Low rider

No i haven't pimped the Fury, but now that the rear body is fitted in place i wanted to check i had enough clearance between the wheels and arches, so i removed the rear springs and let it sit on the bump stops. The nearside was fine, but the offside, although clear, needed a small amount of fettling resulting in a nice even gap at full compression, and hopefully no clouds of smoke during cornering.

The wheels stick out about 60mm from the body work, so next job is to make some easily replaceable spats. The old bodywork had the remains of some spats, but they are prone to damage being the first things to come into contact with the outside world, so this time i will make them disposable and easily replaceable.

There was now a gaping hole between the body work and arches through to the wheel due to the aluminium panelling having to be removed.

I'd never liked the way the panelling meant the return lip on the tub had to be cut away, thus making it very week and cracking all the gel coat. So this time i have ensured the mating surface between the chassis rail and tub is uninterrupted.

Look at the arse on that!

With a lot of help from the angle grinder and lots of yellow itchy dust i cut the new rear bodyto shape, including cuttign away the rear wheel arches as the wheel rub when using the lowered chassis. I have allowed about 50mm clearance between the tyres and body, this may be a bit close and could rub on full compression, so i think i'll pop the rear springs out and sit it down to double check before i fibreglass the planned aluminium wheel spats in place. The rear body is held on as before with 2 bonnet pins at the rear, 3 dzus fasteners across the top and a over centre latch both sides just infront of the wheels. I have also added a 8mm vertical pin in the side pods that slots into a hole on the return flange of the rear body to stop it flaring out. You may be wondering what the 2 big holes are in the rear, well they were originally 4 holes for the old lights to be fitted in, but as i'm using my existing lights which are smaller, and also plan to fix the lights to the chassis of the car i just joined up the holes. The lights will be attached to the chassis and shine through the holes in the body work, which alleviated having to disconnect the lights every time i want to remove the body work and one less connection to cause my usual lighting issues at scrutineering!

Once the rear body was in place, i could cut the old tub in half to create just the front section. I measured this a few times and left a good amount of extra body that i could trim away slowly to ensure it fitted, the last thing i wanted was a 50mm gap in the sides!!

The panels almost lapped over each other which would have been a great way to join them, but it would have left a gap at the bottom or unmatched section at the top, so i decided to stick to the original plan of rivetting a aluminium lip to the rear body that the front tub will fasten to with dzus fastners.

Q20 Oil Sponorship deal

You may have noticed the new banner at the top of the screen and wondering what i am up to. After about 9 months since answering an initial post on www.locostbuilders.co.uk and numerous emails and lots of hard work by Chris Lomas, we have managed to secure a sponsorship deal from JV International who are now marketing Q20 Oil across Europe.

WWW.Q20OIL.COM

Q oils is a South African range of products new to the European market. The range of oils currently enjoys a market share of 70%+ in its home markets and is the standard issue of the South African armed forces. The Q20 product displaces moisture, prevents rust, protects and lubricates all household and industrial products.

The car bodywork will now have to be finished for Brands in June and the shiney new Q20 livery plastered all over it!! I must also try harder not to smash the thing up at every meeting!!!!

Testing at Silverstone

Initially i was going to enter the extra race organised by Colin at Pembrey within the WRDA, but decided it would be far more usesful to do a bit of development on the car. I had received the new dampers from Procomp, had a set of softer springs for the front and rear and had fitted a front ARB all ready for the day

Existing set up:
Front springs 275lb/in
Rear springs 225lb/in

New set up for testing
Front springs 200lb/in

Rear springs 180lb/in

16mm front ARB connected to inboard damper pick up point

The venue for testing would be a trackday at the silverstone Stowe circuit, which is very twisty as thought this would give a good test bed, plus it was cheap! Rather than making loads of changes at once, i decided to fit the dampers and softer rear springs, but leave the front ARB and springs and do these during the day.

For the first session out i left all the damper settings at total soft, just to see how the car felt. Straight away the rear end grip, even on acceleration felt vastly improved, but the car was too soft and wallowed all over the place, and the front felt like i was driving a bus, so i came back in and started upped the damper settings all round. Doing lots of short sessions and lots of tweaks to the dampers, by lunchtime i felt as if i got the dampers set up as well as i could with current spring set up. I was very happy with the dampers as they are mega controllable and can really feel a difference by just adding single clicks here and there! Coupled with The softer rear springs, it was mega grippy at the rear but front end was a bit too loose.

