Brakes fixed: all-go for Silverstone on Saturday...

New brake master-cylinder, new heather matrix (the last one started pissing out coolant....thought it was the ((New rad)) oh no! but anyway replaced), new pads. All set.
Pic from when I picked the car up earlier this week. Big thanks for Steve and Dave @Guglielmi for turning it round so fast.

Three races on Saturday.
I'm finiding myself doing stupid little jobs which i started to list in March..like: measure out driver harnesses so the ridged rubber bits marry up with the HANS device; fit the new soft-top roof (well it's 2nd hand), take off the decals, etc etc.....10 months of preparation and it's come to this....

Nervous_energy....
Will post up qualy>thru race results as i go...

Stu

Brakes...not done. New master cylinder Sir?

OK...so I changed the pads @the weekend having earlier swapped the fluid and bled the system. It's clear the RS42's (pictured) were glazed; "yay" I thought.....brake-balance cured! Sadly....
'twas not to be....

Rather than sand-papering the RS42's (I'll leave that for another day) I wanted to get a new set on the car all-round so to reduce any scope for variance. So, with a new set of Carbone Lorraine's installed (pictured below) I set off on a hopeful test drive, expecting that magical feeling of front-end-bite to return.
Pads bedded-in, I go for a few hard-stops. It went like this:

Brake> rears lock > dab of oppo > Try again.
Brake > rears lock > dab of oppo > try again. Merde!



Net/Net....the "tiny job" I expected is the sting in the tail. Rad, clutch, rear main seal, toelinks, misfire, coilpack....and now I need a new brake master cylinder and/or a caliper refurb. All before silverstone. Super.

I reckon the cost per lap YTD is something like £1,000 ...presently. This is really rather not going to plan.

Rear main-seal: done

Picked the car up earlier this week. Rear main oil seal fixed, also fitted a new clutch. Hmmmm. Thanks to the boys @Guglielmi.
Only thing left to fix is the brakes.....the front-end bite is non existent and the rears are locking. Have bled the system and added new fluid....it's definitely not the master-cylinder as the pedal is hard-as-a-rock. It's highly unlikely it's sticky pistons as it's not grabbing. It can only be the old knackered RS42's on the front so.....they are coming off. Bought some rather super-looking Carbon Lorraine pads from Hofmann's and they're going on the car @the weekend. Then....out on the road for a test....it's critical as if the rears still lock, i have a major problem to sort before silverstone in 2 weeks........

Radiator: Done

And so it is finished. Ol' rusty bolts and c-clips replaced with shiny new ones....al' rusty washers ground-off to be all nice and shiny ...why not?

It all took a lot longer than i thought it would - of course - having not anticipated i'd have to replace so many other bits and pieces. Mounting the fan to the rad was a real pain-in-the-ass (rivets required plus had to get all the rust off the old fixing plates) but everthing else was relatively straight forwards: filled up the system with coolant/water mix, turned on the engine w/o coolant header cap on, topped it up as the system drew air in...bled it @ engine side. let it run up to 100 degrees before the fan came in and that immediately took it down to 90 degrees.
I have to say the pro-alloy rad is absolutely a fantastically well-made bit of kit.
Front clam on and wheelarches (PITA).
Left the car @Guglielmi to start work on taking out the gearbox to get at that rear main-seal.....

Rad change day #1

"I'll do as much spannering as I can to save money...."
....was *just one* of my justifications of going racing when I sold it to Mrs R earlier this year. Today presented itself as a persistent lessor of a loan extended to my often, over-eager tongue. It was time to pay-up or shutup.
So....it was a proper day of spannering - and an enjoyable one at that. I'd like to extend a BIG thanks to Steve Guglielmi for letting me spanner in his workshop all day. I've been using Steve and his fantastic team for over 3 years now - as a paying customer - and they've never let me down. Always hugely welcoming and they ALWAYS do what they say they'll do. Whilst I'm not expecting this to be a permanent arrangement (after all, how often do you get the chance to use a first-class workshop and call on first-class help when you want FoC) Anyway.,...the deal is I change the rad before handing over to Steve's team to do the rear-main-seal. Definitely not a job I'd have even the faintest about......

