Car Limits - Now with Added Videoness

A sleepless night suffering from man-flu provided the opportunity for a little video editing

 

Car Limits Found

Each year the best car club on the planet - the Southern Kit Car Club has a "Car Limits Day" at North Weald aerodrome, this year I went for the first time. So yesterday I was up before the sun & on my way to Egham to meet with David T in his tiger Avon & Crunchie in his brand spanking new Zenos E10S.

I was late - I missed the meet point, got into all sorts of a tangle with the one way system & various dual carriage ways & eventually re-found them 20min late. Fortunately due to a clear M25 we were early to the venue so no harm done.

The day began with a briefing & the signing of waiver forms before we headed out for a "high speed curve" test, we went barrelling along a straight & had to turn at the end, the idea here was to get the highest reading on a speed gun without spinning off the curve. I found this incredibly difficult to judge as there were very few points of reference, but at the end I was about the middle of the group, so quite satisfied.

Then we were split into two groups & each group had a small circuit to drive against the clock. This was much easier to get a grip on. Accelerate into a wide area, round two cones, accelerate along a straight, turn round a cone at the other end, accelerate back, round the cones & brake to a halt. This was great fun though from the footage I seem to have forgotten the camera mounted on the side when passing cones at 50+ mph

After this we swapped circuits with the other group. The second circuit involved accelerating to a cone, round it & back to a twisting section of tarmac, down to the cone again & back to stop between two cones. Again huge fun, with the twisting tarmac's curve tightening markedly before changing direction to unsettle the cars. On each run I seemed to get better & smoother, but the times stayed pretty much the same.

After lunch - when I nipped out for fuel & got lost again, the two groups were combined & a much larger circuit combining the three previous exercises was set up. So from the start line round a cone, hard right - left - right -left onto the long straight from the first exercise, round two cones from the second, back along the long straight, hard left, round the tarmac wiggle, accelerate down to another cone & hard right before accelerating back & stopping at the finish. Fantastic. The car was oversteering a little, but easy to control & my times were in the top half which I was pleased with as the Fury was giving away 90bhp to the front runners & 240bhp to the most powerful.

Then on the last stop of the last run, I pushed the brake just a little harder, there was a pop & the pedal went down to the bulkhead. On the way bach to the "pits" I found I had a little braking right at the end of the pedal travel. At first I thought the pivot bolt had broken or come undone, but no. Surely the master cylinder hadn't pushed off the bulk head? No - a pool of oil under one of the rear tyres told it's own story.

I assumed the rear brake shoes must've allowed the seals in the slave cylinder to come out some how, chatting this through with some of the guys we decided the front brakes would still be working so I drove under escort (thanks again Crunchie & David T) to a local McDonalds for a coffee & a think. I decided to drive the car home as I still had brakes, it was mostly on motorway & so I could control the amount of gap ahead of me.

So I got home without further incident & the following day I stripped the brake down - it was dry, all the seals were still in place. BUT, there was a small drip of oil on the brake hose union & following that I found this:-

It seems a P-clip used to hold the hose in place has succumbed to metal fatigue allowing the hose to rub on the outboard CV joint housing & has worn right through the braiding & into the hose itself. Stamp hard on the brakes & there's nothing resisting the pressure & POP.

I'm just glad it happened in a safe environment, not out on the road.

So I have a little mending to do, but I think the car might be off the road now until the spring while I do some other jobs, so no real harm done.



 

Dunsfold Wings & Wheels 2015

It's always nice going back to Dunsfold, the happiest days of my working life were spent there, & while the rumours about it being turned into a new village go on year after year, the Wings & Wheels event seems to keep on going. This year it took place just a week after the tragic Shoreham crash, so the marshals & organisers were rather jumpy - understandably

This year was particularly special for me as the SKCC had booked a stand which meant an easy arrival, an easy departure, the car left where I could get at it all day & of course a 1/2 price ticket. The only fly in the ointment was that I'd requested a runway run but was refused on the grounds that my car wasn't interesting enough - OK, so why was there a bog-stock Boxter out there? Grrrrr, mumble mutter

The day started oddly when I arrived & saw a blue Caterham on the club pitch, there were no other cars so I pulled in beside it. The guy came & introduced himself, explaining that this was the first time he'd taken part in a club event & that he'd come in place of someone who couldn't make it - this all tied in vaguely with something I half remembered from the club forum. Then as we chatted he noticed the exhaust mount had broken (common fault on CateringVans) so I lent him some tools & a tyrap to do a temporary repair. Just as he was finishing this off he noticed another Caterham parked a little way away & realised he was on the wrong club stand! He quickly decamped to where he was supposed to be & we never saw him again. Little by little the SKCC rolled in & parked up, one of the marshals complained that we weren't parked very prettily & we wouldn't win the prize - we pointed out that we didn't give a monkey's & he went away.

After a while the motoring part of the show started with some "interesting" cars (I'm almost over it) on the runway, the '30s aero-engine cars are always good, then the planes with some WWII types, then more car (or the same cars again) & more aircraft, with one of the last displays by the mighty Vulcan & the Red Arrows, during which it started to rain so we went home. THE END

Clutch Action

On the fury, the clutch cable comes out of the footwell, turns through 180deg & goes into the bell housing about 5in from the footwell exit. This, I think is not a good thing, the clutch has always been stiff, with a certain amount of "stiction" & now the clutch pedal clicks when it's travelling. It started with one click each way & is now up to four, so I'm thinking the cable is fraying.

