Snetterton Race Videos

Here are the race videos from our first and second rounds for 2009.

Saturday Race1 - Aborted 1st lap due to red flag when Aaron spun and was collected by Bob


Saturday Race1 - Restarted race and my early battle with Steve


Saturday Race1 - Part2, lapping a few cars and a rather eventful end to the race when my rear suspension failed on the last corner of the last lap. Dragged the car over the line on three wheels to get 2nd place.


Sunday Race 2 - Highlights of the rather more successful Sunday race. From Pole to race victory with fastest lap along the way. The car was working better as I had the correct tyre pressures.

Autosport

Page 120 of this weeks Autosport covers the fun of last weekend at Snetterton

Testing Tomorrow

A very quick post to bring you up to speed on the developments this week, off for a days testing at Snetterton tomorrow.

B&C Express were fantastic and delivered a new sprocket and chain the day after it was ordered so that was installed on Tuesday evening.

Old and new sprocket comparison

Sprocket off

Sprocket On

Drive Shaft On


Air filter cleaned and refitted.

The car is not all completed and packed up ready for the short trip to Snetterton tomorrow morning. Saturday we have qualifying and an afternoon 30min race. Sunday we have a 15min sprint race in the morning.

With just one week before we do our first test and only 8 days before our first race, its just down to the small things in our prep list, thankfully.

This week, John and I, attached the Shaw patented towing eye and cut out a suitable slot in the front bodywork. The slot is a little larger than the attachment, to ease the fitting of the bonnet and at worse will just a little more cooling for the front wheel. It actually looks quite neat in Red and does not protrude beyond the front splitter which is nice.

Its attached to the front chassis support for the floor and wedged between the two bars so the entire car could probably be hung from it without a problem! Its also nice and low down on the car which will aid the marshals if they need to drag the car out of a gravel trap as it will stop the car from digging the nose in.

Apart from a good spanner check, the only other task at the front of the car was to bleed through all of the old brake fluid and replace with nice clean Castrol Response 4. We did that for both circuits and reset the brake bias. We have already replaced the front pads as the old ones were almost complete down to metal, interestingly the brake bias was wound all the way to the front. I must have been moving this forward throughout the two long birkett sessions, compensating for the reducing front pads, although I have not recollection of this being the case. Interesting how your concentration is focused on the variety of cars and huge variances of speed in a race like that.

At the rear of the car, the K&N filter has been cleaned and refitted, the repacked exhaust and CAT has been fitted (pending a couple of spacer to help clear the rear from the undertray that I need to fit). All of the interior panels have been refitted, some even repainted, belts installed and seat refitted. If I decide against giving the dash a quick spray then all I need to do is refit a few screws and its all complete.

Items for the coming week are down to tracking and sorting out the chain. The chain at minimum needs to be swapped for a new one which should be with us by mid week but that's a quick job. We may also have a replacement rear sprocket through before the test session on Friday so we may have a go at fitting that. Trouble is it requires removing the driveshaft from the diff which is a new activity for us so we may opt not to undertake that in the time we have! You can see from the photo that the sprocket is showing signs of wear as you would expect from Ali being attacked by the chain for a race season.

The start of the season is really close and its all getting exciting. Oh and my new helmet and HANS device has arrived so it feels a little like Christmas.

2 weeks to go!

Inspired by seeing Pauls new car fire up for the first time this weekend, I thought it was about time to get my old car running again and ready for our first race in just 2 weeks time.
Since the last update, I have had the CAT fitted, changed the Oil, Oil filter and fuel filters, replaced the front brake pads and checked the exhaust packing.
This weekend, I put some fuel into the car and checked for any leak around the filters that I replaced and after fitting the final fastener, I refitted the repainted interior panels. The belts and seat are back into the car. I am waiting for some exhaust packing to arrive and then I can refit the exhaust system to the car. Other than that, outstanding items include fitting the front towing eye once its finished being painted, a slit needs to be cut into the front bodywork for the towing eye and the I need to check the tracking.

In the meantime we have purchased a newer motorhome like the one pictured here. We decided to go with something large enough for Dad, John and I to comfortably spend time in, a garage at the rear and facilities to enable us to use to for holidays as well as the racing.

We can rebuild

Just a really quick update to say that the car is back in the garage and we can now start to put everything back together again. The replacement paper elements for the Fuel filters have arrived so we can refit those and then attach all of the bulkhead panels.
That will be everything completed from the front of the car back to the main engine compartment bulkhead. We can then refit the rear body work to get the correct measurements for the exhaust alteration. That can then go to Steve for him to work his magic.

Outstanding items are:

1. Fit new chain (awaiting delivery but its a quick job anyway.)
2. Replace oil filter and fill with Oil.
3. Repack exhaust can
4. Refit camera
5. Fit new exhaust end inc Cat
   
6. Fire her up!
7. Check geometry.
8. Race
9. Sell
   

The Start of 2009

So the 2009 racing season is nearly upon us.......

This is a strange time for club racers. The new season is matching towards us but with a few months still to go, some are frantic in the garage with new builds whilst others are trying to piece together their cars from the winter rebuilds and any major maintenance (Like Adrian, see image!). Its also cold and the short days meaning its often time in the garage wrapped up and with fan heaters on!

For us its a little different this year. We have a new car being build and an existing car in the garage. Its seems unlikely we will have the new S3 in time for the first race of the season at Snetterton, or if we do it will be before we are able to do any meaningful testing.

Because of that, we have decided to keep the existing S2 which we ran last year quite successfully. We will run that for the first few races whist we get the new car through some shakedowns and some basic setup work.

That means that we need to get the new car ready, whilst Brian works on the new car. Mostly this means we are looking at general start of season preparation.

For 2009, we have a couple of regulation changes that we need to make modifications to the current car to meet.

The new regs include the need for a front low level toe eye so that the marshals don't have to use the roll cage to pull a car out of the gravel trap. Honestly I think this is a sensible choice, especially with a mid engined car with a low front as it will help to stop the car from burying itself into the gravel trap. John has busy making up an attachment after making up a template the completely changing the design after viewing the way in which its been implemented on the S3.
The second change to the regs is all together less sensible. In fact its absolutely stupid and just adds cost without any benefits. From 2009 onwards we now have to run a Cat converter on the race cars. Even engines back to the 90's with carbs, running in class C, have to have them attached! So we are working out how to fit one on. Of course the cat contents could well disintegrate very quickly with the overfuelled exhaust gasses and have no advantage to the environment at all. On that point, the fuel and emissions of racing are so insignificant compared with that of the traveling to and from the race meetings as to be laughable. Lets just tell people they are not allowed to use their cars, motorhomes to travel on recreation. That means you cant drive to the park, to the sea side, car boot sale, golf club, gym, football etc etc.

The other items on the list are just the normal maintenance activities for the start of the season. At the weekend we progressed the following:

• Brake pads - fronts replaced and waiting for brake fluid replacement
• Wishbones inspected and front near side swapped with spare
• We found a few suspension spherical bearings that are a bit stiff so they have been replaced.
• I removed the rear bulkhead panels so I that we can get to and replace the fuel filters. With the panel off we can also clean up the engine bay a bit more and check all of the exhaust bolts etc.
• Oil drained so I can do the filter and fresh oil. Cracked testing all completed and all results were clear.

We had a minor set back last week when I did a precautionary check of the spark plugs and one did not come out cleanly. Thankfully Andy Bates came to the rescue once again and was able to clean up the thread so once we collect it from his tomorrow we can finish off any remaining items. When the order from DT comes back we can refit the fuel filters and plug it all back together again.