Hmm, yes, you’re right: as I thought it was going to, that roll cage looks absolutely awful. It might be slightly better if it matched the car’s colour. However, at the moment I have a strong temptation to remove the front hoop over the closed season and put something slightly more attractive in its place. I certainly don’t need it to be this high to clear my bonce. (Actually, it might looks slightly less bad with the rear struts in, I think.

By the way, the front of the car is at about the correct RGB ride-height, although more by luck than judgement. Something else you might see in the photo above, and in the rather manipulated one on the left, is that the rear wheels appear to be lost in the bodywork. Hopefully when I get the proper tyres, they will look a bit larger and more in keeping.

I still need to add some more clips and supports to the bodywork, although you can probably see some springs and things in the photo above.

As for the Fury, there’s another race coming up and I’ve been preparing it. This has really involved two things. First of all I’ve modified the clutch actuation so that the clevis connection to the clutch pedal is about 6mm lower than it was before. This should have the benefit of making the clutch lighter, and increasing the travel. Secondly, I’ve been repairing the reverser after it was scrunched up at the Cadwell race. I think I’ve managed to sort it, although I haven’t had time to adjust it yet and see if it really works or not.

However, for some mysterious reason I didn’t take any photos of all these things, so I can’t show you. Sorry…

As the car had been rendered rather second hand after the previous race meeting, I decided to test at Cadwell as I wanted to try and get into a groove. To summarise the test day, I was too slow; way too slow. Last year my fastest lap around here was 1:36.2. This year, the fastest I managed in testing was 1:38.2. Admittedly some of that was probably because it was so hot, some because the track had various re surfaced bits but the biggest effect was that the circuit had decided that putting us out with a collection of Stock Hatches and Locosts as the thing to do. I’m planning on a letter of complaint to the circuit about this as it essentially wastes my cash. The fastest RGB times are as fast as 1:34ish; the fastest Locosts and Stock Hatches are about 13 seconds slower than this. The end result of this is that testing was screwed up for both us and them. I’m not impressed.

But then, I also wasn’t impressed by the Stock Hatch driver who managed to roll his car at Barn on the out-lap. That is, on the second corner after leaving the assembly area, and before he’d even reached the start/finish line. Inevitably, he red-flagged the session, costing us all a load of cash. To be honest, if I knew who he was I’d include his name here so that googlers might find him. Perhaps luckily for him, I don’t know who he was. I do know that when the truck brought him back to the paddock he was studiously looking the other way. Quite a few of his Stock Hatch colleagues were monumentally annoyed with him…

As it was, I spent most of the test day twiddling with dampers. It was interesting to see that the car really responded to changes in the settings, although I didn’t really diverge the bump and rebound settings at all so as to avoid confusing myself too much. Mind you, I’m still not convinced that I shouldn’t have just left the old dampers on. I may even re-instate them for the next race meeting which is at Pembrey. (Yes, you’re right, that’s a really long drive!)

Back in the Lincolnshire countryside the first race day dawned nice and sunny again. Hopefully, without all those pesky slow cars on track qualifying wouldn’t be such a disaster. It was better—the fastest time was 1:37.4—but not as much as I would have liked. I ended up qualifying 5th and 6th for the two races, 3rd and 4th in class. Could be better, could be worse.

So, we lined up at the start. As usual, I was wondering about how on earth I could manage to get a better start and, true to form, I got a completely lousy one. I was 7th at the end of the first lap which actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it could have been as I’d been able to get past both Doug and Al on that first lap, drivers who’d passed me in the fracas of my awful start.

After that I was stuck behind Gary and not really making much headway, although no fault of his as he was driving in an exemplary fashion. Cadwell is pretty much an “overtaking by consent” place because of the narrowness of the track. As such, you really rely on the other drivers playing fair and Gary was doing exactly that.

And then, there was a truly horrible noise emanating from somewhere in the car. I slowed and left the circuit, although in retrospect I don’t really know why I didn’t just stop at the side of the circuit.