So...I'm working to some time pressure but.....I didn't*really* expect to finish the job 100% today. In many respects, not working to a specific time-deadline made the spannering a tad more enjoyable and certainly, less stressful.

Some pics below........

Clam off and coolant drain..........(3hrs due to some rather spiffingly rounded-off bolts on the pax side sill. Thank you Lotus).











...this is the bleed-off valve on the exit side of the rad. It was completely perished on the top-end - an additional turn tighter disintegrated the entire silicone and rubber extension - and the break-down is visible on the inside of the pipe.....










10-yr old Rad off. Removing the fan was really fun. I love rivets.










Coolant pipes under the front crash structure. removing - and subsequently fixing new silicone hoses - was absolutely joyous. The black bar is the uprated front anti-roll bar.












5pm: front clam off, old rad off, all the old narly bolts and rusty c-clips removed and replaced with shiny new items, NS silicone hose mounted and jubilee-clip-tightened, wheels back on, roll Naomi back into workshop.
(Naomi - whilst pretty damned good to look at and on paper - ultimately extremely unreliable, peaky, high-maintenance and on occasion, law-breakingly upsetting to live with). You dirty good for nothing has-been.....see you tomorrow.....

New radiator

I had *a* plan.
It was fairly simple: duck and dive to the end of the season - then change all the old stuff what needed changing - over the winter.
Her majesty was dripping fluid from both ends @Silverstone, one fix being somewhat easier than the other. Either way, if i have any hope of making it to the grid on 10th October @Silverstone, I need to be "making some fixes"...as a European F1 driver would say.

Fix #1 (DiY)

New radiator.
Turns out - as many S1 Elise drivers will testify - that the rather splendid design of the OEM rad - it being too thin combined with the fact that plastoc ends are crimped onto aluminium - means it's often the first thing to go. Well...it definitely has gone and I need to replace it with a full alloy version; so i'm going to fit one of these:
http://www.proalloy.co.uk/cgi-bin/sitewise.pl?act=det&pt=52_62_178&p=207&id=proalloy
........what's even more worrying is i'm going to try it myself.

Fix #2
....is a replacement rear main seal: gearbox out....definitely a job not for me so will be giving that to the chaps @Guglielmi Motorsport.

the view from Silverstone today

Yup....it's broken again. What you can't see is....

a) the coolant nicely dripping out of the front chassis-well and..b) The rather uniform coating of oil across the gearbox and undertray.....yup...that be the rear main seal alreet Worsel......gearbox out......mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I'm thinking of starting an online t-shirt company....the first design shall be a Elise race-car silouhette (after all, that's all that'll be left after i torch the weasel) with a sizeable red-coloured strike-through sign saying: "Race-cars....NO!"

engine "sorted"

So it appears the engine is sorted. Cylinder missing was caused by duff new ht leads! New cambelt as precaution. Need to find exact compression test figures as cylinder #4 was down c10% before we changed cambelt (which i am told is within accepted tolerance) but tests can vary according to how hot the engine is and whether throttle wide open or not.
Anyhoo...it's all fine apparently. Ready for trackday @silverstone next week....although i've only gone and torn my pere-neel tendon in my left calf....following a physio session yesterday i can barely walk at the moment so hoping it recovers at least 50% strength so i can operate the clutch! Thanks to the guys @Guglielmi.

The last 2 months...

MOG HANS Seat purchased > Mounts not right, sitting too high > fabricate custom mounts > seat fits > Can't reach the steering wheel > Steering wheel spacer fitted > New HANS belts > New geo > Trackday @ Silverstone > She works! > Get her home, off the trailer....oh...she's broken again!

Some pics to follow.....

She's still poorly....

