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…

Back to the J15 and there’s not really that much to report. To be honest I’ve been struggling with fitting the bodywork. The standard way to fit the front and rear parts of the bodywork is with some hinges, in the same sort of way that the Fury bonnet is attached. However, for the front bodywork at least, there’s a couple of problems with this. One is that the hinge frame conflicts with where I’ve got the radiator. And, I want the radiator to be here because in the long term I might want to duct it out of the top of the bodywork and that requires the radiator to sit at a particular angle. More importantly, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to need a substantial splitter in order to optimise the front end grip, especially in the faster corners. On the Fury I mounted the splitter on the bottom of the bonnet. However, that means you can’t really open the bonnet easily anyway, as the splitter bashes into the ground. So, I decided a while ago to make the front bodywork just lift off; unlike the Fury bonnet it’s relatively easy to lift because it’s rather smaller.

You may remember that I made a carbon-fibre panel for a splitter. However, originally I couldn’t make that stiff enough and I’ve been experimenting with that old thing, a sheet of ply! You can see a big lump attached to the car above. With the ply it was clear that I still wasn’t going to be able to make it stiff enough so I relented on what I’d been trying to avoid and made the frame that you can see in the photo above. This stiffens everything up nicely. So much so that I think I’ll try the CF panel again. If that does work then at least I’ll have a spare. One of the problems with splitters is that if you go off track then they tend to act like gardening implements and very rapidly get spectacularly bashed up.

That still meant, though, that I hadn’t actually got the bodywork attached. Eventually, I did it in the manner that you can nearly see in the next photo. I’m not sure you can see it very easily, but there’s a couple of stretchy rubber hooks (like these) holding the bodywork down onto the splitter. Actually, to be honest, it’s being held down onto a couple of blocks of a wood that are providing the correct spacing. (Once I’m in a woodworking mood, it seems to stay…)

I’m not totally happy with this, to be honest, because if the splitter gets damaged (see above) then the bodywork might not be too stable either. My original intention was to put a couple of “towers” above the front corners of the chassis and made some pads on the top of those for the bodywork to rest on. The more I looked at it, though, the chunkier it bacame and the less necessary it seemed. I’ll think about it though.

The rear of this bodywork is, at the moment retained just by a couple of springs. However, I’ll probably need to use a couple of bonnet pins to stop it lifting at speed.

All the same, the car does now look rather more like a car. I’d like to get the rear bodywork mounted soon, as well. Just to make it feel as if I’ve done something.

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.

I’ve also been struggling with bleeding the brakes. In fact, if you look to the rear of the photo about you’ll see that one of the fluid reservoirs was empty when I took the photo. Since then I’ve changed the master cylinder, twice, and pumped about 5 litres of brake fluid through the front brake circuit to no great avail. A reader suggested that I try reverse bleeding the system which I will do as soon as I get a new oil can for squirting fluid up the system backwards. (I don’t think cleaning out my ancient oil can is really a good idea for brake use!)

So, while I’m waiting I’m pressing on. One thing I’ve done it to make a little heat shield to sit under part of the exhaust system to shield the brake and clutch lines that run under it. I hope this’ll be OK; at least it’s only the rear brakes.

As you can probably tell, I’ve POR-15ed the silencer mounting tube that Andy added. I’ve also worked my way through 8 exhaust header gaskets (at £6 each!) trying to get a decent seal to the headers. I think it’s OK now although cylinder 2 seems to be leaking very, very, very slightly. I’ll have to tweak that one up a bit. The odd think is that Mr Honda specifies the torque settings for the exhaust port studs (M7, would you believe) at 14Nm which is about enough to hold down a feather or two…

Then it was back to the red stuff; here’s the tub sitting on the chassis looking all, well, red. (Tom’s really annoyed at me for doing it red again…)

The problem with this is that there’s a socking great hole above the sidepods on both sides of the car, the sort of hole that’ll give a scrutineer heart failure. So, I needed to do a bit more, whisper it, panelling.

Sod it… How had I managed to forget this.

