With the top bracket complete I just needed to weld in the lower ears before finalising the bracket design. The snow and cold wasn't making spending a few hours in the workshop particularly appealing, but wrapped up and the blow heater being left on for an hour or so meant it was actually not too bad, although the cold must have clouded my judgement as i ended up grinding my thumb rather than the plastic coating!
Its amazing how quickly a thin cutting disk slice into a finger!!! Getting dressed. texting, writing plus numerous other things are a little uncomfortable at the moment to say the least!
After wrapping it in rag and electrical tape i returned to grinding and finished removing all of the coating around the welding areas. With the engine and MDF brackets back in place i clamped up the mounting ears in place and tacked welded them in position.
While everything was in place i made some final marks on the MDF brackets were i required small modifications in readiness to transfer them into CAD for the waterjet cutting company.
With the engine out again i welded up the brackets.
To transfer the rough MDF brackets into CAD, i traced the shape of the brackets onto 1mm squared graph paper and used the grid to create reference points in AutoCAD. After getting a rough shape i squared everything up and smoothed all the curves and radii to get a nice neat shape. It had been a while since i had used AutoCAD in any real anger so took me a while to remember how to do a few things, but after a couple of hours i had a set i nicely curved brackets. The 2 smaller brackets are the prop/reverse mounting bracket and starter motor spacer.
The posts are coming thick and fast at the moment!! With the MDF brackets bolted up to the engine we lifted it back into the car so i could fabricate up the mounting ears. After some head scratching and cardboard cutting i ended up with various shapes that then needed to be cut out of steel plate. After half an hour of spark generation, 2 thin cutting discs, lots of little burns and a melted hole in the crotch of my tracksuit bottoms i had transferred the pile of card board bits into a pile of steel. Another 30 mins in dads workshop on the grinder and sander and i had a pile of smooth brackets and lovely manicured nails. By the end of the evening the top bracket was welded up and completed, although i may add a gusset to the forward most ear.
Meanwhile Dad was busy with the front prop. After measuring, remeasuring and then rechecking dad put the front prop in the lathe to cut it down by 60mm. He then turned the weld down off original joint to remove the plined end from the 60mm off cut prop tube. After facing everything off in the lather again to ensure everything was square the prop tube and splined end was tapped back together.
Dads business requires him to weld up cylindrical joints on prop shaft viscous couplings, so basically an identical type of joint required on the prop, therefore i trust him to weld up the prop rather than send it away. You can see in the top left hand corner of the lathe photo a rather large motor and pulley, this is dads modification to the lather to allow him to rotate the chuck very slowly at a constant speed, while the mig weld gun is mounted stationary applying the weld to the joint.
Rear part of prop shaft is now in, with the reverse motor, bearing and mounting plate positioned. Now we know it all fits we need to fine tune the position and angle of the mounting plate. According to prop manufactures, the front prop flange and engine flange need to be as parallel as possible, with an angle, but of no more than 1.5 degrees on the joints, this ensures minimum vibration and the angle ensures the needle rollers in the hardy spicer rotate.
With the engine back out of the car the MDF patterns for the brackets were checked for clearance, trimmed down and the spacings set. There is still some final trimming required before i draw them up in CAD, but before i can do that i need to weld the mounting ears in place on the chassis
With the Fury safely returned from Sandown I stripped all the body work off and dumped it in the bus until further notice, the bus seems to be turning into a glorified storage container at the moment! I'll start to worry when Dad puts the lawn mower in there!!
As the engine needs to be mounted no lower than the chassis (so does not compromise ride height or be the first thing to hit the kerb during an "off track" moment) we clamped a board in place to rest the engine on while making the mounts. The round hole is so that the weld on the sump for the water pump leak outlet pipe that passes through the sump.
Modified sump from Andy fitted, you can see the water overflow pipe at the bottom.
With the engine sitting flat on the sump plate we started to work out where the mounts are going exactly. We have decided that a full cradle is not practical and would be very complicated, so the idea is to use 2 aluminium plates hanging the engine from the 4 main mounting points on the rear (righthand side of car) of the engine, and then 2 stabilising bars from the top 2 lugs on the head. In order to hang the aluminium brackets the chassis required a new member running from the footwell to the front rearward cross member. Initially this cross member was a weedy piece of 1/2" box section and was a contributing factor to the chassis snapping back last August at Silverstone, but during the front end rebuild last winter it was replaced and is extremly strong,made from 2.5mm walled box section as it is the main stay for the front lower suspension pickups (and we ordered the wrong stuff!!). Although i never intended to use this cross member to mount an engine when i installed it, it has worked out very handy!