New coil pack, new HT leads....we've still lost a cylinder.
This was the view of the engine as I left it last week....hoping a cam hasn's spun on a spindle or possibly the cambelt has lopped a tooth off the vernier...which may explain the blackened plug on cylinder #4....

Aiming for Silverstone in October now with work commitments all through September this is the first chance I'll get.

Donington: no-go

The title of this blog is becoming increasingly amusing....soon it will be "My novice year in motorsport...which never happened...."

Anyway...a House-move (yay) ....and ongoing issues (outlay) with the car means dony is a no-go this weekend :(

However the good news is Silverstone is *definitely* a go-er in October.
Elsie managed a evening trackday session @ Silverstone GP back 2 weeks ago...without breaking. However, she did voice her complete disgust at spending this time in working order and made a rather splendid noise in deciding that the coil pack has finally met it's maker when i got it off the trailer when we got home.

Hard luck Jason

Well, after years of preparation, Jason's car managed 1.5 laps of qualifying before the oil decided it was going to vomit itself out the dipstick. Good luck mate - hope you get it sorted.

Jason (friend of BRR) makes race-debut tomorrow (Sat 6th)

Close friend and honorary member of BRR Jason West is making his race debut tomorrow (wahey) in the Nippon Challenge in a 300bhp Nissan 200.

I've just spoken with Jason's press officer, and things are all on track for his international racing debut in the World Series Nippon Challenge race at Silverstone tomorrow. In fact they are so on track that Nick (Technical Director, Sh*tbox racing) spent x8 hours fitting a Quaiffe diff and has just discovered it won't fit. Nothing too major to sort out ahead of Qualifying at 11am tomorrow, then.

I'll be heading across to watch Jase's gearbox explode into smithereens on the out-lap_i_mean_ line up on the grid , so if anyone wants to accompany me/meet me there, would be good to give Jase some support. I'll have both of my little princesses with me as well, so if you're the only other member of Jibber-Monkey-sh itbox-racing fan club, you might even get roped into helping me change a nappy. Now there's an offer you can't refuse.

Oh, and it will be raining, very hard. Builder's tea will be order of the day.

More new stuff

Need new harnesses to fit the new HANS device (3in straps don't sit in the runners) as well as (MOG) CF seat. On order.

Fabricated up seat mounts, pick the car up soon then across to Guglielmi Motorsport (on the way back home from where the car is) to diagnose the issue with the steer-from-ze-rear suspension.

Costs this month:
- New Scroth 2in harnesses: £ 200
- MOG CF HANS seat: £800
- Relocation of harness bar £TBC

Still need to buy boots and gloves (present ones are karting gloves, not flameproof!)

Target: Donington in August

The car has been away for the last 2 weeks. Deposited at a small company called ATF engineering, who are doing some work for me on the seat mounts and the harness bar.

Plan is to recover the car sometime in the next 2 weeks, and sort out whatever is causing the chronic turn-in oversteer in the car (most liekly worn bushes or drive-flange methinks).

Trackday booked end of June, targeting Donington in August. Seems like an eterninty but I know the time will fly as we are moving house.

Those chrysanthemum's are nice, dear

OK so....it's May 3rd.

Just seen the results come in for the A1 Gp meet at Brands and top work to Mr Stanley and Mr Pitch for excellent drives (Ben especially). Equal sympathy to Chris Randall who after an astonishing winter-build had created a fantastic Europa race car, only for it to be punted into the barrier at Druids on it's 4th race outing - Chris here's hoping you can get the thing mended (pic below). Equal sympathy to friend/mate and now into his 2nd season - Mr Rob Beves who had to pull out of this weekend due to a bad case of tennis elbow. 4-6 weeks recovery time - ouch.


If it's any consolation, I know how you feel about having to miss a few races.

