I’ve finished making the new suspension components, as you can see in the photo here. (Not that you can see very much, the brilliant white rather mucks up the camera’s exposure.) I did have a bit of a panic about these new rockers this morning when I convinced myself I’d assembled the spherical bearing bits wrongly, in that the braking and accelerative forces were going to be acting on the circlips retaining the bearings. However, after I was just about to start making some new ones I realised my mistake. Anthea tells me I’m always doing this and I don’t think she’s wrong.

One thing you might be able to see if you peer really hard at the photo above is that as I’ve now got an AC TIG welder I’ve been practising my aluminium welding skills. Actually, with a bit of twiddling around with the myriad of knobs on my the welder and a bit of practise it wasn’t too hard to do. Those aluminium towers are there to hold down the bonnet in the event of the splitter getting ripped off. Originally they were rivetted together but now they’re welded too.

I’ve also build up the rear suspension as in the photo here. Again, the brilliant white it just too much for the camera but you should get the idea anyway.

That means I’ve done what I’m going to do to the suspension. Next thing I want to do is to do a minor mod to the engine cradle. This is a bit of a problem really as I’d expected to have the new engine by now. (Did I mention that I’d eventually decided to get another engine to replace the one I knackered at the Birkett? If nothing else, it means I’ve got a lot of spare parts. Problem is, even though it’s supposedly arrived in the country I haven’t seen hide nor hair of it and I guess I’m sunk until after Christmas now.) Perhaps I’ll have to mock something up with the casings from the existing engine…

I made sure that those wishbones articulated properly, which they did after  I’d attached them with an angle grinder, and then set about the front rockers. This is a bit more tricky as I’d like some better bearings where the rockers attach to the chassis. As standard the J15 has rubber bushes here. On the Fury I replaced the equivalent bushes with needle roller bearings. However, I found that they tended to wear the housings really quickly. Not really surprising, I guess, because they don’t move much and all of the weight tends to be taken by the same small number of needles all the time.

Although, to be fair, when I recently read Tony Southgate’s autobiography he commented that he got lots of needle roller bearings into the suspension of the Le Mans cars he designed. So, perhaps I’m wrong. All the same, I’ve decided to try using some spherical bearings. I bought some housings for these but I needed to make the housing a bit bigger, so as to provide enough meat for welding the rocker components to. I turned a couple of bits of tubing into suitable housings for the housings and welded them together, as in the photo. As you can probably see the bearing is retained by a circlip. As this is the front of the car I can orient the bearings so that all the load is taken on the housings rather than the circlip. I just had to hope that I didn’t end up getting any weld spatter in the circlip groove which would have been terminal. (Note that I TIGged the housing; I’m so glad I bought a TIG as it does things like this much better. Uses prodigious quantities of argon though.)

I then used the old rocker to make another jig. As you can see this time it’s rather harder because the component is very 3D; most other suspension components are essentially planar.

So, making this rocker was rather harder than usual, and is made more difficult by not being able to just turn the component upside-down to make the part for the other side of the car. All the same, after a considerable number of hours in the trenches I ended up with a new rocker for the left hand side of the car, ready for painting and insertion of the bearings. Apart, that is, from a minor problem caused by one of the circlips going ping! around the garage. I reckon it’s somewhere around the lathe but I doubt I can be bothered trying to find it.

So, all I’ve got to do is make another one and then I can get onto something else.

But, I can hear you all asking, what about the engine. Well, I’ve spoken to Andy about it lots of times and we’ve not been able to find a suitable crank from a suitable supplier. That means I can either just wait for a while until one turns up or press on and get another complete engine. The advantage of that is that I’d end up with a bunch of spares. The disadvantage is that it’s rather expensive. However, as I’ve now decided to cut off my route back to using the ’07 engine I can sell that (for example, I’ve taken the hydraulic clutch pipework out). That should make a decent amount of money. So, if you’re interested in a good  CBR1000RR07 engine which has only done about 4 races since being refreshed by Andy, give me a shout. I’ve even got all the gubbins like the billet sump, the throttle bodies, the electronics and even a Power Commander…

It’s kind of hard to see on the photo, but there’s some quite large grooves in the journal.