The overhanging box section that covers the access hole to the pedal box will be removed once the mounting lugs for the plate have been positioned
You may wonder why i have bolted it in rather than welding it in place, there is a good reason for this..... Whilst coming up with the plans it occurred to me that i can make the mount on this side as an assembly that will be bolted to the engine as a sort of cradle. The aluminium plates will bolt to the engine and this steel member will bolt to the aluminium plates, the engine can then be lowered into place and the 4 bolts on the member fitted. There will obviously be another 2 bolts holding the bottom of the aluminium plates to the lower chassis rails. Hopefully this will make more sense when you look at the pictures below....
With the engine in place we needed to stop it moving about, so I knocked up a quick "restraining system", don't worry they will not be in the final design!!
With the engine held in place i made up some cardboard templates, then transferred them onto 8mm mdf (8mm 6082 T6 plate will be used for the real plates)
A few trail fits and some "smoothing" off and they dropped into place and could be bolted up to the engine.
Next job is to remove the engine and check the plates fully clear everything on the engine and remove the non necessary areas. I'll probably then remake the templates to include the mounting points for the lugs that will be fitted to the chassis and new member. I'll then transfer the design into CAD to tart up the radius's (whats the plural of radius??) and add some fancy holes etc. I'll the send it off for waterjet cutting.
Dad has also been busy with the reverse again, its now all mounted up to a dummy MDF plate (which will again be replaced with 6082 T6), and some lightening holes drilled out of the flange.
After sourcing a gear of the correct size and tooth design dad set about mating it to the prop. The supplied gear was 25mm thick and weighed 3kg. Obviously we dont need the gear to be anywhere near this thick, so after turning the centre out to the correct side to slid over the hardy spicer (which was alos turned down to give a mounting sleeve), dad split it into 2 gears. I now have a spare and a lighter gear. Rtaher than welding the gear onto the prop, dad used a flange off a Freelander Viscous coupling unit, turned it down and welded it to the hardy spicer. With the flange welded on, it was put back in the lathe and faced off again to ensure it was true. A small recesses was also machined out of the gear so it fits perfectly onto the new flange. The gear was then simply bolted in place.
On sunday i picked up the sump and we dropped the engine in place and have decided that we can mount the engine using 2 aluminium plates, hanging the engine off the 4 main engine mounts and then use 2 stabilising bars from the top lugs of the engine (copied from Bobs BDN design). The engine was then pulled out again and all the body work fitted ready to be shipped off to the Mechanex show at Sandown park on Tuesday. The car will be back on thursday, and hopefully the chassis mods started on friday, watch this space......
While waiting for the sump we can't go much further with the install as we need to mount the engine in the exact position. But we have got hold of a few parts required for the reverse.
I have ordered a reduction starter motor from a Honda civic, and also got the replacement centre bearing for the prop. The idea is to mount the bearing and starter motor on a plate, and then mount this plate via some small rubber mounting to the chassis. This way the prop will still have some compliance with the bearing, but the relationship between the motor and the prop is fixed. That sounds as clear as mud, but all will become clear once the bits are joined together.
Just a quick post, dropped the engine in last night to see how it all lined up and to try and work out how to make the mountings. I want the engine to sit flush with the underside of the chassis, so to make things easy we G clamped a sheet of wood to the under side of the chassis, allowing us to slide the engine around. There are 8 mounting points from the engine, so plenty of areas to build off from, its just unfortunate that they require lots of intricate shapes to get in and around to them if i was to make a cradle. After looking at it for some time we have come to the conclusion that rather than a single cradle that lifts in and out with the engine, the easiest option is to make 3 separate ones. I have removed the sump and pick up to send off to Andy Bates for modification, so until that returns we can't go much further.
The plan is to get the R1 motor in and running before christmas, leaving plenty of time fro new year testing. With this in mind and the fact that the buyer of the engine setup is supposed to be coming over in the next few days, the day after the Birkett was engine removal day.
From left to right: Engine just removed, new R1, spare engine
R1 motor - 175BHP of fun!!!
Heartless
Prop adaptor has been ordered from AB Performance, so next job after a good clean is positioning the engine and fabing up some mounts. Although i do need to decide exactly what i am doing with the sump, some people say leave it as standards and mount sump flat, some say mount sump/engine flange flat, but Andy Bates recommends mounting as per angle in bike, extending sump and modifying pick up. Andy knows what he is talking about so i may pay him a visit to get the sump mods done, last thing i want is a blown engine during the first test session!!!