So here we are - I was planning to be on the grid in June at Snetterton but that's not going to happen now.
I'm £11k deep into the car (over and above purchase price) and nowhere near my nervous first green-flag lap.
Why? Well, leaving aside the deeply unsuitable timing of the credit-crunch and the impact on my sales bonus, I can't find a blasted seat which will sit me low-enough in the car, and secondly, there's still something major to sort out with the rear suspension.

Back to the seat issue, I've gone back to Elgan (Hot_Lap) to see if we can raise the harness bar by 20mm. At present levels, it's the perfect height for wearing without a HANS device - I can tighten the belts so tight I can hardly breathe - but adding the HANS device means the belts travel some 20mm-25mm higher over my shoulders. As the harness bar is so close to the shoulders in the Elise, it means there's a *little* too much pressure on my shoulders. So, Tuesday Elgan is due to call with a date (I hope) can get the car up to his to sort this out.

In the meantime I've been busy with a house-move (goodbye single garage, hello big double heated garage with electic door yay!) and mainly tending to a newer mahoosive garden (we haven't moved yet but these duties for the vacant property have already fallen to me).
So we had a beautiful day today cutting grass and planting vegetables at the new house; which has a stunning garden. The chrysanthemum's inparticular, are quite something.

PS: First race is now Donington on August 15th (damn you Mr C. Crunch)

Brands Hatch

The day before Brands:
- Pick up new trailer from Brian James: Check
- Pick up car from Steve Williams: check.

- Do "faff" stuff after picking up car. err......
....it's 1am and I'm packing up the car on the driveway having not left Steve Williams until c8ish. Home>work call> stuff food down me neck and then start packing the car. I've still not sat in the thing since the cage has been fitted. 4am reveille. Arrive at Brands for 7am. Unload car. Engine won't start - battery flat. Got a friendly caterham driver to push me off the trailer. THANK F**K i brought the battery charger - stick it into the mains, charge up before heading off to the briefing. Took a quick pic as I headed out of the pit garage:

I've finally got to a trackday! I think to myself. Nothing that new - tb as I did 15 of the things in the VX last year but this *feels* a completely new experience. I have no idea what to expect from the car. Whenever i've driven it on the road, it's been wet and cold and what with the toelinks and geo messed-up, it felt awful.

Back to garage, fire her up. It starts! wahey. Trundle out onto the track - after over 60 or 70 trackdays in my life, i've never actually driven here. The gradient changes out of paddock hill bend feel just like the 'ring. 2nd sighting lap, i start to accelerate out of paddock-hill. No power.

Gulp.

There's a rather spiffing tractor-type noise coming from the engine. Sounds like it's missing or only on 3 cylinders. Limp into pits. Spend an hour faffing with the car (see below) before calling Steve. Spark plug cover off - no water ingress. Nothing visible loose. Had a play with the coil pack leads - no0 use. Must be coil pack.

2 hours later, it's lunchtime and Steve has sent Andy down in the car with some spare HT leads, plugs, spare coil packs. An hour or so of faffing at it's sorted.

Straight out onto the track, banged in a 20 min session. The car feels great: the tyres are on their way out but aside from that, it feels good. Tangible difference in weight compared to the VX. This is most noticeable at Druids (turn #2) - where I would expect the VX to understeer on the way in and push understeer on thw way out under acceleration, the elise just noses itself in without any resistance and statys nailed to the line on the exit. I surprised even myself how quick the car is. I really don't miss the power of the VX.

Making use of the rest of the day, I hooked up about 3 more sessions. The car felt really great: the braking feel - compared to the VX - is on a different planet. I'd become used to servo-assisted brakes (not good) but with the Elise, the feel you get through the pedal means you can go in so so so late on the brakes; with the car being well setup, hard trail-braking into the turn doesn't seem to upset the car as badly as the VX did. Again - there's much more weight in the rear of the VX which would account for this. The car really does dive a lot under braking - the single-way damper valving and relatively soft springs (400/500) are accountable for this - but it's something to sort out next year after 10 or so race starts give me a better idea where I am.

