To support my claims, here’s a photograph of lots of bits! If you look hard you can see a couple of struts sticking up in the middle of the suspension rockers. These are supports for the front bodywork (still can’t work out what to call it). Normally this bodywork would be hinged from the front suspension mountings but the splitter makes this nigh on impossible so I’ve just got the bodywork sitting in position. Obviously it needs a number of fasteners and so on. However, I don’t want to rely on the splitter itself as experience is that the shortest trip across the grass or gravel could peremptorily remove it. So, I needed something to support the bodywork in the vertical direction and these suppots should do the job. I’m intending to mount some bonnet pins on these supports to actually hold the bodywork in place.

One thing you might notice on the photo is the stain on the splitter over on the right had side. This is because the cooling system appears to be leaking which is a bummer. I think it’s coming from the bleed I put into the top of the radiator.

At the rear of the car the situation’s different and I decided to use Jeremy’s hinges to mount the rear of the engine cover. The photo here shows the left hand side of this arrangement. (I can’t show you the whole lot as I’d have to have opened the garage door and it was cold.)

The photos I got from Jeremy at the start of this long-drawn out process showed that he fitted some stiffening ribs inside the engine cover GRP. However, I don’t think I’ll do this. Instead I‘ll fit some sort of support to the rear of the chassis that locates on the inside of the moulding. This is a better idea for me as if, more likely when, I fit a rear spoiler I’ll want something to which to articulate the downforce (or, more likely, reduction of lift). As such a bit of chassis directly under the engine cover will be a good idea. However, in the meantime it’s fairly stable.

Stable enough, anyway, to start chopping it about. The photo here shows that I’ve now fitted the rear struts to the roll cage and cut some slots in the engine cover to clear them. I’ve also opened up the little holes in the cars “shoulders”. However, you can see I’ve made a bit of a mess of things with the paint falling off. It’s clear that I didn’t do a very good job of keying the gelcoat on this moulding. I guess I’m going to have to molest it all and repaint it. Sigh. At least this means I can avoid being too careful with it and just set about it with instruments of destruction.

So, that meant I could close the engine cover, as you can see. However, as you will remember, the CBR1000RR has a socking great airbox/injector arrangement sitting on top of it and that’s clearly not here. So, I refitted that to the engine and I’m now going to have to cut a great big hole in the engine cover to clear it. I’m sure the Sylva purists are going to have heart failure.

So, we got up to Silverstone early-ish on the Friday and I went for a drive down one of the old runways to see if I could get the thing off the line with any degree of alacrity. The answer was no, it was horrible. If anything worse than it had been at Pembrey. What was worse, as I was driving back to the bus the clutch starting slipping and then I had no drive at all; I could put it in gear, let the clutch out, and the car didn’t move at all. Sod it…

So, I took the thing apart again, groaning inwardly about getting RTV all over the place again… I assumed that I was going to find something broken but that wasn’t the case. Luckily, I got Andy to have a quick look and he noticed that the release bearing in the pressure plate had been dislodged. In fact, the more I thought about it, I don’t remember making sure that it was properly home when I took the clutch apart in the garage. I put it all back together again and it certainly seemed to do something. However, by now it was pitch dark so I covered the car up and retired for the night.

The next morning looked pretty bright, although the forecast did talk about the possibility of showers later. However, I prepped the car—I’d scrutineered at the end of Friday—and tried out the clutch. Interestingly it felt very different. However, it could just be that it felt like what it had been before the Pembrey race after I’d moved the actuation point. All the same, it was off for the Allcomers qualifying. As usual, this was a mixed affair with all sorts of different cars out there. My original plan had been to get to the assembly area late so I could push the clutch on the exit but it was not to be. However, out on circuit the car seemed to be going well. FL before this meeting was a 1:04.49. The circuit is now a little different from last time as the GP circuit now goes down the National straight. In fact, that straight has been renamed as the Wellington Straight in homage to the Wellington bombers that were based at the Silverstone airfield in WWII. Nice touch that. I actually think the circuit is now very slightly slower as the wide exit to Becketts is now ruined by a load of astroturf! As such I reckon that times this year are a tenth or so slower than last year.

I ended up 8th in the Allcomers quali with a rather poor time of 1:05.38. However, I don’t think I’d got a clear lap because of all the slower cars on the circuit so perhaps that was OK. Interesting, there were three RGB cars, including me, all at the front of the “non slicks and wings” grouping.