At lunch time I fiitted softer front springs and the arb. But straight away it felt wrong, with loads of understeer. And an observer came over to tell me they had a good picture of the inside wheel lifting high into the air! This backed up the horrible feeling the car had mid corner, I stiffened rear and softened front  dampers slightly and went out again, but could actually see the front corner lifting! It was obvious the ARB was far too stiff for the setup, so I disconnected it and went out again. Instantly the car felt better and had the turn in it had with the old set up, but was far more controllable and less flighty at the rear, after a bit more playing with the damper settings got it gripping to the road like a carpet grippy thing! The rear is very very stable now and it turns in as well as before, the only negative is that the car now  pushes wide after the Apex as it understeers slightly. I am gusessing this is partly down to the fact the car is rolling more, and the front tyres are going into positive camber due to the geometry not having enough camber compensation. But it could also be that i am now putting more power down with the rear end grip coming out of corners so pushing the car on. But then again i could have just screwed the handling up!!! But there has to be a trade off somewhere, so i'm willing to give this a try at Brands and see if the rear stability and better transfer of power from the right foot can get me a quicker lap time. If not, i can always put the old springs back on!!!

Post Brands repairs

Considering what had happened at Brands i felt rather lucky to only have the following minor repairs to complete!!

• Fibreglass, filling and painting of bonnet
• Straightening out bonnet hinge/radiator A frame
• Headlight mountings

On the wayback from Brands I picked up a new (to me) rear tub for £20 from a nice chap off  www.locostbuilders.co.uk. It is a tub from the Fury with the doors, so actually stops just infront of the rear arches, so the plan is to cut the front of the existing tub off (as this is in pretty good nick), mount the new rear body, then create a joining method between the 2 just infront of the rear wheels. I like the ide of this as it makes removing the bodywork a lot easier for 1 man, and future damage will hopefully just require working on smaller mouldings.

Room in the bus was a bit limited, plus i had to get the new rear up to the house from the end of the road (as the bus doesn't fit p the lane to my house), so i invented the first double decker Fury

You can see the front A frame is a little off to one side

And the (new) aluminium rad ducting is a little bent

The bonnet has been sent away to the bodywork doctors (dads house), and an evening with a vice, hammer, 2 lumps of wood and welder sorted out the wonky A frame.

Brands Hatch 24th/25th April

Firstly, I apologise for the late update, work have been very inconsiderate and ensured i have been too busy to post my ramblings, luckily normal service has now returned.


Well Brands was a great weekend overall recording my best class finish to date, although slightly tarnished by controversy in both RGB races. We (myself, Dad and William) arrived on friday night at about 9pm, after a great clear run all the way down. A quick unload (thanks to Bob for saving us a spot and supplying 240v) , a guided tour of the bus followed by a swift pint at the bar with Bob and we settle down to the first night in the bus with the new fold out beds/sofas.


I had entered the Allcomers again for a bit of practice, so it was an early start as scrutineering was at 7.45am. I also wanted to have ago with bobs Pace corner scales to see if i could get the corner weights sorted, so i had an early shower at 6.15am and got everything prepared. The PACE corner gauge is a nice simple bit of kit, that in principle should work very well, but Bob had already expressed his concerns about its repeatability and accuracy. After going round the car a few times the corners didn't seem far out, and definitely less out than the repeatability of the gauge. The problem with the gauge is that it is very dependent on the way it set against the wheel, i.e. its position and upright position, just trying the same corner over and over again gave quite large discrepancy's. So we ended up leaving the set as it was, as it didn't seem that far out. I've not discounted a PACE gauge as its a great, portable simple device, and i have some ideas on how to make it more repeatable that involves some more steel and a welder, so i'm keeping my eye open for one on ebay.


Scrutineering went without a hitch, which was less than could be said for David Wale, whose scrutineer decided to pick up on a black box in the cockpit that could be deemed to fail outside of safety requirements, reading the bluebook it didn't really break any rules, but he did at least say it was ok to race this time with it.


Qualifying for Allcomers went OK, and i felt my way back around the track. I also used the session as a testing to run softer settings on the dampers to try and settle the rear end. My plan was to go out very soft then come in after a few laps a dial in changes, as it happens the session was red flagged after a saxo decided to go for a dig in the sand at Paddock hill. The car felt alot more grippy and settled at the rear but was very wallowy and understeering a fair bit, so we stiffened it up all round but added a couple of extra clicks to the rear. Once the session was restarted i went back out and instantly the car felt a lot better, although still a hint of understeer. There wasn't time for another return to the pits so decided just to add an extra click ready for the RGB qualifying. I had qualified 5th for Allcomers with a time of 53.86, which was slower than last years best time and needed to be as close to the 52's as possible, but i never had a good lap once i'd changed the settings and knew there was definetly more to come off


RGB qualifying was busy, 29 cars entered, and i was near the end of the pit lane and could also see Al and Colin at the front of the queue so wasn't expecting a great class C grid position. I managed 2 or 3 clearish laps towards the end, and managed a 53.12 and a 53.34, which what not only over 0.5 seconds quicker than last year, but also put me in 2nd in class C for race 1 and 1st for race 2. Result!!!!!