As great as the car felt, it was very unnerving through paddock hill bend - regularly being completeley out-of-shape by the time i reached the clipping-point. I'd like to say this was down to my heroically fast skills but actually it had nothing to do with that. It almost felt as if the wheel was toeing out. Maybe it was the tyres, or the camber of the corner, but most likely knackered bushes or worn drive flanges. Either way, I want to try it again on a longer radius right-hand corner. If i was racing, this would be a great excuse for qualifying at the back .

In the last session, managed to tag onto x3 caterham academy guys who were giving it the full beans. We had a great race_I_mean_session. The cars were very evenly matched through all but paddock hill; where they seemed to be able to take completely different line to me: turning in much earlier and getting on the power earlier. Whenever I tried this the rear just stepped out. Entertatining but not fast.

We all had a good natter in the pits afterwards - the caterham guys have a really exciting season ahead and I can totally see why that series attracts so many new entrants every year. End of day: loaded the car up (see below)

Despite being a fantastic family car and daily runner for me (I do c25k per annum) the Skoda is not an ideal tow-car. As you can see from the pic, the rear of the car is really under a lot of load; which in-turn moves the weight off-of the front wheels. As it's FWD, it spins the wheels in 3rd even in the dry. it's very unnerving on the motorway. I can get the elise further back on the trailer to alleviate that to some extent but i really need a RWd or AWD car for more stability

Also being a manual box, manoevering the trailer in the paddock was a nightmare. I had to reverse up the hill into my parking space, riding the clutch all the way. Smelly clutch. As I found out - it's not a good idea to try and get out of the paddock at brands through the exit tunnel. It's NOT designed for trailers! As I apexed a left hand bend into the tunnel, a quick glance in the NS mirror showed there wasn't a chocolate-teapot's chance of the trailer clearing the apex. Cars were backed up behind me and in a split second I saw the scene which might have unfolded - trying to reverse the trailer, it jacknifing - having to take it off, re attach etc etc. It's very easy to panic in these situations and i did to a lesser extent. But by some miracle, i reversed it round the corner without changing the steering spip angle and tried again and it cleared by about 1mm. Thank f*ck for that!

Silverstone report and credit-cruch-impact-on-racing-plans-for-the-year report to follow......

Roll-cage: fitted

No posted since the first test day - so this is the post that should have happened a week or so before that.

Roll-cage: fitted.
Pics below were taken when job 50% complete.
As you can see, it's a quality fit and offers strong protection. We were worried about the harness bar fouling the extended bulkhead where the fuel hose travels to the fuel tank (behind driver's seat) but in the end it cleared no probs.

What a day

Ok....it's late. No pics (sorry).

Today, I i picked up the new trailer from Brian James, sped down to Maideanhead (at 67mph) and loaded the now (90%) complete race-car onto it's transport ahead of the year's first outing in the car - at Brands tomorrow.

Set off c11am for Brian James. Despite all the gloom about racing this year (more about that when I have more time to post) it was hard to suppress the "christmas day" feeling as I pulled up to see a brand spanking new trailer waiting in the car park at Brian James' HQ in Daventry.

There was a minor SoHF as we discovered the trailer coupling didn't marry to the tow-bar ball-journal: which was coated in a resin (to stop it rusting in shipping) which the guys at BJ told me had to come off as their coupling was designue comedy moment ed for a pure 50mm ball-journal.
60 mins later, and thanking the stars I picked the trailer up versus having it delivered, i set off for Maidenhead to pick up the car.
It's been touch-and-go as to whether it owuld be ready in time, but Steve and the guys did a great job, with only a couple of minor items remaining.

Cue comedy moment as i arrive at Steve's workshop and try to reverse (visualise Benny-Hill sped-up footage) the trailer back down the lane to park next to the loading point. It was the first time i'd operated the trailer, let alone loaded a car onto it.
4 hours later (joke - it was *only* an hour) I was on my way.

The tow car is a Skoda Octavia vRS TFSI Petrol. MPG when not towing: c33.
MPG towing: 23mpg. Welcome to trailer ownership!

