Come the first session of the morning and the sun was out. As I’d put in new pads all round I wanted to spend a short while bedding them in. So, I wasted about half of the session doing that and then tried to wind it up. I’d also decided to change the damper settings as a bit of an experiment and that turned out to be a huge mistake as the car was nigh on undriveable. I spent a while taking off body panels and adjusting dampers and things improved slightly until the session finished. In all that time, though, I wasn’t really very quick. In fact, I’m still slower than my best time in the Fury which is a bit galling. The problem is that I’ve still not got the balance of the J15 right (I sound like Jenson Button, albeit without the talent). In some circuits, like Silverstone, that isn’t such an issue but at Brands it’s a killer as the circuit is essentially all corners. The best time in this first session was about 52.3 seconds. Pathetic as it’s still about .4 slower than my best Fury time. Although, as I said, the car was handling horribly so perhaps it isn’t too bad.

Back in the paddock I put the car back to the setup that it had at Silverstone. At least that was predictable.

And then it started raining. In  fact, it absolutely threw it down. If you’re reading this a couple of years hence it’s worthwhile pointing at that we’re in the middle of a drought, especially here in the south east. As usual when wet, the track was very difficult in the second session. This even after removing the bars and slacking the dampers all round. Best time in that session was 68.4 seconds!

And then it was lunchtime. I didn’t feel that I’d learnt much, other than how sensitive the car is to the rebound settings on the dampers. Even worse, the weather cleared and the three sessions in the afternoon, which I hadn’t paid for, were mostly warm and dry. At least I’d done some wet weather running as the forecast for the weekend was pretty grim.

So, I left the settings alone and went to bed. In the morning it did indeed look pretty grim and when we went out for qualifying it was tipping it down. Qualifying at Brands is always a bit of a lottery as the track gets really busy. I toiled around for a few laps trying to get some heat into the tyres and was getting somewhere at the end of the session when the car was starting to grip a little better. Problem was, at the end of the session I was getting silly numbers on the Palm. It was telling me I had an oil pressure of 190° and a pressure of 5psi, although the oil light wasn’t on. I stopped and got towed back to the paddock, although my money was on water getting in the electrics somehow.

Back in the paddock I had a good look round and couldn’t see anything wrong. I’ve been thinking for a while that I ought to replace the Palm dash with something that’s actually water proof and perhaps now there’s a drought I really ought to do so, something like a Dash-3 or a Dash-4. That would also mean that I wouldn’t have to be continually worrying about whether the Palm was charged or not.

Looking at the logs, though, it’s clear that it wasn’t just the display as the logs do also show something odd happening. What’s more, the point at which the oil temperature and pressure start doing odd things coincides with the battery potential dropping. Perhaps I’d turned on the headlights or something and that caused the instrumentation to go awry? I’ll have to check out the regulator/rectifier to see if it’s producing the proper output. I’ve also been thinking for a while that I ought to get a spare battery, perhaps this is now the time to do that.

I ended up with a best time of 67.5, good for a miserable 16th on the grid in the first race. I was 15th in the second race so that was very slightly better. About the only ray of sunshine is that I was quicker than Colin in both races. I must admit, I’d assumed that with his new BDN he’d be off down the road this year, but he seems to be having some difficulty getting the thing working.

Later in the day it was time for the first race. It was still really wet and by the time of the day that we were out the club announced that all races were being cut to 10 minutes. Not surprising really given the fact that other formulae were falling off left, right and centre.

So, I lined up on the left of the grid and when the lights went out was treated to the rather interesting sight  of Lee, in front of me, moving sideways. He’d lit the rear tyres up and, as the Brands grid is on a slope was just sliding sideways.

After that slightly alarming start I had a reasonable time of it for the first lap or so. Problem was, being in the thick of it, as I was, isn’t a recipe for being able to see where you’re going in the wet. Several times I literally couldn’t see a thing; something I’m not brave enough to handle well. I think as a consequence I missed my braking/turn-in for Surtees and ended up skittering across the grass. I came to a halt without any issue but then got going in what seemed pretty much like last place. Looking at the lap chart, though, I was only 26th out of 28…

After that I had quite a fun time, passing cars and working my way forward, although in 10 minutes I was never going to get anywhere. In the last couple of laps I saw Dan in front of me and was slowly gaining on him until I passed him in to Surtees (there was much more grip off  line on the bottom straight) and then, while rounding Clearways lost it again and this time spun right around and nerfed the left front on the pitwall in the process of coming to rest facing completely the wrong way. My camera wasn’t working well; I’d tried to improve the wet weather vision by putting some cling film over the front of it, turns out that the optical properties of cling film are not what you need. But, if you watch Dan’s video then you can see me making an idiot of myself in his video.