The Allcomers race was abit of a none event, to start with anyway, as not really any racing to be had as i was on my own, but then after a spin coming out of graham hill, i was near the back and had a bit of a battle to get past Judy


The 1st RGB race was at 4pm, the weather was great and the car was running fine. I had a game plan in my mind that involved just trying to stay with Al in front of me around Paddock for the first time and hopefully Colin wouldn't get inbetween us, then letting the dust settle for a couple of laps before trying anything. As soon as the lights went out, that all went out the window, I followed Al towards Paddock who got ahead of Richard Wise in his new Sabre, but new RGBer Gary Good year came up the gap on my inside and was rubbing paintwork with Richard directly in front, and also had Tony coming up my inside corner. I kept my distance and concentrated on holding my line around paddock, not cutting the track off to Tony behind and not wanting to get untidy or scrub out wide and cause a collision like ii did at snetterton, but as we reached the apex, Colin who was coming round the outside at paddock turned in and left me no where to go, we ended up touching which caused Colin to spin off into the deep gravel and i was also on the way into a spin, but as Tony came past me my nose clipped his rear end which actually straightened me up and kept me on the track. Luckily it didn't really affect Tony, although it gave his wife Heather some polishing to do so in the paddock later. I lost 3 or 4 places, including 2nd in class C to Matt Rowe. Within a few laps i had caught back up with Matt and managed to pass him and then caught up with Al with Tony infront of him. But as we came out of Graham Hill Tony went into a spin, causing all the cars following to take some serious evasive action, I followed Al onto the grass, but had to run a lot wider as Tony was rolling towards me, and ended up losing a lot of ground on Al. It also allowed Matt to catch back up with me, with whom i then had a great clean battle with for the rest of the race, including some very exciting side by side racing through Paddock, surtees and clearways! On the last lap i knew Matt was always gaining on me coming into Clearways and i knew i couldn't let him past me up the inside there as i would never get past him before the finish line, so i just concentrated on hugging the curb of clearways all the way around with Matt tucked right up behind me and powered through to the finish line. So this gave me 2nd in class, my best class finish to date!! I was ecstatic, as was William who gave me a massive thumbs up as i drove past him on the way to the paddock.


The glory was all a bit tarnished when i arrived back at the bus as i was being blamed for the collision with Colin. My mistake at Snetterton caused us to collide at snetterton, but didn't rule either of us out of the race and which Colin went onto win, but this time i really felt as if i had done nothing wrong. I reviewed the video and still believed i wasn't to blame, but still went to see Colin to apologise if he thought i was to blame. After a public viewing of the video evidence in the "Bus Cinema" i was cleared of any wrong doing and felt a lot happier.





We spent an great late afternoon and evening drinking and eating BBQ'd meat with fellow RGB'ers before retiring to the bus for a warm and comfortable nights sleep, i love the bus!!!!


After waht happened in Race 1, the last thing i wanted was any controversy in the 2nd race, so took it really steady at the start, and through that lost a few places and was back to 4th in class. I spent the rest of the race catching back up, and seeing Colin spin off and rejoining just behind me after druids meant i was upto 3rd. With a 3 laps to go i was back up with Matt and on the last lap made a move on him coming into paddock, i was well past him after getting a great exit from clearways and good drag up the straight, i was on the inside and really didn't want want to run wide and close the track off to Matt, so backed off so i could hug the inside curb around paddock, this allowed Matt to start coming past me on the outside, but as we came to the apex he turn in across me leaving me no where to go, we collided and both spun, Matt ended up in the kitty litter but i managed to keep it on the tarmac and the engine running and facing the right direction, as i got going i realised i was in 2nd, but Colin came shooting past me into Druids. The bonnet of the car was severely bent off to one side now and as i came into graham hill the car leaned over and locked the wheel on the bodywork, causing me to run very wide onto the grass, but luckily it was the last lap so managed to get over the line without having to go round a sharp left hander again!


Returning to the paddock i was not a happy bunny, the last thing i wanted was any kind of contact, and again felt as if i hadn't done anything wrong, i had legitimately over taken the car in front and held a conservative line around the corner to try and ensure no incidents, This time we were called into see the clerk of the course, who after listening to our version of events and stated that the observers comments agreed with my statement. It was put down as a racing incident caused by the driver (Matt) not realising where i was as he turned in, and no actions were to be taken.





So all in all a very eventful weekend, and 2 trophies!!!


There is a 7 week break until the next race, back at brands, so hopefully get some time to repair and develop the car, and also get some more work done on the bus