Got home, spent 2 hours unloading all the sh*te from the footwell's and seats and faffing: fitting rear-view mirror, adjusting harnesses, seats, loading up tools etc etc.
Just had a glass of vino and off to bed.
Can't wait for tomorrow.
Target: finish day without major mechnical problem.

Sound the alarm, you've had a sense-of-humour-failure (ah well, it's only the first)

I dropped the car off with Steve Williams earlier this week (at last!). I felt some sense of consolation when he told me he tells customers it will take "two to three hours" to fit a race / bucket seat in an Elise. Most customers it seems, cannot hide their astonishment_quickly_turning_into_injustice at this figure - but trust me, 3 hours is childs play.

Rewind 48 hours: It's Sunday afternoon, we have some close firends coming over for a cuppa, and I'm stuck with my feet hanging out the driver-side footwell, trying to re-fit the Corbeau race seat I'd taken out the day prior. This is a job I expected to finish by 10am.
It *only* took me about 4 hours to take out the race seat, pax seat, clean the tub (and discover an empty packet of Marlboro lights in the process - not mine i hasten to add) and discover that the new seat setting I intended to try - one notch closer on the seat rails - was in fact far too close for comfort. Resetting the seat to the original setting, *all* I had to do on Sunday morning was bolt it back in. Simple right? Anyway, 5 hours later, a sore neck, shoulders and back, and an enormous hole inthe front of the car - where the windscreen used to be - now replaced with a Corbeau seat (joke) - and I've given up trying 55 different settings on the seat rail spacers and bolts and decided simply to refit the pax seat on the drivers side - after all, the first thing Steve will do on receiving the car will be to take the fecker out.

....So that's the nasty part. And the pic to the left is the goooooooooooooooood-times *bit* of today's post: it's my new roll cage (yay!). Note the extra low height of the horizontal harness bar: THIS is the offending item which has caused so much damned hassle. After much metaphorical "beard-stroking" Steve and I were both of the opinion that it wouldn't fit (OMG, pleeeeeeeease not again) as the harness bar - at least on the "3 and a half fingers" measurement technique appeared not to be high enough to clear the outcrop of the bulkhead behind the drivers seat to accomodate the fuel filler hose-to-fuel-tank. So, it came as a

not insignificant sense of relief when I got a voicemail message from Steve a mer 24 hours after dropping the car off saying "The A-frame is out and the rear section of the cage is in. And.................................(drum roll) it FITS" I a rather un-manly display of emotion I fist-pumped the air in my office - much to the chagrin of my colleagues. Hey-ho.

So...we are moving forwards. Steve is now well into the other jobs: fitting the remote thermostat, oil cooler, driveshaft oil seal, gearbox mount, easy-access battery charger, toelinks etc etc.

Also, I've found my trailer and will be picking it up shortly. Light twinkles at end of tunnel. A track with black tarmac may actually happen in March.............

Sunshine....

.....this weekend meant opening up the batcave and finishing off all the jobs i could before getting the roll cage installed.


1) Taking the thing off of the axle stands. Sounds a simple job but fitting wheels to the car in such a confined space is a huge S&H. This, combined with refitting the undertry on my own, took 4 hours.






2) New ROTA's on, wheel the car out, jack it up.







3) Bolts dreml'd off (and right thumb nearly in the process), replace indicator unit.




4) replacement bolts and nylock nuts all ready to go














5) In fading light, wheelarch liner back on with new shiny bolts - take the thing out for a drive. Reminded that the toelinks are still f*cked so it's handling like a shopping trolley. Geo also way out and the engine is clunking all over the place due to the perished gearbox mount. Nice to get it out under it's own steam nevertheless.

6) Gearbox mount and driveshat oil seal still need doing (see pics below)...........