I then made the mistake of my life by moving forwards a bit (that is, backwards along the track) so that I was opposite one of the holes in the fencing at the top of the pitwall. That meant I could climb over the cage and onto the pitwall. Why was that a mistake? Because it was the last lap of the race and I could have reversed over the finishing line and got an extra point. I’d surely also get RGB style points for crossing the line going backwards. Probably also a talking to from the clerk of course…

What I actually did was to kill the engine, there was some steam around the front and I was concerned about the radiator having been holed. That meant another trip back to the paddock, this time on low loader.

Back in the paddock it didn’t look too bad really, although the bonnet had a bit of a graze, as in the photo. The bodywork doesn’t fit as well as it used to either. I probably need to bash the mountings back into position. Note, by the way, that the headlamp covers are really grubby on the inside. I keep wondering about getting rid of the mounting plates (those little bits of aluminium) and just holding them in place with tape as that would also mean, I think, that they wouldn’t get water inside them.

I was still a bit concerned about the radiator though, and after a very wet evening and night I had a good look at things and checked everything over. Although there is a bit of a dinge in the rad it wasn’t leaking. So, everything was set for race 2. All we needed was for the rain to disappear.

And then, amazingly enough, it did! I lined up on the grid in what seemed like sunshine. A trip round on the green flag lap, though, showed that although the track was mostly dry there was a river across the track on the exit of Clearways.

At the start I got away pretty well and was in a group with Lee, Austin and Steve Bell. Those three people were scrapping away and I was checking that the car really was going all right. After a lap or so Steve ran wide out of paddock and I managed to get up the inside into Druids. I’m slightly concerned (see the video) that I chopped him into Graham Hill but he didn’t complain later! Then Austin ran wide on the exit of Clearways, probably having a bit of a moment on the river, and I got past him. After that it was really just a drive to the flag.

Just about at the end of the race John Goodwin, a returning RGBer in a newly built Spire, came zooming past. Hard to see how he managed to be so much quicker than me. I’ve been thinking about the handling of a car a lot recently and it’s clear that I need to do a lot more to stick the rear end down so as to get some grip coming out of places like Clearways. (Or perhaps I just need to grow a larger pair.) I think I’ll go testing before the next race at Cadwell and try a few things on the rear suspension; softer springs and different damper settings come to mind.

Anyway, here’s the video of the race. It’s quite good for a few laps and then gets boring. Worst of all I got lapped! This is something that hasn’t happened to me for ages and brings home how far the chaps at the front of the grid have jumped forward.

I’ve actually started doing a few things to the car since the race, I’ll leave those for the next spine-tingling update though. Watch this space…

Race 1 at Silverstone was fun but race 2 was rather disappointing. One reason for this was that I cooked the brakes in the second race. I certainly had been trying to use them harder (I’m not really a demon braker) but all the same it seemed a bit poor. So, I’ve been whiling away a bit of time by chaning all the pads and the fluid. So, I’ve just pumped most of a couple of litres of expensive brake fluid all the way through the system and out the other side.

I’ve also just realised, while typing this, that I’ve done all that and not actually sat in the car and checked that the pedal hasn’t gone all spongy. That’s a bit of a pain as the car’s actually now on the trailer again…

Something odd happened at one point at Silverstone, during the test day, in that the drop link to one side of the front ARB became detached. At the time I thought the ARB itself had taken a bit of a set but on closer examination it was just that the actuating lever on the end of the bar had moved sideways slightly. As such, I needed to stiffen things up a bit so I welded another bit of steel in to try and triangulate the lever slightly, as in the photo.

Of course, this doesn’t actually actually help get any weight out of the car. The issue here had been hightlighted by borrowing Bob’s corner weight scales while at Silverstone. When I’d set out on the track of building the J15 one of the notions that I’d had in my mind was that the J15 ought to be roughly the same sort of weight as the Fury was. If so, then I’d be pretty much on the weight limit. However, that’s turned out not to be the case and the biggest issue is the J15 bodywork. Measurements with Bob’s scales show that if I take off the front and rear bodywork (admittedly still with the lights attached) then the J15 is pretty much the same weight as the Fury was. However, adding those bits of bodywork adds about 30kg to the weight of the car. I’ve failed to persuade Jeremy to make me some lightweight bodywork; he seems very concerned about it cracking and no matter how many times I tell him that I don’t mind about that I’m not sure he believes me.

