So with the car together, well in advance of the season for once it looked like I was going to make the first race of the season. I even had time for some pre season testing at Snetterton In Late February
I took along Dave Turner who is a pretty damn good chassis dynamicist (his blog is at http://dynamicist.blogspot.com/) to help me setup the car.
Dave was determined to help me sort out my handling problems with the car… indeed I span at 20 MPH in the Russell Chicane on the day’s warm up lap 
. We ran a couple of damper cycles… This is basically a process where I go out and do a couple of laps with the dampers turned off… and then come in and tell him how the car felt… we’d add two clicks front or back and then go out again and report any changes. After a couple of seasons my arse is now calibrated well enough to be able to correctly report what was happening in the car and Dave used his not inconsiderable expertise to interpret this into suspension changes.
. We ran a couple of damper cycles… This is basically a process where I go out and do a couple of laps with the dampers turned off… and then come in and tell him how the car felt… we’d add two clicks front or back and then go out again and report any changes. After a couple of seasons my arse is now calibrated well enough to be able to correctly report what was happening in the car and Dave used his not inconsiderable expertise to interpret this into suspension changes.Well when I say “We” I mean Duncan and Dave did the adjusting I just sat in the car and then went out and did two more laps…. Repeat process until car feels good… then when
it starts to go off again back off the last two clicks…..
I felt somewhat like a proper race driver, come in … report to engineer.. pit crew swarm on car… retest & adjust appropriately Its a great way to setup a car and worked like a charm… the thing is now just so chuckable. Thanks Dave 
The front rear balance is now as near perfect as I think I’m going to get without investing in some new dampers.
As a result I was now leaning quite heavily on the car… but still the absolute performance wasn’t there and power delivery was a bit crap. it was juddering all over the place in the midrange and this was shaking the whole car and ruining the balance. I was doing 1:29-1:31 which is 10-12 seconds off pole and last on the grid by a full 3 seconds. By contrast a mate, in a car with notionally less power that he had never driven before went 5 seconds a lap quicker. All pretty disheartening stuff really as I felt I was being brave enough and getting the lines and driving pretty well… Not Banzai but it felt way better than 1:30s.
The acceleration traces on my
data logger looked “lazy”…especiallyy in the higher gears… so we wondered if the diff ratio was too tall for the new motor… se set about swapping the drive cogs around over lunch.
Unfortunately we think we got the adjusting shims mis aligned and three laps into the afternoon session this happened
Basically we think the rear sprocket was misaligned and the chain jumped and then started machining everything in touching distance. This happened when I was flat just after the Richies apex … I thought I’d blown the engine judging by all the rattling
So I was then faced with rebuilding the drive train in two weeks flat to get ready for the first race of the Season at Snett.ARSE!