.........along with: roll cage install, new 6-pt harnesses, remote thermostat, oil cooler, coolant replacement, new coolant bottle, rear toelinks, geo etc etc...
All of these items I am leaving to the professionals.
***Good news today: Elgan at Hot-Lap called me to say the new cage is fabricated and is going for painting in.....Orange (joke). and will be delivered at the end of the week.

Assuming they start work on Monday, we have x2 weeks to get the car sorted before a test day at Brands Hatch. It's all getting a bit close............

(15th Feb) More faff

Stripped, sanded and Isopon 40'd the front splitter this weekend.

There was a c20-24 inch crack along the NS where it's hit a big road-kerb. Had to cut out unwanted F-G and fill with an aluminium mesh, then swab-on the P40. Added some P38, then sanded and painted with Hammerite "straight-to-rust"

Couldn't be arsed taking any pictures - will do that later. Had enough of doing shitty little jobs and just want to get the 'fing thing out on the track. ETA for the cage 7-10 days away. ETA for first outinf on the road-let-alone-track; 4 weeks away. bah humbug.

(13th Feb) Best intentions.....

I took a call this afternoon to hear that the roll-cage has been delayed by another 10 days.
Great.

Best-intentions and all that now gone to pot. I deliberately factored in some "slippage" time in getting the car track-ready for mid-march; in_that the very LATEST I wanted the cage fitted was this week. We are already c2 weeks down on that.

Slippage time? Why? I hear you ask. Well.......this project has all the soundings of complete "arse" written all over it ergo: I have been taking measurements for a specific roll cage fitting independently, which is never a good thing.

So, taking everything into accoint, I estimated I would need to get the cage fitted this week latest, as there could well be some "WTF is this?" and "WTF is that doing there" and even worse "it doesn;t fit, you'll need a different seat if you want the HANS device to work properly" *things* to happen.

Apparently the cage "is" fabricated, but they cocked-up the mounting of the harness bar, so it is/would be fouling the angled section of the bulkhead near the A-pillar. Fair-play to Elgan (Hot-Lap) in that he is starting again from scratch - so as not to influence the overall integrity and strength of the cage, but it has delayed the plan for 2 weeks.

So, best case now is that it goes to Steve Williams c23/24th Feb, and then needs 20+ hours of cage fitting + additional workshop time for a whole host of other tasks - which doesn't leave much margin for error as I have x2 test days booked in Mid-March.

I have some faff to do over the weekend - namely refitting some parts i took off last week but it's annoying I'll lose another week now...Oh....cock.

(11th Feb) : Colin Chapman

Colin Chapman said:
"More power makes you faster on the straights. Adding lightness makes you faster everywhere"

Generally, this first year is all about getting race experience. My aspirations are all about not disgracing myself and - mechanical reliability allowing - finishing as many races as I can - I'll leave any fine-tuning weight stuff - lighter flywheel; ally bells, CF seat; until next year.

That said, I am adding c20 KG's to the car with the cage. AND, one of the 111s wheels is bent.
So, where there's an opportunity to replace, why not upgrade?

These ROTA wheels (the black ones - pictured) cost £500 and save a kerbweight of 10 KG's, which is tiny compared to the unsprung weight saving.

I think they look better than the std wheels as well. We'll see at the weekend...

(10th Feb) L.O.T.U.S

Lots

Of

Trouble

Usually

Shag-and-hassle

My NS indicator housing is cracked, see here:

On Sunday afternoon I started taking off the NSF wheel arch liner and well er......fell at the first hurdle :-\
Well in fact....i got completely sidetracked (as you tend to do when stuck in an artificially lit garage, with "man-music" playing, supply of tea (Mrs R) and much-to-do. Actually I forgot how much i liked Bon Jovi and er....Def Leppard (ahem).

Like a magpie i got distracted by something shiny (actually the opposite, something less shiny that expected) - the state of the wiring and perished mounts in the bonnet and chassis-well. So off came the radiator water-shield.........

