I’d got myself all ready well in advance, here’s the car sitting on the trailer and, after a morning lecturing to students. I jumped on the train, zoomed down to Cambridge and drove to Silverstone. There, miracles of miracles (they must have got some new security guards) we got in easily and parked up for the night.

What’s more, the weather forecast was looking good so perhaps we’d even have a dry race. So, first thing on the Friday I got the car sorted, signed on, and I was ready to go. However, looking at the track it was clear that it was still pretty wet from the overnight rain and the dew. So, I took a short detour to put the wets on (there they are in the photo above) and hence got on track a bit late.

And, spun hugely at Becketts on the out lap… Sigh. The session was really slippy and I’d neglected to remove the ARBs which I know is necessary. However, it wasn’t too big a problem, as there was the rest of the day.

So, come the second session, I went out again and was starting to press on a bit, especially as it was now properly dry. One problem was that I’d clearly got the gearing calculations wrong as I was on the limiter from about half way down the Hangar straight. I don’t think that precipitated the awful thing that was to come, but you never know… All the same, the first lap of the second session was aout 30 seconds faster than the fastest from the first and it got quicker every lap after that.

Until lap 6.

At which point, while going around Brooklands, the oil lights (there’s two of them, arranged to be dazzling) came on. Ooops. TBH, I’m not sure I killed the engine as quickly as I should have done but here’s a snapshot of the logged oil pressure. The top trace is lap 4 and the lower one is lap 5, that is the lap before the oil light came on.  The cursor is positioned about 80% of the way around Luffield and, as you can see on lap 4 the pressure was fine, on lap 5 it wasn’t very clever as it was about 50% of what it was the previous lap. Problem is, this wasn’t low enough to put the light on and at this point of the circuit I’m not looking at the gauge. (The reason it drops right down at the end is that on this lap I came in to adjust the tyre pressures.

So, after the light came on I killed the engine and coasted into the pitlane. Luckily there were some helpers there to put me back to the garage. Once there I took the engine cover off and there was oil everywhere inside the engine compartment. at first I wondered about a rod sticking out through the block but inspection showed that wasn’t the case. After much cleaning it transpired that the cooler had sprung a leak. (These things seem to be too fragile…) As a temporary measure I took off the cooler and cleaned everything up. (And, while doing this, Damon Hill came over for a chat; his son was testing from the adjacent garage. Damon was whinging about the cost of motor racing which I thought was slightly rich going by the amount of stuff they had in that garage for one chap.)

With that done, we added some more oil. (Not a huge amount, it doesn’t take much oil to make a quite spectacular mess.) And then I started the engine. The pressure seemed OK but I must admit I wasn’t too happy as the engine didn’t sound right.

All the same, we retired for the night, and set up everything for the race the next day. It dawned cold and damp but, again, the forecast was to clear up which looked right. I was in the second qualifying session, and trundled over to the rather unusually sited assembly area. On the way over, with the engine essentially ticking over the oil light came on again. Now, as the light comes one at 10psi this isn’t unknown when the oil’s really hot. Problem is, it wasn’t. In the queue I fretted and tried a few things but it was clear that something was up. Bugger…

So, I pulled out and that was the end of my Birkett. My team ended up coming 10th on the road which is pretty good seeing as we were down to 4 cars and we had a couple of mishaps. What’s to bet that it rains, again, next year.

I’ve decided to strip the engine myself rather than taking it to Andy, mainly for interest. I’m assuming that I’m going to find some run shells in there. I hope so as something more than that could be expensive. It’s not going to be cheap though, I looked up the prices of new shells and fell off my chair. A complete new set of big end and main shells will be about £250 which is horrible. Cheaper than a new engine though. I’ll just have to hope there isn’t more damage in there when I get in there…

So, I’ve started putting the car in position to strip things over the winter. I’ve taken all the bodywork, and have even secreted a bit of it in the garage roof as seen here. (A long time ago I screwed some hooks up here to hand the Westfield bodywork here. They’re still there…)

Anyway, that’s the absolute end of the racing season. Watch this space for the tale of the winter fixes and upgrades…

So, I made those components and re-setup all the suspension, yet again. I must admit, I’ve no idea why I didn’t do this originally. It’s much better like this. So much so that when I next get a break in proceedings, I’ll do the same thing for the front suspension components. In many ways those will be easier. The rear ones are a bit tricky because of making everything articulate properly with respect to driveshaft and so on. Mind you, all this is giving me some very good ideas on how to completely re-build the rear end of the car. At the moment I’m trying to resist that though.