So, as long as I continue to ignore the “why don’t you design your own car” voice in my head I’m still wondering about how to get some lighter bodywork. One possibility is to use the J15 bodywork as a buck with which to make some moulds. However, this is not as easy as it sounds and will lead to huge amounts of work, not least because I’d have to fill in all the holes in the current bodywork so as to have a chance of getting a moulding out of a mould.

The other thing I’ve often wondered about is making something completely new. There’s a chap in Switzerland who built a mini-LMP style car as in the photo here. Quite a lot of this is actually just aluminium. He did, however, make a pretty complex mould for all the top of the bodywork and he made a pretty good job of it as you can tell by the reflections. I’m not sure about the rather ugly cover over the airbox though.

Anyway, back to the real world. You may remember that I had a problem when I first installed the ’08 engine with the sprockets getting pretty chewed up. To be honest, this continues to be an issue although a rather less serious one after a lot of time spent aligning things absolutely as well as I can. I decided to have a rather more dramatic go at this by installing a hard anodised driven sprocket. What’s more, I decided not to split it to make sure that the chain runs just as smoothly as I can make it. I spent some time working out what the right size was so that I could get a reasonable amount of gear ratio adjustment by just using 14, 15 or 15 tooth drive sprockets.

Of course, fitting this sprocket is a lot harder as I had to remove one of the driveshafts and take half the transmission carrier off. However, I did finally do it and here it is. It doesn’t really show up well on the photo but it’s a fairly fetching light gold colour which is quite nice.

And, in today’s second “you dozy twit” moment I’ve just realised, while looking at the photo, that I’ve forgotten to put the chain guard back in place.

The other thing I’ve done is to change the oil. That’s no big deal, you might think, but it turned into a bit of a marathon. I think I might have mentioned that I had a bit of an oil leak at Silverstone. I changed the O ring on the cooler take-off sandwich plate as the first part of fixing this. However, it turned out not to do the entire job and there was still some oil coming from somewhere. After some effort I tracked this down to the clutch cover. While at Rockingham we’d had a bit of a leak which seemed to be due to a bolt being missing from the clutch cover. We replaced this but I checked a but harder the other day only to find that all the clutch cover bolts were loose, almost as if the cover had been  replaced, poorly, by the breaker who supplied the engine.

All the same, it seems to be OK now and the clutch does work so perhaps it’ll be OK.

While changing the oil I removed the plugs to let me spin the engine over. I was concerned that they looked a little  bit too pale. Although the air-fuel ratio, as measured by the wideband lambda, looks about right I might use the buttons on the front of the Power Commander to richen everything slightly. The  reason why this might be happening is that the snorkel is actually managing to shove a bit more air into the engine that is expected.

So, that’s about if, apart from correcting the fauxs pas mentioned. I’m pretty much set for going testing and racing at Brands…

However, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’d booked the Friday test day and we travelled up to Silverstone by a different route to usual and arrived at much the same time as we would have done by the normal route. I’d arranged to share Bob’s garage and was rather surprised when we got there to be told by the people on the gate that Bob was already there. However, all was revealed when I saw Bob, and realised that he’d metamorphosed into a physiological form that looked exactly like Colin Chapman. Odd that.

However, it was great being back in the paddock and much chatting went on and we retired for the night.

During the test day I set about fiddling with ARBs and so on and got somewhere on the times. Prior to this day my best time was 1:04.62 which was actually a Fury time. (Last year’s RGB race was washed away, see above.) After the testing I was about a second quicker than that. Looking at the logs a lot of this is just down to the increased engine power so perhaps that’s not too surprising. It’s still the case that I’m not carrying the amount of speed into the corners that I did with the Fury. I’m not totally sure why this is the case. I do need, though, to work on the braking rather more than I am at the moment.

Back to race day, though. It was rather gloomy but didn’t look as though it was going to rain. I was pretty much at the front of the qualifying race (that is, who gets into the assembly area first) although that’s not really an issue at Silverstone because of the nice wide track.

Qualifying was mostly uneventful. I don’t think I got everything out of the car that I could have done though. And, as such, I qualified in about the middle of the grid with a time of 1:03.37. Yes, quicker again but an age slower than the fastest class R boys were going.

