Nearly There!

Well over the last weekend I've got an awful lot done, which is good. but pressure of work means that I'll have to cancel my test at Mallory and test closer to the Brands meeting on the 20th, which is less good, although it does relieve some of the time pressure.

No 1 and most importantly I've finally got a complete and working braking system and managed to fit the new 14" alloys to all four wheels for the first time. The hassle necessary to get the various combinations of calipers, disks, offset, calliper mounts, spacers, 14" wheels, leaky master cylinders, alloy bells, rotors, suspension bolts heads and brake pads into a combination that allows the car to both move without the brakes\calipers\pads binding and stop properly when you push the middle pedal is simply incomprehensible. Take my advice If you ever..... ever EVER build any sort of racer or kit car choose one that uses standard uprights (the bits that hold the hub,bearings and calipers) and standard caliper mounts. Then you can choose a known, working off the shelf kit where somebody else has invested the necessary blood sweat and tears. If you have to fabricate or sort any of this part of the car out yourself be warned it is a seemingly endless trail of frustration and woe.

The latest in a long stream of issues was that the pad depth on my Mintex 1144 pads was too thick to fit across the new 9mm rotors, what this means is that you a) have to grind slightly one edge of the pad backing pad and b) reduce the thickness of the friction material a bit using a file simply to get the pads to fit over the disks and then to get them both to fit in the caliper slot. And this despite me ordering calipers with a slot specifically tailored for 9-12mm rotors. I chatted to Hi-spec about this and they said "yeah!.... we're having lots of trouble with the pad manufacturers altering either backing plate designs or pad depth..... file em to fit".

Bah filing pads every time I need to change them seems like a job I don't need.

Hmmp, anyway after an inordinate amount of frustrating tomfoolery (which also included me copiously testing my garage floor paint's immunity to brake fluid) everything was finally fitted and ready for bleeding. Bleeding the system identified a couple of leaking unions (one of which was on a master cylinder which then had to be replaced). But eventually we got there. And I finally have a working brake system. Due to replacing the master cylinders and cleaning the pedal in the last post I probably need to adjust the pedal rest position to allow me to heel and toe properly but compared to getting to this point that should be a doddle.

It was only later that I noticed a slight leak on the front left caliper that I'll need to investigate next week.

While I spent a "pleasurable" few hours sorting out the brakes Duncan was fitting the exhaust more permanently. Tony Law had done a good job of fitting it, but had failed to account for the fact that the Diff slides backwards when the chain is tensioned. As a result when the Diff was in it's final position the CV boot rubbed on the exhaust can. The solution was to cut off the existing slip tube which formed the exhaust joint, and add one about 3 inches longer. This allowed the Can to be positioned further back away from the CV joint. With this sorted out he then set about fitting an axillary support to both the can and rear body support frame. By his own admission he wasn't very pleased with either his welding or the fact that he designed the whole thing "in peel". Still it is at least sturdy enough for one or two races so I'm not going to worry about it now and as always I'm more than grateful for the help.

Other stuff that got done today or in the last few days included.
Torque the front hub nuts, finalise and tighten the gear linkage, tap and fit the new gear knob that Dave T had made for me, renew rear suspension Nylocks, flush the diff with petrol and fill with new gear oil. Lock wire diff drain plug, change a couple of CV joint boots, fit new brake lights connector and replace the temporary plastice cable ties with nice stainless steel ones. Tighten rear sprocket bolts, bolt check suspension and fit new calipers.

The other major piece of work that got done in the engine bay was to complete and fit the airbox. This required connection of the secondary fuel rail to the main one via a -4 bulkhead fitting and wiring the electrics via a suitable grommet. Plus I needed to make a new cover plate for the rear of the box. I made this out of clear perspex and finally got to discard one of the last vestiges of the fire... the old airbox cover.

So now the engine bay is complete bar one little job (I'm going to re route that fuel hose left on the which looks to be in peril from a flailing chain) I have to say I'm pretty proud of it. It looks neat and tidy and properly designed.

At the end of the day, Duncan got his just desserts and had the honour of driving the beast up and down the drive.

True to form this small test identified another little job, the reverse select T bat does not provide enough mechanical advantage to make selection reverse\forward easy and so this will need a lever fabricating.

The long list of Odds and Sods.

You know I can always tell when I'm getting towards the end of a build the engine bay starts to look like it has been visited by the NASA fairies, as I finalise the cable and fuel line routing and fit the shiny silver heat protection sleeving.
I got most of this work done on Sunday, and also did some preparatory work on the running the fuel and electrical lines from the main bank of injectors to those in the airbox in readiness for fitting it to the car.

