A day of fond farewells and welcome arrivals! Due to a serious case of lack of use (blame the Locost) and the arrival of my new bike, I've sold the TVR. On the brighter side the new owner part exchanged an Enduro bike for it (I've been an off-road nut since I was about ten years old) so that's another toy to play with even though it's white and Barbie pink!!! I've also retired my long serving and bargain priced Peugeot 309 diesel, in place of a more substantial towing car. My brother came up with the go ods and I'm now the owner of an Isuzu Trooper 3.1 turbo diesel which is excellent. It'll be almost unique amongst UK 4x4's as it will actually go off road every once in a while ;) So now I can at least tow the Locost which was half the problem as far as getting the car to testing and the rolling road sessions. So with a bit more room in the garage (for more crap no doubt) the first race looms....
Well, time's almost up. First race is at Mallory on Sunday and I'm not very well prepared :( Due to work commitments I've not had a chance to do any testing at the circuit so I've got to learn it as I go along. Oh, I've no time to get the car rolling-roaded either so it's just 'best guess' as to the carb setup and timing. Never mind, I'm hardly going to be competitive in the first outing am I? Or am I?
Stay tuned for a big update next week with video stuff and all!
Final race preparations today! There are basically 5 jobs left.
First up was the towpoint. After considering several ways of doing this from welding a steel hoop to the rear chassis rail (not the strongest part of the car) or bolting an old hook we found in the workshop to the chassis, I stumbled on the solution whilst looking at the exhaust. Simply, I popped next door to the exhaust fitters and got hold of a 'U' clamp. I removed the bracket to leave the 'U', put a locknut on each leg, painted it bright red and drilled holes in the chassis plate at the base of the r ollbar and bolted up from above! Job done, well, almost. The first set of holes were a bit too close to the chassis rail above to get the nut on so I moved the whole lot back an inch and tightened it up. Looks good and more importantly, does the job.
Next, the flyscreen. Blimey, talk about putting this off. It's taken me ages to get around to it and the solution proved to be a piece of the proverbial. Now, some scuttles that can be bought have a ridge already in place for the windscreen but mine doesn't. So I needed a frame and some material for the screen itself. I popped next door to the builders merchants and bought some aluminium angle err.. stuff and some perspex. I would've liked tinted stuff but had to make to with clear for the time being - I mean, you don't see many tinted greenhouses and conservatories do you? Very Max Power! Unfortunately the angle err.. bead, yeah, that's it - bead, can only be bought in 8 foot lengths so needless to say I cut it down. I toyed with the idea of going full width but it was more of a pain to cut all the angles and served no purpose on the passenger side so I went for a driver side only job. After cutting to approximate length I then sawed slots in the vertical part of the bead ! in order that it could be formed to the shape of the scuttle top. Once done, I used the bead as a template to give me the shape for the lower edge of the screen which I marked out on the perspex in indellible ink (the perspex had a protective film coating). Then I simply marked out the rest of the screen shape and cut it out with a fine bladed jigsaw. Holes were then drilled in the frame with two only, for the time being, to hold the screen in place. DO NOT RIVET THE SCREEN IN YET! You won't be able to riv et the frame once the screen is in place. Then I drilled through the pilot holes in each end of the frame into the scuttle and rivetted. The other holes were drilled and riveted accordingly. Next, I attached the screen and rivetted each end. The other holes were drilled in situ. and rivets applied. Be carefull when rivetting as you're quite close to the edge of the perspex and it's very brittle. Finally, off came the coating and voila - one damn fine looking flyscreen!
Next up was the application of the race numbers and backing. This is a pig of a job to get right but the best solution I found was to first clean the surface thoroughly, then liberally coat in washing up liquid with a bit of water. The 'sticker' can then be slid around on the surface for fine positioning. Don't worry about the washing up liquid, it dries out to leave it firmly stuck down. The scuttle is the biggest pain to do as it has curves in all directions. Use a hairdryer and gently tease the stick er down with a squeegee for the best result. Final bits were to clearly mark the towpoints and check everything was tightened with sound electrical connections. Ta-da - job done.
I've recently sold my beloved TVR in order to get something more 'sensible' - did I really say that? So welcome to my Isuzu Trooper 3.1TD - it's a monster and perfect for towing. Can't get it in my garage though which is probably just as well as I've now got a Yamaha DT200WR enduro bike which I took in P/X to keep my R1 company.
I couldn't finish this entry without a 'big-up' to my pit crew. So a big shout from me to Martin (left) and Karl (right) and my brother Stuart (not pictured - doh!). Thanks chaps. Now get back to work you bloody slackers! ;)
Well, a weekend of mixed fortunes. On the positive side I passed scrutineering with flying colours and the car was reasonably competitive giving me midfield position in a very wet qualifying session. On the downside, I didn't finish the race :( In fact, it lasted about 400 yards! For the full report have a look at the Mallory race report.