I wanted to remake the rear spoiler as it was rather gruesome. What’s more, I’m not at all sure that the middle part of the spoiler, behind me and the intake gubbins, is actually doing anything. So, after a while experimenting with a large adjustable device I gave up and reverted to what I’d done before, albeit without the central component and with added adjustment. The adjustment comes because the spoiler flaps can be moved up and down and bolted in different positions. (That is, I can’t adjust them as I’m zooming down the straights.)

Of course, I have absolutely no idea whether this is going to work or not, I’ll have to see. What I’d really like to do is to put some sensors on the suspension so I could know whether there’s any down (or up) force in various situations. There never seems to be the time to do things like that though.

You may notice that I’ve cut a couple of big holes in the back. This is because it’s getting pretty hot in there and it seemed a good idea to try and let some of the heat out. If nothing else it reduces the car’s weight a bit!

Finally, as the next race is a Snetterton I want to make the rear axle ratio a bit taller. Now I’ve got sprockets this is a lot easier than it used to be. So, I bought a new 48-tooth sprocket from B+C components and cut it in half as I did before. (The yellow bits are some paint I put there so it was easy to see the cut marks.)

I did change the 52-tooth sprocket I’d used at Brands for a 50-tooth one prior to going to Daytuner last week. However, revisiting the calculations showed that I’d probably still be running out of straight line speed. It could, of course, be too tall meaning I end up changing it again. If nothing else, I’m getting quicker at changing the sprocket although no-one could say it was slick.

I finished the oil cooler duct, as seen in the photo. I hope it’s going to have some  effect, if it doesn’t I’ve got a couple of ideas as to how to persuade more air to do into it. It’s not particularly pretty though.

As you can see in the photo above, the car’s on the trailer. In fact, I was taking it to Daytuner to get the engine mapped. This was useful but not spectacular. What’s more, I’m not sure it was worthwhile going all the way to Harrogate nice though it is. I didn’t get time to go to Betty’s either…

One entertainment of the day was sitting watching the cat doing its stuff. It does make me wonder how long it can survive though:

As you can see, it’s all looking a bit hot on the overrrun.

One problem I’ve had with the car has been things getting very hot behind the seats. This doesn’t seem to be penetrating to me but it’s done a bit of damage to the odd plastic part. Hence, I’ve added a bit more exhaust wrap to try and keep the heat down. I’m less worried about the sidepod now so it should be OK.

I’ve moved the rear suspension damper top-mounts up a bit again so as to get the rear of the car down. At this rate one of my winter jobs is going to be a complete re-design of the rear suspension. I’ve had to do a bit of a bodge to try and support the modifications; I hope it doesn’t fall to bits!

There is another problem with the suspension though. Disappointingly, my lovely Delrin bearings have to be declared a bit of a failure. This is because the suspension is just not articulating properly. I think in most cases this is because the single degree of freedom that the bearings have is not matched with the suspension mounts being welded into the chassis in an exactly co-axial manner. That is, the two bearings in, say, the lower front wishbone are not exactly in line with each other.

Problem is, I’m running out of time to sort this before the Snetterton meeting. I may, yeuch, put metalastic bushes back in the wishbones… I think I’ve got time to remake the rear upper wishbones so I’m looking at a weekend of welding and painting…

I’ve got a collection of things that I want to do to the car after Brands. One is to get it mapped to see if that’s where the power is disappearing to. So, I phoned up these people who are recommended by Andy Bates and got the car booked in there for a trip before our next track outing at Snetterton. Problem is, I really need a lambda boss in the exhaust system to do that. Andy forgot to weld one in for me when he built the exhaust system. So, I got a boss from my friend  Chris up at trigger wheels (he sells the bosses for a fraction of the price that other people do) and took my tail pipe up to Andy. The chaps there welded the lamdba boss on and it’s now back in the car.