Back in the paddock it was clear what the noise was in that the reverse sprocket on the nose of the diff had machined a slot, as you can see, in the reverse motor assembly. In the process it had also destroyed a good deal of the rest of the assembly. I’ll have to re-build all that now; sigh.

What wasn’t clear, was how this  had happened as the reverse unit seemed firmly bolted into the chassis. Further investigation, though, showed that the front diff mountings had sheared away from the rest of the chassis. I wonder whether this was an un-noticed consequence of the Brands accident? That meant that the diff could tilt in the chassis and hence the fracas. So, I cleaned it all up and got Andy to braze the mountings back together. To be honest, brazing is Andy’s weapon of choice in these circumstances but I’m not at all sure that it’s the right thing really. However, it did work and we got the car back together, albeit reverse-less, without too much problem.

That evening, we held the annual RGB marshalls BBQ. That is, we RGBers pay for the BBQ and we invite all the marshalls to come for free. This year we were helped by John Cutmore’s Dad providing all the meat and bread for us. John’s a class A driver at the moment and his Dad is a fixture of the paddock and a great supporter of RGB. John, unfortunately, didn’t get to partake of the BBQ because he was changing the engine in his Spire. All the same, it’s a measure of the spirit in the RGB paddock that about 60 people paid £5 and, in all, we probably had about 75 people at the BBQ. A great time, essentially, was had by all.

In fact, the best aspect of the evening was that Cadwell Park is right next door to Jeremy Phillips’ (that is, the J15 designer) house. He came over to the circuit both days driving the prototype J15 with his wife, Stella, in the passenger seat. I spent a while in the day looking at the car reminding myself just how gorgeous it is. Later in the evening Anthea left the BBQ to go and have a look and returned sitting in the passenger seat with Stella driving. For some reason that I just cannot fathom she  turned down the chance to drive it herself. For some other unfathomable reason I didn’t take a photograph of them. We’re obviously both stupid…

Come the following day and the weather still seemed OK. I got the car finished off and went for a blast up the entry road and it seemed to work fine. So, hopefully if I could only get it off the line I was in for a better race after two DNFs.

As it happened, I didn’t. Bollocks.

In fact, I got a worse start than usual in that I completely stalled it. In fact, I got overtaken by the ambulance in the run to the first corner. He even told me where to pass him before Coppice.

After that it was the depressingly usual charge back through the field. This is much harder at Cadwell because of the narrowness of the track. Everything was going fine until I caught up with Neil in his BDN. This is very quick in a straight line which meant that I couldn’t outdrag him and he succeeded in keeping me behind him into the various corners.

While I was driving around (and this is probably one reason why I’m not a better race driver than I am) I was thinking that I ought to modify the clutch so that the pedal was lighter and went further. That way, perhaps, I could feel it biting better. I had hoped that I could do this by just buying a master cylinder with a smaller diameter but, it turns out, they don’t exist. So, I’m left thinking that I either need to use a different sort of master cylinder all together, or modify the pedal to use a different ratio somehow.

Back at the race, I carried on harrying Neil, up  until the last lap. I knew that I was considerably faster than him and tried my hardest on this lap. I had thought that there was a small chance into Barn where Neil didn’t seem to be blocking me. I hadn’t tried to dive up the inside as on a normal race lap as he’d probably just have outdragged me on the exit anyway as my speed would have been hugely compromised. However, on the last lap that might not be the case as the start finish line was only half way to the next corner, Coppice.

So, I made a superhuman effort, and Neil, as he had on all previous laps, was rather slow out of the hairpin anyway. In that position I got right up alongside him into Barn. In fact, the video and the subsequent rubber evidence shows that the nose of my car was probably about 400mm or so behind his: the diameter of a tyre. However, he obviously didn’t see me and turned straight into me and there was a thump. I recovered all right and made it to the line. However, I could see Neil spinning in my mirrors.

