Brands Prep

Other than the suspension/handling concerns i had there was actually nothing to repair on the Fury after Mallory!! Not one scrape, crack, dent or bent thing!!! Well not until i checked the car over and discovered oil all over the front of the chassis, steering rack and engine bay under tray. My initial thought was it was just the annoying drip from the sump plug has some how found its way forward, but i couldn't see how on earth that could happen. Some more investigation revealed oil had been passing through the radiator fins and spraying the inside of the engine bay, a quick look at the oil cooler showed a rather big dent in the front of it. With the engine ticking over and cold there was no apparent drip or spray, so i  concluded that it had to be seeping out of a small hole in the cooler only when under high pressure and temperature. 


A quick search on the web and i found nice looking oil cooler for £40, half the price of the equivalent Mocal item!! It was a simple job of undoing a few nuts and pipes and hey presto, a new oil cooler in place. Hopefully this was the problem and i won't be treating the chassis to more rust prevention at Brands!


I noticed that the rear nearside tyre has had it, so have ordered one from Polley Motorsport and will have it fitted saturday morning in the paddock. I may splash out on 2, as the other looks like it probably only has a few laps left in it aswell.

The last check i wanted to do was on the rear axle input flange, i had noticed a very small amount of up and down play in it before Mallory so wanted to check it hadn't increased. Now i'm not sure if it had increased or not, but I wasn't too happy with the amount of play and decided i'd check the centre nut holding it on. Most diffs have taper rollers, so you can soak up some of the play by nipping the nut up, and on this occasion it worked a treat. 1/16th of a turn on the nut and all play was gone. Its something i'm going to keep my eye on, a rebuild of the rear axle is definitely on the wish list when i could hopefully replace the nearside bearing again and cure the small leak i have suffered since changing it at Cadwell last year.

So Roll on the weekend, i have busy weekend with 2 practice sessions and 3 races (Allcomers and 2 x RGB) over 2 days, the forecast is good, the BBQ is packed, the entire disco bus crew are attending, what could possibly go wrong.......................