As you can see, this car which started out a few weeks ago very clean is now starting to get all grimy. It’s really difficult keeping all this stuff clean under the onslaught of the elements and track marbles.

As the next meeting is at Snetterton, with its collection of fast straights then I’d realised a while ago that I probably ought to change the gearing for there. So, I took off the 52-tooth sprocket that I’d got in place and put a 50-tooth one on instead. However, in consulting my big spreadsheet I can see that really it’s still going to be too short and I probably need to get a smaller sprocket, 48 tooth I think, before Snetterton.

Of course, I did a lot of work making changing the sprockets dead easy. Even so, it took me ages to change the thing, probably because I didn’t really know what I was doing. Hopefully next time it’ll be easier. However, I think I might have to machine a couple of slightly shorter turnbuckle links to change it again. That shouldn’t take too long though.

One real problem at Brands was the oil temperature which was, to use the technical term, sky high. Atone point it got up to about 145° which isn’t clever. So, I clearly need to improve the oil cooling. There’s two obvious ways to do this. One is to get a bigger cooler and the other is to shove more air through it.

I thought about it for a while and decided to do both of them.

First up was to mount a new cooler which is done as in the photo on the left. This is a 19-row cooler as opposed to the 13-row I had before. However, my suspicion is that the biggest problem is that there’s insufficient air getting to the cooler and getting away from the back of it.

First up, then is to arrange for a much larger duct on the inlet. It seems as though the NACA duct I as using before just wasn’t up to it. So, I’ve decided to cut a much larger hole in the sidepod, which if nothing else gets rid of some overweight GRP, and to fabricate an aluminium duct. This will be along the lines of the ducts you see on many LMP style cars. First step, though, is to cut a big hole. So, which much girding of loins I set about the sidepod with a jigsaw and it ended up looking like the next photo.

You can see the remains of the front end of the NACA duct here, I always knew that wasn’t going to work if I’m honest. You’ll have to envisage what this is going to look like with a sort of aluminium box leading down to the cooler. And without all that GRP dust.

Finally, I became convinced that the rear end of the car is still too high up after Brands. As such I need to modify the rear suspension, again. Sigh… However, I haven’t quite figured out how to do that yet because I’m running out of places to put the top spring mounting. In fact, Adrian’s coming round later to talk to me about it. He doesn’t know yet, but he is…

So, I’ve just been doing a few bits and pieces really.  First up was fixing a small problem. I found at the recent Snetterton test that when I climbed into the car I tended to whack my knee on the connector on the bottom of the Palm, breaking it! So, I’ve put a little extension on the bottom of the mounting plate to hopefully support it a bit better.

Next thing was something else I broke! This was the rear light cover, as here. I was actually using the mounting screws for this cover for holding the entire light unit into the bodywork. And, it fell apart. The cover that is. I did think about buying some new ones but remembered, in the nick of time, that it was a race so I stuck it together with Araldite; hence the tape around this unit to hold it together while the epoxy sets. I also bonded the light units into the rear bodywork so the screws now have to just support the light cover. I hope it stays in one bit this time!

You will remember that I had half a tonneau. Well, I’ve now got an entire tonneau. The driver’s side bit is a bit of a bodge because of the need to go over the screens, but hopefully it’ll keep the worst of the grot out on the trips to and from circuits.

You may remember that we have a rule in RGB, for reasons that completely escape me, that we have to have catalytic converters in the cars. The only way we’ve found of making these survive is to put a slice of cat material in the very end of the tailpipe so I’ve done the same. You can see it in the next picture sticking out of the side of the car in a rather ugly manner.

Whether it does any good here is open to considerable doubt. It definitely does something because you can often see the cat material glowing which it wouldn’t do unless it was catalysing some reaction. Hopefully it won’t get too hot here. I’ve put a bit of alumiumium around the hole to make it slightly more heat insensitive but I’m always rather worried about setting the car on fire, for some odd reason. We’ll see how it goes.