I can’t admit to feeling good about this, but I’ve showed the video to many people, including other racers in different formulae, and they’re unanimous in that it was a fair, although tough, move. See what you think, here’s the last lap:

Luckily Neil was very good about things later and we shook hands on it. I’m still not exactly happy about it though. Although I’ve been punted off I don’t think I’ve ever done this to another racer.

So, I need to check the car over and find a way of making the clutch easier to use. Hopefully, I’ll also put in some time on the J15 which must be feeling a bit unloved at the moment.

Still, with that fond look backwards I needed to actually get the car together again for the next meeting. As I said last time I found out that the rear wishbone was bent and so I had to make a new one. Here it is, respendent in its colourful, er, grey finish.

I needed to re-install that in the right rear of the car and then, tedium warning, set up everything. As that was such a nice thought I decided to make life much harder for myself by actually fitting the new dampers I’d bought for the J15 to the Fury. That should confuse me. Problem is, that means I’ll lose the entire suspension settings and have to reset everything up. Everything includes ride height, corner weighting, all the wheel cambers, front toe, rear toe and “stringing” (making sure the rear wheels actually point at the front ones). As everything affects everything else that’s pretty tedious. Still, it had to be done. First step, though, was to actually put it together and here’s the right rear corner with its new damper and new wishbone. The rest of it’s still pretty grubby though.

That left the bodywork. When he was over the other week Adrian had done a sterling job of patching up the sidepod. I still needed, though, to pretty it up a bit. So, I took off the mould that Adrian had used (some aluminium sheet), and waved some filler around and sanded it down. A measure of the care with which I treat the bodywork these days can be derived from the fact that the finest grade of abrasive paper I used for this was 120 grit.

After that, I waved some paint at it (see, I’m quite blasé these days) and fitted it back on the chassis, as you can see. Of course, the problem is that bodywork like this never really fits right and making everything fit is pretty much about pushing it forcefully into position.

It was done after a while and I finished off with a celebratory wash so that it looks less like a mobile shed and pushed it back into the side of the garage where it assume its prior unloved situation. Problem is, it’s probably realised that I do care about it and therefore won’t go so well at the next race meeting. I shall endeavour to thrash it within an inch of its life to teach it who the boss really is though.

First thing was to clear all the gravel out of the tunnel, you can see what it was like above. Bear in mind that the car has a complete front and read undertray. That this much gravel got into the tunnel gives you some sort of indication how much there was in the rest of the car. In fact, I took all of the brakes off so as to make sure there weren’t any little bits sitting there waiting to jam up the brakes at an inopportune moment.

The biggest problem, though, looked to be this. I knew something was wrong with this suspension mounting. I’d thought I’d have to take the diff out and then I realised that I could just take the seat back off. As you can see the U-mount is partially torn away from the chassis. In fact, it doesn’t look as if my weld has penetrated too well here.

So, I took the wishbone and everything off, battered it all back into place and patched it up.

I knew that the upright was mullered and I had originally thought that I’d got a spare. However, it turned out that my spare was for the other side of the car. So, I phoned BGH and they said they had exactly one and that they’d send it to me. That it hasn’t turned up yet isn’t worrying me in the slightest…

In the meantime, I thought I’d put the wishbone and everything back in. In the process of doing this I discovered that the wishbone was twisted. It’s essentially flat but when you lay it on a flat surface one corner sticks up by about 20mm. This is probably not a Good Thing. So, swearing slightly, I dug out the jig I made a few years ago and set about making a new one. Luckily I’ve got the various bits of steel and the bushes that  I need. The photo shows it in an early stage of construction. Of course, since I made these originally, I’ve acquired a lathe; have I mentioned this at all? So, things are a bit easier now and I don’t have to traipse up to the wilds of Eloi to use Dan‘s lathe.

In fact, as I write, the upright’s arrived. Phew… So, with luck, I’ll be able to get this all back together in time for the next race. In fact, I’m considering a minor tweak in that I might fit the double-adjustable dampers that I got the other day to the Fury. As I’m doing a test day it might help to see where I can get to and will provide a bit of information to help with the J15 when I finally get the thing on track. I could easily just convert back to the single adjustables though. On that subject I phoned Protech to tell them I hadn’t paid, and they said that as I’d just bought four more dampers from them they were repairing the single adjustable for free. Super service, I’m very very impressed.

