Finishing with a bang

After the trials of the last post, I was hoping that the next outing for the Tiger would be a lot smoother. Unfortunatley it was not to be….

I had the car booked into the Complete Kit Car/Omex trackday at LLandow circuit in mid May. The few days before had been a bit of a mad rush to get a new alternator from Brise, and get it fitted to the car. The mounting lugs were completely different to the existing ones so required some additional bracketry to be fabricated. I got this done in a few hours and it seemed to be fairly solid. I had a new Red Top battery fitted as well so everything was ready to go. I loaded the car up Friday afternoon for the evening slog along the M4 to South Wales, ready for a nights camping before the track day on the Saturday morning.

Saturday came with a nice dry morning, so packed up the tent and made the 3 minute drive to the circuit. After signing on and the briefing we were split into groups for the first few sessions. I was in the first session and warmed the car up and headed out. After about 5 laps of building up speed I lost the rear end of the car and spun 180 degrees to the side of the circuit.  Unfortunatley the car following me could not avoid me or slow in time and hit the front of my car, wheel to wheel.

After being recovered back to the paddock it was obvious the chassis had taken the brunt of the impact and sustained some fairly serious damage, with quite a few of the chassis rails bent. That was the end of the day for me and so got the car loaded up on the trailer and headed for home.

Having a look at the damage it seems to difficult to repair and get straight again, so I decided a new chassis is required. With a little help from Tom we stripped down the car in about 6 hours, watch the video here….

So the plan now is to order a new chassis and commence the rebuild, hopefully this will be fairly straight forward. Watch this space…..

2011 update so far….

Things have been pretty quiet on the car front on the first few months of this year, mainly due to being away with work so much. With the handling and suspension of the car pretty much sorted (for now) I decided to have a little bit of work done on the engine before the 2011 season started. I dropped the car of at Northampton Motorsport at the end of February for them to do the work, hoping I would have the car back in plenty of time for the first event I had planned at the end of April. Unfortunatley due to a fire at the machine shop they use, the parts required for my car where seriously delayed. I took a call from them saying the car would be ready to pick up on April 29th, just one day before my race on the 30th. Cutting it fine again. The 29th came round and I took advantage of the quiet roads due to some wedding being on the TV to head up to Northampton. I got there at around 12.30, just as the car was being strapped down on the rolling road by Troy and Cooper, ready for mapping.

On the rolling road

Troy began with a gentle run up to make sure everything was happy, and bed in the new shims on the cams. It soon became clear there was a problem, as Cooper spotted oil and water leaking from between the block and head. It seemed that a brand new head gasket had failed (at least this was the hope as the alternative would have been much worse!). Troy managed to find a motor factors open in Milton Keynes who had a Zetec gasket and bolts in stock, so I popped over to get them while they worked on stripping down the engine. Coincidently, while I was out another customer of NMS popped in and said he had a spare ST170 gasket at home, so he went back to get that. With the head removed, Cooper checked the head and block and found both to be fine, so it appeared the gasket was to blame. The ST170 gasket was fitted and everything reassembled. This time it all went a lot more to plan and Troy began the mapping session. This time everything went a lot more smoothly with no gasket problems.

Just when everything was going well, and the mapping session had finished, we shut down the engine and the extractor fans, and noticed a strange noise. We quickly noticed the battery was swollen and looked in a pretty bad way. After checking the car it seemed the alternator had failed and was overcharging at around 20 volts. It was after 7.30pm on a bank holiday Friday so no chance of getting a new alternator and battery for the following morning. A disappointing blow after getting the engine up and running after the gasket failure.

I have ordered a new alternator from Brise, lightweight and uprated so should hopefully be a lot more reliable. Once I have fitted that I should be able to test out the car.

