More Wheels, Tyre & Clappers

Duncan and I, spent most of today resolving the problems of calliper fit and alignment. The output of our labours is shown here.

No this isn't the quest for weight saving gone mad using a perspex steering arm and a wooden calliper mount would be a bit daft eve n for me. :-)

No this is prototyping a solution for the front brakes, using materials that are easy to machine and fashion into shape using the tools available, you do it this way and then transfer the measurements to the metal components and get them machined up.

Using the wooden block we established that the existing calliper mounts need to be thinned down by about 5mm to 16mm thick to allow them to fit onto 265mm disks and this works nicely inside the 14" wheels. We also established that the mount need some pockets machined into it to clear the rotor mounting bolts and pads.

265 mm is a step down from the existing 275mm disks but 5mm on the radius shouldn't matter much. Plus most of the people in the paddock run smaller disks than me, I've event attracted remarks about having "boy racer brakes" :-)

The steering arm has been shortened by about an inch and I'll get new ones cut to this pattern during the week. Changing the arm will make the steering a bit heavier, but hopefully will not introduce any nasties like bump steer, plus we've been very careful to move the mounting hole along a line drawn between the centres of the existing hole and swivel to ensure that the Ackerman angles dont change.

At the rear things are a bit tighter. Using a 254mm disk should give me around 5mm clearance between the handbrake arms, the disk and the wheel. Whether this is enough to allow the handbrake to operate will remain to be seen. But if necessary I'll adjust the calliper arms and hopefully it will be fine! The step down from 275 - 254 diameter rotors is a bit large but most of the braking happens at the front.

Overall the smaller rotor sizes should save about 2.5Kg from the car which should just about offset the heavier rims.

Many thanks to Duncan, when he comes along and helps out in the garage I get much more than twice as much done. Cheers Mate.

While Dunc was wood working I also got the rear suspension bushes and suspension mounts painted up. So that once the brakes get sorted we should just be able to bolt them back on.

So major outstanding jobs now are

1. Get it rolling again (with or without brakes on 15" wheels if necessary) so that I can take it and get the exhaust fitted.
2. Fit revised braking system
3. Modify the anteater airbox to take the upper injectors
4. Fabricate handbrake mechanism
5. Fabricate reverse lever actuation mechanism.
6. Finalise diff & engine mounting when adjusters arrive
7. Fit Tim Hs Palm DL1 based laptimer and temp sensor & tidy internal wiring
8. Pre season suspension setup
9. Get it rolling roaded and fuelling setup
10. Fit Driveshafts and chain
11. Get a trackday and some instruction in before going racing again

So not much left then!

Brakes, Wheels and A Sense of Humour Failure

W ell another week passes and still I don't have drive shafts. I'm beginning to think that I will certainly miss the first two races of the season and my first outing will be the double header at Lydden Hill in April. Still missing races does save me money but while I like making and fixing things in the garage I also like the camaraderie of the paddock and fun of racing. Hmmph.

Anyway, the major issue to resolve this week was getting the new wheels to fit. One of the consequences of moving from Class A to Class B is that Class B is limited to 6" Rims whereas class A is allowed 7" rims. It seems a bit daft as the 6" rim rule hails from a time when class B was limited to (I think) 140 BHP. Whereas as redrafting of the rules to make it a 1000cc class means that modern engines can be used that put out 165+ bhp, pretty much bringing it in line with class A. I didn't spot the anomaly in last year's draft rules regs (when I had a chance to suggest the change) so as rules are rules and I need to get some 6" rims to fit.

I bought a stack of old Ford Escort Xr3i Alloys off ebay for 14 quid, these are actually pretty light and weigh about 6 Kilos each. Unfortunately this makes them a bit heavier than my existing 15" OZ Superleggarers at about (5.5 KG each) but at least they were cheap, are the right offset and fit my Ford hubs. So all in all a bargain. These are also 14" rims rather than 15s because 14" rubber is substantially cheaper than 15" rubber (£200 per set of tyres) so If I'm changing wheels, buying myself some rubber savings down the line also seems a good idea

Like Tim, to make life easier I have also bought some of the new swanky Wilwood Powerlight callipers that include a handbrake mechanism. I had lost my previous handbrake mechanism when I removed the diff and these seem the easy option... Erm No "easy" is not the word

With the mind set of changing as little as possible I performed some trial fits of the 14" rims on the cars. This is much easier to say than do. As I now had a new set of wheels, two different types of brake callipers and two or three different types of brake disks thanks to Tim Pell who had loaned me a stack of ally belled brake rotors to use as alternatives. The permutations seemed endless, If you then throw in the fact that to get the offset right you might need spacers behind the disk or calliper mounts, to get the calliper - disk clearance right you may need packing washers between the calliper itself and the mount And anytime you change anything the calliper has to come off, the wheel has to come,off everything gets unbolted and you pretty much start from scratch you can see that it is a long and frustrating process. Particularly when you get to the end of it and see that without major modifications there is no way it is going to work with the 14" wheels bells and callipers. AAARGH. At the back the operating levers for the handbrake mechanism foul the wheel and at the front the steering arm and calliper both get in the way.

OK lets use my existing Rim's and forgo the potential rubber savings. Job done!. Erm no ...about an hour later it dawned on me that of course I can't use my existing Rims they are 7" not 6" and are illegal. ArgghggggggGGGGGHHH!

At this point with timescales already tight, no drive shafts, no exhaust and delays being injected into the timetable everywhere I had a real sense of humour failure at the frustration of it all! Even considering junking the entire season.