Later on it was time for the RGB qualifying. That went rather better in that the FL was 1:04.48. That’s right, 0.01 seconds faster than last year. However, conditions were very different. Down the end of the Wellington straight I was 5mph slower than last year, and not all of that can have been due to the remodelled circuit at Becketts. All the same, I was 8th, again. This time 2nd in class.

Come the Allcomers race and it was going to be good to see if the clutch worked. I was spectacularly careful with it at the start and got away fairly slowly. However, it didn’t bang in and out in the way it did at Pembrey, and indeed while testing it out on the runway on the Friday evening. Does that mean that I was just driving it differently, or could the release bearing have become dislodged inside the engine? Seems very odd… A couple of people got past me at the start, including Dan!, but I quickly got past to my alotted place and after that it was really a Saturday afternoon drive. I kept getting closer and closer to the slick-shod people in front only to fall back when catching up with back markers. As I’ve come to expect these guys often don’t watch their mirrors and both someone in a Mini (a real one) and a Lotus Europa tried to kill me by ignoring my presence. In fact, the Lotus also had a go at the leader who was coming past at the same time as pulling in front of me. Oh well.

So, coming up to the RGB race, as you’d have expected, it started to rain. I trundled over to the assembly area and it promptly decided to throw it down big time. However, it looked as though it was going to stop just as quickly so I decided to leave the suspension alone which might not have been a sound choice. However, it meant I stayed dry under the umbrella! I reckon the J15 is going to be easier to adjust in a rush which will be good, assuming I ever finish it.

We got a green flag lap because of the conditions and, at the start, I was very careful again with the clutch but got away reasonably. However, at Copse Gary spun, see the photo taken by Austen’s friend Dan (a different one) on the left (as was the photo at the top). Luckily we all avoided him and set off on a very wet and greasy track. In the first couple of laps I passed a couple of class A cars (David Wale and Doug Carter) at Copse, I suspect the extra power only makes things difficult, and set off after the leaders who’d got away a bit. In retrospect this bit would have been a lot easier if I’d just softened the dampers. However, I was caught by Al (class C) who was having a storming drive. We actually had quite a good dice, each giving the other room to make a mistake which was rather important here. He got past after I screwed things up monumentally at Luffield on one lap but I stayed with him all the way to the end. In the later stages Tony (the silver car in the photo) started to catch up alarmingly. In particular, he seemed to much quicker at Becketts which necessitated some Olympian levels of blocking from me on the straight. I still don’t know what he was doing!

However, that’s how it finished. I ended up 5th on the road and 2nd in class. So, quite a good race really. To show you how different driving in the wet is, the traces on the right show the throttle position and speed traces around the fastest laps in qualifying and the race itself. As you can see there’s a considerable difference in both speed and how brutal I am with the throttle.

And, here’s a video of some bits of the race:

I had thought that the best bit was that the car was undamaged. However, since then I’ve been looking at the logs and have noticed that the oil pressure was a bit down. This is very odd and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a consequence of fiddling with the clutch as taking the clutch out requires disconnection of the pressure sender. I hope it’s that as I don’t think I can face swapping an engine from the J15 to the Fury before Snetterton…

Most recent progress, if that’s the right word, has been around the Fury. Since I had such a torrid time at Pembrey with starting I decided to strip the clutch out of the Fury in case there was something obviously awry. However, there was nothing obvious. The friction plates were all worn about 50% so I decided to change them anyway. However, the only other issue is that one of the steel plates had had a small groove worn in it by the anti-judder spring. If you look hard, you can just about see this on the left most steel plate in the photo. However, according to Andy this is normal. So, I put the clutch back together. This time using some new Barnett springs and after 30 minutes persuading my tube of RTV to work properly. (Eventually it did; I should have picked all the bits off my skin soon.) We’ll see how it goes at Silverstone.

Just in case the aforesaid RTV hadn’t worked I ran the engine for a short time. Well, I had intended to but it wouldn’t start as the battery appeared to be flat. Odd. I charged it with the Optimate and left it for a couple of hours at which point the Optimate said it was fully charged. As the Optimate is just a trickle charger then it seemed likely that the battery was duff; I had thought it was dying a while ago. So, I fitted the spare (that is, I nicked the one from the J15) and now the engine turned over. However, I didn’t run it because liquid was running along the coolant bleed hose to the header tank. Bugger…

So, I took the airbox off. In the process, I disconnected the fuel hose to the secondary injectors as in the photo above, expecting it to go Pftttt! as the fuel pressure was released. However, all it did was go drip. At that point I realised that the fluid I’d seen was clear, not coolant coloured and therefore was probably fuel. So, I took airbox off further. On the way down (it’s really in three layers) I discovered the the fuel filter had fallen out and was sitting on the floor of the airbox, as in the next photo . Things were going from bad to worse.