So, this crank is not going to work for me. The problem is, what am I going to do about it. Buying a new crank is ridiculously expensive. However, Andy reckons he can get a short engine for a pretty reasonable price. So, I’m leaving it with him for now. Mind you, I’m not sure why short engines exist on the second hand market. Perhaps there’s a chap who goes around bashing in cam covers?

I put all the engine bits on the floor and protected them so that they didn’t get loads of rubbish in them. With that it was on to the next job. First up was to have a massive cleanup around the rear of the car where there’s a lot of general grot and quite a lot of oil that escaped from the cooler when it expired. So, after much spraying of brake cleaner I cleaned a good deal of it up. One problem, though, is that after all the modifications there’s splodges of paint all over the place. All of which is POR-15 which started out as grey but has now gone various shades of greyey green.

One of the things I want to do is to stiffen up the rear of the car somehow, which I think is important. I’ve also been concerned for some time about the way I had to modify the car to get the suspension in the right position. This ultimately required me to locate the top damper mounts above the top of the chassis at the rear. This isn’t a very good idea and in the long run I’d like to completely rebuild the rear of the chassis. However, when I did this to the chassis I included the additional diagonals you can see in the photo here. This is pretty gruesome. It hasn’t fallen apart though.

An alternative I’ve been considering is binding the engine mounting frame into the chassis rather more effectively. You can see this in the next photo where I’ve mounted the engine mounting frame in the chassis. Well, I pushed the bolts into the holes… The idea is to remove those additional diagonals and make a removable section, as a long turnbuckle so I can make it tight, between the suspension turret and the top bar of the mounting frame. Depending on what this looks like I might also add some additional triangulation in the engine bay.

I took it up to Andy’s last week and he modified the old exhaust system to fit to the new engine. I think it’s ended up being a bit of a bodge, to be honest, but with luck it will work well. I do keep wondering if I should have had a complete new system built.

Still, this did mean that I could run the engine and at the weekend I did so for long enough so as to get the engine up to temperature and the fan cycling on and off. That also allowed me to work out which fan controller line to use. To make life exciting the CBR1000RR08 ECU drives two fans which come on sequentially. I worked out what order these came on in and used the higher temperature one (on account of the fact that I’m not really planning on the radiator fan coming on all that often) to drive the fan relay.

The other thing I got from Andy was the above clutch cable. This is the length that I measured it ought to be and a decent quality cable with swaged on ends. The issue is that I needed to make a device to restrain the outer at the pedal end. This I did and here it is bolted into the chassis hanging onto the clutch cable outer. You can see the inner going off to connect to the pedal.

First indications are that this works pretty well, although time will tell. I’ve made a collection of attachment points on the clutch pedal so with luck I’ll be able to adjust the pedal ratio should it be be needed. At the moment I’m quite pleased with this, I just hope it works when on circuit. As you can tell, though, I’ve had to chop a bit of a hole in some of the panelling around the pedal box. I’ll have to bung the hole up a bit, but for now it will do.

I’ve added a load of new wrapping around the new exhaust, this time using some better quality stuff, I hope, than that which I used before which just fell to bits if you touched it. First indications are that this stuff, bought from Merlin Motorsport, is rather better. If nothing else it was nothing like so uncomfortable to work with; with the previous stuff I think I ended up with millions of bits of glass fibre stabbed into my skin which took ages to come out.

I done a whole bunch of other small things and started putting panels back, and so on, so that the car looks like, err, a car again. Along the way I’ve replaced the brake fluid reservoir for one that doesn’t have the clutch outlet sticking out of it. As a consequence I’ve replaced the brake fluid and bled the brakes again. I’ve also spent ages re-aligning the suspension; you may remember that an age ago I made some new suspension parts.

