It's Fixed!

Well, Nanjgel came up trumps. 

By the time I got to see it (1.00pm) they had the old diff out and were busy fitting new bushes to the pitman arms and new hub seals.  By 4.00pm there were four of them beavering away and soon after 7.00pm it was back on the road.  I drove it round the block, pronounced it fit for purpoose and wrote them an enormous cheque.

Tomorrow we race!

A week's a long time in Motorsport

One step forward…..

Sunday I was back from a week’s travel and Richard was free in the evening, so we had a productive session on the Beast. Shiny new windows were carefully drilled and riveted to the frames, with a thick layer of black silicone to try and keep the occasional rain out. Exclusive Acrylic had used some rather sexy fasteners to fix the rails for the sliding section to the main window – but they weren’t really suitable, and we decided that some button-head screws and locknuts would be more secure. These were duly added to the shopping list, alongside a new hub stud for the front wheel and a new battery. (Yes, the battery had decided to pack up.)

Richard (bless him) produced some very fetching red insulating sleeves for the HT leads, which really add a touch of class to the engine department, and hide my previously described HT lead surgery.

And what a joy it is to be able to see through the side windows for a change!

..and a giant leap backward

Sunday night I put a spare battery on charge and by Monday evening it appeared to have its full quota of ergs, so I slapped it on the Beast and gave it a quick spin round the block. Clunk…clunk…clunk it went. (The Beast, that is, not the battery. The battery hardly made any noise at all.) The sound appeared to come from the front axle, it hadn’t made its presence felt the other week at UAQ, and it sounded expensive. Bugger. Back on the trailer with it, and by first thing Tuesday the Beast was back in its second home, Saluki Motorsport. Tuesday came and went, and by midday Wednesday Robbie admitted that they weren’t going to get a round tuit this week. Bugger, and more bugger. A day and a half left till Friday and a race I really need to run. What to do? WHAT TO DO?

…followed by a lurch forward (we hope)

Find another garage, you hopeless plonker!
Oh yes! I almost forgot. Al Quoz probably has more garages per square km than anywhere else on earth. And the one two doors from my office had just done a rather stonking bit of cosmetic surgery on my Merc, and were clearly angling for more work. So when they said they could look at it straightaway, I rushed back home, picked up the trailer, rushed round to Saluki, picked up the Beast, and rushed back. (After all, I was in a bit of a rush.)

The verdict as of this evening is that it needs a new diff, which is painful but not entirely surprising. More surprising is that they will have one in the morning and have pledged to fit it before close of play Thursday. Oh, and they’ll replace a couple of bushes that they’ve discovered have crapped out as well. This in itself shows that they are reasonably switched-on, because I hadn’t asked them to give it a once-over, but they clearly did it anyway. So a big-up to Nangjel Garage so far, but let’s see if we have a working Beast in time for Friday’s bunfight in UAQ before we get too excited.

Watch (as they say) this space…

Ongoing Maintenance

Part of the reason for doing the short-course races up at UAQ is to identify and resolve issues with the car, before we launch into the DC.  (The other 95% of the reason is, of course, just to have fun.)  So the first issue is to replace the flexible elbow with something more rigid.

The solution Robbie at Saluki Motorsport came up with is a rectangular air-box, with stub pipes for inlet and outlet on adjacent sides.  We haven’t yet put it to the test, but I’m confident this will solve the air-starvation issue.

Richard came over the other night and we pulled out the near-opaque side windows, which are now at Exclusive Acrylic to be copied.  We also drained and flushed the clutch fluid, which has become a disgusting brown colour because the master cylinder lives close to the exhaust.  We also pulled out the thermostat to check the dimensions against the one I'm ordering to replace it.  The new one will be a high-flow 160f (72c) unit, which should reduce the water temperature from is current 92c

He was also able to find the cause of the backfire – there’s a clean break in one branch of the Y-piece which leads to the main exhaust, which was replaced last year for the same reason.  The car is booked into Fox Exhausts on Monday, and a flexible section will be inserted to (hopefully) prevent this happening again.

Another ongoing problem has been the proximity of one of the front HT leads to the exhaust manifold, which toasts the insulation until it eventually fails.  My last attempt at a solution was to wrap the HT lead in exhaust wrap, but upon unwrapping it, it fell apart.  No worries – I bought a set of 8, so I have 7 left to play with.  The problem is that the semi-rigid moulded insulator is just too long, and practically touches the manifold.  So I decided to remodel it.  By slicing through the insulator I was able to pull the HT lead 20mm further back, enabling me to cut 20mm off the plug end of the insulator.  After re-contouring it to fit, and wrapping it in tape, I also cut down the tubular aluminium protector which sleeves over the insulator.  The result is that the HT lead now emerges from the insulator well clear of the exhaust, like the other 7, which have no such problems. Time will tell, but I think it will be a permanent solution.  The pix show the original (left) and modified (right) plug leads, and the plug lead in situ.

Finally I have relieved the engine compartment of various items of non-functional hardware, and blagged a gallon of white Smoothrite from David ‘Streaky’ Chambers.  The current under-bonnet colour scheme is blue, white and rust, so the next job is to give the engine compartment a serious spring-clean, and then coat it in Smoothrite which is like Hammerite – but smoother.