Live on TV

I’ll be racing live on TV in May as part of the Motors.TV Mallory Park race day. More info -

LIGHTS, CAMERAS, ACTION: CLUB MOTORSPORT ENTERS THE LIVE TV ERA

A new concept in televised motorsport action is to be pioneered in Britain next season, with viewers across Europe set to enjoy a five-hour feast of national race action live from Mallory Park.

The Mallory meeting – a pilot event for a planned quartet of live-TV meetings in 2010, ahead of a full season of such meetings the following year – will feature a 16-race programme of 10-minute races for saloons, sports cars and single-seaters with the emphasis squarely on entertainment.

“The aim is to provide the most exciting spectacle that British club racing can offer,” says event director Magnus Laird, “and to bring back some of the appeal which has been eroded in recent years for spectators, competitors and sponsors alike.

“The combination of full grids, short races and live television, combined with slick organisation and presentation, should prove a winning formula.”

Behind the cameras at the Sunday 16 May event will be the technicians of HayFisher, the country’s leading motorsport TV production company. The action will be beamed via HayFisher’s unique wireless camera system and a satellite uplink truck from rural Leicestershire to the Paris HQ of Motors TV, from where it will be broadcast to homes Europe-wide.

Eight championships are scheduled to appear and take part in double-header races at Mallory, including Kent-engined Formula Fords, Caterham Graduates, 2CVs, the Kumho BMW Championship, BARC Dunlop Motorsport News Saloons, BARC Intermarque League, Sports 2000 and the BARC Tin Tops Championship.

Organisers are pegging entry fees for competitors at £300 per car, to include a 10-minute qualifying session and two 10-minute races, with test sessions available at Mallory on the Saturday at just £30 for 25 minutes of track time. All competitors will receive a free DVD of the Motors TV programme and free in-paddock catering is planned.

The Mallory live TV raceday is being designed to appeal not only to armchair viewers and competitors but also to circuit-goers. Paddock entertainment will include between-race autotests against the clock, which all the race winners will be invited to contest, and there will be professional commentary and a 40-metre TV screen broadcasting the action.

Twitter

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Changes ahead

It’s been a while since this has been updated, but hopefully with the new season around the corner I will try and get more regular updates going.

The car is currently undergoing quite a lot of change, the old 8v Pinto engine has been sold, being replaced with a shiny new ‘Blacktop’ 16v Zetec. With the addition of fuel injection should give me a performance increase while saving a bit of weight. The rebuild is in progress, I will add a few pictures of the build. Watch this space….

Mallory Park Race 21 Sept 2008

After a long break since the Anglesey race at the beginning of August (I missed Cadwell Park due to work commitments), Sunday morning bought glorious weather for a double header at Mallory Park, one of my favourite circuits for racing.

I had barely touched the car since Anglesey (other than to charge the battery) so first job was to give the car a once over. Everything seemed as expected, so after signing on it was off to scrutineering. The car got a thorough going over but passed through with no problems. Back at the paddock I used the time before qualifying to do a few small tidying up jobs, including running a cold air feed to the carbs (something I had been meaning to do for a while!).

Pretty soon we all lined up for qualifying, Kat and Annabelle arrived just before I went out to wish me luck. We headed out onto track and had a couple of easy laps to get the temps up and remember the circuit a bit. Once we had spread out a bit I concentrated getting in some good laps (I hoped!) The car seemed to be rolling quite a bit which didn’t help going round Gerrards, and also I was getting some bottoming out coming down through the Devils Elbow, which I thought was the exhaust mount as it felt in that area.

After 14 laps we pulled back into the paddock. and awaited the times.  I had managed a best lap of 57.8 seconds, a bit slower than my previous best time, and put me 11th on the grid of 18.

I went over and spoke to Tigers mechanic Gary about the settings on my car, and he suggested I put a bit more air in the tyres and increase the dampers by a few clicks to control the roll a bit better. I would have to see if it helped when I went out for the first race.

