Hey, I have a blog...

I have some urges to work on the car but I am not acting on them atm, they are increasing. I've not felt at all creative or arsed to do anything since I quit smoking. However I have been "getting back into" making some stuff the last few weeks but not car related. Feeling a little more normal.

Spent some time this evening looking into what will be needed to remake the exhaust manifold into a longer primary 4-2-1.

Will redo this myself, I am quite confident it's an easy job.

I make my own collectors from tube with the correct convergence angle, around 15degrees the rest if just some angles and extending the existing primaries.

The rear-end needs a LSD so will need to make decision either subaru or ford diff.

Thats the winters jobs hopefully then I can get some track use from it next year and dial in the chassis.

After that it'll just need a decent set of ratios in the gear box and be good to pull the engine, slap in some forged pistons, fuel inject it.

Been using it as everyday transport for 4months :) It's done quite a few miles...

Amazingly i have not needed to put a spanner on it, only bothered to check the oil for the 2nd time the other day.

Had the odd fiddle with the ignition and jetting thats about it.

Want to see what the difference is with another exhaust before I do anything else decision wise.

Could use another caterham manifold was one on fleabay with the silencer this week but went for £175! I got my bare manifold for alot less than that last time. I'd rather not just chop mine as I spent time making it + cash. You never know it could be useful...

I could change the layout at the same time, ditching the sidepipe silencer and running the main pipe down the entire length of the sill instead, closer to it, then kinking around by the rear wheel and heading to a larger silencer under the boot, I can kind of design that into the manifold and use my current silencer.

While the sidepipe might look cool etc it's gonna get ripped off oneday....It makes great dust clouds though when your at 7000rpm and driving really close to a dusty verge :)

It needs the LSD so bad, you can't get the powerdown anywhere if your have any decent lateral load on the tyres.

Few thousand miles....

e


completed.....

Having got over the mammoth task of doing the engine swap, refinements, majority of engine tuning might be time explain my thoughts towards this monster I have created?!

It's been a good few weeks with the car. Why? Really I haven't "needed" to once open the bonnet to fix anything bar that clutch problem since mile one, which is good. However bar making very small adjustments to the carbs pump system I haven't felt the need to change anything for a few weeks. It's all held together, all worked as intended.

I've fiddled with tyre pressure, dampers, ride height but nothing fundemental.

Was a long slog to get the carbs where I wanted them, which wore me out a bit, hense I have been quiet on this blog building up some motive. I think it was hard mainly due to this funny short primary exhaust manifold.

I think its a bit crap low down and wakes up at 3800rpm or so. I have the ignition/fuel setup on the nose low down and it's flat on every setting...so.....

Ended up making some custom idle jet holders and custom emulsion tubes which I am currently happy with. This was to get the cross-over from circuit to circuit good. I mean good, I mean faultless. So good that I barely need the pump jets in the carbs.

Ecomony is good now, made some minor adjustments to the ignition map and I'd say the low-end is done. I'd like to get it on the rolling road now the fuelling is perfect all over to setup the ignition mapping from 3500rpm-redline.

I say the exhaust is bit mute/crap low down however with the weight of the car it's still got plenty of torque you can drive in 5th gear everywhere and it'll still be perform like the old engine through the gears?! Remembering that is just 1800cc! It's fine, it goes really nicely the top-end is excellent, and there is very much two sides to the car.

I just mean I could see some 20ft lb additions to the low-end. It's a bit flat but it drives faultlessly. I am actually pretty happy with the whole setup atm. Top-end power is good. I don't expect a change to 4-2-1 exhaust manifold would improve the top-end at all.

I really haven't felt the need to adjust the cam-timing or carbs jetting at all, I only modded the ignition map the other day as on 95RON fuel I heard some pinking labouring up a hill in 3rd.

I mentioned two sides to the car. I've got it so good low down, it's just like driving my BMW when pottering about, faultless silky smooth feel to the throttle, no rough areas, flat spots, jerking, hunting, pulsing, you'd need a ride in it to feel how nice it is. It's really nice to just go out and potter about in, happy in town, can drive it at 1200rpm in 5th gear and it picks up clean, drives itself along really nicely on closed throttle considering the fact the flywheel is so light.

The other side to the car is somewhere you don't stay in for long, as you pass legal speeds in a second or two or come on the next corner. It's a total animal when you keep it in the wide-open throttle location between 5000-7300rpm.

So I've got two worlds. I had this with the tuned 1300 but it was flat as a fart at the bottom.