The long awaited Birkett relay had arrived! RGB pups now consisted of 4 myself, Bob, Ben and James (not forgetting the background team of support and Tim as team manager). With only 4 cars running this year we really needed the cars to behave themselves as there wasn't room for cars to start dropping out. Last year all 6 cars started and finished the race without a hitch, we may have been faster in a boat, but we had all finished unscathed! This year we hoped for the same, but not in the weather department. Last year was miserable, but this year the forecast was good, and when we awoke on saturday morning it looked very promising! This year we were on the old GP circuit, not many, if any of the RGB'ers competing had ever done this circuit before, meaning most of us tried to get some sort of testing in on the friday. A final BBQ of the year and a nice social evening followed and sums up the great atmosphere within the RGB paddock
Although the weather was looking better than last year, car behaviour wasn't. Bob had suffered a suspected fueling problem in testing on Friday and although he thought he had found the problem wasn't able to try and replicate the problem in practice as the damp track meant he couldn't push on, this meant that although the car had worked ok, he wasn't confident that it would be ok in the race. Then as Ben went to pull out of the garage for his practice session, the oil filter o-ring decided to make a bid for freedom, resulting in lots of oil being dumped onto the garage floor!. After lots of mopping up, a new oil filter, more oil and some discussion about the possibility of the oil pressure relief valve being stuck Ben managed to get out in a later practice session (thanks to Tim for sorting that out seamlessly), taking it easy for 3 or 4 laps just keeping his eye on the pressure gauge rather than the track ensuring he was allowed to race (you have to complete 3 laps to be allowed to race).
Bob is a great starter, so again was unanamously voted to be driver number 1 and line up on the massive 60 car grid!!! As usual bob didn't disappoint and got a flying start, but after a couple of laps, as he came up to speed the engine problem returned!!! Luckily Dan (who was out trackside watching and photographing) spotted him slowing and called back to the pits so we knew bob was coming in and i got straight out without losing much time. Whilst Bob tried to diagnose the problem with Andy, myself, Ben and James held the fort, doing a 35-40 minute session each. I think its safe to say that we all returned with grins bigger than a teenage boy upon finding his first "girlie" magazine in the bushes!! The GP circuit is simply fantastic, fast, flowing, technical, loads of room for overtaking and very safe, this coupled with a field of 60 cars with massive speed differentials makes an amazing racing experience. You are constantly involved with a handful of cars, overtaking, being overtaken or scrapping for position! If you could bottle the Birkett, it would be the essence of fun!!!!
When i came in from my 2nd session after having a fantastic battle with Tim from RGB east, we were 5 seconds ahead of them and were runinng in 19th place, 2nd in class B and the highest pure RGB team, things were looking good and far exceeding my wildest dreams!! I suddenly became very competitive and was transfixed on the positions table being broadcast over the TV's. This was soon shattered by a catalogue of car problems and mistakes. Bobs car was till playing up, James's car had developed an oil leak and his brakes were not good. This started diverting our (mainly Dads who was previously on pit board and pit wall spotting duty) attentions to garage repairs, which then lead to Ben not being ready when James came in, then shortly after sending Bob out on track thinking that Ben had gone AWOL, when infact we had just missed him coming past, twice, so ended up with 2 cars on track. After getting Ben in, Bobs car started missing again and this time stopped, resulting in me having to go out again, but in doing so having 2 cars on circuit meaning another lost lap. And just to finish the day of car troubles off, Bens clutch arm snapped leaving him stranded out on circuit and not being recovered until after the end of the race, and another lost lap, then james's non existent brakes resulted in a restyled nose cone after a brief meeting with a clio cup!
We ended up 50th on scratch, not very good really and disappointing after a very very promising start. But on a positive side it was bloody good fun and i can't wait to do it all again next year!!!!!!
Oulton park was probably my favourite circuit in the UK when i was a regular trackday junkie, but i had never raced there before, something i was really looking forward to! Something i wasn't so sure about was the engine i had just fitted to the car. It all fired up fine in the garage after fitting, but it needed a good ragging to check everything was in order before the race. I managed to squeeze in a test session in on friday as i was working up in Liverpool, and apart from a short trip to the gravel, everything seemed in order and the engine and box felt strong. We had to remove the under tray to rake out the the 10kg of gravel i had collected and while there gave the the car a check over of the car which again showed no problems.