Lastly, I’ve said for a while that I want to make some sort of spoiler as a test part to try. So, I’ve been making this rather ugly contrivance for the rear of the car. As you can probably tell, I haven’t finished yet.

The idea is that on the next test I’ll try the car without this (it’s fairly easy to fit and remove) and then I’ll try it with it to hopefully get some idea whether it’s a good idea. As always with aerodynamic things it’s really about efficiency.  That is, anyone can make downforce, it’s doing it without increasing drag that’s the issue. Obviously, this thing is going to increase drag…

When we went to Snetterton last the inside of the unprotected car got soaked. In order to stop this happening I need to make some sort of tonneau cover. I’d also like to make something that stops some of the whirlpooling of air inside the cockpit that these sorts of cars tend to make.

I made a tonneau for the Fury but it was a bit naff really. So I decided to do something a bit better this time. So, I made the thing in the photo on the right.

Note that this is actually seamed. What’s more, I did it myself. Even I can sew with the aid of a sewing machine; it’s just like using a lathe really. You will have noticed that there’s only half of this. This is because the shape of the two sides of the car are dramatically different because of the screen. Hence, I’ve got a wacky idea involving the use of magnets to fit a cover to the other side. I haven’t had time to effect it yet, though.

So, I’m just about ready to go off testing again in a few days. Doubtless it’ll pour down with rain again…

That doesn’t connect up close enough to the radiator though, so I made a couple of “ears” for the radiator, like the one in the next photo. Hopefully, this’ll at least get air into the radiator. I really need to test the car to find out though. Problem is, with it being a bit parky outside it isn’t a great test.

After a week spent nervously drumming my fingers on the table, I had a phone call from Jonathan, who was making the driveshafts, to say that they were ready. So, not wanting to commit them to the uncertain ministrations of the postal services, I nipped up to South Yorkshire very early in the morning and picked them up. Here they are, next to the previous ones on the workbench. You can probably see that they’re just a smidgeon (a technical term, that) shorter than the old ones were.

I’m trying hard not to think how much this faux pas has cost me. Not being too successful at the moment though.  Once I had these I re-installed the complete rear suspension. Along the way I installed the joints with the proper CV and Tripode greases that I’d located. (OK, Jonathan told me about them.) The latter stuff is the rather iridescent colour shown on the photo here.

Once all that was together it looked much the same as it did before; but, it didn’t come to a grinding halt at 80% bump which was a great relief. What’s more, I don’t think the tripodes are going to fall out of the cups on the diff either. (The shafts are located firmly in the outer CV joints which are of the Lobro style. The plunge movement required is provided by the tripodes moving in three big grooves in the inner bearing cup.)

One minor issue was that the hub nuts, when tightened up, move to a position where the built in nut-staking mechanism can’t be used as it’s past the staking groove in the stub axle. I got around this by maching a couple of thick thrust washers, like the one in the photo. I got rather a lot of chatter while parting this, hence the not totally smooth top surface, Hopefully it won’t be too big a deal. Now I just need to torque up the hub nuts to the final torque, which will be done by standing at the right point on a breaker bar, and staking the nuts in position.

You may remember a while ago I put a NACA duct in the sidepod to supply air to the oil cooler. To, hopefully, make sure this does its job I put a bit of ducting in to point straight at the cooler. As you can see, it has to go around a rather inconveniently placed bit of chassis.

The weird lumpy bits of GRP are a consequence of the extension I had to make to the sidepod. The lumps are where the rivets were in the strips of aluminium I originally used (and in fact wish were still there) to initially extend the sidepod.

And that, barring a million little things still to do and many, many, improvements that I’ve been hatching, is just about it. I pushed the car out so as to turn it round so that I can put it on the trailer when the time comes. While out, I took a few photos of it. Yes, I know, the front of the roll cage is too high but I’ve got a plan to fix that. Apart from that, I reckon it looks pretty good. If I had the time and the inclination, I’d spray the roll cage black, I might still do so in fact.

