Some random wafflage

It's all still in one piece. Be good to take off the valances and give the engine bolts a tweak etc...I've really not even looked at it for months, or even bothered to recheck anything since I drove it first. It works...Thats the idea.

Yes its really bloody clean still isnt it. I like it clean...The aim would be to finish the car while its all still nice and shiney and mint...To get to a stage of a completed shiney monster. I hate tattytatt. Plus it helps to paint stuff well etc.

My new springs, bit smaller than the hi-tech stuff widely sold for these cars? :)

5" length, 2.25" and 325lbs. Under half the weight of the 9" springs of old, or current?!

Also picked up some bumpstop packers so I setup the max bump I want as these springs will allow some squidge.

Was going to fit these this morning but I decided I couldnt bothered.

Re suspension turret bracing the basic idea is to copy this idea below but a bit better made and welded.............

I can do this no issue on the driver side but the lower bar to the outrigger will have to wait till a 'zorst is sorted.
This will need something to link to on the inside.

Having been rubbernecking inside the car I can see a way to make this work.

I'll need to add a bar between the two sides of the dash just below the level of my dashboard.

This will run just over the gearbox tunnel and go behind the radio frame.

Obvious this means I can add some tangs to the new bar and bolt this to both the rollcage at either end and also to the radioframe via some tangs.

Radioframe is now quite a strong item being in one unit with a solid bolted alloy tunnel, this will really tie up the cabin.

Also works out well that the new bar will need a small kink at either end to allow it to pass behind the radioframe. Perfect cause I need to run two bars forward inside the car from this new bar to meet the new turret braces .

This bar it will be bolted to the bulkhead on the inside to sandwich the bulkhead between the two bar flanges.

The clever bit being I can join the bars inside the cabin to the new main lateral bar at the kink points rather than simply onto a straight bar that would flex a bit.

By putting the links onto a kink I get no flex and no real need to support this lateral bar to stop flex lengthways (a straight pole easy bends dunnit)...However it will be supported by bolting to the radioframe anyway at the middle of its length... the radioframe is solid mounted to the chassis and cannot flex back and forth as its supported by the tunnel...I reckon it's pretty solid and probably more solid than most of the original car!

So I have a plan anyway. It works out better this way as I can keep the supports from the turrets in-line through bulkhead and not kinked through pedals etc to meet the existing cage, if I had an angle change at the bulkhead this joint will just flex anyways.

I think I am aiming to stop the chassis flexing like a lengthways banana between the wheels and somewhere just behind the bulkhead, also stopping the rear of the turret/rear top wishbone pivot point squirming about.

The rear mount now takes all the force from braking effort / twist cause the front wishbone mount is braced via my beefy strut brace.

Also having tubes from the turret down to the outrigger is clearly essential to tie the lot together, although fun on my passenger side. I can do this job totally bar the passenger side which is good as I mentioned chopping the outrigger about.

I won't be making the front bars from anything as thick as those shown in the picture, total overkill I reckon as the lengths are very short, seen the tubes on a Caterham chassis? like pencils.

Yes it's adding some weight but I remember what a marked change it was just fitting the cage to the general stiffness with a few more bars here and there done with some thinking I am sure it'll be better prepared for 200HP.

Also one has to remember these chassis are all knackered by now anyway, gone like a piece of rubber after being work softened? :) for years, can use all the help they get. I reckon my chassis is arite through cause its not got a single plate welding on it and no corrosion.

This job might get my juices flowing again now sure I can be arsed with the suspension job yet.

Need to find someone to bend me some tube and get some materials.

Neighbours won't know whats hit em after 7months of quiet :)

Fear not DaveArseWide will be back in business soon, back and as bad ass as ever. Infact even more skilled cause I learnt alot stuff doing this car, didn't I.

Plus I have some "weapons" I have been sitting on I will have incorperate these into my projected schedule of events.

Plan of action.

Got some new springs today, 325lb 2.25" and 5" length.

Be interesting to see what suspension feels like again, torn between the 300 and 325....