As to what caused all this grief, there’s various videos been posted so you can see where I came to grief from many points of view. What’s more, this race is going to feature in a TV programme on Motors TV in a few weeks (there will also be a copy of the programme here). You never know, you might see me in it…

Here’s Al’s video where you can see how I came to grief at Druids. Or, rather, someone else applied the grief to me at about 26 seconds in. It seems that the BTCC is having an effect…

As to the J15, well progress has stalled a bit the last few days. I did make a bit of start getting the front bodywork fitted. In particular I mounted the carbon fibre/epoxy splitter I made on the front of the car, as in the photo.

However, so far this isn’t good enough as the aluminium floor that the splitter is connected to isn’t up to the job. I did make a strap to support the splitter but it allows the rear of the panel to lift which isn’t good enough. I need to think harder how to do this, when the Fury is well again…

I’ve been thinking that I might end up doing all of this season’s RGB races in the Fury. I’ll bust a gut to get the J15 ready for the Birkett though. Especially as that’s going to be on the “Historic GP circuit” this year, which is what was the GP circuit up until this year. Of course, we’ll see the new “Arena” circuit in operation for the upcoming British GP. Pity that it cuts out Bridge though…

As the super-duper dampers supposedly being built by my friend Dave have never appeared, as it was becoming increasingly apparently that there’s no point relying on something made out of vapour and wishes I finally decided to go elsewhere.

As I’ve had good experience of the Protech dampers in the past I decided to buy some of their new double adjustables. They arrived earlier this week and here’s one disporting itself languidly on the kitchen table. Of course, this means there will be 8 things to twiddle on the dampers which should confuse me alarmingly. The only problem I can see so far is that the twiddlers (and it’s black for bump, red for rebound) are really a bit close together and it could be rather tricky to adjust at the circuit.

The other super-duper thing was that I sent off the damper that I bent at Brands to Protech on Monday afternoon. Absolutely amazingly, when I got home yesterday it was back; this time complete with a rod that was straight. They don’t even appear to have asked me for any money which is odd. I’ll phone them to make sure I do pay them…

So, a big vote of thanks for Protech who, as before, get a prize for truly superior customer service. Fantastic stuff.

It finally stopped raining at about 0345; I was awake for some reason. In the morning, though, it was bitterly cold and we all spent a lot of time standing around getting windswept.

I’d signed on for the Allcomers race so as to get a bit of extra practice and that was the first race of the day, and so we were in scrutineering at 0800, still shivering. And then it was out for qualifying. However, the track was still pretty slippery so it was clear that there weren’t going to be any fastest times set. My goal for the weekend was to get below 50s. My previous FL was 50.4 and I reckoned it ought to be possible to get below that. However, in the Allcomers quali the fastest I managed was 55seconds. That was a mere 8th on the grid, behind a couple of class C cars! I knew I was being tentative but that was annoying. Worst, really, were the number of yellow flags. I don’t think I got a single clear lap the whole time. I don’t understand why people throw their cars off the road, especially, as often happens, on the first lap. Surely, you’d spend a couple of laps looking for where the slippy stuff was? Here it was clearly at the Esses, although everywhere was fairly greasy.

Next up was RGB qualifying. This was now important and I got into the assembly area earlyish. What’s more, the weather now seemed to be decidely better and it seemed likely that a decent lap was possible. Still, I didn’t really seem to be able to get a lap together; it would have been a lot easier with a dry quali for the Allcomers earlier. And then they red-flagged the session. I can’t actually remember why and as I forgot to turn the video on I can’t really remind myself. What’s more, I got pulled up in front of the beak for overtaking under a yellow in this session. I’m almost positive that the yellow must have come out when I was looking past the post but I can’t prove it. It’s  a bit problem, in general, in that the posts are sited in a straight line along from the straights, in a misguided belief that that’s where a driver would be looking. However, we’re all looking through the next corner so it’s surprisingly hard to see the straight on posts. Oh well… The clerk did say that they’d got some enthusiastic new observers out so perhaps I was a victim of that.