(all the panel fixings had perished)

...so it was off with the water shield and a good clean (yes yes i know it's a race car but it doesn't mean any work-and-wire-area shouldn't be clean)

And I started noting various items which needed replacing due to age, i remembered that Elgan (Hot-Lap) still needed some additional plumb-line measurements for the roll cage harness bar.

My-oh-my I never realised what a mess the cockpit was. "It's going to get completely f*cked when it goes in for the cage to be fitted so what's the point in cleaning it now?" I think.

Tourettes kicked-in........so i find myself taking off the gear level surround (unsurprisingly no small job)and.....well, this is what I found.....enough foilage for some small nesting animals to hibernate for the winter.

None in the least a fire risk i thought, and a huge weight penalty.....

....so out came all the crap, and combined with a can of "gunk" I attacked the cabin....

As you can see, it was filthy.

The idea was not to get the thing pristine but at least clean out enough of the crap so that there's a clean operating area for all the stuff to go in the car; from the cage, to a in-car camera system (Chase-Cam) etc etc.....

Several hours later.....I find myself back at the wheel arch liner.

(Note: the Mrs came in with the umpteenth cup of coffee at this point and mentioned the time. I also got a SMS from CTO of BRR Steve. It's 18:30! Better get a move-on.

Now...anyone who has ever tried getting something done on a car by a certain time will know that it;s a recipe for a sense-of-humour failure.

"remove liner, fit light, replace liner. 30 minute job" I thought.

60 minutes later and I am still hacking away at screw number 1!

Equally, the wheel arch liner is hardly easy to take off (FFS) and in typical Lotus fashion, why make something simple (maybe with 4 or 5 panel fixings) when you can make it impossible? I know, let's mount a fuse box and a relay box on TOP of the wheel arch liner AND make the mounting screws
a) Inaccessible
and
b) prone to corrosion so that whenever you try and take them out the rawlnuts are just corroded to feck and will (again) knacker the liner.

The outboard screw on the front-facing side (commonly known as "M5 x 20, front-of-wheelarch liner-to-front clam" ) was already rounded off and I just can't get the bugger out :(
I managed to get a set of lock-grip pliers on it but that only worked as far as getting the screw turned about 2 turns, and now it appears to be stuck - it turns about a quarter-of-a-turn before it loses grip of the pliers and then "crack" ! as i think it's jammed in the rawlnut on the other side. I *think* what's happening is the screw is solid in the rawlnut, and it's turning the c-plate on the wheelarch - the sound is a little concerning in that it sounds as if some glass fibe or plastic is being slowly cracked - so i'm worried about using any more force in case i knacker the hole in the clam, wheelarch or both.
I was planning tomorrow to undo ALL the other bolts and try and drop the wheel arch out backwards, so only this bolt is connected and try and get at it from the other side. Based on the parts manual, it's saying what's behind there is
Part #12: Rawlnut, M5, clamshells, front & rear(A075W6074F) part #10: Washer, shakeproof M5 (A075W4045Z)PART #11: Washer flat, M5, A075W4011Z
AKA i think i'll need to drill the f*cker out. Great!

So, after 3 hours of completely getting nowhere (my oh my it feels just like i'm at work!) I wrap up for the night. I remember that smug Steve Williams telling me it's "a five minute job" when they've got the front clam off to do the cage installation. 3 hours versus paying someone 20 quid to do it.....the bottle of Merlot sitting on the table is far more appealing at this point in time.

"Boring boring boring" I am shouting to myself as I type this.

WHAT ABOUT THE RACING YOU SILLY TOOL?

GOOD NEWS:

The cage is nearly done. Calling Elgan @ Hot Lap tomorrow to find when I can get the car booked in to get it fitted (hopefully next week)

In the meantime and in between 14 hour days at the office, I need to find time to:

- Source some cap head bolts for the diffuser (hex shaped don't work)

- Get the tyres swapped onto the new rota wheels

- Measure up the car and order a trailer

And it's torrential rain outside.

Damn...the grid seems a long long long way away........