The sign of a budding engineer or just crazy?

Now I would never call myself an engineer but all this work on the race car has defiantly taught me some things.
So today I had a problem to solve and used these newly obtained skills in finding the solutions. Or maybe I am just a bit crazy !

Problem.
Well I had some bedding that need to go out on the line to dry. Good idea as its nice and warm at the moment and should not take long. Problem was that we have thunderstorms forecast for today. Hmm what to do?

Solution.
So my solution was to put the bedding (sheets, duvet covers etc) on the drying line and to erect my garden parasol in the middle of the spinner so as to protect the drying items from any rain whilst still allowing the drying breeze to pass the items.
I even puts some weights on the base in case the wind picked up.
Here's a picture for your amusement!

Whilst I am posting, you can also see from this image what the bonnet side now looks like with the new fancy catches installed. Its nice to have a bonnet back on the car and even better for it to be secured correctly!

Prep for Pembrey

The weekend after next we are off to south wales for the Pembrey race meeting. A double header, includng a 30min race like Cadwell back in May and what I think will be a split grid. Its a long way down there but I heard some good things about the circuit and it would be silly to miss 2 races! Thankfully there are a few in car videos on the web of the circuit and the circuit guide looks comprehensive as usual. I have the Friday afternoon testing session booked as well to dial the car in and get comfortable with the layout. I will probably run a new set of rear tyres as they are nearly at the end of the life and probably got a fairly hard asault in the heat of Brands. Depending upon the level of improved rear gripi from new tyres, I may also try to run the rear a little bit softer.

Radiator Ducting
As I mentioned in the Brands report the relocation (closer to the water radiator) and then bottom splitter under the oil cooler seems to have made quite a difference. As I had the bonnet supporting frame which also happens to hold the oild cooler in place, off for repairs and a re-spray, I thought I would take a quick photo of it. You can also see the repaired frame, many many thanks to Tim Duncun for his expert welding. In addition to this support, I have added two side catches to replace the single item per side that it used to have. Now if there are any impacts on the bonnet it should not move about to the point of knocking the air box off. Probably just a glass fibre explosion!

Headlight replacement
Well I have the new headlight support installed, just need to get a replacement bulb and put some tape over the glass, then its ready to roll.

Brands Hatch June - Race 1 and 2 - delayed report!

Race 1
Another good start, quite a different from the last (and first) time I raced at Brands.

Through Paddock hill bend for the first time, I went around David Wale on the on the outside to stay in 5th place on the first lap. As we finish the lap, I get a better run out of Clearways than Tim, had a good run on him down the start finish lap, headed up to the left as Tim covered the overtaking line into Paddock Hill.


So I just went around the outside and managed to get back into the inside before the hairpin to take 4th. I was then right behind John Goodwin into the hairpin whilst he gets a little too close to John Cutmore who had an excellent start into the lead. A slight sprinkling of plastic and glass! I then get a better run through and out of Graham Hill bend and get along side John Goodwin for 3rd place. Just before I head into the chicane I noticed that Tim was heading up the inside of me. Well from my position I thought I would take his nose off if I cut into the corner and therefore with a late entry I ran wide and bounced over the grass for the second time in a matter of hours!

Off grass in one piece but still traveling very fast which means I run wide into Clearways and skirt around the inner edge of the gravel trap. This lets a gaggle of 6 cars through and I rejoined following Colin and Henry. My run down the start/finish straight was good and I came up behind and on the inside of Colin as we enter Paddock Hill bend. I kept to the inside of Colin, hoping maintain the inside line into Druids, excellent driving from Colin as we ran side by side with inches between us.

A few car lengths ahead of us, Matt Rowe goes wide through the latter half of Paddock Hill, keeps his foot in and drives in a nice arc through the gravel. Matt rejoins in a cloud of dust as Colin and I move to the right to stay out of his way, Colins continued transition to the right encourages (would normally say forces but heÂ’s too nice for that!!) me further and further to the right which left me over on the dirty edge of the track and when Henry slams on the brakes I just did not have enough grip and ended up using Henrys car as an extra brake. No major issue for Henry except part of my headlight being added as ballast for him as it stuck into his rear body work. For me however, there was more of an issue, it pushed my bonnet back and to the side which popped the air box off the carbs and limited to me 7k rpm and therefore the end of my race.