So with the car tucked up under its own awning, now fitted on the otherside of the bus to the human rain shield, we headed off for a RGB social at a local restaurant i booked. The Alvanley Arms nearby was excellent, great service and very good food, definitely better than our usual BBQ road kill. After returning to the paddock i had the pleasure of tasting (well necking about 3/4 of a bottle) of John Cutmores dads home brew cider, this ensured a late night and a fuzzy head in the morning!!
Friday had been wet, but saturday was forecast to be dry, and although the circuit was still damp for the first few practice sessions, by the time we were out there was a good dry line. As we were queueing up for qualifying Paul Rogers came over to tell Dan and I not to wait for him that Derek to go out (they were in front of us in the queue) as they were going to wait for 2 minutes before heading out onto track to ensure a clear road. I decided to do the same, hoping that i could try and tag onto the of them for as long as possible. As it turns out they soon disappeared off into the distance, but the result of waiting for clear track meant that i had a virtually uninterrupted practice session. This also meant i qualified 2nd in class for race 1 and 1st in class for race 2, result!!!
I had a good start to both races, but then a catalogue of driving errors ruined both my races, culminating in spinning in both races on the last lap! I know i can drive fast enough to be competitive, but a mixture of racing inexperience, red mist and plain driving mistakes keep letting me down. Hopefully as time goes by i can minimise these and get the win i hanker after!!!!
To finish the day, and season, i got awarded driver of the day, but for all the wrong reasons, nothing to do with good driving, but just because its entertaining to watch as i am now almost expected to go spinning off the circuit at somepoint!! All in all another great day of racing, if a little frustrating.
Great news (for me anyway) is that Q20 have agreed to sponsor me again next year. So its a big thankyou to Q20, especially to Chris and Lee for all their hard work to make this possible!!!
This has encouraged me into getting some better video recording and data logging equipment, so the current plan is to get a a Video Vbox from Racelogic. I'm currently in negotiation with them to get some sort of deal , so watch this space for some seriously fancy footage
As i mentioned in the snetterton race report the car had started jumping out of 4th at the bombhole, this left me with a big decision to make! RGB regs are changing next year, pushing the formula into a simplier class structure and hopefully boosting the grid numbers for the classes. From next year there will be 2 main classed F (front engined) and R (rear engined) using any 1000cc motor prdoduced before 01/01/09. So this means there is still a class for my fireblade, but i would be competing directly against the late CBR's and R1's with 45BHP more, meaning absolutley no chance of a top 3 finish. Initailly i decided that over the winter i would upgrade the engine to a later type, but with Andy Bates introducing a prize (a 919 blade engine) for the highest finishing 919 (919 cup) in 2011 i decided i would stick with the blade for another season. I love the engine, its bullet proof (apart from the gearbox) and creates some great racing against identical cars. But the need for a gearbox rebuild threw this decision up in the air again. I have a spare engine which had completed less than 2 seasons so not a problem just to throw that in for Oulton (rather than rebuild the box), but it leaves me with no spare unless i rebuild it for next season. Also the engine will have completed 2 seasons since its last refresh so probably could do with a full strip down if i'm going to start putting new gears in etc. Another option was to take a punt on an ebay special and keep that as a spare. Trouble is with all this is that the plan was to upgrade at the end of 2011 anyway, so i'd be spending more money in the long run. So i decided to take the plunge and upgrade this winter.
Next decision was which engine. Initially i was going to go for a 2008 R1, but after seeing and hearing of a fair few all failing the same way in car installs (cylinder head melts between 2 and 3) i decided against it. I then turned to the new CBR, but was put off by the height of the engine. I'm only short and worried that the huge airbox sticking out the top of the bonnet would reduce my field of vision too much. So i finally decided on an 04-06 (RVY) R1, its nice and compact and tried and tested in RGB. The gear ratios of the R1 are also slightly better suited to the live axel than the CBR, so all in all it was the best choice. After some hunting i eventually plumbed for an engine off Malcome from Yorkshire Engines. The engine is now sat in the garage awaiting the start of the transplant. Luckily the sale of my current engine and spares will virtually cover the cost of the new engine, so all in all i'm glad i've done it sooner rather than later and can't wait to get started on the install over the winter.
Anyway, back to the oulton prep,over the 3 evenings Dad and I took out the old and fitted the spare engine, filled with fluids and gave the car a good check over. The need for the engine removal also meant i could remove the bodged up engine mount repaired at snetterton and sort it out.You can just see the web and plate added by andy, but can see the extent of the crack from underneath.