After the red they, for some reason, guided us back into the paddock. That seemed really odd and I went back round to the assembly area to see if the session had really finished. It turned out that it hadn’t. I think only about four of us realised that but that meant the track was really empty. In the first session I’d got down to 50.06 but that was still above 50s! On the out lap I concentrated on getting the car warm and dropping back from the others; I was last out of this small group. Then I went for it and was immediately rewarded by a 49.8 second lap! And, that was with a rather unpleasant slide at Devils Elbow that meant I lost nearly two tenths in that corner alone.

Here’s the video of that lap, which turned out for the fastest, although another one beat it to it:

That all left me 4th on the grid, and in the class B pole which was rather pleasing.

So, after some lunch it was time for the Allcomers race. I nearly didn’t do the race but thought that a practice start would be useful. So, when the lights went out I got a half-decent start and ended up in about 6th place. I was behind Doug Carter (class A RGB) and further up the field was Colin (class C RGB) who’d got a really good grid slot. After a bit of ducking and diving I got past Doug at the Elbow where my car seemed really quick. In fact, I’d managed to get to the point of driving around it completely flat, although it needed short-shifting into 4th before the corner to do it, with 5th having to be grabbed in the exit. Then Colin was in front and I did the same thing to him, although slightly questionably because I’d slid a bit wide at the apex.

Then there was this socking great Marcos a hundred metres or so down the track. It was reputed to have a 6 litre engine was therefore really quick in a straight line, but slow around the twistier bits, not that Mallory has too many of those. However, I hauled him in fairly easily. I was then fairly lucky to come up to the hairpin in a collection of other cars and I got past him too at the Elbow. However it seemed unlikely that it’d last as he’d pass me too easily on the straight, unless I was silly about blocking him which I didn’t want to do; if nothing else his car was probably more than twice the weight of mine. So, round on the back straight he just powered up the inside and then, on turn in (for the right hander) turned sharp left into my car. I only just managed to keep it together and promptly buzzed the engine because my head was all over the place. I really can’t imagine why he did this. He was easily past me, I’d left him enough room and the corner was clearly his.

See for yourself in this video of the race, the important bit is around 6:30 into the race:

Still, ho hum. I did wonder if we were going to get called to the beak later, especially as it was at the same corner where I’d be called for earlier on. Nothing happened though and I couldn’t face some sort of process. I still can’t understand why people drive like this though.

After this coming together I instantly started driving slower. I was worried about the engine and everyone started passing me again. So, I pulled in to retire, at the same moment as the race was red-flagged anyway.

Back in the paddock I worried about the engine but we checked over it, later on the logs said I’d got up to 13,800 RPM is a bit of a concern. However, we checked the valve clearances and all seemed fine. We did discover that the front suspension alignment was slightly out, but probably not enough to explain why I was suddenly 2 seconds a lap slow. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was all in the head.

So, later on it was the RGB race. As I said, I was 4th on the grid. However, this time I got a truly horrible start and after a bit of sorting out I was in 5th place, first in class B but with Tony Gaunt (who’s also B) just behind me. This was like it had been at Snetterton last year when Tony stuck behind me like glue and managed to go way quicker in the race than he’d done in qualifying.

It seemed to be the same this time. Tony had done 50.7 in qualifying but this time he did a whole sequence of laps that were way faster than this! However, I managed to keep him behind me and, towards the end of the race, managed to pull out a bit of a gap.

Still that was another class win and I thought I ought to have got fastest lap. However, when the results sheets appeared Tony had done a 49.5 early on in the race so he got the point for fastest lap. Good on him! One encouraging aspect of this is that Tony’s car is a Riot with a home-designed body on it. In essence, therefore, it’s the same sort of car as my new J15. That at least appears to show that the car can do decent times which is a real encouragement.