I'm guessing a lot of the problem is because the cable has to turn 180 deg in such a short length. I used to have the longest possible Ford cable running in a wide(ish) arc round the engine bay, but it wasn't much better.

So what to do?
My plan is to cut the outer cable outer off & run the cable inner forward from the pedal, round a pulley in the engine bay & back to the bell housing. It'll reduce the friction to almost zero, but will it work?

One problem I identified was adjustment (currently the adjustment is on the cable outer - which won't be there) so I've come up with a natty way of using a kart track rod to adjust the pulley position. The next problem could be vibration up through the pedal (the cable will be trying to pull the engine forward on its mounts), but mostly the vibration is side to side, so that should be cancelled out.

To begin I bought some alloy angle & a track rod for a Kart (to give the adjustment). I also rummaged through an old spares box & found a flying control pulley & a high quality bolt to attach it with.

Next job was to cut the cable outer from an old clutch cable I'd found in the garage roof.

Not a quick or pleasant job by any means, but by the by it was reduced to a tangle of twisted metal.

Then in to the making side of things, I drilled & cut the box section so the pulley fits into it & one of the track rod ends attaches to one end. It needs prettying up a bit, but I'm just testing the principle at the moment.

So at the moment the linkage looks like this.



 

Clutch Works

Well, I thought it would be ok, but wasn't entirely convinced. However, today I mocked up the new clutch linkage & can report that it does indeed work as planned. As you can almost see from the pics, various lumps of metal are g-clamped tot he chassis, but, I started the engine & drove it in & out of the garage & it felt just like a clutch, though the cable is rubbing a little & that need sorting out but it's no big deal. I can now move on to the next stage.

Starter Button

Ever since I started building the Fury it was my intention that there shouls be a little bit od Hot Rod & a little but of aeroplane in it. Regular readers will know that there are several bits of aeroplane used in the car - not there to be flash or ornamental, just when I had something that was of genuine use. One thing it hadn't had was a thing I'd noticed on Ebay from time to time but never had spare money for.

Well, I decided I'd waited long enough & bought one. It's a starter button to a standard Air Ministry pattern as used in Spitfires, Hurricanes, Lancasters & probably every other plane of that vintage.

It's a shrouded button with a sprung - lift up flap, so you don't hit the starter by accident (I had hit the old starter button unintentionally once or twice, it certainly makes you jump!).

Today I had a day off work as I'd built up too many hours & one of my jobs was to get this fitted.

The starter panel came out of the car easier than I was expecting & the fuel pump stitch & alarm light came off easy enough as did the old start stitch - I say "old" but it's probably at least 50 years younger than the "new" one - then it was just a case of opening out the hole, drilling four small bolt holes & re-assembling - simple.

Now doesn't that look good?

And in answer to the inevitable question - no I'm NOT going to fit an altimeter - that would just be silly.

Small Improvements

It’s been a while since I wrote anything on here, so here’s what’s been going on.

The car’s been on a couple of longish runs, the first to the castle coombe racing circuit. Yes I should’ve paid the extra & taken the car on the track, but I didn’t. This was the first time we’d seen Crunchie’s new toy, a 640-odd BHP Ultima. He said “I’m not taking it on the tack – I’ve only had it three days” ten minutes later I saw him returning with paperwork & a rented helmet. It certainly looked & sounded impressive out there, especially the flames when lifting off to change gear.

The journey there was a bit of a trudge as we were following a herd of tin-tops stuck behind a potato truck all across Salisbury Plain, on the way home the sky got darker & darker, eventually It started raining big lumps of rain like it does in summer, I stopped & put the roof up – which was pretty much exactly when the rain stopped.

A couple of weeks later we found ourselves driving the same roads as we headed to within five miles of Castle Coombe, to visit Nick Mason’s house. He was having an “open garden” day for charity & had parked a few million’s worth of cars on his lawn, A Ferrari 250, F40, Daytona & a new one that looked like it had been half crushed, a McLaren F1 & an Alfa. Various other interesting cars were parked up in nooks & crannies about the place & as is often the case at these things, the car park was almost as interesting as the event. As we arrived it had just started raining, so I put up the soft top & as ever – the rain stopped almost instantly. I should hire the car out for open air events.

On the engineering side, the car is still smoking if it sits idling for any time. I’m pretty sure this is because the valve stem oil seals dried out while the engine was sat in it’s crate. So it looks like I’ll be stripping the engine over the winter. On a more mundane note, I’ve changed the way the soft top attaches – again. It has been held to the screen arch by a couple of bike quick release fasteners, but they were fiddly & time consuming to do up & I was usually wet by the time I could get in the dry. So the QRs have gone, to be replaced by Dzus slide fasteners, in theory the front bar of the roof passes over two small bobbins & the slides hold it in place. Today I took it up to the National Speed Limit - & good news, I still own a soft-top, so it must be strong enough. I also fitted press studs to the top of the deflectors to help hold the roof in the right shape, only small improvements but now, that's all the car needs.