More progress to report :-)

First up I completed the wiring for the new rainlight that is now required by this year's regulations, OOOOh look a glowing set of LEDS that look almost identical to the last set of glowing LEDS that were fitted there. You'll have spotted a pattern that most of my jobs are now the little things that are requried to meet the RGB series regulations. This is a good sign as it means that I am now focusing on the smaller jobs rather than major structural or mechanical components, ERGO I'm getting to the end of this.

Next it was on to that leaky front Calliper. A quick test on Tuesday night indicated that both the left and right calipers were leaking when under heavy pedal pressure. Both from the same place; where the top halves of the caliper are joined by the removable aluminium spacer. If you remember the picture of the handbrake calipers this is where the fluid cross over drillings are located and the two sides are pressure sealed by a rubber O ring. I suspected that the O rings had aged and failed and a call to Hi-Spec confirmed that this can happen. So a couple of rebuild kits were duly ordered and should be here for the weekend. That will mean I need to disassemble the calipers which in turn means I'll need to bleed the brakes ....again!. Shouldn't be any bubbles in my fluid. No sir!.

The other job identified last weekend was that the reverse control needed a control lever to get sufficient mechanical advantage. So I've quickly fabbed one up out of a strip of ali bar stock. This now makes operation of the reverse very easy. So easy in fact that I was concerned that the system would jump out of drive if knocked by my arm, so I fitted a retaining spring to the diff to hold it in the forward drive position. Of course this does mean that I'll have to manually hold it in the reverse position to actually go backwards, but this is preferable to false diff neutrals in a race, also it means it should slip in of it's own accord If I happen to miss the engagement dogs. Also as is my own particular habit I labelled it up clearly because it is slightly counter intuitive (pull back to go forward) but also because I forget stuff!

The other major system ( and the last to be done) that was completed this evening was the handbrake, having finally got calipers to fit I needed to connect them to the handbrake lever. This entailed welding a couple of mounting plates in the rear frame (next time I'll get these made up as part of the laser cut plates). And adjusting the sierra handbrake cable to fit. It took me a couple of attempts to get the routing tight so that the wires didn't get cooked on the exhaust but in the end we got there. And I now have a working hand brake..... well working good enough to pass scrutineering. :-)

The plates will need painting but this is hardly essential before Brands on the 20th.

Then came another regs job. All chain driven cars must have a chain guard fitted to stop the chain exiting upwards or rearwards if it snaps (and they do). So a few minutes were spent with some Ali angle and I got about 60% of this particular job complete. Other small jobs that got done in the evenings this week included torquing and staking the front hub nuts in place, replacing the DL1 sensor, fitting locknuts to the Diff spacer plates and lockwiring the diff and sump plugs.

The To-Do list now numbers just 22 items totalling about 14 hours in estimates and ranges from essential stuff like Set Toe In, Ride Height and corner weighting (4 hours) to the less vital .. check and adjust pedals for heel toe (10 mins) and fit race numbers (15 mins) and finally to the nice if time category including polishing the beast.