Inevitably, the to-do list is not empty though. At least the jobs get smaller overall: Pre test: Torque and stake hub nuts. Pre race: Think about adding additional triangulation to the engine compartment. Think about adding some yellow. Get a lambda boss welded into the exhaust system. While this is being done, get the little fitting on the exhaust that I damaged re-welded. Add catalytic converter to tail pipe. Long term: Get the car on a rolling road. Consider ducting radiator out of  bonnet top. This depends on how well it cools and how hot my feet get. Come up with some way of making cockpit adjustable ARBs. Or, possibly, make some skinnier ARBs. Make some dive-planes Make a tonneau cover. Put some trim around the hole in the sidepod from whence the exhaust tailpipe emerges.

I did manage to get the CVs off the driveshafts. Thanks for everyone that mailed me. In essence, it seems as though my shafts are pretty tight on the splines. I finally managed to get them off by holding the spring clip out of the way with some circlip pliers, assisted by a screwdriver, and using a hammer to tap the joint off the shaft. Actually, perhaps that should welt the joint off the shaft. Many people commented that it should drop off. There was no way on earth these were going to do that, even when my trusty assistant Adrian pulled and yanked on the joint it didn’t budge. It only moved when he hit it. That’s really what I’d been doing on my own, but having Adrian here was the big difference.

While I’m waiting for the new shafts, I’ve been pressing on with the final little bits and pieces. One thing I’d been fretting about for ages was whether the angle of actuation of the rear ARB links was right. A consequence of shifting up the top spring mounts has been that this was exacerbated. Hence I decided to move the ARB up. I did look for another place for it but decided that it had to stay here. So, I welded some little standoffs onto the chassis and shifted it up by a few inches. As a consequence I had to make some new drop-links (little items that require an age hunched over the lathe and a tap wrench to make). I thought I might as well do it properly now and have also finally got around to painting the bar, in this case matt black. I’ve quite got into painting things matt black, you seem to get a really nice finish with very little effort. Anyway, here’s what the suspension looks like, albeit without any driveshafts.

Long time readers will know that I like to video my races. Hence I needed to make a camera mount for the new car. Well, I didn’t need to make one I could have bought one for £50 or so. The attraction of making one at a total cost of about 10p, plus my zero-cost time, was quite attractive. Here’s the end result attached to the roll cage and just in front of what my friend Denis called the car’s ghetto blaster. This mount is essentially two bits of tubing, cut longitudinally  in half, a flat bit of ally, some sticky foam and a few rivets and tie wraps. It doesn’t look super sexy but I reckon it’ll work fine. The one problem is that I’m not totally sure if it’ll be able to see over my shoulder. I can’t really check that without getting in the car and I’d have to remove fake Tim for that and I’d only have to put him back later.

You can see the video recorder in the photo above. Because of the re-located data logger in the J15 I’ve been able to put that inside the same lunchbox as the logger where I can reach it pretty easily. Hopefully, the microphone will work OK in there.

One thing I’ve been concerned about for ages is whether the tyres are going to clear the bodywork, which is always a problem on this sort of car. So, I took the springs off, again, and tried moving the suspension through its full travel. It’s interesting to do this as you can feel the camber recovery as you get to pull bump.

The rear tyres, it turns out, are fine. In the photo above the tyre is actually inside the bodywork which is fine. The front ones, though are a different  kettle of fish and I’m going to have to be really careful with this. I’ve made a bit more clearance by grinding off the returns on the front wheel arches bit I may have problems at some circuits, exactly as I used to do in the Fury. Time will tell really.

Anyway, that all means that the current to-do list looks a bit like this:

Pre test:

1. Install driveshafts,
2. Duct air into radiator.
3. Redo setup. (Everything will have changed by now.)
4. Make/get some thrust washers to go under the rear hubnuts. As it stands the staking bit of the hubnut misses the staking groove.

Pre race:

1. Think about adding additional triangulation to the engine compartment.
2. Think about adding some yellow.
3. Get a lambda boss welded into the exhaust system. While this is being done, get the little fitting on the exhaust that I damaged re-welded.
4. Add catalytic converter to tail pipe.