However common sense prevailed and I thought "OK lets get some new rims, sell the old ones to cover the cost and we are away." Racing usually comes down to choices to spend money in order to make things easier or quicker :-(. Erm No, this wont work either it as appears that 6x15 Rims are not a common size in race wheels. The only options available are Compomotive MO/MTs and these way a full 2.5 Kg heavier than my existing wheels and would cost the best part of £500 pounds.

AARGH! I know racing is a nutty thing to do but spending £500 quid to be heavier and go slower is very simply stupid and the 10KG gained would undo much of the good work that has gone into lightening the car this season.

So after a long think about the problem while on my 2.5 hour commute to work and a chat with my dear wife Katie who is totally reliable at being practically minded and pulling me down to earth we came up with a solution. If I'm likely to miss Donnington anyway, accept that that is going to happen, use the money saved and the additional time to sort out the brakes and smaller wheels by getting stuff machined to fit. That way at least you are ending up with a car that is lighter and will save you money in rubber in the future. Plus the Ford alloys are pretty cheap so getting a second set to use for track days\wets is an option then.

Simple eh Aren't ladies great at common sense, if I had any of that I suppose I wouldn't be racing any way :-)

External Injectors Mounting

Andy Bates at AB Performance has sent me the mounting plates for the CBR1000s intake trumpets and extenal injectors. I'll use the lower plate (pictured here) as the base for my modification to the cars airbox. I was going to use the upper plate as well but when I weighed it it was close to a 3/4 of a Kilo. The upper plate
only supports the injectors, but these are already supported by a casting fitted by Mr Honda to the original plastic airbox.

I figured if I could mount the injector rail on some aluminium standoffs then I could achieve the same for very little weight gain. Remember that this is on top of the engine and very high in the car so all weight lost here is especially important.

So after much measuring to try and ensure I got the injectors properly centralised on the trumpets I made these standoffs to hold the injectors at the correct seperation from the mounting plate (90mm measured from plate to tip). I'm pretty pleased with it considering I only made it using hand tools, a bench grinder and a drill press. plus is only weighs a couple of hundred grams and doesn't restrict the airflow.

Dift Mounted on New Ali plates

The new laser cut 8mm NS4 alluminium differential mounting plates turned up from Peterborough Laser cut today. so this weekend was spent mounting the diff in it's final position. Here I must credit Dave Turner a mate from Cam7 who spent a lot of time refining my original diff mounting plates drawings. Dave performed a bunch of finite element an analysis (FEA) on these mounting plates. His work allowed me to reduce the plates from those which were 15mm thick and required expensive machining from billet aluminium, down to plates just 8mm thick which could be cheaply cut from flat plate by the guys at Peterborough Laser Cut.

The Diff plates are still awaiting the chain tension adjusters (which Dave T is also machining for me).The small ears close to the rear of the plates are for bolting to brackets which will be welded to the transverse chassis member and provide lateral stability for the whole assembly.

With the diff mounted I could also finalise the engine bay signal wiring, the position of the oil pressure sensor, and all the electrical connections. The engine bay is now beginning to look very neat and complete.

This weekend I mounted the power Commander which I had imported from America and saved over £100 on it's UK purchase cost.


The only fly in the ointment was that I had it confirmed that my new driveshafts will not be here in time for next weeks appointment at Tony Law. So I've had to post pone this to the 6th March. This makes it highly improbable that I'll make the race that I was aiming for on the 25th March. Right nowI'm constantly being promised they'll be here in a couple of days and sent out immediately... but I've heard that at least three times now :-(

Coolant System Completed

Time is rapidly running out now. So it is imperative I crack on with the car. So this weekend I got the entire cooling system completed. As part of this process I cut the center out of the thermostat. I couldn't remove it completely as it has the rubber sealing ring that stops the thermostat housting leaking around its circumference. Cutting just the center out also leaves a slighly restricted hole which Andy Bates at AB Performance assures me is required to ensure that the water doesn't flow too quickly through the head. If the flow rate is too high not enough heat is transferred to the water as it passes though the head and overheating can be a problem.

As part of this process I also removed the old electric coolant pump (another Kilo out of the car )and directly connected the coolant lines to water pump on the side of the engine . Here I managed to use the stock aluminium pipes and hoses from the original engine, this is always a good idea because it is then easy to get replacements (although at a cost) from Mr Honda.

I also re mounted the coolant header tank, to this I fitted a splash guard to ensure that any over flow water does not hit the ECU which is now mounted directly behind it due to cabling limitations. While in the engine bay I also tidied up and bound up the engine bay wiring, and found a permanent site for the exhaust control valve which cannot be removed if the ECU is not to throw a warning code.

I'm really starting to get worried that I will not make my booked appointement on Monday 19th Feb at Tony Law exhausts. I need the diff & dry shafts and engine bay pretty much completed before I can take it to Tony as the exhaust must be routed around all these possible obstructions. At the moment the driveshafts do not look like they'll arrive in time.

New Shear Plate for the Rear of the Car...

The new shear plate turned up from Peterborugh LaserCut who did a great job, except that between us we managed to miss the fact that the drawing I sent them was not at a 1:1 scale . Therefore what they sent me was a perfect 75% scale model of the shear plate I actually needed. In fairness to them they corrected the mistake at no extra charge but I couldn't collect it for a few days, so it effectively cost me a week of time. However I can't fault them for thier service and will be using them to make up some ultra light 8mm mounting plates for the diff.

So a week later, with the correct plate collected I could finally weld it in place and stabilise the rear frame of the car. The plate fitted pretty well and only needed a small amount of fettling around the edges before I could weld it in place. The bolt holes all lined up nicely too... all very pleasing really.

So with the shear plate in place I cracked on and got all the rear brake lines replaced and clipped into place. The panal is all nicely painted up and pretty much finished except for the mounting required for the push -pull cable that will work the reverse control lever on the diff.