So, battle is rejoined at Brands in a few weeks. I’m looking forward to it. In the meantime, I’ll get on with the J15. I’ll tell you in the next post what I’ve been doing.

In order to get to this state I had to repair the damage to the right rear of the car caused by being attacked by an MR2 during the Birkett. There was actually rather more damage than I thought with the undertray being bent, the bodywork fixings having been broken and, worst of all, the right rear suspension upright being bent. Hence I’ve had to spent a lot of time taking that corner of the car to bits and straightening everything I could, and replacing various bits that I couldn’t repair.

I’ve also done loads of other bits: changed the engine oil, replaced a broken headlamp, re-aligned the suspension (which took ages), changed back to my proper race numbers, checked all the fluids including the diff oil and even checked the video and data logging systems.

However, I’m now ready to go. Mind you, I feel as if I’ve wasted the weekend when I could have been building the J15. Hence, I’ve promised myself that if I end up at the end of a race weekend with a Fury that’s going to take a lot of time to prep for the next race, then I’ll skip the race and concentrate on the J15 instead.

I have, though, done a few bits for the J15 since the last post. I’ve designed and made the fuel tank. As you can see, I’ve decided to make it out of cardboard instead of the normal aluminium. this way it’s a lot lighter which should help slightly.

Most entertaining though, was the first trip out for the J15. Because I needed to swap the cars around so as to get access to the Fury I took the J15 on a walk around the drive.  The photo on the right shows it’s back in the garage after a 47-point turn in the drive so as to swap it around with the Fury.

One intriguing things about having both the cars on the ground next door to each other is the obvious differences. The J15 is clearly going to be shorter in the body although the wheelbase is actually about 150mm longer than the Fury’s. It’s also apparent how short the J15 steering column, which is exposed in a very obvious way at the moment, compared to the Fury’s. This is due to the driver being nearer to the front in the mid-engined car; something that was always going to be the car but is made graphically obvious like this.

The biggest problem now is swapping the cars back over again. What’s more, I need those shiny wheels back as they’re one of my sets of Fury race wheels…

It all started on the Friday when I went down to Brands for a relaxing bit of testing in the morning, intending to spend the afternoon doing some minor fettling and possibly car washing. I even had some assistance there as Tom had come along to Brands to help out which was great.

Not knowing what was to come, we got the car ready and trundled over to the pitlane for the first session of the day. I just wanted to get into an early groove and then we could try a few setup things. Out I went. I have a bad habit of taking too long to get up to speed so in the first part of the session pushed on. So then they red-flagged the session. I came in and went out again and did a 53.2 which was a way off my fastest lap of 52.8 but at least it was in the vicinity.

So, I came in an Tom checked the tyre pressures, which it turned out were pretty much correct. Nice having someone who can do this, though, while I was sitting in the car. I, of course, was wearing my new HANS device. I felt a bit like a turkey trussed up for Christmas but it’d probably  be OK.

Then I was off again and in the exit lane, the car stuttered. And then it carried on doing so for a couple of laps. I’ve had misfires before and they’re frustrating to find. I came in and we tried the obvious things, looking at electrical connections but still the misfire remained. In fact, at the end of the session I had trouble driving back to the paddock through the exit tunnel, which has a bit of a hill in it.

Back in the paddock and we couldn’t find a problem, and the car was fine driving around the paddock, even in quite a brutal fashion.

So, to cut a long story short, that was our day. We tried one thing after another trying to find this misfire, which only seemed to happen under load and at highish revs. I made a large number of forays onto the circuit to do just an out lap. Along the way we changed all sorts of things even including the fuel, all to no avail.

At the end of the day, with a race meeting the next day, we moved the motorhome over into the pits area, which RGB had been allocated for the race, and say and wondered what the problem was. To be honest, I felt pretty down about it all; it all seemed very reminiscent of a lousy weekend in Snetterton back in March. At least this time I knew it wasn’t the cat.

