May 5th

Following all the discussion here about the cooling system, I was contacted a while ago about the issue with the fan switches. In a nutshell there are two fan switches: the "red top", as supplied by Westfield, comes on at 87° and goes off at 77°. (Remember, the thermostat is set to 88° which makes these temperatures seem stupid.) However, the "orange top" switch operates at 106° and 92° which seems rather more sensible.

(Many thanks to David East for these details by the way. He has done the same sort of mods as I have.)

So, I got hold of the orange top switch (Ford Part number FINIS 7001611) a while ago and I finally got around to fitting it today. Of course I had to take the nose cone off again, but I'm getting better at it now. It's definitely best to leave the radiator behind by unbolting the ducting from the nose cone.

After fitting the new switch a cursory test shows that the fan does indeed only run at a more sensible time, and it goes off. There are a few runs coming up soon, including a track day, so we'll see how it goes.

May 7th

Although I haven't got any pictures (not really sure why) a bunch of people from Cambridge went up to Stoneleigh for the kit car show there. We went up in a convoy of one Ford Puma (as Jim hasn't finished his Westfield yet), three Westfields (including ours), three Caterhams and one Fisher Fury. It was a wonderfully sunny day and the cooling system behaved fine and I was able to largely forget about it, sure in the knowledge that the fan would kick in if required.

May 31st

A few weeks ago I found out a track day that was being held at a venue quite close to us. It's at Oakington airfield which is just north of Cambridge and takes place on June 17th. I signed us up a while ago and I'm really looking forward to it. You can read about the track day on the BookaTrack web site. I'll try and take lots of photos on the day and put some of them up here. The only problem is, it takes place right in the middle of Tom's exams (GCSEs) so it might not be a good idea to disturb him...

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