Down at the bottom layer it was clear that the original problem was that the main fuel connection wasn’t connecting properly. I fixed that and put everything back together. Luckily, this time it was fine and fuel didn’t piss out all over the place. Phew.

Now I had to repair the reverser, again. At least this time it was still pretty clean as it had only done a few laps since I fixed it last time. Again I replaced the main shaft on which the idler gears run, the broken one which has been sawn into by the gear on the nose of the diff is shown in the photo, and put it all back together. Again.

Hopefully, it’ll work here and I won’t have to take it out again, although I’ll doubtless have to adjust it again. Then I might be in shape to go to Silverstone for another RGB race. Wonder if I’ll get any time to look at the J15 before then?

Before going on about that though, I suggest you go off to the 750 Motor Club web site. On the front page, at the time of writing, you can see the TV programme on the second Brands meeting earlier this year in which I feature a fair bit.

So, we set off on Thursday and took a frankly sub-optimal route to Pembrey, arriving at about 1800. Still, we weren’t getting rained on although the forecast was a bit mixed.

First session out on the test day was a bit tricky as I was finding my feet. I could remember which way the corners went but not how to drive it. Apart from the fact that I could remember it was tricky. All the same it was going OK. Come the second session I put in a super-smooth, and slow, lap right at the beginning to try and fix the circuit in my head and, while rounding the Hairpin, which isn’t a hairpin at all, something went BANG and the car started making the same gruesome noises that it had at Cadwell. At least this time I knew what it was. I pulled into the paddock and after a cursory look indeed, the diff mountings had come loose again. The brazing done at Cadwell had come adrift.

After a short discussion with Anthea about just going home and getting the J15 finished we decided to have a try for a better solution. After discussing things with the locals we found a chap up the road who could apparently weld. To cut a long story we went up there and, indeed, he could fix it back together for me. Hopefully doing a rather better job.

However, while we were at Jones the Welders it started to rain. Back to the circuit and it was still pouring and I put everything else back together. Yet again, I was going to have to leave the reverser out because it was, again, knackered. Luckily, by the time the penultimate session of the day appeared I’d got the car done and I went out on a drying track to really learn the place again. FL was 1:03.3 which wasn’t too bad (and a mile under the class B record which was clearly due for a pasting this weekend). In the last session of the day the car was finally going quite well and I was down to 1:02.9. Now we had to wait for qualifying.

Come qualifying I managed to get near the front of the queue and managed to get a couple of half decent laps in with the fastest being 1:02.65. That meant I was 5th and 6th on the grid for the race, 3rd and 4th in class respectively. Not wonderful but OK. The thing was, was I going to be able to get the car off the line. Since the Cadwell race I had modified the clutch so as to lower the actuation point for the master cylinder. That meant that the clutch was much easier; I might be able to feel the bite and slip better.

Or then again, as it turned out, I wasn’t. Yet again at the start I got passed by a stack of people. Most importantly including Gary. Then, after passing the other people who’d got past me I was stuck behind Gary. His class A car was very difficult to pass. I did get up the inside of him once but I ran wide at the next corner and he snuck past again. It was good racing though, “hard but fair” as Gary put it later. The problem was, while we were holding each other up the rest of the class B battle got away from me and I ended up 4th in class.

The next race was a similar result really. Again, Gary got past at the start after I made a lousy start again. Again, I was stuck behind him. This time I got a decent run at him at Hatchetts, which is a hairpin, but I skated past in a cloud of tyre smoke. Unfortunately in the process Lee got past as well. So, this time Gary was keeping two class B cars behind him. That was how it finished and I was again 4th in class. To be honest, I’d made far, far, too many silly errors trying to get past Gary and Lee. In the process, though, and after one error had put me back a bit I put in a 1:02.71 which turned out to be the fastest lap  of  the race so at least I get another point for that.

Next race is at Silverstone although there’s a conference that I’m presenting a paper at, and some holiday, and continued work on my PhD on this project, in the way so heaven knows whether I’ll be able to sort the car at all. At the moment I’m minded to strip the clutch to see if there’s any reason why I can’t seem to get away smoothly. I’m beginning to think that there’s something wrong in there. Perhaps I’ll buy a Barnett clutch for it to see if it likes it; Lee speaks highly of his.

