More tidying up of the garage, converting an old pallet into a sheet metal storage metal storage area by flipping around its feet and screwing it to the wall. Tacked the tracking gauge up so that William can finish it off tomorrow to learn some welding.
Separated out the boot box lid, it looks like the surround will need a scoop taking out of it to clear the roll bar diagonal, the wind deflector prototype will also need shortening as well. Apart from that the surround looks like it will drop straight in. The plan for the lid is to cut holes for the braces, then to cut the either end of the boot lid off such that the ends can be fixed in place while the central section continues to pivot up. Some careful measuring and then some fancy trim will be required but it's not looking too difficult now.
Cut down the wind deflector to give room for the boot box surround and started measuring up for the cutouts for the front surround strip. I'm spending a fair bit of time working things through since the more accurate the cuts the less work I'll have to do glassing it back together.
Happened to notice that motorsport events have had a couple of cancellations for their day at bassingbourn on saturday. William and I have got in there for a play, since it's a nice open airfield that's interesting to drive with limited scope for damage. I'm praying for a slightly damp track and cool air temps to gain maximum benefit from the day which so far the forecast seems to be promising.
In preparation for the track day I decided to make up a bracket to secure the AP22 in place on the dash. I used the two central poppers to secure an ali plate, this was bent back on itself to cover the poppers, with some high grip rubber material underneath to futher cushion and grip. To secure the AP22 on I covered the top of the plate and the bottom of the AP22 with velcro. Further to all this I was hoping to rig up a mount for my GPS system but really just ran out of time. I suspect that the GPS mount will have to wait till after the track day which is a shame.
At last plucked up enough courage to start chopping the top box surround. The cut lines I picked weren't the easiest to cut but were selected to make it far easier to fibreglass over. The cutout for the diagonal downbrace will be left as is for the moment although it could be easily filled in later.
To cover the corner that I cut off I used one of my prepared 4" square right angles GRP pieces. Marking around the piece of cutoff I was able to get a pretty good approximation of the shape that I needed. Shaving a little at a time off this resulted in a pretty good fit, which I then held in place with masking tape while I used some GRP dough to bond it in place. Some sanding and a few dribbles of resin and some more sanding and polishing of the outer surface should result in a good finish.
For the rear half of the surround all I had to do was drill some appropriate holes in the rear tub, drop in some rivuts and secure it down. Securing the front portion isn't going to be easy but a couple more rivnuts should do the job.
Added some gelcoat to the front section of the top box surround, I didn't have time to fully sand and polish it but it's rivnutted in place now and can be tweaked easily late on.
In terms of track day preparation I added 3 layers of heat shielding cloth around the end of the master cylinder which seems to be the only thing I can do due to the lack of space. Added some spiwrap around the brake flexi hoses since they were occasionally marking the bodywork. Eventually this will be sorted out with new hoses but that's a job for another day. Wind deflectors came off and the side screens went on. Fluids checked and that should be me ready.
Well the track day was a blast but a recurring electrical problem curtailed events rather. I've tracked it down but the proper fix means a whole lot of faffing around so will have to wait a bit. The car really did perform wonderfully though and looking at the playback from the data logging it's very obvious that the weak point is the driver.
Looking back at the day there were quite a few positive points that I think it's worth noting. The noise limit for the day was 103dB@.5m taken at 3/4 max revs which is actually pretty generous. Tim and William in their V8 Dax's came in at 97 and 95.4dB respectively while I came in at a whispering 92.8dB. The suprise of the day was MJ and his crossflow lowcost, it had a large bore exhaust which although freshly packed was making a very low throb which registered at between 107 and 109.5dB. The solution was to shove a vast quantity of wire wool up the pipe and secure it with wire which got him down low enough. After a few laps though it looked like a small animal was stuck up the pipe. All of this goes to show how a effective a turbo is at baffling the noise.
Other positive points to take away was that the car feels a lot more sure footed under heavy braking that it did initially. I suspect this is down to a combination of them having bedded in, correct geometry and a decent road surface. The cooling system also worked well, while on the track the temperatures didn't get up above the low 90s although after coming in and allowing the car to idle the oil pressure was rather lower than I would like. So I shall definately be moving over to a thicker oil in future.
Looking at the tell tales on the chargecooler system they've not even registered but feeling the radiator after a run I suspect the water temperature was up to 30C or so. Given that I wasn't working the turbo that hard I think that the radiator could be a little larger but that it's probably not all that far out now.
Unloaded the car, finished off the boot box surround then started looking at the wiring problem. First thing to do was a proper look to see if there were any obvious areas that could short under load. Unfortunately there wasn't anything which is reassuring in some ways since it means everything is well wrapped up in its loom tape, this however meant that it all had to come out to be redone from scratch. While removing it I was careful to mark up everything and make copious notes to aid the production of a proper circuit diagram for this section of loom.
Made up some templates for the boot lid modifications. The ideal version is going to be pretty tricky to cut but should give a tight fit. The alternative is much easier to manufacture, will look a little more natural but will have a moderate sized hole. At least one, maybe two more templates will be needed before I commit to anything though.