In addition I fitted the catch tank, and bolted the exhaust headers, tightened up the gear linkage and did a few other bits and bobs jobs.

I've also dismantled, lubricated and rebuilt the brake pedal as it had got a bit stiff and recalcitrant about returning to the rest position. I wondered if the master cylinder springs were getting a bit weak and so disassembled the whole lot to clean, strip and check it. Ultimately it turned out to be binding in the pedal pivot point and the MCs were fine. This whole exercise took up a couple of hours and of course I need to re bleed the brakes again.

I'm currently working towards a shake down test at Mallory Park on the 9th May, and the plan is now to complete the build and setup the car over the bank holiday weekend, then go to the test, and then work on the Bus so that I can get it through it's MOT before I need it to go to Brands on the 20th.

Time will tell :-). but currently the planets do seem to be aligning for me at long last

It Moves!

The car has today, moved forwards and backwards under it's own steam. Given that I've pretty much completely replaced the engine, transmission, clutch & brakes you can imagine the was a pretty big moment. :-).
An added advantage was that at no stage did it sound like a milkfloat and the engagement mechanism will not need adjusting in anyway as a result of other changes to the car. People have been DSQ'd for forgetting to adjust or failing to engage reverse when asked by the scrutineers.
First up I fitted the new drive chain, and then removed again once I realised I'd wrapped it around a chassis member! D'Oh! The second time around it was fine though and my new style tension blocks seems to work very well too. however looking at this picture I guess I could easily take 6" out of the wheel base of the car or move the engine back by that amount..



So after a quick check of water, oil and fluid levels and a brief repair of a weepy hose that hadn't been tightened properly during the engine refit last week we were off. 20ft up the drive and 20ft back again. 20ft up the drive and 20ft back again. Repeat until grin is firmly established :-)



Two or three things followed the test.

1. The clutch is nicely progressive with lots of feel.


2. The brake master pedal is a bit slow to return to it's proper position and feels like it needs a clean and lube.


3. The car seems reluctant to move. Getting out and pushing reveals a lot of rolling resistance.


4. The exhaust will need extending and re bracketing. When you pull the diff rearwards to tension the chain the offside CV joint boot fouls on the exhaust.


5. Engagement of forward and reverse is a bit stiff and could probably do with a lever to control it rather than the current T bar.

Of these the rolling resistance was of most concern . Was the diff a bit stiff or was it new brakes binding? I removed the pads and retested and she moved nice and easily so it was the brakes. However this did set me thinking about the Diff and how I needed to change the oil. So I emptied it out and it had a pretty nasty metallic sheen with a fair few particles of aluminium in it. Plus the magnetic sump plug had a nice furry coat of steel particles. I mentioned this to Graham at Nova and offered to strip the Diff down and inspect it. I'm not sure that I've got time for this before Brands and I don't want to miss another meeting. So a flushout with petrol and new oil will have to do until then. On reflection the steel fillings are probably from the dog teeth which engage reverse or forwards and inexpert handling could easily have had the grinding a bit.

Still something to worry about a bit later.

However, armed with a rush of enthusiasm I've set about the long list of odds and sods jobs that weren't on the critical path to movement but which must be done before we are going to the track. These included.

1. A whole bunch of wiring and electrical work, tiding and binding up looms, running a 12v feed to the DL1 for Palm dash's laptimer, fitting 6.7R resisters (actually 10x67R in parallel) to defeat the HESD linear solenoid.


2. Removing the Lambda sensor dial and cabling as Tony Law forgot to fit a mounting boss for it,


3. Running a control line to the bodywork connector so I can have an high mounted oil pressure warning light in my line of sight.


4. Tidying up on side of the car to such and extent that I can actually fit the side pod.

The last job of the day was to commence fitting the external injectors and inlet pipes to the airbox. This is a bit more difficult than it looks as the floor of the airbox must sit nicely on the engine, and the top must of course line up with the bodywork. Still I'd done most of the preparatory work previously and pretty much all that was left was to glue and rivet it all in place.

Work on the airbox also included replacing a perfectly good and previously MSA approved rain light with a new one which must now be FIA instead of MSA approved. Out goes a £7 quid unit and in comes a new unit that should have cost upwards of 40 except I got it off ebay. Bah! this just seems to be a way of adding more cost.

Still a pretty successful day all round and I seem to be running out of excuses not to be at Brands Hatch on the 19/20 of May :-)