I want to actually be able to feel that I have suspension :)

The car rides fine etc on decent surface just there is no movement at all, this means on rough wild roads its pretty nutty/nervous, great on a race-track way to wild to enjoy high speed gaunts on country lanes...I think it would be better served with a softer spring, also I cant get any feel for damper adjustments cause there is no suspension? :)

Well happy with the rose-jointed shock mounts etc, thats part of the reason I want soft springs, there is no "boing" in bushes etc so it's just razor sharp, spring and damper acting on any movement, I'd like to feel the wheel working on the road over yumps rather than at this time the energy often goes into ramping the car around as the energy isnt being disipated into a correctly weighed spring.

There has to be a point of harmony, it's not on my current 475lbs springs. Remember I lost alot of mass at the front. I remember 330lb being quite soft on my old spit, so they might be just ok on this.

I want to get on and make some turret braces next. Brace the turrets to the cage and to the outrigger and look at stiffening the chassis a little more at the front, say give myself a 10kilo budget. That would pretty much conclude any work at the front. I want to fine tune the ride and stiffen the thing up a bit, not sure if it needs stiffening but it can't be a bad thing. I have a strut brace now so that would in effect give me a chassis over the original chassis at the front.

Rather than putting tubes through the tub I can just link them on plates bolted to either side of the tub so the relevant sections car be removed. Also gives me the option to link 1 or more tubes to each plate etc. I don't intend to use really thick tubing but more smaller tubes!

Also I was looking how how to get a really nice exhaust on it.

Reckon I can modify the outrigger shortening it and supporting the body a bit differently on the outer-end. Looking at the rubber like construction of the outer end of the outrigger I can't see that adding any rigidity to the chassis/tub anyway, its made of rubber, the outer end is just a rest/location point. I think I can rebrace this from inside the footwell instead with stuff related to the turret bracing.

So by loosing the end of the outrigger back to the proper box section that the inner tub bolt goes to I have a nice slot that is adequete to take 4x 1.5" exhaust primaries.

Just where the out-rigger went they will converge into two secondary pipes of 1.75" and around 10" in length and I can run a 2.25" main pipe underneath the floorpan along the sill seam at the outside cooking the passenger to death.

This will actually hang down less than my exhaust can, so it's a good solution and gives me the ability to run a main pipe to the back. I need to have a gander at how the pipe will run from the footwell backwards/related to suspension ideas, so I will stew on it for a while.

Quite keen to make these jobs an immediate priority. Mainly just basic construction stuff bar the exhaust manifold. It just needs a good exhaust so bad!

So I might just focus my attention at finishing off some jobs at the front half of the car so atleast something is totally compete.

Bizarre happenings

I had a good blast back from Wales today.

Been making the odd minor adjustment to ignition maps still and jetting, oddly back on some older main jet/tube combos and finding then better with the perfected progression jetting. Fiddling with the cam timing and whatever, but really nothing more than the odd 2mins here and there once a week or so.

The car was loving the cold air today, it was just good.

I lowered the front a while ago, super slammed it. Doesn't work. The top wishbones need the inner pickups raising cause the balljoint is so articulated that it is almost out of travel. Eckk.

Top wishbone has so much rake on it. Plus it gave me 4deg of camber on the front lol...it's been interesting to drive.

So I decided i'd done bad and got inspired to handle a spanner for the first time since May.

I needed to remove the alloy spacers from behind the wishbones to get rid of some camber (before using the wishbones! extreme!), raised the front up, checked it all over, dismantled the hubs and had a gander at those, general once over.

Decided to have a crack with some "stock" ish settings and a decent travel allowance on the suspension.

Setup camber at a very gentle 1.2deg neg (car doesn't roll like it used to), setup tracking again to no toe in or out...

Faffed about, started at 8pm, fuck me it's 4am :)

See I dented the underside of my exhaust can a bit at some point, probably the fking great piece of wood I drove over a while back.

Be interesting to see what the front is like now, I want to gather some more info before I take it apart this winter. I'd like to raise the rear a tad also and actually do the tracking this time...It's just too wild over bumps, crazy surfaces with 7deg of negative camber YES 7 DEGREES.

Had a gander at the brakes, great stuff! Discs are just lovely even look no ridges and smooth, pads evenly worn and looking nice, dust is quite low now, great brake kit, always dependable, good amount of feel, pads are not great but I with a set of 1144 or pagid they will be amazing!

That's all.