In fact, pretty much all I’ve got to do before taking the car on track is to do a big bolt check and finish putting the bodywork back on. Oh, and putting some fuel in would probably be a good idea…

Phew…

So, as it was new, I booked a day’s testing and went up there on the Thursday evening. We got a half decent place in the paddock, or so we thought and settled in for the night. The next day looked sunny, in fact it was scheduled to be decent weather all weekend but, frankly, you can never tell at Snetterton.

Out on the circuit first thing and what was immediately apparent was that the recent suspension modifications had had a huge effect on the car. Most particularly, it was no longer trying to kill me. A pity I had to break my finger in the process. (It’s still hurting like buggery, I wonder if I should go back to the docs? Can’t see what they’d do though.) So, I started to settle in to the new car and the lap times were dropping when it started making a horrendous noise. Luckily, I’d heard this before when the exhaust fell apart at Brands. I pulled in and, indeed, it had come apart again. Odd because it seemed to have just straightened the locating split pin in situ… That’s a shame as I had to remove all the nice neat exhaust wrap I’d put in place.

I put it back in place and lock-wired around the tails of the split pin in an effort to make it stay shut.

The second session arrived and I was off again. Again, it felt better and, again, the exhaust fell apart again. Sigh. At least it was a different joint this time. So, again, I took off more wrap, replaced more split pins and, this time, put in some more ostentatious lock-wiring as in the photo here. That seemed to stay in place for the rest of the weekend but it isn’t pretty. However, it may be irrelevant, see later.

After that things got a bit better although I never felt that I was going anything like quickly enough. What was interesting was to play with the adjustable flaps on the spoilers. They made a surprisingly large difference. You could feel the greater drag with it in the highest downforce position but, interestingly, it was like that that the lap times were quickest.

Come race day and it was still OK. There were lots of us out for the weekend and it was great to see 32 cars lined up in the assembly area. In fact, some are still missing and  we could have even more out later in the season. For what the 750 club calls a “development formula” this is great.

Qualifying was OK, although it’s a measure of RGB that I’ve gone backwards this season. I qualified 9th (6th in class) for both races. The chaps at the front of the field have really gone forward this year. One reason is that the latest crop of engines is putting out a few more bhp. Secondly, some of the cars are getting rather more like proper race cars. I’m not too sure what I think of this, although I can’t see anything that can be done about it. I can, though, think of lots of things that I can do to my car.

One good thing is that the oil cooler and duct were working great. The highest oil temps I saw all weekend were in the region of 110° which is fine. In fact, the water got a bit cold so I taped up a bit of the inlet duct later. It does make you think that repositioning the water radiator, or just making a smaller inlet duct, would be useful. Perhaps I should go back to the VW, cheap but light, radiator as a test?

So, it was race 1 and I made a half decent start. I was right in the melée for a couple of laps and then ever so slowly I fell backwards. I was just getting out dragged on the back straight and I’m pretty sure that it’s just a power thing. Although, I could with getting a few kilos out of the car; I’ve got some plans how to achieve that.

Here’s the video of the first race, complete with a spin/near spin at about 7mins in. This was at Montreal and I must admit I’d really like the old Sear back… Montreal is just too slow. Oddly, I was regularly seeing 1.5g lateral here; I wonder if this is a feature of the new car because the old one never really  got above 1.2g?

After a great RGB BBQ on the Saturday evening we re-convened for the Sunday race. In many ways this was the same for me and I ended up driving round on my own thinking that I ought to look into getting an ’08 engine for next year.  Here’s the video:

In fact, on the way home my lovely wife convinced me that I really ought to look into changin the engine straight away, as otherwise I was wasting my time.

So, I’ve ordered a CBR1000RR08 engine package. It remains to be seen how long it was take to fit;I keep thinking of problems.

In the meantime, I’ve carried on replacing the suspension components with rod-ended ones. (I’ve no idea why I didn’t do this originally, it would have made much more sense. What’s more, the rod-ended ones are no heavier than the Delrin bearings.) Here’s the front lower wishbones being made. (Note that you can make nice jigs using MDF and, it makes a good place to do calculations as well!)

