2008 Challenger - BDN race car

Before I go into a lot of detail about the new car, I had at least mention that we had a great time during the Birkett 6 hour race at Silverstone. I have some notes and photos that I will make into a post of its own.

A couple of weeks ago, John (now named Champion race engineer!) and I headed all the way over to Herefordshire to collect the 2008 race car. Brian, Ian and Rob have continuously developed this car of the last few years, culminating in a good number of race wins this year in Robs progress to 3^rd overall in the 2007 RGB Championship.

Their focus has now moved onto developing an S3 model and so the option of buying the current S2 presented itself quite a few months ago. Brian and Ian gave us a very extensive walk around the car, going into details of how and why it has been developed as it is. Along with the documentation, it was a great handover.

The car has been in its new home for the last 2 weeks and each time I have been in the garage, the car has become increasingly less complete! Rob, as many who follow the RGB series will know, is about 9 feet tall and therefore his seating and steering wheel position are quite different to my requirements. John and I have so far, reposition the steering column and made a new seat, along with fitting my new 6 point harnesses. As we have moved everything down by quite some distance, we have also dropped the dash lower in the cabin which allows us as a next step to remove the top 2” form the trailing edge of the front clam, as it attaches to the dashboard.

My seating position is quite laid back and my eye line is well below that of the existing bodywork so this is the last of the items on the must do list before I can get the car out on track. One main benefit we are hoping to gain from this modification is to allow substantially more air to reach the rear spoiler where before it was being direct over the passenger compartment and missing the rear of the car.

To further this improvement we also have plans to relocate the air intake from in the centre of the car and instead make use of the body work cowling that sits behind the driver head. As my head is so much lower than before, we can use the top of this cowling as an air intake a bit like an offset F1 air intake.

The first planned outing for the new car is Saturday 15^th at snetterton so all we have to do is keep the car in working condition, holding off from any major work before that point. Once I have a base line indication of the cars feel and performance with me driving, we can look at the bodywork of any other modifications to suite.

We have kept the same DL1 telemetry setup as used last year so we should be able to do some good back to back comparisons to see which areas I need to concentrate on with driving and where any improvements may have come from modifications.

An exciting few months ahead I think, despite the lack of racing and full steam ahead for the first races of 2008 in March. Only 4 months left!!!

Some more progress.

In the last week we have brought the car back into working condition with one exception.

The seat is now complete, although I need to get some more gaffa tape to make it look better. The seat belts are in and although we were concerned with the top adjusters being too close to my neck, all seems to clear ok. With the steering column in the right place, seat and belts sorted , we were able to see the line we need for the front body work. This was marked up against the top of the dashboard and cut away. The view out is much improved, it should help more air get to the rear spoiler and it also improved the look of the car as well. More of the impression of a radical from the front.

The one item that is holding us up at the moment is that we found a considerable amount of play in the bias adjustment for the brake pedal. John is sorting out the spherical bearing for this as we speak and should be back by the weekend. Of course we will then need to find a way to estimate the correct bias from which to start!

So with the exception of new tyres, that is all of the ‘have to do’ items completed. It would seem that Polley don’t have any 48R tyres in stock at the moment so I cant even replace the existing used set let alone test the new ‘wet’ tread pattern for next year. Not a very good state when introducing a new variable that all of the drivers will have to take into consideration.