For the next lap or so I kept an eye on temperatures and pressures and all seemed ok , so decided to continue to run around and get the 3 points for a finish. Its quite interesting doing the Brands Indy circuit in just 5th and 6th!

After the race it was a matter of putting the air box back on, trying to re-mount the bonnet and taping up the missing light. Here you can see Jamie with a rather taped up Fury!

Race 2
There was a delay before our allocated time for the second race due to a rather nasty accident in another formula which meant that our second race would be a combined A, B and C race.
Again I managed a good start but it was from 12th in class and even further back now we had a joint race. The track temps were even higher than earlier in the day and as we set off I was a little uncertain as to the grip levels. I had also elected to run a lower tyre starting pressure as an experiment so some more unknowns! Off the line and around the first few corners were rather close and frantic but I did manage to keep an eye on Paul who was a couple of places ahead. Well he was until a quick reaction to avoid a rather wayward David W meant he had a rather bumpy adventure over the grass at surties Unfortunately he was also rotating and I just caught the end of his spin in my mirrors to see he bouncing back on to the track and avoiding other cars – phew! Well on with my race and on with overtaking, I managed a few good moves but a few laps later as we all approached surtees again I was behind Pete Rope and David Wale. David has just passed gained a place a Pete ran a little wayward on the exit of Graham Hill bend and as I got close through surtees he again seemed to be very ragged. Unfortunately for me and David that meant I had to make an avoiding action or hit Pete as we had a rather large closing speed. I dived to the inside of the corner to get out of the way and slow down, not attempting to pass. Dirt on the inside made it really hard for me to slow and David could not see me due to the acute angle which meant that as David turned into the corner we collided. My front corner clipping his rear corner and tipping him into a spin which David did not manage to catch before the lure of the gravel trap. It was really disappointing to see David sit out the rest of the race as he was running really well at Brands. After the race I had to go and see the Clerk of the course with David about the incident and have my knuckles rapped. After that incident on the track I continued on with my move up the grid with ever more sliding due to the high track temperatures. One interesting run through Clearways had me completely on opposite lock whilst having to dip the clutch to regain forward motion! The only other point of note in the race was a little battle with Matt Rowe which came a little closer than either of us planned with a little understeer in Druids which left me with some nice tyre marks on the side panel!
Overall a little messy race but I did go from 12th to 5th in class and regained a least some useful points.


Reflections

So not the best of race weekends for me results-wise. Some repairs to do on the car before the next race although its mostly superficial and not my finest hour of driving but it was a lot of fun and as always a great group of friends to go racing with.

I do however think more than ever that Qualify if really important.

Another reminder for me is that even if you have lots of cars to pass, take your time and make each move count. More time can be lost by slowing each other down in passing attempts that are never going to work.

The changes to the oil cooler position definitely made a difference, with such a high ambient temperature I was expecting over 130 oil temps but in fact it never got about 115deg which is lower than any other race meeting this year. Quite impressive if you think that most races so far have been cold and in some cases cold and wet!

Birkett 6 hour Relay Race

Well a rather lengthy delay in writing up the Brands race weekend. Nothing to do with it being a rather disappointing event points wise and more to do with concentrating on other activities. I actually had a really good time at Brands despite the dramas. In the last week I and a number of others have been trying to organise a team of RGB drivers to take part in the end of season Birkett relay race. The race takes part on Saturday 28th October at Silverstone, so after the final round on the championship. The race lasts for 6 hours and each team runs a relay of drivers in their own cars. We have submitted an entry for a team called "Posh 'n BECs" with 6 drivers, each running our own RGB cars, The 'Posh' part will be for Neil as he has a double barreled surname and not because he looks like Victoria Beckham and the BEC part is of course because we are running 'B'ike 'E'ngined 'C'ars !
Hopefully we have our application submitted in time as the event is normally well oversubscribed.
I have always liked the idea of endurance racing and this should be a really blast. We have a great team of drivers from a social point of view and as the results are based upon consistency handicaps around each driver/car combinations fastest lap of Silverstone you don't need to be the fastest drivers to do really well. If we can all run consistently and maybe improve upon our previous times at the circuit we could come out very well. Anyway its an opportunity to have some fun at the end of the season.
More later when we have confirmation and of course the details on the 2 races at Brands when I get a chance to write them up!