For those of you who have read my race report you'll know that the problems I encountered at Mallory were down to too much heat and too weak a mixture. For those that didn't, well, get over there and read it you lazy sod! ;) Anyway, it turns out that there was a broken wire in the loom about 6 inches from the fan connection which was giving intermittent contact :( This is why it wasn't cooling in the paddock assembly area. Secondly, further to a comment from Adam Wilkinson in the pits, he pointed out that there was still a feed from the water pump to the inlet manifold. Doh! I knew that this wasn't advisable as it makes for less dense air in the mixture - again, not helping lean carburration. So I blanked it off. But, what I really needed was a rolling road session. I managed to book a session with the infamous Pete Baldwin (01223 207217) who is based near Cambridge, so off the car went to be tested thanks to a generous brother as I was in bed with flu!
Pete's a great bloke and really knows his stuff. I won't go into too much detail about what was done to the car (well, competitors read this stuff don't they! ;), but suffice to say that the chokes were replaced to give a richer mixture (it was, as thought, well lean) and everything was correctly timed for the best power delivery. The car came out with another 8bhp for the princely sum of 104 quid - excellent. That makes 145bhp! - well, not quite ;) Pete agreed with my diagnosis and explained that the second choke was richening the mixture up sufficiently to stop the misfire until things cooled down. Put simply, I could've probably carried on BUT, I would have have to use full throttle for most of the first couple of laps - not nice round a wet Gerrards! Still, lesson learnt and I now know that the car is set up properly and it's up to me to drive it competitively. No more excuses - it's off to Donington at the weekend hopefully with better fortunes!
With hopes of better fortunes tomorrow the usual car preparation session took place down the workshop to sort out some niggles. First up was the adjustment of the pedals so that I could heel-and-toe. This was a simple 'pedal in the vice' affair to put a crank into the pedal shaft. It took a couple of attempts to get right but the steel was fairly soft although I was a bit concerned about it cracking if I went too far. Luckily I got it right second time and it's MUCH better.
Next up was the adjustment of the tappets. During the rolling road session Pete had noticed a rattle from one of the tappets and after the thrashing last week (not to mention the road) I felt it wouldn't do any harm to adjust them. So, off with the rocker cover which revealed a very clean looking top end (see why later!). I checked the clearances and set them to 0.008 and 0.022 (inlet/exhaust) as per the Haynes manual. I wasn't happy with the oil I was using in the belief that it broke down quite quickly when hot so everything was drained and I refilled with fully synthetic. My brother had fitted a new battery in the week so starting wasn't the usual hassle and it fired into life with no bother. Top end was nice and quiet so job done - so I thought. I wanted to check the operation of the fan after the broken wire problem so let it run up to temperature. Sure enough, at 95 degrees the fan cut in and within a couple of minutes (it's only a 6" fan remember) the fan cut out again with the temperature hovering around 90 - perfect. What wasn't perfect however was that the top end was now rattling again? A bit puzzled by this, off came the rocker cover again. Working on the theory that the pushrods and rockers would be worn by time and use, I knocked a couple of thou. off the stock settings and reset clearances this time to 0.006 and 0.020. Everything back together the engine was fired up again to find..... more rattling?!?!? Eh? It wasn't as bad but I'd almost run out of time, so we just left it as it was hoping it would be OK (there's no such thing - engines don't just fix themselves you know!). After Mallory I suspected pad binding on the nearside front caliper. Jacked up and checked the wheel span freely and on further investigation so did the offside - bizarre. Must be the rear drum. Anyway, I decided to check it in the paddock (wrong!) and loaded up the car ready to go to Donington.
Well, for my exploits which gave me my first racing result - woohoo! - as well as some TV stardom (NOT!). See my race diary for an explanation. From the cars point of view, I came back with it still in car shape but with a very noisy top end :( On first inspection it appears that not enough oil is getting to the rockers (this explains why it was silent after first filling with oil) although from discussion with the egroup list there's a chance that I've got Kent chocolate cam syndrome :(( Let's hope not eh! Stay tuned.
Bad news I'm afraid. Further investigation has shown that due to oil starvation the cam followers have increasingly worn the further away from the pump you get - no's. 7 & 8 are conical - not good :( Unofrtunately they've also scored the follower bores and I'm not sure wether this can be rectified. With this in mind, I've decided to rebuild this engine as a spare and I'm going to try and get hold of another and send the whole thing off to a professional builder to work their magic. It ain't gonna be cheap, but at least it should be done properly! So now I've got to find an engine....