After lunch we had a couple of races ahead of us to wait, before we went out for the grid. We lined up as usual and went out in our parade lap. The start came and unfortunately mine wasn’t good. I think I didn’t quite have enough revs and the car bogged down, allowing Dave Davies and Nick Gregory to get past me into the first corner. I chased Nick for a few laps and managed to get past him through the Esses and hold the position into Shaws. I think Dave Davies had a small moment a few laps later and I passed him on the exit of Shaws, up into 10th place (after Paul Clarke dropped out at the start), behind Mike Pierce and Bradley Woods. I got quite close to them as they battled with each other, but in the end didn’t have the power to keep up with them. I stayed 10th till the end of the race (4th in class), and was very happy with the handling of the car, having improved my lap time by over 2 seconds, a 55.6 being my best lap.

We lined up again for the second race in roughly places as the first race and I hoped for a better start this time. I got the revs up more and pulled away a lot better, but got boxed by Nick and Dave going into Gerrards and backed off a bit which let them through. I followed Dave for a few laps but his car was quite a bit quicker on the straights, but I was quicker in the corners, and I finally managed to get a good run on him and pass him on lap 6, and passed Nick and few laps later when he spun at Shaws. After that I was on my own for much of the race, finishing 11th in the end (4th in class again).

Overall a good weekend, with another 2 races finished, and another 8 points, leaving me 5th overall in class (mainly due to the races I have missed). The car performed well overall but again highlighted the difference in performance that the Zetec cars have over mine. It was good to be back at Mallory Park too, definatley one of my favourite circuits on the calender.

Only 2 rounds remain this year, Pembrey (South Wales) in October and Brands Hatch in November.

Ready to go

Flew back in from my holiday in the US on Wednesday morning, and after a quick cup of tea hooked up the trailer and drove up to Northampton to collect the Avon from Northampton Motorsport. The maincase of the gearbox had been replaced, along with the layshaft and bearings that had sustained so heavy damage due to lack of oil. Troy had put the car on the rollers that morning to test the gearbox and declared all was well, so I paid the bill (ouch) and headed back down the M1 with a couple of cans of Red Bull to fight off the jet lag.

Everything is ready now for the next race, tomorrow at Lydden Hill in Kent.

Cracking Up

Had the car out for a few hours on Sunday to track down the misfiring problem I had experienced at Snetterton. It quickly became clear the crank position sensor had taken a whack at some point, so I checked the timing with the strobe gun. With the advance locked in the ECU it was obviously out, a quick adjustment suggested it was around 8 degrees.

I removed the sensor and the old bracket and set about making a new stronger version with a bit more support in it, then put everything back together and reset the timing back to normal. Hopefully now the engine should be running nicely again. More of a concern now was the puddle of gearbox oil that had collected under the car……

I had booked the car into Northampton Motorsport after Snetterton to get the suspension alignment checked, so on Thursday morning I loaded up and headed up the M1. Got there and got the car unloaded and ready to be worked on. Corner weighting and ride height where the first things to check, I was hoping to get the car a little lower but the bottom of the sump is still a problem, but we managed to get it down a little. The balance of the car is pretty spot on weight wise, with the weight of the engine versus the weight of cage and driver working out pretty well. The car weighed in at 660kgs including me in the driving seat, which I was pretty happy with. Wheel alignment was next, a bit more camber was added to the rear wheels, but we couldn’t quite get enough on the front nearside as we had run out of threads on the balljoint and couldn’t screw it in any further.

With the suspension setup out of the way I asked the guys to have a quick look at the gearbox leak while the car was up on the ramps. Unfortunately my fears were confirmed when a crack was found at the front of the maincase of the ‘box, oil had been weeping out and down to the bottom of the box. It was also clear from the oil trail on the underside of the car that some of this had been getting onto the rear tyres as well, possibly causing the strange handling in the second race. Not sure how the crack was caused, but clear Snetterton had made it much worse as the evidence on the garage floor proved.