Saturday morning dawned bright and clear, it looked a good day for racing. At least it would if your car worked. I had signed up for the BikeSports races as well and went out for an early qualifying with them, having changed a few more things overnight. Rats. It still didn’t work. So, I struggled through my three laps which you need to do to get onto the grid without having to go cap in hand to the Clerk of the Course. FL was a 62.27, good enough for last place on the grid. Sigh…

So, we changed a few more things before RGB qualification and I went out again. And, again, it was still useless. Mind you, I managed a significant improvement to 59.98 in this session, again good enough for last spot on the grid. Mind you, my qualifying time for my very first race back in 2004, which was on this circuit, was 63 seconds and I seemed to be whizzing along. I got lapped twice in the race though, even though I got the time down to 59 seconds.

Enough of the reminiscence. Back in the garage, we looked again. Things seemed to have got worse in that the engine wouldn’t run properly even without load in the garage, at least not above 8000 RPM. Then Tom noticed something, I knew it was useful having him here. He noticed that smoke coming out of the catch tank. That is, the crankcase must have been being pressurised which is really very bad news as it means something seriously awry inside the engine.

Sod it, that was my weekend done.

However, as has happened before, I got set on by others. Andy pointed out that he had another engine on his truck which I could relieve him of, in exchange for a quantity of my Earth pounds. Ah, umm. Surely we wouldn’t have time to change it would we, especially as they’d just announced that all the races had been brought forward by 30 mins?

However, there was probably no problem trying. We had loads and loads of offers of help and decided to get stuck in. Tom drove over to the paddock and arrived back with the tailgate on his car open and Andy sitting inside with a new CBR1000.

Essentially, we all, and there were lots of us, worked like buggery for hours taking the engine out, swapping all the ancillaries over like the sump and the specially modified water pump. The biggest problem was the prop bolts which are always tricky and were even more so this time due to the copious quantities of loctite on them. Tom and I were helped in all this by lots of people but special mention must go to Colin, Roger, Tim and the two Andys. Miraculously, the Locost race took ages to get going having been red-flagged and then Stock Hatch did their usual service too. So, things were looking up.

We finally got everything back together and spun the engine round to try and get some oil pressure. That just about flattened the battery but it did arrive and we tried to fire it up. The flat battery wasn’t helping but it managed it and burst into life! What’s more, all of the electrics seemed to be connected and there weren’t any fluids whizzing out. Most gratifyingly, the cooling system hadn’t needed any bleeding at all; we’d just bunged in the coolant and put the lid on it. The addition of the bleed tube had clearly been a good idea.

The RGB race had, by this time, already been called and all my co-racers were sitting in the assembly area. In the fact the assembly area marshall came along to see if we were going to make it! (This is why I like the 750 club…) I had just had time to clean the grime off my hands and get my race gear on. So, I climbed in an drove off to the assembly area, taking a rather unorthodox route with the permission of the marshall mentioned. When I got to the assembly area there was a huge cheer and beeping of horns from all the other RGBers! I was really rather touched.

I sat there for about 2 mins with the car idling. Andy was even heard to mutter that we’d had two minutes to spare and we could have done slower. And then the engine stopped!

A posse of helpers descended on the car and poked and prodded everything and, for some reason it just started again. Andy reckons that the flat battery couldn’t handle the engine just idling which is a possibility, I reckon. Finally, having promised Andy faithfully that I’d take it careful, I trundled out to my grid slot.

We got a green flag lap because there was lots of oil, and cement dust, on the circuit from the previous race. The car seemed to go OK on that and, when the lights went out I took it easy, as instructed for about 80% of the lap. After that, I though, I might as well go for it. So I did and had a ball! This was the second race from last on the grid and I passed loads of people along the way, like I did last time. So much so that the edited highlights are probably worth looking at:

I equalled my previous fastest lap in the race, which considering that I’d left off things like the undertray, is pretty good. (Or, perhaps the undertray makes no difference at all?) I ended up 2nd in class and 7th on the track which was pretty good from essentially last at the end of the first lap. In the RGB presentation later I got awarded the driver of the day award which was very gratifying, and again very touching.