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.

As the car had been rendered rather second hand after the previous race meeting, I decided to test at Cadwell as I wanted to try and get into a groove. To summarise the test day, I was too slow; way too slow. Last year my fastest lap around here was 1:36.2. This year, the fastest I managed in testing was 1:38.2. Admittedly some of that was probably because it was so hot, some because the track had various re surfaced bits but the biggest effect was that the circuit had decided that putting us out with a collection of Stock Hatches and Locosts as the thing to do. I’m planning on a letter of complaint to the circuit about this as it essentially wastes my cash. The fastest RGB times are as fast as 1:34ish; the fastest Locosts and Stock Hatches are about 13 seconds slower than this. The end result of this is that testing was screwed up for both us and them. I’m not impressed.

But then, I also wasn’t impressed by the Stock Hatch driver who managed to roll his car at Barn on the out-lap. That is, on the second corner after leaving the assembly area, and before he’d even reached the start/finish line. Inevitably, he red-flagged the session, costing us all a load of cash. To be honest, if I knew who he was I’d include his name here so that googlers might find him. Perhaps luckily for him, I don’t know who he was. I do know that when the truck brought him back to the paddock he was studiously looking the other way. Quite a few of his Stock Hatch colleagues were monumentally annoyed with him…

As it was, I spent most of the test day twiddling with dampers. It was interesting to see that the car really responded to changes in the settings, although I didn’t really diverge the bump and rebound settings at all so as to avoid confusing myself too much. Mind you, I’m still not convinced that I shouldn’t have just left the old dampers on. I may even re-instate them for the next race meeting which is at Pembrey. (Yes, you’re right, that’s a really long drive!)

Back in the Lincolnshire countryside the first race day dawned nice and sunny again. Hopefully, without all those pesky slow cars on track qualifying wouldn’t be such a disaster. It was better—the fastest time was 1:37.4—but not as much as I would have liked. I ended up qualifying 5th and 6th for the two races, 3rd and 4th in class. Could be better, could be worse.

So, we lined up at the start. As usual, I was wondering about how on earth I could manage to get a better start and, true to form, I got a completely lousy one. I was 7th at the end of the first lap which actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it could have been as I’d been able to get past both Doug and Al on that first lap, drivers who’d passed me in the fracas of my awful start.

After that I was stuck behind Gary and not really making much headway, although no fault of his as he was driving in an exemplary fashion. Cadwell is pretty much an “overtaking by consent” place because of the narrowness of the track. As such, you really rely on the other drivers playing fair and Gary was doing exactly that.

And then, there was a truly horrible noise emanating from somewhere in the car. I slowed and left the circuit, although in retrospect I don’t really know why I didn’t just stop at the side of the circuit.

Back in the paddock it was clear what the noise was in that the reverse sprocket on the nose of the diff had machined a slot, as you can see, in the reverse motor assembly. In the process it had also destroyed a good deal of the rest of the assembly. I’ll have to re-build all that now; sigh.

What wasn’t clear, was how this  had happened as the reverse unit seemed firmly bolted into the chassis. Further investigation, though, showed that the front diff mountings had sheared away from the rest of the chassis. I wonder whether this was an un-noticed consequence of the Brands accident? That meant that the diff could tilt in the chassis and hence the fracas. So, I cleaned it all up and got Andy to braze the mountings back together. To be honest, brazing is Andy’s weapon of choice in these circumstances but I’m not at all sure that it’s the right thing really. However, it did work and we got the car back together, albeit reverse-less, without too much problem.

That evening, we held the annual RGB marshalls BBQ. That is, we RGBers pay for the BBQ and we invite all the marshalls to come for free. This year we were helped by John Cutmore’s Dad providing all the meat and bread for us. John’s a class A driver at the moment and his Dad is a fixture of the paddock and a great supporter of RGB. John, unfortunately, didn’t get to partake of the BBQ because he was changing the engine in his Spire. All the same, it’s a measure of the spirit in the RGB paddock that about 60 people paid £5 and, in all, we probably had about 75 people at the BBQ. A great time, essentially, was had by all.