Long term:

1. Consider ducting radiator out of  bonnet top. This depends on how well it cools and how hot my feet get.
2. Come up with some way of making cockpit adjustable ARBs.
3. Or, possibly, make some skinnier ARBs.

After some deliberation, I also decided to fit a bit panoramic mirror as well, like the one I used on the Fury. However, as the front of this roll cage is rather higher than the one on the Fury, I could position the mirror pretty much straight in front of me. I think this’ll make it easy to see and, hopefully, not too much of a distraction. Again, only time on track will tell.

All that stuff about mirrors trips off the keyboard so easily you might wonder why this is all taking me so long. The problem is that I spend ages juggling things about, and sitting on the workbench musing about things, before actually drilling holes. At least that’s my excuse.

Next thing, although you might well notice that it isn’t really next, was to make a head restraint. Here it is in all its glory. Essentially it’s just a lump of steel retained by the harness mounts and that old stand-in, an exhaust clamp. I’ve put some lumps of alarmingly solid roll bar foam in front of this, held in place by that other old technique, some gaffer tape. This all makes a pretty solid and I’m pretty sure that it’s in an acceptable place. To be  honest, the exact position of this is something else that it’s hard to work out before being out on track. I’m aware that as I’ve got quicker as a race driver I actually move my head around rather more. If you look at photos of the car at speed around a corner these days then I often have my head at quite an extreme angle. Hence I need to make sure that the restraint doesn’t impede me.

You may notice that I painted the steel matt black and I did the same thing to the injector cover that forms part of the induction device. My hope is that this makes things a little less obvious. Hard to tell really though, it does look quite neat though.

I then decided to redo something that I’ve done a couple of times recently and have a look at how the cooling was working. The last time I did this I wasn’t convinced that the fan was cutting in and out properly. So I tried it all again and there did seem to be a couple of problems. First of all, the fan was coming on rather late when the temperature at the engine was showing something like 105C (the pressure stops it boiling). Even when the fan did start up it then had a problem getting the temperature down. I suspect this is because it’s a long way to the radiator and the engine’s got up rather a head of steam, if you can forgive the curious metaphor.

Even when the temperature did start to come down it seemed as though the fan didn’t ever cut out. In this case the temperature at the engine end got down to 85C or so and the fan was still battering away. That seemed to show that there was rather too much hysteresis in the radiator mounted fan switch.

Another problem was that I seem to be suffering from the odd leak. (If Anthea sees this I’ll get some stick as she always pulls my leg that plumbing things I do always leak. Of course, this isn’t true.) There’s an example of a small leak here with a little blob of coolant under the plumbing for the top hose. It’s not much, I know, but there shouldn’t be any at all. I’ve come to the conclusion that some of the hose clips are not very good quality, so I shall probably buy a bunch of better quality ones and check what they do. Mind you, I keep discovering little puddles on the floor and I’m bemused as to where these are coming from. Unless of course, it’s just condensation in the cold garage.

The other problem was every time the fan did cut in there was a little plume of steam from the radiator. This is clearly not right. The odd thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of the radiator itself leaking. Although, it could be that my policy of using a cheap radiator is starting to come home to roost. At the moment I’m seriously considering investing in a rather more expensive radiator. I did the same thing on the Fury to great effect.

In the meantime I tried something else which was to wire the radiator from the ECU output which controls the fan on the bike. This entailed stringing a wire all the way from the back of the car to the front, nearly ruining all my plans for a super-organised loom, and requiring a relay by the radiator. However, the end result was rather encouraging. In this plot from the data logger you can see the temperature cycling up and down between about 88C and 95C which is much more satisfactory. What’s more, every time the fan started there seemed to be less steam. I’m now wondering if what I was seeing was condensation on the radiator boiling off. Seems odd though.

In the meantime, back to the now rather denuded to-do list. Here it is:

Pre test:

1. Mount a camera somehow.
2. Do a mega bolt check.
3. Setup the suspension. This’ll have to be a guess at first but it’s a start. One issue with this is that I think I’m going to have to modify the little gadgets that extend the track rod ends as I think they’re a smidge too long.