Later on, I did the second BikeSports race having decided that it’d be rude not to. To be honest it was pretty boring after I’d hunted down David Wale and passed him. (David, you will remember, is the car that I spent all of the last race at Anglesey trying to get past.) Interestingly, my FL in the BikeSports race was 52.5 which is another 3 tenths faster. Mind you, my theoretical fastest lap is now 51.7 to which it’d be nice to get nearer.

But then we won’t be back at Brands now until next year. Be nice to start at the proper place when we do come back…

I took the exhaust off again and, lo and behold, the cat is showing signs of incipient degradation. It’s got a way to go yet but you can clearly see that  the matrix is coming to bits and there are various clearly hot spots which are just about to block up the exhaust.

To say that I’m hacked off about this is the understatement of the geological era. There must be someone whose legs I could rip off… I had had plans to do all sorts of clever things to the car this weekend. It looks, instead, as if I’ll be welding…

With that done I can hopefully ignore the exhaust for a while, albeit worrying all the time about whether the cat is just wasting away for some mysterious reason.

Next thing was to sort the oil system. As shown a while ago I was refitting the oil cooler. However, a problem arose in that the new cooler that I bought a while ago to replace the one that sprung a leak turned out to have nadgered connection. It looked as though an elephant had sat on the threaded fluid boss on the top of the cooler. I’ll have to phone Rally Design tomorrow and whinge. Problem is, I got this new one about 6 months ago… In the meantime I took the sandwich plate off again…

I then refilled the oil system. I’d drained it because one problem of the engine running rich is potentially that a lot of fuel ends up in the sump, contaminating the oil. So, Mr Castrol is again richer for yet another purchase of oil by me.

Apart from the oil system I also wanted to modify the cooling system. It now appears that I’m not the only one to have had horrendous problems getting the air locks out of the CBR1000 cooling system. I wanted to try putting a bleed in from near the head to the top of the header tank. I don’t know if this is the right thing to do but it seems to be worth a try. I made up this ally pipe connection which connects to a tee inserted into the top hose using a neat little gadget that just fits in the side of the hose. It remains tobe seen whether it leaks or not.

With the fluids sorted, and the exhaust back on, I went ahead and made sure I’d got oil pressure. (The number of times I’ve taken the plugs out of a Fireblade engine and spun the motor on the starter until I’ve got  oil pressure must now be in the hundreds.) Then, with the plugs back in again, I pressed the starter button.

Nothing. Well, the engine went round but nothing else happened. I then remembered that I’d disconnected the fuel pump to make sure that I didn’t pump fuel all over the place so I reconnected it.

Still nothing. I spent ages looking at the car, trying to work out what I’d done wrong before I started the time-honoured starting diagnostic procedure. (You know the one: look for a spark, check that the fuel’s there, etc.) Luckily, before I started all this it dawned on me that as I’d had the pump out I’d had to siphon all the fuel out of the tank. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

With that done, it fired up with alacrity. What’s more, it seemed to rev properly. Not really surprising as presumably the exhaust system is now letting gasses out of the engine as it’s intended to.

So, I could move onto the things that I wanted to do other than just fixing the car. The first was to try fitting an Exhaust Gas Circulation Valve, as seen just above. This is a gadget that adjusts the back pressure into the engine on the bike and is essentially a servo-motor controlled flap in the tail pipe. The ECU has always complained before about the lack of one. I wasn’t worried about this but Andy now thinks that it’s worth a couple of bhp, so I wired it up. What I’d like to do is to create an electronic analogue of the mechanical gubbins but I haven’t worked out how to do that yet. Interestingly, the ECU has always had two fault codes in there. One relates to the EGCV, which has now gone away, and one to the lack of the steering damper that is obviously not present. Although the latter fault code is still thrown up by the ECU it doesn’t cause the engine management light to come on, presumably as it’s not an engine management issue.

With these bits done, and a bit more faffing about over the next week or so, I’ll be able to get the car properly back together so that I can take it on its trip to PDQ.