Since I was last here I’ve been pressing onwards, and missed the RGB meeting at Donington last weekend. Anthea and I went up to watch and got burnt in the sunshine while watching the RGBers swooping down the Craner Curves. What’s to bet that when we go back there later in the year it’ll be raining, like it’s doing at the moment? More importantly, it’s now not long until the meeting at Snetterton which I’m aiming at for the newly engined car.

I’ve finished chopping the loom apart and the first photo here is the finished loom. This is the complete bike loom with most of it removed. That is, there’s no fuse box, starter relay, lights wiring, stop relay and bank angle sensor, and so on. What’s more, I’ve lengthened and shortened a few of the wires so it fits properly in its new home. I’ve also bound into the loom a few special bits, including the pump relay, the speed sensor power supply and the resistor that mimics the Honda steering damper.

Mind you, despite my best efforts when installed in the car it still looks like an explosion in a knot factory.

From this position I really starting putting everything back together. First thing was to put the airbox together which necessitated fitting the link hose that goes between the top and bottom injector banks. On the ’07 engine I routed this around the airbox but the situation is a little different here because of the quick-fit fuel connections that Honda now uses. (Which include the magical stated necessity of replacing the “retainer” every time you disconnect them. This is a tiny piece of injection moulded ABS (or similar) for which Honda charges the princely sum of £5-24. I suspect I shall be reusing them…) I’ve ended up with the link hose, as you can see, snaking through the body of the airbox where it will eventually be contained inside some sort of air inlet duct. Not quite worked out how to do that yet though.

Next thing was to fit the sump which I’d got from Andy. I tapped this for the oil temperature sender and carefully fitted it all to the engine. It’s a bit trickier than in the past because there’s a bypass hose in the sump that has to be fitted after the baffle plate. I ended up bolting the baffle plate into position, using the now-normal smear of PRV sealant, and then bolting the hose into place. After leaving this alone overnight so that the sealant would hold the baffle in place I then removed the bolts and put the sump itself on, again with PRV sealant. Finally, the central sump which fits around the pickup was fitted, with more PRV, and it looked like this.

With luck this won’t leak like mad when I fill it, as it’d be a real pain to take it off again.

In a plumbing sort of mood I then connected up the coolant hoses. I think I managed to do a slightly better job of this than on the other engine, as the runs are a bit shorter. Here’s one of them for your delectation and delight.

It was now time to try things so I worried a lot, installed a 1 amp fuse, worried some more and finally connected up the power. Gratifyingly the IACV (inlet air control valve) make a little chirrup and the pump whirred into life for a few seconds.

Then the fault light came on which was depressing. After a while spent reading the fault codes it said that the EGCV (exhaust gas valve) wasn’t happy which was odd. I eventually found out that if I rotated the rotor on the flap valve and re-turned the engine on then after a while it was happy that the valve was now in the correct position and the fault light stayed off.

Next, I put some oil in (no, the sump doesn’t appear to be leaking as yet) and spent the usual time churning the engine around trying to get reading on the oil pressure sender. After adopting the old trick of cracking the filter off to help flow it did finally appear.

What I should now be able to do is to start the engine! However, I’ll leave it until I can make a huge amount of noise, due to the lack of an exhaust, without too much worry.  So, I consoled myself by starting to refit the transmission. Luckily, my calculations worked out and the sprockets were still aligned properly. That’s a relief.

The biggest issues left now are to sort the exhaust and to work out how to actuate the clutch, whether by cable (as on the bike) or hydraulically as used by the ’07 engine.

As a couple of people suggested to me, I made a support for the standard-sump equipped engine as in the photo here. This allowed me to support the engine in position to see what I was going to have to do to make some engine mounts.

Note that I’m using a motor sport magazine to get the support at the right height.

My original plan was to modify the engine support cradle I’d made for the ’07 engine but eyeing things up on the floor of the garage (quite difficult because the engines won’t sit horizontally) I’d come to the conclusion that that wouldn’t be possible. So, I’d taken some fairly careful measurements of the location of the diff, as I didn’t want to move that at all as otherwise I’d be back in driveshaft hell again.

That was a bit tedious, but I suppose that’s the way it was going to be. So, I hoisted the engine into position and spent ages shuffling it about to get it in just the right place.