Brands Hatch June 10th - Qualify Report

Well for once this year the forecast was looking really good for a race weekend. Whilst the F1 boys were baking at Silverstone we were contemplating the effect of 40+deg of track temperature at Brands.
Tony, James and I arrived at Brands some time after 8pm the night before, I unloaded the car whilst Tony and James put up the tent. It was to be our first camping adventure at a race circuit. Just as the light was going, we all went for a very revealing walk around the circuit. There are some curbs which are much more severe than they look from within the car and others where the painted curbs overlap onto just bog standard tarmac. In the later case that’s a simple extension of the circuit which I would never have used if I had not seen it in person.

Signon was at an early 7:30am in preparation for a 7:45 scrutineering session and then almost straight away out to the assembly area for a 9am race. I guessed with a joint A, B and C class qualify that there would be problems with space on the track but there was the added fun of trying to guess what tyre pressure to start with and whether a 15min session would put the tyres over the top.

So out in the first pack in qualify and people were messing about with speeding up and then dropping back to get some space when we would have been much better off just all going for it and making space with subtle changes in pack rather than completely messing up each others laps all the time. The first 5 or so laps were completely written off with other cars well of the pace and running inconsistent lines which makes it really hard to get past. After that the car was not feeling to good, initially I put it down to the temperature but then it felt inconsistent which did not help the confidence to really push. As the time went on the steering was get progressively stiffer which was very worrying.

On one run through the chicane I got it a little out of shape, in fact this lap ended up being my quickest. On the next lap I did roughly the same but entered the corner even quicker because of a better run out of Graham Hill bend. So more of a slide to catch and increasingly stiff steering meant that I went off, well that’s my excuse anyway. Interesting trip over the grass though! After that I decided to call it a day for the qualify session and pulled into the pits. In the pits it was obvious that the bearing that supports the steering column had run out of grease and started to seize up. Fairly simple to fix, with excellent support from Neil C-B for his supply of grease, cheers mate. Looking back at the on-board video the track in front of me when I chose to pull in was looking much clearer. Oh well first time for a mechanical problem during qualify and I had at least set times for both races.

I was in fact hoping to run at the front of the grid for the weekend, I think my expectations have grown a little since the last time!

5th on the grid for race 1 and a dismal 12th on the grid for the second race. Should be interesting.

Post qualify I also realized that the car was still setup at the front for the wet race we did at Thruxton. Dampers rather soft then for a dry hot race! Now that would make a bit of difference wouldn’t it.

Prep for Brands

So the car is now prep'ed for Brands to the point that I could strap it up, load the car and go if everything gets manic between now and Friday evening. I have a few other items to do like fuel up the car and refill the Jerry cans, check tyre temp but I could do those at the track if I need to.

Last night, I moved the mounting points for the oil cooler so that it is almost touching the radiator in an attempt to aid air flow through and therefore increase the oil cooling effect. I can't quite get the top as close as I would like as the bottom mounts are on the bonnet hinge bar and that's not horizontal. Anyway its much better than before and I have added a horizontal splitter that runs from underneath the oil cooler both backwards to the radiator and forwards about 4 inches which hopefully will help direct the air through.

I guess Saturday will be the real test for this - forecast is for 25deg so that's 10deg higher than I have run the Fury at before. Dry ice anyone?

Thruxton Telemetry - Qualify Laps Compared

Comparing dry qualify fastest and second fastest laps
Lap 6 – 1:25.82
Lap 7 – 1:25.66


Lap 7 was slower from the start all the way through to Goodwood (had traffic to pass in the complex). My lap 7 line through Noble was neater, missing the bumps on the exit and giving me a better transition into the entry of Goodwood. This is represented by the first green line (showing an improved sector) on the trackmap. I managed a better run out of Goodwood, probably due to a better line and that makes quite a difference down to church (first part of the medium thickness green line on the trackmap). Then I get a better run through Church itself and that makes the difference all the way through to the end of the lap (thickest green line shown on the trackmap). The improvements in the last part of the lap can be seen from the top speeds. On my fastest lap I maxed out at 132mph compared with 127mph on the second best lap. If I am able to combine the first half of lap 6 with the second half of lap 7 that lap would have been a 1:25 dead. .