I was going to make a new mount, but seeing that it only has to last for Oulton and the Birkett i opted to fill the crack with weld and add another web
It looked so nasty i had to spray it black to try and hide the offensive material, it didn't really help!!!
The car was used as the main display on the Q20 stand at the Mechanex show at Stoneleigh on the Tuesday and the Wednesday. Luckily there was no external damage to the car at Snetterton so she was looking her best, especially after a rub down with petrol and a quick application of polish :)
As an extra visual and stand attraction i created a movie of all the TV highlights broadcast by Motors TV featuring my car, plus added some extra onboard footage, slides and questionable sound tracks!!
I gave the car a real good shake after Silverstone and didn't find a single nut, bolt or wishbone loose. What could go wrong??
Snetterton is a long old drive so i entered the extended invitation from Bikesports to join them for an extra race. This meant 2 practices and 2 races. Upon arriving at snetterton we were informed that due to a lot of bikesports entering late we would now be having our own non championship RGB race, sorted! :) After arriving at 7pm and pitching up to Bob, the usual BBQ and beers were had while having a good chat with the RGB crew.
1 extra Stella resulted in a slightly fuzzy head when i woke up on sunday, but a shower and a cuppa sorted that out for scrutineeering at 8.15am. With only 1 session between bikesports practice and RGB practice it meant that a full tank of fuel was required so i could go straight to holding after the first practice had finished. As it turned out we had a bit longer as the marhalls had to peel a radical out of the tyre wall at russels after it had collected Andy Grant while making a completely unnecessary lunge to get past him going into Russels. Why some of the bikesports drivers feel these types of moves are necessary is beyond me, they can get past our cars where ever they like with ease, so why try doing it it tight places, especially in practice???
Practice went well, and i was 2nd in class, and only fractionally behind Al and in a pack of class C cars, so had high hopes for the race! The non championship race didn't really matter, but i was 8th on the grid alongside James W and would definitely require some kind of heroics to improve upon due to the straight line disadvantage my class C car had over all the A's and B's infront of me.
While calmly preparing for the race and with an hour to go i was looking round the car and noticed the driver side "H" engine mount had cracked. Further investigation showed that it had virtually gone all the way around the tube. Luckily Mr Bates was standing close buy and after 20mins with the oxy torch i had a a bronze splattered, dog eared looking bracket that supported the engine:-
The non championship race was great fun, trying to overtake james on the brakes and using his brick shaped car as a towing aid was great racing but also taught me where i could push the car harder and deeper and take liberties!! Bens dive up the inside at the end of the revitt was exciting, and also makes a good video, thankfully with a happy ending ;):-
I also managed a 1.18.92, which i was over the moon with as non of the other class C cars broke the 1.19.00 mark in either practice or the race.
The only downside of the race is that the car had started to jump out of 4th, which was not good going through the bombhole!!!! I had my fingers crossed it would hold for the RGB race!
I got off the line well for the RGB race, but by the time we had got down to the Esses Colin and AL had managed to get get a couple of cars in between us, and then over the next couple of laps Phil and a few class A and B went past me down the Revit. It took me a few good laps to finally get past James, Dan and Neil and back up the chuff of Phil. Phils car gives very little tow down the straight and is bloody quick, meaning a slip stream move was probably out. By now the car would not stay in 4th around the bomb hole and becoming increasingly difficult to get into gear, meaning on a number of occasions i either missed 4th gear or it popped out. The bombhole was the worst place, as when it popped into 3rd it would lock the rear wheels, and was something i was constantly thinking about while doing 95mph around Riches!! I started trying to drive it in 5th around here but i just couldn't get the acceleration, i tried holding it in 3rd for longer, but it either meant i hit the limiter, or the at the point where i needed 4th the car was becoming unbalanced at which point i couldn't wrestle to get it into 4th. I was right behind phil coming into the bombhole with a few minutes to go and decided to try it in 4th so as to get the best run on him, unfortunately it popped out just as the car was squirming around, this locked the rears and i ended up spinning off!! I got going again and finished the race, but it was the worst result of the season (well apart from the not seen at cadwell), although it had been a bloody good race and infact i recorded fast lap in class!!! The fastest lap cheered me up as i hadn't managed that before and at least means i was pushing it and could have stayed up with Al if i had had a better start!
On the downside the gearbox was shot and would need to be sorted for Oulton in less than 2 weeks
