardened to be as brittle as that, but with the broken bit retrieved I'm fairly certain that I can weld the two halves together and at the appropriate angle so it's not the major disaster it first appeared to be. We've run out of time, patience and body heat now (it's bloomin cold) and so the wheels go back on car and she gets put away.

Another weekend has passed without major progress being made.

After Sunday tea I had a brainwave..... I'm sure I have a picture of the calliper's installation that was taken when Tim was first building the car, a bit of digging around locates it and here it is. It's not very clear I'm afraid, but it appears to show that the calliper mounting bolts are not standard Cap or Hex heads and that the calliper has been machined a bit, or Mr Sparky angle grinder has been having some fun to relieve the bolt mount faces.


For those that are interested here's a shot of the Willwood calliper's components. Left most is the fixed side of the calliper, the pad is permanently fixed to it's inside face. On the right is the other side of the calliper which houses the actuating mechanism and moving pad. The (now two part) lever is hinged at the right hand side using the bright hinge pin in the calliper, and has a cam section just to the left of the hinge hole. The operating cable attaches to the left hand end via one of the two mounting holes.
The small "bullet" shaped piece of steel passes through the centre hole of the mechanism side and is moved by the cam in the lever. The bullet operates on the steel back plate of the moving pad, which in turn bites into the brake disk surface. The bullet and operating lever are "pinched" by a threaded stud at the rear of the mechanism to allow the pad to float the correct distance above the disk.

Finishing the Dash + more upright news

I've spent many, many hours in the last few evenings wiring up the dash. It does seem to have taken an enormous amount of time, just to make a few electrical connections. Anyway here it is, all the major circuits are now connected, all that's left to do are the sensor circuits for the Digidash and the extinguisher. The circuits terminate at multi way connectors, which while they add weight and potential points of failure, do allow the dash to be removed\replaced fairly easily. I think I'll plonk it in the car in it's current state, if for no other reason than I'm sick of the sight of it on the dining room table. On the plus side it does work nicely :-), and once it's in the car I can start interfacing it to the Bike loom that I stripped down and modified waaaaay back in January.


Again, I chatted with Tim Pell today about my replacement uprights, they aren't to expensive at £160 for the pair which is good news. But unfortunately they are slightly different in design to the ones I currently have, as they are designed for the MKII Genesis Evo. They will simply bolt on to the existing suspension and steering with no problem at all, but the calliper mounting points are different. The new uprights use radial mounted callipers, whereas on the older ones the callipers were lug mounted and needed adjustment brackets. Further discussion with Tim discovers that the radial mounts on the uprights are at 130mm centres, whereas the HI-SPEC Ultralight 4s mount at 129.5 centres, so it seems the callipers may simply bolt onto the uprights. Nah life cannot be that simple....... we'll see when the uprights and callipers arrive. If the offset is wrong I may have to choose a different disk and bell.... but things may finally be falling into place on the brakes & suspension front.

So it seems the fact that I've been waiting for 6 weeks for my callipers has actually worked to my advantage, I've rung HI-Spe2 c and asked them not to supply any disks or brackets for my front brakes just the callipers themselves, I'll fit the callipers and then measure up to see what offset is required after the uprights and callipers are assembled.

Also today Pace rang to tell me that the dry sump tank is ready for shipping and that the dry sump pump will be ready next week. Things are really looking up!

Today has been 2 steps forward and only 1 step back.

22:36 pm as I said earlier intended to fit the dash this evening, well for once my intentions actually came to fruition. I sat the dash on the bench and tested it's operation using as spare bike battery. Everything was fine except when I operated the hazards with the ignition off. Every time the hazard flasher clicked the whole dash was powering up, including the Digidash and even the indicator light on the ignition switch. I've seen this behaviour before and it was a fairly simple task to see that part of the hazards circuit was incorrectly connected to the fuse ways on the ignition switched side. This was therefore powering up all the ignition switched circuits (including the Digidash) via the flasher unit . Removal of the offending wire cured the problem.


20 Minutes later and the dash was fitted into installation from my normal driving position, with all the circuits turned on. I can comfortably reach the reverse enable toggle, switch which is the first red light to the left of the bank of green ones.

It think you'll agree it looks very nice indeed. I can see all the warning lights very clearly and nothing major is obscured by my hands or the steering wheel, I'm very pleased with it although if it was in carbon fibre it would be just a smidgen nicer :-)

(The pictures are a bit dark, as they were taken on my drive at 10 O'clock at night, I'll post a daylight shot tomorrow)

Even though the dash needs the wiring finally P clipping into place and the actual car circuits connecting this was a very nice moment, particularly after a week of setbacks.

Finally I've built and assembled something onto the car. So far all I seem to have been doing is dismantling it :-( and this was most definitely, indisputably positive progress! Hopefully if callipers and dry sump kit arrive in the next few days positive progress will continue.

News on the cracked upright

Today I talked to Tim Pell regarding the cracked front upright, The uprights are custom made and machined up to his design (which sounds ominously expensive) but Tim does have a couple of them on the shelf, he'll check up how much they cost and then ring me back with a price. The downside is that the calliper mounts are different as the new MKII Evo uses radial rather than lug mounted callipers, so that the custom made brackets that Hi-Spec have been making for me for the last month or so will not fit. Oh well one step forwards 2 steps back, but it appears that my chances of getting on track anytime before the summer or Autumn are receding. :-(