The race was quite fun, though. I got a pretty good start and was right up behind Tony’s new Wolfe. This is a home designed and built car that has got my “I must design my own car” juices running again… But, I just couldn’t get near it. Time after time I came out of Becketts just behind him but he just pulled away on the straight. It probably helps that he’s down to weight limit and I’m still about 30kg over. In fact, before the race I borrowed Bob’s corner weight scales (lust, lust) and that showed that the front and rear bodywork on my car, although admittedly with the lights, weighs over 30kg. Compared to the waffer thin bodywork on things like the Spire and the BDN that’s awful. I keep trying to persuade Jeremy to make me some light bodywork and he’s not really interested.

However, the bet thing was I was in a race. I ended up spending most of the race swapping places with Colin and Al although that had the side effect that Tony got away. You can’t see it on the video due to the lack of any rearward vision (I’ve plans to sort this) but Colin, Al and I crossed the line with just 0.24 second covering the three of us. Luckily I was the first one over… Here’s the video:

So, it was back to the paddock and after a nice Indian takeaway, eaten in the palacial surroundings of garage 5 at Silverstone, we retired to bed.

The following was it was actually sunny. Odd, I thought we were at Silverstone? Our race was quite early and I lined up, hoping for a better race. I decided to alter the angle of dangle of the spoilers on the car to try and get a little more straight line speed. That may have been a mistake.

I got another half decent start but after that I just didn’t get in touch with things. Only by a tenth or so but all the same I was going backwards. Worse, after a few laps the brake pedal got longer and longer necessitating some alarming lines, that you can probably see on the video. As a consequence I just had to back off a bit and try and get the car back. Here’s the rather boring video:

So, not a bad weekend but I’ve got some stuff to do to the car. That started today when I changed all the brake pads, changed the brake fluid and changed the oil. Hmmmm, probably an expensive weekend.

What I really need, though, is to lose some weight out of the car. Wish I could work out how, other than making some moulds and making my own bodywork…

All the same, I need to get the car ready. One issue is that I only squeaked through the noise test at Rockingham. So, I took off the silencer can to find, as expected, that a good deal of the wadding had disappeared. As you can see from the photo a good bit of it was left, but most of that had become glass-like and was therefore doubtless a waste of space.

So, I repacked with nice new wadding and wrapped the expansion tube with stainless wire wool. Once it was back together it was clear that it was making rather less noise, even when idling. Hopefully it’ll be a good deal different at the circuit.

I’ve also adjusted the gearing, it was really too tall at Rockingham. Odd because I’d set it to that position at the Birkett last year when I was running out of revs in 6th down the Hangar straight. You’d have thought that Rockingham would have been as quick, but I was being circumspect because of the noise and short shifting along the banking.

I finished off the exhaust system by welding the cat to the end of the tail pipe. Although it was working with a big exhaust clamp on it the weight rather annoyed me. Mind you, there’s an issue with this in that I’m concerned that bits of wadding might end up blocking the cat. If so, I’ll have to come up with another solution. For now, though, it’s a great plan.

I want to do a couple of small suspension adjustments to the car before the Silverstone weekend but apart from that I’m ready to go. Can’t wait, especially as we’ve got an entry, at the moment, of 28 cars which means a pretty busy race. Theyre even letting us use the garages although I reckon it’s going to be a bit tight in there…

If you’re not familiar with it Rockingham is essentially an oval, albeit an oval that’s a sort of a squashed square. However, there’s a lot of twiddley bits of track in the middle and the circuit we were using was essentially one of the oval corners (bottom of the track plot above) and various bits of the twiddley stuff. But, after a day whizzing round I have to say that it’s not my favourite circuit by a long chalk. Apart from the bend on the oval it’s all low speed stuff so it’s just a collection of point and squirts, with no really flowing bits of the track. I’m glad we’re not racing there. (Of course, it might be different in a race…) In may ways it’s reminiscent of the Indianapolis circuit that the F1 chaps used to use; that was dull as ditchwater too…

We got there a bit late, courtesy of the plonkers who decided to dig up one of the bridges on the A14, neglecting to advertise this fact at a place that would have allowed us to make a decision to go a different route. However, we just got there in time. After the safety briefing we took our time and got the car ready. One small problem was that I only just scraped through the noise test; I’ll need to repack the silencer I think for proper action later in the month.