I think now the engines pretty well setup that the whole effort was worth it, the car is really ballistic performance wise, not stupidly fast but there are loads of upgrades for finding another 30-60HP, but able to manage the power ok and and doesn't resemble a Triumph at all in performance, handling, poise and ride anymore.

I've been out everyday in it for about a week "blatting" for an hour or so just enjoying what I have created without any need to stop and measuring something or adjust something, thats really nice. "Blat" is a caterham term for a drive :) Blatting means you can overtake any car you come across and spin your wheels alot and be bad.

The handling is just miles better, you turn in harder, later and sharper and there is none of that understeer and front-end wash, it's just on rails, really noticable in slow corners.

I think the effort put into the front suspension was very much worth it, it's a big step forward. Another level.

I drove a "tuned" spitfire the other day, with all the normal additions, being frank it was a terrible, vaige, wandering, rackish, yuck!

One thing that's really noticeable with my car is the fact everything is SO SO tight, you have no vaigeness anywhere, no wandering, it's just all put together well and working nicely. You'd need to drive it to understand.

The effort put into my car has really just moved it into another level. Have to get passenger seat in the car sometime so people could understand what I mean :)

I've given the car some pretty hard use I go out driving ~ I go out "driving"...Nothing appears to want to break atm.

Engine has used a little oil in 3000miles, about 1/4 of the measurement marker on the dipstick, barely anything. I don't really care about the engine, only the cylinder head, the engines are two to a penny.

Traction is quite poor now with the superlowered suspension setup I re-instated, back to 2006 level. Camber is massive on the back, gone is that unstable handling I mentioned and it's back on rails, but it's just a joke it spins wheels the now in 3rd if you hit a bump and can spin in the dry all the way through 2nd...

Its pretty easy to handle and control when it goes sideways, hard to compare it to before "balance" wise bar what I said about turning harder, sharper and faster and being less fissy...cause it was difficult to establish what the balance was bar on the track when you can go in superdeep and drive through the corner on the power, I admit I've not gone total nuts in the car cause your doing 120mph in the blink of an eye! I do know it's MUCH MUCH MUCH easier to drift cause of the pure power increase, you can spin the inside wheel at 100mph in a corner and go sideways, before on the 1300 that was all over by about 50mph.

I did get epic'ally sideways in 2nd the other night, kind of missed the fact it was a bit damp and mashed the pedal I ended up looking through the passenger window to look down the road with near full lock on :) Good to see my cat like reactions automatically scooped it up I drove the next 1/2 mile literally laughing my head off at how insanely out of control that was :) I am sure it was good show for the punters drinking in the Malvern Hills Hotel beer garden. Would be bad to have ended up inside the pub.

There are somethings the car needs;

It's crying out for a different gearbox, the stock type9 ratios are appauling when you start pushing serious power. 2nd gear is good for 62mph @ 7300rpm I think but it's just a joke, you can be at 20mph in 2nd and floor the throttle and your on the limiter in about 2seconds :) You might think 60mph is ok in 2nd, but it's not, you can't use 2nd around a hairpin really cause as soon as press the pedal on the exit your thrown up the tarmac so fast you need to shift gears. Would be really more useable with a TranX or Quaife box.

I've been using the rev limiter ALOT, it's not my style but the engine spins up so fast it's hard to understand whats going on :) Also it breaks traction alot and you can find yourself on the limiter.

I cycled past a wheelspin i did the otherday on the backlane, it was about 80metres along :)

1st gear is useless I've taken to pulling off in 2nd now.

Basically it needs a 1st good for 45-50mph and 2nd good for 75mph and 3rd good for 100mph or something.

The rearsuspension is actually ok, but it's not great as transmitting power over uneven surfaces and it tramps and dives alot. So it needs the roto-CV, coil over job doing, don't think it needs anything that fancy just needs setting up correctly, right dampers, springs and geo.

Passenger seat and a hood.

Very much in my good books atm. Turn-key use.

Hoping it gets me through the summer, I'll pull it apart over the winter and do all the above. It's quite brash I might add a few kilos of carpet / make my carpet set / trim it, make it a bit more refined. Got a few harmonics in the tub as the engine is near hard mounted and the seat belt bar has harmonic and rings at a certain rpm related to the exhaust, so could fill that with foam or something. Still got a fuel smell in the boot, can't trace it, no leaks, no damp spots, odd.

It's not a car you can exploit on the road, you'll get into serious trouble!

Waffle?

Bit quiet on the car front, can't get my head into it atm, non-smoking related shift in psychology?

Can't get interested in creating anything either?!

Concentrating on Poker playing atm.

