Not a great weekend, no major damage, but generally a bit disheartening in how slow I
was but the car held together with only a few teething problems. Of most concern is it’s lack of straight line speed relative to a much less powerful car (Judy’s) I think it is just too damn heavy and with less power now there is simply nowhere to hide.
As a result I’ve decided to cease developmental effort on this chassis and contemplate building a new lightweight one over the winter. In the mean time I intend to drive this one to death. Plus I need to lose some flab… but that’s obvious
On the plus side, car is smooth and pretty well balanced, the new brakes work and it is not displaying any nasty habits or snap oversteer in fact the only adjustment change I made all weekend was to knock a single click off the front dampers to kill a bit of understeer in Clearways. And my manual alignment was within 20 minutes of arc of being perfect. Plus the RGB paddock is full of great people.
Friday Testing.
I arrived Thursday night, Tim and I had arranged to share a garage so I unloaded and parked the car up in the garage. Tim was already fettling, so I took the opportunity to do a few extra things like stick on the CAM7 stickers. Tim and I got to sleep around 2 am and where up with the lark, or at least with Brands noisy indigenous bird population anyway.
I managed three test sessions on Friday, The first was a 6 lap shakedown, taking it easy and just seeing how things went. Pretty early on it became apparent that the cooling was crap. Even taking it easy oil temps were climbing to 120 and water towards 100. Not good and on reflection there is something seriously wrong here.
However I came in to check it over and see how things were. The only major issues were that the chain had stretched, and the shift lights were not working. So after giving it the once over and a brief stint to cool down, I went out again and gave it some beans. In about 6 laps I managed a 59.59 (front runners are in the 52s) but the coolant went to 120 and the oil to 140. So I decided to do a couple of laps touring round to cool it. but just then they red flagged the session so I had to bring a cooking engine straight in. Of course when you kill the engine the coolant pump stops and it immediately boiled over. Later inspection also showed that the radiator was also weeping a bit from one for the pressure margins where the metal and plastics are crimped together so the pressure had got just a bit too high and things are getting pretty hot.
After mopping the coolant from the garage floor, giving it a couple of hours over lunch to cool down, refilling it and fixing the rad. I thought I’d go out and do 4- 6lap bursts to get some value from the day. Again it over heated badly in the afternoon so I didn’t get to do much, and my data logger failed to record any times either.
On the last session I bought it in and it was sounding like a bucket of bolts and only running on three. Really carp. I thought I’d badly cooked it. However Andy Bates came and looked at it and identified a stick coil that had jumped from the plug… and a couple of missing nuts on the exhaust manifold. Once these were repaired it sounded ok. But I decided not to risk it further.
However I wanted to fix the cooling issue before the race on Sunday so a quick call to Tim Pell indicated that there was a larger radiator that I could fit so I ordered one of these (from a 2Ltr Meastro Turbos Diesel) on the way home and collected the new radiator on Saturday morning. I then spent14 hours on Saturday fitting the new rad, cutting a vent hole in the front bodywork, making the aluminium shrouding to duct the radiator exhaust air out through the hole and fitting an auxiliary electric coolant pump. All in an attempt to get some heat out of the engine. I also refitted the electric coolant pump so that I could keep the cooling system running after shutting down the engine.
Duncan arrived around 5pm and identified an even bigger problem.
The Diff has twisted sideways under drive tension from the chain (this was what was allowing the chain to slacken)and the bolt heads holding the drive sprocket had started chewing into the steel shear plate at the rear, so he spent a few hours making a burly steel support to stop this happening. All in all we finished around 10pm. Essentially the tension under load is pulling the driven sprocket forwards. As the left mounting plate prevents the left mount from moving forward what is actually happening is that the right hand mount is moving backwards and the rear end of the diff moves to the left as the whole thing pivots around the left hand mount.So I need to stop this happening using different tension fittings on the mountings.
On Sunday I was up at 5:30, Dunc arrived at 6 and we reloaded the car on the trailer and set off once again for Brands, hopeful that we had fixed the problems.
I arrived in the paddock to much congratulations for actually making it to a circuit and some gentle ribbing, but it was nicely balanced with some genuine admiration for the neatness of the engine installation and some nice “Welcome Back” hand shakes from the RGB paddock. It was really very very nice to be in the paddock again. In fact sometimes it was hard to get to car to stick the stickers on it because everybody was stopping by for a gawp and a chat 
The car passed scrutineering first time, and so it was on to practice. Somehow I arrived early and ended up fourth in the queue. Once the session started my over heating problems seemed to be a bit better, I was running at about 1:05 deg water…. dunno what the oil was as I hadn’t managed to load the updated software from Tim onto the palm on Saturday and it crashed on lap one, driving Round Brands… resetting a plam pilot will definitely put a kink in your times.
So after 6 laps and with the whole field streaming past me (not a good sign) and the coolant running towards 110 again I decided to call it a day and come in.
The qualifying times came in and I was dead last. 59.6 I think, which is 1.1 second down on my fastest time from last year, but then I did have the kwacker.
In between practice and the race we tested the engine and were concerned to see that the secondary injectors were not firing, so we spent a couple of hours chasing down the fault. But it wasn’t a fault, it was a ghost. Everything checked out and eventually when we re tested them by stamping on the throttle rather than winding it up gently they worked fine. So they are not the reason I was slow. I’m slow because I’m slower than a slow thing out for a Sunday stroll pushing his infirm slow granny in a slow thing’s bathchair!
When race time came I was lined up on the grid dead last with Judy in her class C Fury next to me, when the lights went out, she got the jump on me and we were off. At Paddock I briefly thought about diving up the inside but wasn’t really close enough and on the way to Druids passed Gordon G’s stricken car in the gravel on the left. Round Druids and there were two other RGBs spinning into the ARMCO on the left and so unsurprisingly the race was red flagged while they cleared up the carnage. On the restart we made it as far as Clearways on Lap 2 before we found a spinner in the gravel and we had earned ourselves another red flag plus a group bollocking from the Clark and retirement to the end of the meeting. The Observers reports used words like “disgraceful” pretty bad stuff. Apparently people were still banging into each other when the red flags were waving but I was too far back to see it or be involved.
So as the last race of the day we restarted and this time I managed to hang on to Judy for a couple of laps and was actually trying to go up the inside of her at Clearways when I missed the selection from 2nd to 3rd. By the time I had found a cog she was 100 yards up the road and I went down the straight swearing loudly. Difficulty selecting the right gear for Clearways was to be a recurring theme and marred the rest of the day (such as it was) . In fact I suspect in frustration I yanked the lever a bit hard as I
Although I felt I was getting faster in Paddock, Surtees and Mcleans, Druids and Clearways remained crap. Particularly Clearways which is the crucial corner for Brands. After about 8 laps and having been lapped the temps started to climb again so I abandoned it and headed for the paddock. Once there I discovered a stone hole in the nice new radiator that had done precisely 15 laps. 
So the take home messages are
- It needs an oil cooler, I think the oil is currently heating the coolant through Mr Hondas standard oil\water heat exchanger and for some reason I can’t keep the water cool. Either that or I need a wire basket to cook my chips in the boiling oil.
- I’m slow, dog slow…. glacial in fact
- The engine seems to be pretty strong in terms of standing up to abuse.
- Most of the work this winter seems to be wasted as the power loss certainly isn’t counteracted by the weight loss.
- Last year I was plainly using the power of the kwacker on the straights to mask my crap cornering. with less power now there is nowhere to hide.
Must get better!
Hmmph