This meant that I would have to miss the race on Saturday at Rockingham, as there was no way of getting the maincase replaced by then, and racing with a leaking gearbox would be too dangerous for myself and the other racers. I left the car up at NM, where they will pull out the engine and box and replace the maincase while I’m on holiday, ready for the race at Lydden on June 28.

Snetterton Pics 26 May

B&W pictures by Chris Stacey, Colour by Nik Woodley

Snetterton Race Report 26 May

Rain. That was the forecast for the Bank Holiday Monday, and heavy rain at that.

I spent a little time on Sunday making up a Tonneau cover and half door for the car in preparation for the expected wet weather. Very basic but hopefully will do the job. I loaded everything up on Sunday evening and headed up for the circuit about 8pm, arriving at Snetterton just before 10pm. It was dry at that time, but some of the guys who had been arrived early said it had rained all day.

Woke up about 6.30 on Monday morning to a very windy, but dry Snetterton. Got my things together and headed down to Race Control to sign on. We had an early qualifying slot as all the other groups racing had qualified on Sunday, so it was just the Tigers before the day’s racing commenced.

Got down to scrutineering and straight through, which is always nice, then went and got changed ready for qualifying. The weather was still dry when we headed out on track, but the wind was a real shocker, it was really catching the car and moving it around. Everything seemed fine with the car so I dropped back a bit from the guys in front to try and get a bit of clear space to put in a couple of good laps. I was pretty happy with how it went, and I managed to qualify 12 out of 18 runners, 4th in my class.

About an hour before our first race the rain started, luckily it didn’t last very long and by the time we headed out to the assembly area it had begun to dry out. We went out on track for the green flag lap, and the track seemed dry and similar condition to qualifying which was good. We rolled around onto the grid ready for the start. The red lights went out and we were off. The next few seconds became a bit of a blur as there seemed to be some sort of incident at the front and everyone was coming across to avoid it, I took to the grass as room on the track had rapidly run out. We got around the first corner and the race was red flagged, so we headed slowly back around to the grid. There seemed to be carnage on the grid with a number of cars being craned onto transporters.

Eventually the track was cleared and we headed round again for another green flag lap and the restart. Everyone seemed to get away safely this time, though I dropped a place to John Walton, and slipped into line behind him and  Gary Lapinskis. I was trying pretty hard to get past but my car didn’t quite have the grunt of the 2 zetec engined cars in front. I stayed with them for most of the race until I was caught and passed by Mac McCarthy (who had been held up at the started), but then he suddenly slowed in front of me (due to an electrical problem I later found out) and I dropped back a couple of seconds. I tried to catch back up to the pair in front but slightly over cooked it into Russells and spun on the exit, unfortunately letting 2 cars behind me past right on the last corner of the last lap! Needless to say I was less than happy with my self, scoring 10th overall, 6th in class.

Back to the pits for some lunch, we had a couple of hours before race 2. Unfortunaley the rain started again, more heavily this time, and it was still raining when we headed to the assembly area to form up.  We headed out form the green flag lap and there was quite a lot of spray and the track was very wet, but it didn’t seem too bad. We all got away ok at the start but I got a bit stuck behind the 2 guys in front who bogged down a bit, and got passed by a few cars. The track seemed quite slippery but not too bad, until I got to the Bomb Hole when I spun off the track coming out of the dip, putting me last. I managed to keep the engine running but it seemed to be misfring slightly, and back on the track something felt not quite right.  The handling of the car had changed quite a bit from before the spin, much more of a handful, but I carried on going deciding to finish the race rather than pulling off early. I didn’t manage to make up any ground and finished the race in last place, which was a pretty depressing end to the day.

I got the car loaded up and headed straight for home so as not to be back too late. I gave the car a very quick inspection before putting it away and it seemed there was a leak from the gearbox, which fingers crossed will be nothing serious. Hopefully next weekend I will have a chance to look the car over properly and try and sort out the misfire before the next round at Rockingham on June 7th. Hopefully summer will have returned by then!