The day was vastly improved by having Adrian, Duncan and Charlie there to help for the day. It was amazing to come into the pits and just sit there while the dampers were adjusted. I spent a lot of the day twiddling with dampers trying to get a decent setting. Eventually ending up essentially where I’d finished last year. That’s no bad thing though. I’m pretty sure that the car felt more stable at the rear than it did last year. (Long term readers will remember last year’s first track outing was accompanied by a lurid spin under the bridge at Snetterton.) This time I was approaching the hairpin at the bottom right of the track map just shy of 130mph and I found I could just leap onto the brakes (you had to) without any issue about loss of stability.

I wonder how much of this improvement is down to the diffuser panel. To be honest, after I got home I remembered that I’d meant to try taking it off and seeing what the car felt like. I clean forgot, oh well…

Most interesting, though, is the undertray after I got home. I made the new undertray as wide as I could manage it and I was always unsure if the sides of it were as well supported as they might be. They’re really only supported by the front of the diffuser panel. Looking under the rear of the car today the sides of the panel have been folded down by the effects of the air, what’s more in a rather interesting pattern as you can see in the photo. This has happened on both sides of the car and not just the one in the photo.

This has the interesting aspects of making the undertray not RGB-legal as it’s more the 10mm away from the horizontal. However, it should be easy to fix. I’ll bash it straight with a hammer and use some aluminium angle to stiffen up the edges.

Worst thing, though, was that despite my attention to the engine mounts over the winter and the careful re-alignment of everything the driven sprocket still seems to be suffering slightly from wear. (Although, to be absolutely fair, I don’t think I paid enough attention to looking what it was like before the trackday.) I think I might try and get a hard-anodised sprocket to compare with the current ones.

So, all that’s left before the start of the season is to test the thing.I did drive it from the garage onto the drive again which worked. I then used the reverse to get back into the garage, which didn’t work. However, I’ve now fixed that. (Some dozy pillock had wired the motor wrongly.)

To get myself finally set up I trudged up to Harrogate today to get the car dynoed. This is the same place I took the J15 in its earlier CBR1000RR07 incarnation so, even though the actual numbers from the dyno are not relevant, the comparisons are.

Hence the plots at the top right. This shows the data for the current car and the best run from the ’07 engine last year. As you can tell, there’s about a 10% improvement in the power output. What’s more, the ’08 engine carries on going rather better. In fact, the power curve is pretty flat from 11,500 upwards. Obviously, the ’08 engine’s rev limit is rather higher than the ’07 one. In fact, it was essentially a rather boring day, as commented on by Damien (the dyno chap). he reckoned that was essentially a good sign; it just worked with no excitement.

With  that out of the way I’ve got a few little things to do but, essentially they’re peripheral. For example, I want to check my helmet visors and locate my nomex undies… In fact, I’ve decided to just leave the car on the trailer…

The first race is at Silverstone towards the end of this month. Before then I’ve got a couple of test/track days to do. I’m getting really quite excited now… I’ll tell you how I get on; there might even be some video.

In fact, this was at the end of a rather odd weekend. Tom is going away from the UK to live and work in Hong Kong for the foreseeable future. I was a bit discombobulated when he left home to go to Durham University but this is a bit odder than that…

So, discombobulation aside, how to did I get here. Well, back  in the Dark Ages I was building the airbox snorkel, you will doubtless remember. I did say that I wanted to shroud the oil cooler slightly, which I did with the aid of a bent bit of aluminium. This is held on, as you can doubtless tell, by some tiewraps. Look, if it’s good enough for holding on bits of F1 cars then it’s good enough for this.

With that the car was back to the point where I’m now really tarting it up and getting ready to test and race it. As you can tell from the photo at the top I’ve got the usual race number, which commemorates my age; odd that I’ve been that age for some years now. But, these things happen.

One thing I’ve been meaning to experiment with for ages is some sort of “diffuser” panel. The quotes are there because we can’t build a proper diffuser in RGB because of the rules limited aerodynamic development. However many people have claimed some effect from a bit of a rising panel at the rear of the underside so I decided to make something, and ended up with the thing in the photo.