More work on the theory of the rewire. I had a couple of ideas about possible causes of the problems, neither of which proved correct. My new diagram is complete but needs more thought before I start making it up.
More revisions to the wiring diagram, mainly to give me an idea of what cable bundles will be required and where any junctions will actually be put as opposed to where was easiest to show them on the diagram.
Finally completed and checked the wiring plan and started to wire it up. Planning the wire thicknesses and cable bundles in advance should make the actually manufacturing somewhat easier. The plan will need to be updated later when I've finalised the wiring colours.
Made up the remainder of the wiring, updating the plan as I went and started organising the bundles. Once all the bundles are assembled into their groupings they're laid out in roughly the right places so that all the spurs can come off at the right places. The fuse/relay box is going to be located in the engine bay for better access which means that a couple of the cable runs are complicated somewhat because the component end needs to under the dash and it's the engine bay end that needs to be snipped to length. Needless to say much measuring and checking is required to get this right.
More wiring. All the wires into the cockpit/scuttle area are now cut down to length, connectors attached and neatly wrapped in loom tape. The engine side will wait till tomorrow.
More wiring, engine bay portion now in place.
Verified all the connection prior to trying to start the car up. In the process found that I'd swapped over the Rd/Bl and Rd/Bk wires on one of the connectors, thus showing up the importance of checking what you're doing.
It runs again! One minor hitch in that the ECU can only switch switched feeds, not permanant ones. I won't go into detail since it's a security device but I made a trivial fix which has a couple of benefits. The root problem though has some implications for people wanting to use the ECU as a primary security device (ie no key).
Out on the road I attempted to create some high G loadings on the bumpy A roads and via rapid deceleration but there's no sign of the problem recurring.
Chopped up the boot box lid. After mulling the plan of attack for some time I'd decided that although an offset cut (making the forward section of the lid narrower to fit between the rollbar struts) would be desirable it would be a lot more difficult to get right. Since I only have one shot at the cut and the usability differences aren't actually that great I went for the narrow centre section instead. This seems to have been the right decision since there's little enough space for fastening the outer sections down as it is.
With the outer sections cut free I set about slowly making the cutout for the rollbar. In the process I discovered that if used carefully a rasp is actually great tool for working GRP. I'm using some carefully positioned M4 allen bolts to hold the sections in place, they're a nightmare to fit but are the only viable way of doing it. I need to do some more trimming to the two sections but it really does look very promising.
Finished trimming down the boot lid and the end sections. I also replaced the locks so that the key matches and the key can be removed with the lock in the open position.
I'll probably add a layer of carbon to the lid to stiffen it up a little. If I'm being nit picky I may also add a spacer to the outer sections to compensate for the lost height of the hinge. The other alternative is to recess the hinge into each section. I'm not convinved though that this would be nearly as easy as I'd like to think. All in all though I'm rather satisfied for something that Westfield and indeed most other people I've spoken to claim is impossible!
Since I've taken quite a lot of strength out of the boot lid I decided to add some back in by added in a layer of carbon fibre to the underside. To get maximum benefit I used some core material to add some thickness, layed up the carbon and for the first time I was able to sucessfully roller it over. In the piece of cloth has been too small or over a compound curve and so hadn't had enough stick to withstand the rollering. I then used some release film to cover it over, put a thick sheet of ali on top and weighed it all down with some large reels of wire stacked up on top of it. After it had all cured I sanded it all down and then went over the whole boot lid with the compounder and polisher to bring it up to a nice shine.
Reconnected the heater pipework that I'd removed to aid the rewiring and put the finishing touches to the wiring diagram. Last job of the day was to add some rubber strip along the boot lid to seal it up from the elements. I'd purchased some 50x4mm rubber from Woolies some time ago and this was just perfect for the job. With a small cutout for the roll bar and a 5mm lip to overlap the central section of the lid when it's down I used some black PU adhesive to stick it in place to the underside of the outer lid sections. It will be interesting to see how it adheres but it should hold on fairly well.
Added some more carbon to the boot lid and used it to hold a captive nut. This enables me to attach a strap to stop the lid from flopping down when open.
Took Catherine out for her first decent length run in the car. Once she was used to it we cranked up to full boost, albeit only briefly. Judging by the grin and the giggles I think she liked it!
New idle control valve and GrpA coil arrived from scc, the idle valve just slipped into place and fixes all the problems but the coil upgrade requires a little more work. The grpA coil is fitted with spade connectors so some minor adjustments to the wiring is required to fit it, the mounting is identical though. The implication is that besides performance improvements the spade connectors and slotted mountings would greatly speed up a replacement at a rally service interval. The new coil is very much more compact than the old one although the weight is broadly similar. With both items in place the car seems to run sweetly which is good.
The new parts seem to be working well so Catherine and I went out to meet some other Cam7 folk. The unusual thing was that Catherine drove the car for the first time.
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