With those on the car, as in the next photo, I’ve only got the bearings in the front rockers to sort. I’m not too sure how to do this. I could make some housings to retain spherical bearings but I’m semi-reluctant to weld something into  these rockers and, therefore, make them irrecoverable. Perhaps that’s the only way though.

In the meantime I’m left with a humongous pile of old suspension bits, onto which I’ve lavished huge amounts of effort in the last. Ho hum.

So, the next thing is to get the car up on stands and take out the engine. I’m planning on doing this in a manner that makes it dead easy to fit the engine back again in case I don’t get on well with the new one, which is hugely more complicated. Time will tell though.

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…

Anyway, what have I been up to? I think I’m catching up here so there will probably be some rambling. First up is that I did some modifications to the pedals after the initial tests which seemed to have worked out fairly well. One aspect of this was widening the throttle pedal a bit, as in the photo. This is a bit tedious really, this is an OBP pedal box, something I shall not ever be buying again. Why not? Well, this “race” box is far too flimsy and I’ve had to beef up several things to make it race-worthy. For example, if you look at the top of the photo there some small bolts that go through the top part of the pedal. This is because without these the whole pedal bends laterally. Secondly, you’re expected to heel and toe in a race car.  I’ve already cut off the pedal once and re-welded it towards the left and adding this extra panel, as you can see in the photo, is the latest attempt at getting the throttle and brake close enough together.

Next time, if there is a next time, I shall just make my own from the start.

Next up is the clutch pedal. I started remember all the problems that I’d had getting the Fury off the line. There I resolved things to some extent by changing the lever ratio slightly. I’ve done the same here by the contrivance you can see in the next photo. This is essentially a modified pivot point for the clutch by welding a small, home-made, bush onto the side of the clevis. (Although, as I write this, I’m wondering why I’m not using a small female rod-end to take account of flex and general shonkyness of the pedal box. (See above.)

It was race time again this weekend, that’s a shot from race 2 at the top, just after the start. If you look you can see both me (car 50) and my old Fury (car 24) in there! I didn’t do that well at the weekend, but I’ve realised since that I have a good excuse… What was good, though, was that I got two pretty good starts which is a pleasing difference from my previous existence.

Back though, to pre-race things.

I think I mentioned that I’d noticed some coolant leaking. I finally traced this (well, to be fair, it was really John who fettles Derek’s car who worked it out) to the bung in the radiator that plugs up where a fan switch could got, the black thing in the middle of the photo. John worked out that the coolant that I’d been thinking came from the bottom hose connection was really running down from this bung which, of course, I’m sure that I tightened up properly in the garage. All the same, I did it up with some pump pliers and the car now seems to be coolant tight which is quite a relief.

For a change, here’s a bit of tool-porn. This is  Rage Evolution saw and is my latest toy. I’m a firm believer, you see, in the “he who dies with the most tools wins” philosophy. This thing is just a circular saw which chops and slides and can be used at various funky angles. Best of all, the blade is a TCT (tungsten carbide tipped) device that means it can cut steel as well as wood. In the saw in the photo is a length of 40mm steel box with 3mm walls. It just cuts straight through this which is great because in the past I’ve had to use a hacksaw and then, if I really wanted it to be square either struggle for ages with a file or use the lathe. Now it just cuts. About the only thing that isn’t any good is that bag on the top in  which your cutting swarf and dust is supposed to be deposited. This is not true. What happens is that everything gets liberally thrown around the garage and nothing, absolutely nothing, goes in the bag. Oh well, it’s a small price to pay.

So, why am I chopping up 40mm/3mm box section? Well, it’s to get some droop travel in the front suspension as discussed here before. What I did was to use some of the box section to make a slightly lower mounting point for the top of the dampers in the rocker arms. Initial indications are that the suspension travel is rather better now than it was.

That was the condition that we set off for Brands in. I’m going to summarise what happened for reasons that will become clear in a moment.