As you can tell, this provides a truly superb way of bashing in the shins of other RGBers, having wreaked havoc on people last year with the rear spoilers. It’s made from a carbon/glass composite with some bits of coremat to stiffen it up a bit. Mind you, I do keep wondering why I didn’t just make it out of aluminium. (In fact, I keep musing about this pipedream of making some complete bodywork, of a rather different shape, out of ultra light aluminium. I reckon with the right curves and lots of rivets it’d be very stiff. I’m thinking of a sort of CanAm shape if that means anything to you. The J15 body isn’t half a sexy shape but the bodywork is far too heavy.)

With all that done the only things, really, are setting up the car and seeing if it works. Hence, the trip onto the drive. I didn’t actually drive it there as I hadn’t even started the suspension setup at the time. I’m most of the way through a first run through of this now. Tomorrow I’ll do some corner weghting and we’ll see where we are.

Once that’s all done I couldn’t half do with some testing. I’ve got a trip to the rolling road sorted, but trying the car on track as well would be rather sensible. Heaven knows how I’ll find the time though.

I also need to start getting race ready: sorting the trailer out, making sure the bus works, sorting out the race spares and tools. That’ll take me weeks. Last thing, though, is that I tidied up the garage while the car was out of the garage idling on the drive (I was checking that the cooling worked properly). I realised that I still had a perfectly good CBR1000RR07 sitting there complete with one of Andy’s expensive billet sumps and a Power Commander. Time to put them on eBay, I suspect. I reckon I could make enough to buy some better set up gear; I keep wondering about proper cornerweight scales and some toe alignment gauges…

I’ve finished sticking the airbox together, and the final version is in the photo on the right. Actually, that’s not quite final as since then I’ve arranged a couple of little brackets to stabilise it to the roll cage and covered up that hole which was a failed attempt at getting access to one of the fixings on the top of the standard airbox; I’ve decided to live without it.

However, even with the airbox like this there’s an obvious thing missing which is an air filter. I’ve done here something like what I did last time and installed a grid inside the standard airbox lid onto which I can sit a layer of air filter foam.

This is just some galvanised (I think it’s intended for gardening really) mesh that’s held in place inside the airbox by melting it into the polypropylene.

Of course, I need to put the foam there as well and the next photo shows the foam in place. To be honest I reckon it’d just sit there happily but as you can see I’ve retained it slightly with, yes, a couple of tie-wraps. I deliberately put them in a bit askance, as I convinced myself it was better that way. Can’t quite remember why now, though.

With that I could put the airbox together and put in the little brackets I mentioned. The only problem is, Adrian lent me some air filter oil and I left it on my desk at work. I’ll have to wait until I retrieve it to put it all together.

With all that done I’ve reached the point where, at last, I can put the bodywork back on and it’ll start looking like a car again. I retrieved the main tub from where I’d parked it hanging from the roof and put it back over the chassis. I then spent a good time cleaning last season’s clag from it. I also started changing the mirrors. For all of last season I never felt I got very good vision from the large central mirror I had. It’s rather in the airstream and seems to vibrate like mad at speed. So, I’ve decided to have a go with just wing mirrors again. However, the Racetech ones I had before are really rather too small, and it’s hard to see over the humps that are the “shoulders” of the J15. So I’ve bought some rather larger and more sticky-out ones from Lifeline. I’ve mounted one of the left of the tub (I’ll do other once the screens are in place) and you can see it compared with the central one in the photo above. it remains to be seen whether I like this or not.

With the bodywork back on, and I’ve started putting the sidepods back too, you can see the new oil cooler nestling at the rear end of the sidepod. I’m planning on shrouding this slightly so as to make it a bit less in the way of stones thrown up by the wheel, I keep wondering if that isn’t the reason I had the failure at the end of last season.

With the reappearance of the bodywork, I can clean it up and take off the numbers that were on there for last year’s aborted Birkett. Luckily, I think I’ve got enough 5s and 0s for three new 50s which I’ll put in place soon.

I’m now getting perilously close to putting the car back on the ground and starting aligning the modified suspension. Oh joy, that’s just so tedious…

All the same, after putting the new engine in I put all the wiring back. Of course, this was a lot quicker than last time as everything was cut to the right length. You can see some of the wiring in the photo on the right. Not really very interesting though, being the same as before.

On the right of the same photo is a new expansion tank. The previous one was exactly the same as this, but was a tenner, or something, from ebay. It had always annoyed me in that it was dirty and this brand new one appeared on eBay for the princely sum of £40 so I bought it. I will never understand why some racers buy expensive aluminium header tanks for 3 times this price and which mean that you can’t see the water level without taking the top off. What’s more, it has a connection for the bleed on the top of the thermostat housing which means that the system is essentially self bleeding. Mind you, as you can see, I might just have overfilled it a little.

