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.

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!