Oh well, I got stuck in with aluminium, cardboard and rivets and finally did the driver’s side panelling, as in the next photo. What you can see here is that there’s a vertical “wall” at either end of this horizontal bit which at least approaches sealing to the tub. When I’ve got a moment I may make some little extra trim pieces to make this fit snugger than it is at the moment.

However, at the moment I’ve got the other side to do. Sigh…

Most importantly, I got stuck in on the bodywork while there was a bit of space in the garage. So, there’s been rather a paroxysm of filling, rubbing down, priming, flatting and spraying going on. And, of course, the house smells of cellulose.

However, all of the bodywork is now painted. This, of course, means I’m now going to have to be much more careful with it while fitting it to the chassis. And, of course, there’s no room in the house to contain it all which is why some of it is now outside getting rained on, as in the photo above.

The bit in the photo, which is part of the engine cover, makes it look as though my spraying is quite good. Trust me, though, I’ve chosen the photograph quite carefully. Still, it’s a race car, and as Adrian keeps saying it only needs to look good from 100 metres away at 100mph.

The next big event is that I’ve got the car back now, complete with an exhaust system as in the photo. As you can see, I made the decision to fit the silencer in the sidepod, pointing forwards from the engine. This has the advantage that it keeps a lot of the gubbins out of the engine bay. It also pushes the weight forwards a bit which I think I’m going to need. The problem with this, though, is that the Blue Book says that the exhaust exit from the bodywork has to be no further forward than the centre line of the wheelbase. Heaven knows why that’s the regulation but it is. As such it makes the packaging a bit tricky.

Mind you, on trying the engine the exhaust blowing like a blowfish on a very blowey day. This appears to be coming from the header gaskets which, as usual on the CBR1000RR, are a pain in the bum as it’s absurdly easy to get the header to tighten up out of line, meaning it leaks. Consequently, I’ve just bought some more gaskets (at £7 a go, no less!) to have another go at sealing it up.

You can see on the photo that in order to fit the silencer in one of the support members had to be removed. Andy replaced this with a bent strut that’s also used as the place to mount the silencer which is quite neat. And, since I took the photo above, I’ve POR15-ed the new strut.

I’ve also re-routed a couple of the water lines which were a bit close to the headers. I also intend putting a small heatshield above the brake lines you can see at the bottom of the engine bay. I don’t think it’s really needed but better safe than sorry.

Next up is going to be fitting the bodywork. I’m going to need at least a couple of aero bits for this and in particular a splitter. I looked at what it would cost to buy a large carbon-fibre sheet for this and had to sit down for a rest when I saw the price. Hence, I’ve made one as I had some carbon fibre and some epoxy sitting around. The resin, was nearly two years beyond its sell-by date so it seems sensible to use it up.

So, I’ve made a big flat lump of carbon fibre. It’s not the most briliant moulding in the world, in particular it’s got a couple of creases in the surface as the film I was using managed to crinkle up somehow. However, it should do fine. I may well make another one of these, in case it gets nerfed at some point. That will have to be made out of glass and polyester, though, as I’ve run out of carbon and I hate laminating with epoxy resin. I can see why the professionals use pre-preg for everything as they don’t end up sloshing litres of nasty sticky resin all over the place.

However, that gave me a chance to tidy the place up a bit and then set about messing it up again.

The first such tactic was to modify the airbox so that I could get air into the top, rather than the bottom, of it. First up I drilled a couple of holes in the top of the airbox and then (plastic) welded the inlet ducts that are attached to the (normal) bottom of the air filters into the top of the airbox, as in the photo.

Yeah, it looks a bit messy in the photo, but that’s because of the melted polypropylene. I think it’ll work OK. The problem now is how to get the air into the filters. I’ve been wondering how to do this for a while now. One possibility is just to run air from a couple of ducts, and I’ve got these rather nice spun aluminium air inlets (as in the photo), down a tube directly into each air filter. The alternative is to make a diffusing inlet, sticking up from the airbox in the usual fashion.

