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Recent
happenings...
30/6
- Gallery updated
30/6
- About Us/Car updated
29/6
- News updated
June 27/28th 2009 -
Lydden Hill Report
A successful but hot
event! With a newly prepared car we were aiming for a couple
of fun but uneventful races to test settings and shake the car down.
Scruitineering was
passed with the only sticking point being the tow points on the car
protruding too far from the body work. We were allowed to race
on the condition they were replaced with the new strap type tow
points.
Qualifying started
with Dominic slowly building up speed as we have no experience of
the tyre grip levels on the Toyo R888's. This proved to be a
sensible option as another car fell off the track on the second lap.
Dominic managed a time of 56.345 which was good enough for 8th in
class and 23rd on the grid.
Race 1 was busy with
a full grid and a lot of jostling for position on the first lap with
several faster cars making their way from the back of the grid to
their usual position. This helped Dominic make several
overtakes stick during an enjoyable battle with the Beetles.
Improved confidence in the handling of the car helped to achieve a
final position of 4th in class.
Race 2 was generally
quieter and Dominic was able to concentrate on delivering some
consistent lap times. However the tyres struggled to perform
on the hottest day of the year so far and so lap times were around 8
tenths down on the previous day. However we achieved a
respectable 4th in class again and the car performed brilliantly.
Detailed results
here.
June 12th 2009 -
Race entry confirmed + Tyres
We are now confirmed
for the Lydden Hill round (entry
list here). Our tyres have also arrived after we chose to
run on the Toyo Proxes R888 medium compound, which are road legal
(just) but are the stickier MSA List 1B rubber.
June 6th 2009 -
Brakes upgraded
We've now fitted the
new EBC USR disks and Ferrodo Racing DS2500 pads to reduce fade and
give a sharper bite on braking.
June 5th 2009 -
Race entered
We've applied to
enter the Lydden Hill round of the BARC Tin Tops as the car is now
virtually ready to race.
June 4th 2009 -
Interior finished!
A coat of paint has
been applied to the floor to tidy things up, the door bars replaced
and cage padded for the driver. The rear door cards have been
modified to fit around the cage. The extinguisher is now
mounted and plumbed in.
May 27th 2009 -
Roll cage niggles
Having seen some
other Fiesta's with the same OMP cage we've noticed a flaw in the
kit we received and now installed. Essentially the 'bolt in'
feature of the foot mountings are upside down with the nut that the
foot of the cage is bolted to being welded to the top of the
reinforcement plate rather than underneath which other folk have
received.
Now that doubt's of
the mounting's safety have arisen with an impact possibly breaking
the nut's weld and the cage foot then being free to deform into the
car which is bad.
We've decided to
enhance the safety margin by bolting completely through the car
floor with higher tension bolts and with a sandwich of cage
foot/welded nut/reinforcement plate/car floorpan/big washers.
Hopefully the scruitineers will approve!
May 24th 2009 -
Mallory Park round
The results for this
round can be found
here,
and yes we're still not on them :(
May 13th 2009 -
Timing transponder fitted
The transponder which
is required for accurate lap times and results has now been fitted
under the battery tray so that it can have a clear signal to the
track. It has been wired up to the now spare emissions cable
for a switched 12v and also earthed to the chassis.
May 9th/10th 2009 -
Brands Hatch round
The results can be
found here.
Unfortunately we could not attend as the car is still not quite
ready and due to other commitments the Mallory Park round will also
be missed.
April 18th 2009 -
Rollcage fitted, MOT passed
Welding has been
completed on the cage - just some painting to do now. Also the
car is road legal again with a fresh MOT.
April 13th 2009 -
Castle Combe round
Due to lack of
prepared car we've missed the second event.
Results
here. However the car is now booked in for the roll cage
welding work and MOT retest, and the electric cut off switch is in
progress.
April 5th 2009 -
Fitted Seat & Harness
After finishing
preparing the rollcage doorbars to ensure no clashes with the seat
and door trim the seat was finally fitted and harness fitted and
adjusted. One harness mounting point will need to be welded
onto the floorpan as the original seat incorporated the 3rd
attachment point for the seatbelt. As we're using a 4 point
harness the 2 points to the rear of the seat can use the seatbelt
points built into the car and the right hand lap point can also use
the built in point, but a harness mounting plate needs to be used
for the central point. This needs to be welded in properly,
but is just screwed in position for the moment until all the welding
can be done together.
April 4th 2009 -
Fitted Subframe
The subframe has
arrived but is designed for a mk4 Fiesta floorpan which in 1 corner
requires a spacer which we've had to get from a breakers yard.
Also as the subframe is for OMP seats and the seat is a Sparco there
needed to be some modification of the subframe for the seat mounts
to line up properly.
March 31th 2009 -
Ordered seat subframe
Previously with the
XR2's we've welded some box section in to act as a seat mount, but
the floorpan of the Mk5 is a bit more complex and so a dedicated OMP
subframe which will bolt to the floor and make things easier will be
fitted.
March 29th 2009 -
Prepared rollcage
The cage was starting
to rust already, so have given it a quick coat of hammerite to tidy
it up a bit. Unfortunately the front legs of the cage fit very
closely to the A pillar of the Fiesta which means some modification
to the dashboard is required. This was compounded by the metal
beam and support mounts that run through the dash being in exactly
the wrong place, and so after taking the dash in and out several
times we've now chopped off about 3 inches from both ends of the
dash.
The paint has now
been ground away from the reinforcement plate positions to allow for
welding and the door bars cut to length with the mounting positions
marked on the cage legs which will need the fresh paint removed for
welding up.
March 28th 2009 -
Bought Wheels
Found some Zetec S
wheels on eBay, 2 of which have decent tyres on. We will now
keep a set of wets/road tyres, and probably use Toyo R888 tyres for
racing which although road legal would by lousy in the rain and wear
out much too quickly.
March 15th 2009 -
BARC Tin Tops race @ Brands Hatch
Due to lack of
prepared car we've missed the first race. Judging by the
results
though, we should be competitive in class as our old XR2 did sub 60
second laps which a fair few cars seemed to be slower.
March 14th 2009 -
Failed MOT!
With February being a
bit cold and snowy we've not had a lot of chance to do much prep
work other than a little weight stripping. As we're still
needing the car to be road tested it is also necessary to get it's
second MOT with us - which it failed on a bent alloy wheel.
Since it passed last
year at the same garage with the same wheel and has not been crashed
or kerbed at all since (in fact the car's only done 3000 miles in
the last year) it shows how random MOT testers can be.
Unfortunately we've
now got to blow some more budget on a Zetec S wheel which only seem
to be for sale as a set.
On the bright side,
the same garage does a lot of motorsport work and are willing to
weld in the mounting plates for the rollcage for us.
February 5th 2009 -
Seat and Harness bits arrive
We had good deal from
Demon Tweeks with the Sparco Evo seat with mounts and a Sparco
Clubman 4 point harness. With the Euro exchange rate going the
wrong way things are getting expensive for all these motorsport bits
that need to come from Italy. Fortunately there's little more
bits that need to be bought.
February 4th 2009 -
Rollcage finally arrives
Two months later
after much chasing up with suppliers my cage arrive from Italy after
needing to be built to order. OK there was a Christmas in the
middle but 2 months to weld some tubes together is unimpressive -
and to annoy us further one of the backstays was bent in transit.
We've managed to bend it back to the right position as we're running
out of time.
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