Grossed about $1000 in 20days playing, at the lowest stakes, not all profit but most of it is. Not bad from a $50 deposit!

Almost scored another solid final table result last night, 22nd place from 3500 people. Ironically the A7 playing donkey who drew a 7 over my AQ won it...He's $1200 better off! Only brought in for $2.20!

Confidence is growing I can turn a solid living from Poker Tournament playing, but it won't be an overnight thing, but it could be, just waiting for another solid result to boost my bank roll over $1500 and I'll step up to bigger earning buyins.

Even a pro cant expect to win more than 1 in 100/150 tournaments really, finish in a max of 18-25 out of each 100 you enter. I've been holding a level bankroll between results. My $25 deposit has been pegged at $650 for the last week, I've not had any "big" results this week, but that's how it goes, no matter how good you are.

So spending my time on this atm.

Qualified though to all 5 of the Pokerstars $300,000 freeroll finals! Pretty good cause the qualifiers are rockhard.

You can make some massive cash in some of the tournaments, each sunday you can enter the $1,500,000 Sunday Million for $200 and win like $420,000 if you win, even a low finish in the 30's can earn you a "nice" years wage! That's a way off yet, I'd want a $20,000 bank roll to be doing $200 buyins.

Qualified in the Top10 from 416 players and got free entry to the Sunday $250,000 tournament earlier, costs me 0.77cents to qualify :) Field was 26000 players, I finished 819th after getting knocked out on a coin flip when my AQ was beaten by AJ (JJ). I was short stacked anyway, I had to take a gamble. I made two errors playing too conservative, I could have tripled up twice I reckon I could have run on much further. I am still learning all the time I have a solid conservative, calculated game atm, I am trying to introduce more advanced plays and risk stratergies as needed without corrupting my solid game and maths use on each hand.

Sadly only $67 prize :) Top prize was $27000.

I think I am going to sell off my carbs and a few parts, get some Jenvey 42mm DTH (direct to head) throttle bodies, fuel inject the car using Emerald ECU, make the exhaust a 4-2-1. Whenever I get motivated anyways. After doing about 3000miles in it I know what it wants...I need to get all the remaining parts together for the back-end also. Pretty happy with the car, had a storming run along the road from Ledbury to Ross-on-Wye and back the other night, totally flat put. Happy with the front-end,suspension.

Not much!

Got a few more jets and filled out my jetbox a bit more.
Useful addition to the dash, a 12V fag lighter outlet, like a fag lighter but without the lighter bit. Means I can charge and power stuff!
Lowered the front about 1/2".

Not driven it since the last blog entry. Just waiting for an excuse for a decent journey to go on / do some decent logging of a few jet changes. Also need to relocate my speedo's pickup, it's a bit random, I was going to check via GPS. 3000rpm in 4th should be 50mph.

Matrix Mode

Another useful logging method in which can display average AFR readings in each cell versus MAP and RPM, some have min of 10 logs per cell and other have up t0 600 or more, so a good average is made.

Image above is more open road slow cruise, hense leaner low down than the image below, but below is a different idle jet setup. The image below has some slow town work and some fast acceleration between, so more green rich readings lower down as slow speed acceleration was dominating and use of the pump jet, lots of pulling off junctions and using idle to 2500 to accelerate. Idle is best at 12.7-12.9 so this dominates at slow speed, once constantly rolling as above it leans off.

Found 7850.1 and 55 idle is now better than my 7850.9/58...I couldnt use 7850.1/55 before as the 5 tube was too delayed...I will testing my hunch as per the other two postings made once my 150 correctors arrive!

So it's important to take readings in context. You'd say it was too rich in the 2nd image, but when your not accelerating its ok as per the first one! or similar, can't be the same as the jetting is different!

Car has been giving me some postive payback lately. I like to make steps forward, clear improvements and developments. Its coming together nicely but the package needs polish in some areas. The rear suspension is miles better now it's lowered, even if the straight line traction is slightly impeeded by the extreme camber, or made the extra power?

Engine is running nicely, nice and smooth at the top you can batter the limiter in 2nd, 3rd and 4th and it feels happy. Cam timing is working well yet I am sure I can squeeze something more from it, but I want to work on this cross jetting before another stab.

Its a pleasure to drive like a granddad just pottering at 1000-2500 rpm...Runs nicely down there, will drive and pickup from 1000rpm in 5th, can slot it into 5th at 25mph, its quiet and smooth. Seems to be doing good gas mileage, excellent when really pottering. Good thing is, once the jetting is done it can only improve more when the ignition gets sorted! I don't think its far out though I worked on it some already.