The problem with the former is that I need to make some way of attaching some 65mm ducting, which is essentially the diameter of the air filter and the duct, to the end of the filter. Perhaps I could make some sort of adapter from some polypropylene sheet, suitably heated so it softens? I’ll give that a go, I think.

One advantage of having an empty garage is that I can sort out the bodywork. The first thing to do with this is to fill all the holes created by the aluminium I used to stretch it a while ago. Here’s one of the sidepods which is just about done now. Unfortunately, the other sidepod is with Andy as he needs it to see where the silencer can go.

As you can see, I didn’t make the gelcoat here thick enough as I’ve ground all the way through it while rubbing it down. Doooh. It’s still pretty smooth though so, hopefully, with the addition of some hi-build primer, it’ll be OK.

However, with luck I can get the tub done as well, and I might even get around to splashing some paint around. After a huge amount of thought I’ve decided to stick to the Tim standard colours of red and, perhaps, yellow. If only because I’ve still got a decent supply of these. Problem is, I hate how much dust you create by painting things, it gets everywhere.

All the same, seems a fun milestone.

In this position, I managed to get a lot more air out of the two circuits left. However, this doesn’t seem like a sensible approach in the long term. The only sensible thing would be to tilt the car at a stupid angle, but that doesn’t really seem feasible.

I did wonder, though, whether I’m supposed to have a different sort of master cylinder, one with the exit port 45° around the bore. I’ll see what I can find out tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’ve booked the car in with Andy to have an exhaust system made. I’ll take it up there later this week.

Next up was to sort the oil cooler. I arranged to attach it to the chassis in the position I talked about a while ago and plumbed it in to the sandwich plate. As usual, I’m just using push-fit hose which in my experience works quite well and is at least reasonably cheap. Mind you, it’s practically rupturing to push the hose onto the fittings.

You might be able to tell on the photo that I’ve mounted the cooler on little anti-vibration bushes. Oil coolers like this are aluminium and they tend to vibrate and crack. Hopefully it won’t be too wibbly wobbly.

As it was clearly fluids time I then filled the cooling system. I debated for a while whether to use water or proper coolant at first, the problem with the latter being that it’s expensive and if there was a leak somewhere then it’d be a waste. So, I put some water in and it didn’t, leak that is. So, I drained it all out again and put some nice garish pink coolant in it. The odd thing was I didn’t seem to get as much coolant in as I drained out water. I must have an air lock in there somewhere. I’ll have to watch out later.

Next up was to put some oil in after which it was time to turn the engine over. So, I put the right fuses in, pressed the starter and nothing happened. I worked out which connector I hadn’t re-attached and then the engine spun around. That meant, of course, that things like the starter relay and so on were working.

Then, as usual, I set out to flatten the battery by spinning the engine around. Eventually, I got some pressure in there, after adopting the old trick of cracking the filter open a bit.

Carrying on the fluid theme I put some fuel in the tank and then started up the engine ECU to see if I’d got any fault codes. There were a couple of minor issue but I cleared them and it was time to press the starter button for real:

Yikes! I particularly liked the blue flames!

I also tried running the reverse. Obviously the car’s off the ground but the rear hubs did go round, and backwards at that. So, perhaps that will work too. I’m pretty sure it’s going to flatten the battery in double quick time though.

Then it was time to turn to the hydraulic systems and here I struck a bit of a problem. I’d become concerned that the banjo bolts I’d used for the fluid takeoffs at the master cylinders weren’t as long as they could have been so I’d ordered some longer ones. And, when fitting a new one to the front braking master cylinder I managed the strip the threads in the master cylinder. In fact, I suspect this is because the banjos were indeed not long enough and that meant that there was too much load on too short a length of tapped aluminium. So, ho hum, I’ve ordered another master cylinder.

In the meantime I’ve bled, or tried to bleed, the clutch and rear braking circuits. However, I seem to be having difficulty getting them to work properly. I’m wondering if this is because the location of the master cylinders, slightly  on their side, means that there’s a bit of air inside the cylinder that isn’t being expelled, especially because I’m using a pressure bleeder which isn’t moving the piston in and out of the cylinder. I’ll have to think about that.