Pre race:

1. Think about adding additional triangulation to the engine compartment.
2. Add some yellow.
3. Get a lambda boss welded into the exhaust system. While this is being done, get the little fitting on the exhaust that I damaged re-welded.
4. Add catalytic converter to tail pipe.

Long term:

1. Duct radiator out of  bonnet top.
2. Come up with some way of making cockpit adjustable ARBs.

That means that really it’s time to start the setup. So, I’m going to have to drag fake-Tim out from lurking in the shed and start fiddling about with bolts and angles.

First up was fitting a NACA duct into the sidepod to shove some air in the general direction of the oil cooler. This was just a pre-made duct which I rivetted into the sidepod. (But, these pre-made ducts aren’t NACA ducts, they’re the wrong shape. Although, I see that Demon Tweeks are now selling ducts that they say really do follow the original NACA design. Yes, you’re right, this is a bit of an aerodynamic hobby horse of mine…)

To be honest, I don’t really know why I rivetted this in position. I should really have bonded it in to neatness. However, it’s done now. If it offends me later I’ll come back and drill the rivets out again.

I only really put the duct in the sidepod because I’d taken the sidepod off to add some attachments to the floor of the car. As on the Fury these are just rivnuts in the GRP and little M5 bolts through the floor. It’s all nice and rigid though. While I was here I also satisfied my vanity a bit by cutting back and polishing all of the bodywork. It makes a truly huge difference, probably not really observable in the photos, but the car looks positively gleaming now.

While I had the sidepod off the other side, I did something I’ve been meaning to do for ages and trimmed the tail pipe. Now it’s like this I can spend a while fixing a slice of catalytic converter to the tail pipe to satisfy the (stunningly ignorant) powers that be.

A job I’ve not really been looking forward to was making a windscreen. On Jeremy’s car, as in the photo on the right, this is quite a large wrap-around thing. There’s a good reason for this in that the sides of the car are actually very low and it’s probably needed to avoid blowing the occupants to kingdom come. I’ve always been intending to copy this, to some extent, on my car and so I set about making some cardboard templates to do this sort of thing, as in the next photo. It’s amazing how much cardboard I use for things like this. You will see that I’ve decided that any passenger is going to be uncomfortable.

With that done I made up sheets of 4mm polycarbonate, Lexan no less, to match the templates. I then struck a bit of a problem in that the front screen, when attached to the flange on the bodywork fouled the dashboard and the gear paddles. Ooops.

After a considerable amount of thought I eventually mounted the front screen on spacers to move it forwards slightly. Of course, this meant making a slightly differently sized screen. It seems to look OK though, as in the next photo. Of course, you can’t actually see the screen as it’s, err, transparent.

In all the faffing about with screens and dashboards, I have been wondering about making the dash itself even smaller and moving the Palm to the side of the wheel. I’m wondering if that would actually improve visibility. It might also help  with getting the serial lead into the Palm.

So, here’s the state of the to-do list. I think I’m going to have to make a seat next. If you don’t hear from me again, it’s because I’ve glued myself into the car.

Pre test:

1. Make seat
2. Mount a camera somehow.
3. Do a mega bolt check.
4. Setup the suspension. This’ll have to be a guess at first but it’s a start. One issue with this is that I think I’m going to have to modify the little gadgets that extend the track rod ends as I think they’re a smidge too long.
5. Make rear undertray
6. Adjust master cylinder pushrods and throttle pedal.
7. Fit mirrors.

Pre race:

1. Fabricate some sort of inlet for the airbox.
2. Possibly as part of that, make a cover for the upper injectors and fuel line. As it is at the moment it’ll give a scrutineer heart failure.
3. Fit roundels and race numbers. Fit other missing decals.
4. Think about adding additional triangulation to the engine compartment.
5. Add some yellow.
6. Fit the catch tank.
7. Get a lambda boss welded into the exhaust system. While this is being done, get the little fitting on the exhaust that I damaged re-welded.
8. Add catalytic converter to tail pipe.

Long term:

1. Duct radiator out of  bonnet top.
2. Come up with some way of making cockpit adjustable ARBs.