The engine is now rebuilt, and is back on the gearbox ready to refit to the tub. Hurrah!
Martin is fitting a fridge, oven and hob to the truck to make catering easier (and milk last longer).
And the front wing endplates have been remade in lighter ‘foam’ that should wear rather than splinter, as recommended by Jon Gray of the BRSCC F3 series.
Update: The engine/gearbox assembly is now fitted to the tub, with most of the ancillary connections done as well…
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After Snetterton we decided to remove and refresh the engine due to lower than ideal oil pressure. Nothing wrong was found – perhaps it was just fuel diluting the oil with the bodged air intake system blocking on cylinder 1 – so it was rebuilt and prepared for refitting.
It was then that Martin discovered the missing teeth on the oil pump drive belt. Failure analysis is still ongoing as I write this, but will update this post when we’ve deduced the cause.
Click on the thumbnail to the right to see the belt, and here to read about belt failure modes.
Recently we’ve come to find more out about our car’s previous life. From British F3, where it was driven by people like Takuma Sato against people like Button, Burti, Pizzonia and The Stig (Ben Collins), to ARP (ClubF3) and now Monoposto. The results aren’t nicely formatted yet, but the detail is there if you want to see what our car has done in the past.
Despite an amateur theatrical production of Wuthering Heights getting in the way a bit, we’ve got the engine out of the car in into its constituent parts to make sure everything was okay. So far it’s all looking rosy, but the rebuild process will prove if that is the case or not. Here is a picture of the engine at the moment (block and head not pictured, as they were being cleaned at the time); click to enlarge
The Twitter feed on the right of this page isn’t working at the moment, but if you are desperate to follow me on Twitter or just want to casually glance at my ramblings, then go here. <edit: bodged up a Twitter feed, but it’s not as nice. It does work though, which is an improvement>
The other ‘exciting’ thing this week is a inspirational talk at a local school on “Living the Dream”. I’ve been asked to do a small presentation to some children about how I turned my dream (motor racing) into a reality. Hopefully the children will then want to get involved in motorsport, at some level, later in their lives – either as marshals, mechanics, drivers or simply fans. The aim is to do the talk in the style of a TV interview, and I’m hoping to have the car there too – as such I’m spending my evenings fitting the ‘spare’ engine (from last year) so as to make the car into a rolling structure again. Could be interesting…
MoreA few photos of our new race truck as it stands. Still plenty of things to improve on it though!
Comments OffI’ve had a brief look at the championship points and worked out (using Excel to calculate the permutations):
In other words – the championship is very much alive, and far closer at the moment than the pure 24 points deficit would suggest!
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