I did  the test day, which was OK and my times around Brands (not my strongest circuit, to be honest) were just about where they were in the Fury. However, it’s clear that I could go faster because the car is just not accelerating as fast as the Fury did even though it’s only a little heavier. For example on a typical pair of laps I’m losing 2-3mph compared to the Fury even though the gearing on the J15 is slightly shorter. At the moment, I’m guessing that this is because I haven’t had the engine mapped with the current exhaust and inlet. So, I’ve arranged a trip to a rolling road chap to see about that. I hope to be able to do a few different runs with different configurations of inlet to see what works and what doesn’t.

One problem, though, is that the spoiler is probaby introducing a fair bit of drag. So, I’m going to re-design that somewhat; you’ll have to wait and see how. It’s also the case, though, that I need to lower the rear of the car somewhat. I started off assuming that I’d have to run the same of sort rake as I did in the Fury, about 25mm or so. However, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that really the car needs to be flat or possibly even lower at the rear than at the front. The problem is that I can’t really do this at the moment because I’m running out of travel on the rear dampers. That is, I’m going to have to change the damper mounts again. Sigh. I hope that this doesn’t mean that I run out of room inside the bodywork for the tyres.

As for the racing. I qualified 10^th (5^th in class) and 11^th (7^th in class) for the two races. Not brilliant but arguably not bad for a new car. I’d put some tell-tales on the rear suspension for qualifying and I realised that it was bottoming out which isn’t clever. (I could really do with some of the progressive rate bump stops I used on the Fury but I’ve been unable to locate any at the moment.) To try and control things a bit I stiffened up the ARBs and went out for the first race. I made a good start and disposed of a couple of people at the start. But, the car was very twitchy and I had quite a few moments including one trip through the gravel at Druids with rather a lot of wheel twirling. Hence a rather lousy result. Back in the paddock I softened up the ARBs again and just tried raising the suspension slightly. While doing this I was aware that I’d banged my little finger at some point, but I ignored it and pressed on.

The second race was a bit better although it was very clear in that race that cars I used to be able to outdrag I couldn’t anymore. Hence the mapping trip. All the same I finished in one piece and packed up. I was 11^th (7^th in class) and 8^th (5^th in class) in the two races. So, a decent basis but lots of things to do. My to-do list is getting longer again. When I can type properly again, I’ll tell you what’s on it?

Why can’t I type properly? Well, my little finger hurt more and more after the race and on Sunday swelled up rather a lot. A trip to A&E on Monday morning revealed that I’d broken it. Not seriously, apparently I’d banged it so hard, I’m guessing in the gravel trap moment, that a ligament has pulled on the bone so hard that it’s broken a bit off. I’m off to the Addenbrookes fracture clinic at the weekend where I will doubtless feel out of place with people who have really hurt themselves as apart from my relatively minor injury. At least I hope it’s minor. Bloody hurts though…

The forecast was sort of OKish in that it was supposed to be mostly dry but showers were promised for about the time of the RGB race at the end of the day.

Scrutineering went off without a hitch which was good. It’s a bit more of a fiddle with the new car you have to make sure the lights are checked before taking off the bodywork as that involves disconnecting the lights. Still, with the car’s first shiny scrutineering ticket I was well satisfied.

One problem is, though, that when checking the ride height the previous evening I’d found it to be a bit low. In fact, the spring platforms are dangerously close to the end of their travel and there’s precious little bump movement. Perhaps I shouldn’t have cut off those mounting ears for the bottom of the front springs? As it is I’m going to have to do something and I think I’ll modify the top mounts if only because they’re easier to get to. One problem is that at the moment there’s really too much stiction in the bearings. Perhaps my Delrin bearings are not up to the job and I ought to make some rod-ended wishbones? Having done that for the rear lowers I’m thinking more and more that it might be a good idea.

Anyway, after checking everything it was out on track for the Allcomers qualifying. To be honest it didn’t really feel that good, but that was probably because it was Mallory, and what’s more the track’s been resurfaced with something that looks wet when it’s dry so I was rather more careful that I should have been.