Finally, when it was just about right and not teetering too much I stepped back and thought that perhaps the cradle would fit after all. Of course, it wasn’t just going to fit, that would be too easy and the world doesn’t work like that. However, it looked as though if I just moved the mounting lugs on the cradle then I had a fighting chance. What’s more, I could probably move them and mount the engine using some small spacers meaning that the ’07 engine would fit back in, albeit with some different spacers. Here it is in position with the new mounting lugs being postioned. (The G-cramp is there to hold the engine at the right place while the new lug is tacked in position.)

After all that, it looked great and I stepped back to admire my peerless handywork. Then, I noticed that the engine was about 12mm too far to the right. So, I cut off another of the mounting lugs and made some different spacers; I think I’ve mentioned how useful the lathe is for making things like this.

After much faffing about it was finally in the right place. As you can see in the next photo there’s a spacer now on all the mounting points on the rear of the engine. However, that’s not really a bad thing as it means I can shift the engine laterally without too much trouble.

As you can also tell, the cradle is now suffering from repeated modification. At some point towards the end of this process I’ll take it off again, clean it all up and paint it one single colour. Or, perhaps I’ll get it powdercoated?

Finally, I made some supports for the front of the engine using some bucket bushes that I made up. I’m still wondering about whether I need to triangulate these a little more though. As I mentioned there’s only one support on the engine at the front now. However, the ’07 engine, although mounted on two points on the engine, only had a single mounting point to the chassis so perhaps it’s OK. I think most of the scope for engine movement is taken up with the cradle. To be honest, the front mounts don’t really do that much, the engine is quite stable without them. So, for now I’ll stick with it as it is, apart from getting the front mounts painted/coated as well.

The engine was now in the chassis and I could move onto the less dirty aspects. The first thing was the airbox.

On the ’07 engine I’d turned the airbox around so that it fitted pointing backwards. I’d then made some holes in the top for the air inlet and routed that into the air filters turned upside down. (Trust me, it makes sense.)

Something similarish was going to be needed with the ’08 airbox. In the next photo you can see the lower half of the standard airbox in the standard positi0n. However, it’s only just missing the roll cage which the top half wouldn’t and it’s probably too close to the long-suffering driver.

So, the same sort of surgery would be needed. I spent ages working up to taking it to bits as it was just such a nicely made part. However, eventually I set about it. As before it’s made of polypropylene and therefore cuttable and weldable as it’s a thermoplastic. I did the welding by turning up the temperature on my soldering iron and buying a spare bit for it.

After much messing about, an inhalation of doubtless very dubious polypropylene smoke I ended up with something that fitted onto the throttle bodies without too much trouble. You can see that I’ve blocked up the air inlet at the bottom, using some stock polypropylene sheet, and I’ll have to arrange for inlet, and a filter, at the top. However, this looks OK at the moment. What’s more, I can get at the gubbins under the airbox OK, which includes things like the primary injectors and the knock sensor.

One minor problem is that I’m going to have to route the fuel supply to the secondary injectors up through the airbox, you can see the feed pipe slap bang in the middle of the airbox. There isn’t the room for manoeuvre on the fuel lines to do anything different. Haven’t quite worked out how to do it yet though.

Next, as on the ’07 engine, I made a panel to both support the airbox and make a mounting place for the ECU and so on. In retrospect I think I might have made this a bit tall and perhaps I’ll have to cut it down.

With that done, I set about doing what I’ve now done several times, that of taking a complete bike loom and chucking away everything i don’t need. As you can see at a partial point in the process I’m surrounded by a mountain of wires. The ’08 engine, inevitably, includes loads of bits and pieces that the ’07 didn’t so the wiring loom is consequently more complicated. I’m getting there though.

One thing I have done, though, is that I’ve pulled out of the next race at Donington. My original plan had been to re-fit the ’07 engine but I decided that I couldn’t face doing that, or the problems that might be caused should I bend the car in the race. What’s more, it’s only a single race. That should meant that I’ve got plenty of time to get the new install finished before the next race at Snetterton.

No worry, I’ve lightened up a bit now. I’m actually doing some races next at Anglesey with a different club. Hopefully that means I can relax a bit and get my brain back into gear.

Before telling you the complete story, here’s a photo. Many thanks to Dave Hackett for this rather stylish attempt.

The second photo, and the others in this post were taken by Derek Jones’ Dad, whose name I seem to have forgotten. My excuse is old age.