In fact, the best aspect of the evening was that Cadwell Park is right next door to Jeremy Phillips’ (that is, the J15 designer) house. He came over to the circuit both days driving the prototype J15 with his wife, Stella, in the passenger seat. I spent a while in the day looking at the car reminding myself just how gorgeous it is. Later in the evening Anthea left the BBQ to go and have a look and returned sitting in the passenger seat with Stella driving. For some reason that I just cannot fathom she  turned down the chance to drive it herself. For some other unfathomable reason I didn’t take a photograph of them. We’re obviously both stupid…

Come the following day and the weather still seemed OK. I got the car finished off and went for a blast up the entry road and it seemed to work fine. So, hopefully if I could only get it off the line I was in for a better race after two DNFs.

As it happened, I didn’t. Bollocks.

In fact, I got a worse start than usual in that I completely stalled it. In fact, I got overtaken by the ambulance in the run to the first corner. He even told me where to pass him before Coppice.

After that it was the depressingly usual charge back through the field. This is much harder at Cadwell because of the narrowness of the track. Everything was going fine until I caught up with Neil in his BDN. This is very quick in a straight line which meant that I couldn’t outdrag him and he succeeded in keeping me behind him into the various corners.

While I was driving around (and this is probably one reason why I’m not a better race driver than I am) I was thinking that I ought to modify the clutch so that the pedal was lighter and went further. That way, perhaps, I could feel it biting better. I had hoped that I could do this by just buying a master cylinder with a smaller diameter but, it turns out, they don’t exist. So, I’m left thinking that I either need to use a different sort of master cylinder all together, or modify the pedal to use a different ratio somehow.

Back at the race, I carried on harrying Neil, up  until the last lap. I knew that I was considerably faster than him and tried my hardest on this lap. I had thought that there was a small chance into Barn where Neil didn’t seem to be blocking me. I hadn’t tried to dive up the inside as on a normal race lap as he’d probably just have outdragged me on the exit anyway as my speed would have been hugely compromised. However, on the last lap that might not be the case as the start finish line was only half way to the next corner, Coppice.

So, I made a superhuman effort, and Neil, as he had on all previous laps, was rather slow out of the hairpin anyway. In that position I got right up alongside him into Barn. In fact, the video and the subsequent rubber evidence shows that the nose of my car was probably about 400mm or so behind his: the diameter of a tyre. However, he obviously didn’t see me and turned straight into me and there was a thump. I recovered all right and made it to the line. However, I could see Neil spinning in my mirrors.

I can’t admit to feeling good about this, but I’ve showed the video to many people, including other racers in different formulae, and they’re unanimous in that it was a fair, although tough, move. See what you think, here’s the last lap:

Luckily Neil was very good about things later and we shook hands on it. I’m still not exactly happy about it though. Although I’ve been punted off I don’t think I’ve ever done this to another racer.

So, I need to check the car over and find a way of making the clutch easier to use. Hopefully, I’ll also put in some time on the J15 which must be feeling a bit unloved at the moment.

Still, with that fond look backwards I needed to actually get the car together again for the next meeting. As I said last time I found out that the rear wishbone was bent and so I had to make a new one. Here it is, respendent in its colourful, er, grey finish.

I needed to re-install that in the right rear of the car and then, tedium warning, set up everything. As that was such a nice thought I decided to make life much harder for myself by actually fitting the new dampers I’d bought for the J15 to the Fury. That should confuse me. Problem is, that means I’ll lose the entire suspension settings and have to reset everything up. Everything includes ride height, corner weighting, all the wheel cambers, front toe, rear toe and “stringing” (making sure the rear wheels actually point at the front ones). As everything affects everything else that’s pretty tedious. Still, it had to be done. First step, though, was to actually put it together and here’s the right rear corner with its new damper and new wishbone. The rest of it’s still pretty grubby though.

That left the bodywork. When he was over the other week Adrian had done a sterling job of patching up the sidepod. I still needed, though, to pretty it up a bit. So, I took off the mould that Adrian had used (some aluminium sheet), and waved some filler around and sanded it down. A measure of the care with which I treat the bodywork these days can be derived from the fact that the finest grade of abrasive paper I used for this was 120 grit.

After that, I waved some paint at it (see, I’m quite blasé these days) and fitted it back on the chassis, as you can see. Of course, the problem is that bodywork like this never really fits right and making everything fit is pretty much about pushing it forcefully into position.

It was done after a while and I finished off with a celebratory wash so that it looks less like a mobile shed and pushed it back into the side of the garage where it assume its prior unloved situation. Problem is, it’s probably realised that I do care about it and therefore won’t go so well at the next race meeting. I shall endeavour to thrash it within an inch of its life to teach it who the boss really is though.

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.