So that’s the cooling and wiring back together. Next thing was to make the oil system whole again. Most important here was to fix the oil cooler, which was responsible for me losing the engine at the end of last year. So, I went out and bought the most expensive oil cooler I could find. In this case just a normal Mocal one, but a heavy duty one. What’s more, following some advice from Nick, who works with Andy, I put some supports between the top and bottom flanges on the cooler, as in the photo here. The cooler’s back in the car now, although one other thing I want to do is to shroud it a bit more, so that it doesn’t get hit by grot spat around by the rear wheel.

Before starting the engine again I wanted to do one final thing, which was to replace the master switch. OK, so here a photo of the new one, although that there’s a new one down there you can’t really tell. The only reason for changing this is that very occasionally these things wear and they can disconnect when you drive spiritedly over kerbing. (I don’t think the switch itself fails, it’s the little track in the plastic body that the little lug on the key follows that wears. However, rather than buying some expensive silicon like Adrian did, I just replace the things regularly. I rather like reducing the number of failure modes and having a single switch with an air gap is, to my mind, rather superior to a lump of silicon whose failure more is, of course, to go short circuit…

With all that done, I filled up the oil system, took the plugs out to check for oil pressure, put the plugs back in a pressed the started. Brrrrm, brrrrm, it said. That’s a relief.

So, it’s back to trying to make the thing go faster. One thing on my list which is still there after the delays and tribulations over the winter is to make the air box rather better. My idea this time is to replace the access panel that’s on the top of the normal airbox with a diffuser sticking up towards the top of the car. I considered making this with grp or aluminium but finally decided to use some polypropylene that I’ve got lying around. I’m planning on making a rectangular cross section duct that enlarges gradually on entry to the standard airbox, at which place I’ll try to put an air filter of some form.

The reason for using polypropylene, which the standard airbox is made of, is that it’s a thermoplastic so you can “weld” it using a hot soldering iron or an air gun. That is, you can stick the duct to the airbox inlet with ease.

As you can see, I’ve only done the top and bottom of the duct at the moment and it’s all held together with sealing wax and string. My fond hope is that when I stick the side panels on it’ll essentially make it  monocoque and make the whole thing a lot stiffer. We’ll see whether that works later this week…

In the meantime, the season’s rushing up at us. I got my medical done at the 750 do this weekend so I’m going to stop writing now and fill in the form so that I can get the race licence application in the post…

All that left me feeling invigorated. What’s more, I’ve finally managed to get a replacement engine. I still don’t know what to do with the other one (find a new crank and build it up as a spare engine or just keep it for spare parts) but at least I can get back to putting the car together. Of course, all this has cost me a lot of time. I have, though, got a few things done. First of these was to make a new rear undertray, as in the picture above. I want to change the underbody aero slightly on the car (says he implying he has a clue what’s going on) and this is part of this. The reason for this is that the way the previous undertray was getting pushed around by the air indicated that something quite different from what I intended to happen was happening. So, at the moment I’ve just make a big flat bit. Whether this has any chance of functioning as the central bit of a venturi, which is what you want, is anyone’s guess at the moment.

That isn’t really much to write home about. However, I drove along to Andy’s on Friday to pick up the new engine which appears in the next photo. As you can see, I’ve taken the sump off it here in preparation for fitting the baffled billet sump. Certainly it looks pretty clean on the inside, but time will tell about the performance.

Since then I’ve spent a good deal of time over the weekend getting the engine in and a good deal of other things hooked up, as in the final photo. The engine’s bolted in and the transmission’s all in place. The exhaust headers are connected up, using 4 more super-expensive Honda gaskets, and the coolant system is all in place. I’ve even put some coolant in there, but I may well drain that out again as I’ve had an idea about something that I might well tell you about.

Next up is to get the electrics all back together and see what I can do about the airbox. I think I’ve decided what I want to do with this, although it depends on some measurements that I want to take with the airbox back on. I’d better check that the engine starts first, though, which means filling the lubrication system and buying a silly expensive filter…

In the meantime, things are hotting up on the run  up to the new season. The new race programme is now published and I’ve registered for the series. I’m number 50 again which is good. In a couple of weeks time we’re going to the 750 club’s awards dinner which is pretty much the start of the season really. It’d be nice to know where I’m going with various bits of the car then.