This one was taken on lap 1 of the race and you can see my red car in the foreground on hill up to MacLeans. Derek’s white car can be seen at the top right and is already a loooong way up the track…

The first problem was that the club lost my entry for the Allcomers race which I’d been intending to do in lieu of testing which is very expensive at Donington. I now think that this was because I sent in the entry using the facilities that the club provides in the form of the Acrobat field data rather than as the complete Acrobat document. It seems as though when sent in this form it confuses the people up in darkest deepest Norfolk.

So, I went all the way to Donington for a single 13min +1 lap race with no testing of any form.

Qualifying was a bit of a disaster. Over the years racing I’ve come to know that I really need to test at a circuit to get any chance of getting up to speed. With the absence of the allcomers this was never going to be any good and so it proved. My previous FL at Donington was 1:21.09 and I knew that going at least half a second faster was easily feasible. However, during the first few laps I was really just getting up to speed, trying to stay flat through the Craners and marvelling on how quick the Old Hairpin is.

There was a problem though. As an experiment I’d tried changed the carb main jet size before getting here and it was looking as though it was a bad idea. Although there was a lot of headwind down the main straight I wasn’t getting out of 5th gear, as I’d normally expect to be. Looking at the logs afterwards and I was hugely slower down that straight than I was last year (111 instead of 122 mph).

And then it all went horribly wrong. Someone, not sure who, dumped a load of oil at Redgate and for a lot of the rest of the circuit. I had a couple of hairy moments approaching Redgate wondering what the gravel was going to be like. As such the miserable 1:22.8 that I’d managed earlier in qualifying was going to have to do. That’s right, about 1.8 slower than last year when I could clearly have gone faster. I was 17th on the grid, 10th in class. I hadn’t been this far back for ages. I was even behind Adrian for the first time ever.

I spent some of the interval putting the carb jets back as they were. Talking to Andy, who’d originally suggested the change, my experience was pretty typical in that the car had felt much better in the mid-range, but the top end power was down. That would certainly fit with what I’d seen on the logger.

The thing is, I perhaps shouldn’t have bothered.

Perhaps the problem really is that I approached the race thinking that I really had to get on it as fast as I could before everyone else got away from me. Consequently, I set off really quickly. In fact, I got a really good start and passed quite a number of people on the run to Redgate and down the Craners and the Old Hairpin. The photo here is at Redgate, you can see I’m already past Adrian, although I’m not entirely sure what Neil is doing all the way  out there on the right. I actually had to brake a bit at Redgate because Tim Gray in front was having a bit of a moment.

Then I was a bit too far to the right on the approach to MacLeans, making an over-ambitious attempt to get up the inside of Rob Grant if I’m honest. All of a sudden the car jumped out of gear. That meant that I ran too far to the right, got it on the grass and the car spun right across the track into the kitty litter on the left. Miraculously, I missed everyone. In the photo here you can see that I’m on the grass and spinning. I’m just about to shoot across the front of Phil Alcock’s car, nearest the camera.

More accurately, they missed me. Laurels must go to Phil who as you can see was very close to me. How the hell he avoided contact I have no idea.

So, there I was stuck. I got out of the car and the marshalls did a “live snatch” which essentially means they sent in a large tractor to pull the car out of the trap. The only good note from the whole weekend really was that they did this with the front towing eye I made a while ago. This worked a charm; they could tow the car forwards without it diving into the gravel and the welding didn’t pull apart which I’d been slightly concerned about. What I would like to do, though, is use a flexible connection to the chassis, with something like a bit of old seat belt webbing. You can see the tractor in this photo. If you look hard you can see me (white helmet, black overalls). Even at this range there seems to be a distinct downcast look about me.

So, that was my race weekend. There’s now a few weeks before Silverstone. I’ll have to try harder next time, where “harder” probably means relaxing a bit. One bright note, though, is that I won the day’s “Pewter Spoon” award. I’d kind of like not to do this again, to be honest…

It’s the time of the year when the Birkett entries go in and I’m in an entry from “RGB East”, there’s also an RGB West you’ll not be surprised to know. RGB West essentially beat us last time (I’m using “us” slightly flexibly here because this was just after I’d set the car on fire so I wasn’t actually racing) by a whole 0.6 second after 6 hours of racing. The race looks even better this year as it’s taking place on the International circuit. Of course, none of us has any experience whatsoever with this layout. That could be fun…