Back in the paddock I did some mods to try and improve the feeling of the car and went out for the RGB qualifying. At first it seemed OK but after a couple of laps the car started feeling a bit odd with the back end being all loose again. Then it felt really horrible as I was going around Gerrards and I pulled in to the paddock at the end of the straight to see what the problem was. I’d been thinking that something in the rear suspension was awry and so it turned out in that I had the first puncture I’ve had in seven years of racing. That explains why the car felt so horrid.

Luckily, earlier in the day I’d taken 4 wheels to George Polley for some new tyres. I went off to find them, only to find George having lunch. Once I’d prised him away I got the wheels back to the car and hurriedly fitted a new left rear just as they were calling the Allcomers race! I got into the assembly area in the nick of time; in fact I rather held up the start getting helmet and HANS on.

On track and the car was horrible, really horrible. I finished the race with it feeling very like it did at Snetterton before I fitted the spoiler. That is, it was really loose at the rear and suffered badly as I went onto the brakes. Still, I got to the end of the race which was great. What’s more, I did a pretty good race start, I think I got up to 4th for a while until the car started feeling horrible.

Back in the paddock I checked around but couldn’t see anything obviously wrong. Eventually I decided to increase the rear rebound damping to try and control the weight transfer a bit. After that we waited around for the race.

And then it rained.

Well, to be strictly accurate it absolutely pissed down. After a while it was clear that some adjustment was required. So, I turned all the dampers down and set about putting an extra couple of psi in tyres. The problem was that three of the tyres were at about 19psi and one was at about 30. Some dozy pillock had fitted a new tyre without actually checking the pressure. Doooohhh.

So, I set it right and lined up, in the pouring rain. At the start I got away not too badly, only to have to back out of it as Colin was charging up the inside seemingly intent on an accident. Back to Gerrards on the first lap and the car suddenly felt planted on the road, even in the wet! I got past Tony and exacted my revenge on Colin in the first couple of laps. What was clear was that the car had really good traction out of the hairpin, which bodes well for the future.

Towards the end of the race Tony got past me again. To be honest I think the conditions had improved slightly and I hadn’t responded. Here’s a video of the race for your delectation:

I’m not actually sure where I finished at the moment. The important point is that I did finish in one bit. Roll on Brands Hatch!

This was a real trackday with a large array of different cars and driving skills. As usual, I’m pretty amazed by the people who turn up in fantastically expensive machinery and then drive really slowly. I do like the people, though, who buy a track-day special Clio or similar for a small amount of money and just have fun.

However, that meant that the track was very busy. I was by far and away the fastest person on the track so spent the entire day passing, or trundling round corners just behind, lots of other people. However, I did manage to get some decent testing. Before starting, though, I’d taken the spoiler off so as to get some back-to-back information.

One thing that was immediately obvious was that the instability I’d worried about before was still there. On careful observation when the car was going really quickly then it became directionally unstable, you can see it weaving on the in-car video. On getting on the brakes, it got much worse. I suspect that this is what caused my spin last time out, not the brake bias at all.

So, first attempt was to stiffen up the rear. That made a slight effect but not too much. Then I lowered the rear of the chassis by about 10mm which would move the weight bias backwards slightly. That made a big difference and the car suddenly felt better; much more planted on the road. It was still oversteering though.

So, over lunchtime I fitted the spoiler, or at least the bits of it that I’d completely which was really just the vertical wall and the side-fences.

In a nutshell, that made an astonishing difference. All of the sudden the oversteer was gone and the car seemed to be glued to the road. Admittedly it was about 2mph slower at the end of the main straight, but I suspect that the overall laptime would have been better. (Being a trackday one isn’t supposed to time oneself. Given the traffic there wouldn’t have been a point anyway.)

So, a successful day. I’ve got a couple of minor things to do but I reckon I’m in good shape for the first race of the year at Mallory this weekend. I doubt I’ll be at the front, but hopefully not outclassed…