The daily Post

Today the car has had the wiring finalised, the arches have been rolled so they clear the wheels that I have fitted, its quite amazing the little jobs that you need to do and how long they actually take. Simple way now to work out time needed, is to estimate the work then double the time.

Well its 1am in the morning, and I have just managed to get the fire extinguisher, electrical cut-off, working on the car. There are still a couple of jobs that need doing but with the time that is is, I do not think the neighbours would of been too pleased if I started to drill holes in the car for the fire extinguisher nozzles, so this will have to wait till I am at the race track tomorrow.

We are getting up at 5am to leave at about 7ish, so we can get to pembury at about midday. The car is already on the trailer (we did this in the evening to ensure it would fit)

Jobs to do when we arrive at the circuit

• put some p-clips around the extinguisher tube
• bolt on the steering wheel securely, its only finger tight at present.
• stick on the stickers that assist the marshals to locate the cut offs
• put in the harnesses and adjust them
• put in the door panels, if i need to
• get some new tyres on the car
• put on the roll cage padding
• cable tie some of the loose wires

I feel this weekend is going to be a long one.

In the championship there are certain people you have to keep happy, a main one is the sponsors, so I got the stickers put on to the car today by a very nice man called Chaz from DJCdesigns.

Got the wheels back from the powder coaters and had a set of old championship tyres fitted to them. When I got them home they would not fit on the car, but after a little thinking I remembered the words of the powder coater. “We put on two good coats so it will be durable”, so it was out with the dremel, and took off a little of the coating on the center bore hole, then they fit perfect.

This weekend is the final weekend before my first race, it started with a forecast of rain all weekend, but that was not going to stop me. The part that has stopped me dead though is my seat does not fit. It seams the company (www.speedreligion.net) that put in the seat rails, did not do it to the measurements of my seat mounts (that are a standard part from Cobra). The seat rails are not spaced correctly, so this means I can only get one bolt in to secure the seat (I am sure the scruiternerring would not allow my car to race with this). The dash is in, the battery mounted, the fire extinguisher bottle mounted but with out the seat mounts fitting I am stuck.

In preparation for the rain tomorrow whilst I am fitting my calipers from the guys at my local ECP (http://www.eurocarparts.com), I thought I would put on the rear disks (I put on the front disks when I did the suspension), I also had some new rear handbrake shoes to go on, so this was another job ticked off.

Tomorrow I am planning to get wet in the rain and put on the braided hoses, and new calipers, then I can refill with some fluid and the brakes will be done.

Jobs left to do are as follows

• Fit battery
• Fit fire extinguisher
• Fit cutoff switch
• Put dash back in
• Put steering wheel on
• Fit the seat
• Tidy the wiring loom
• Make list of items I have forgot

I think its going to be a busy weekend.

Over this weekend I have put on the race suspension that I got from www.blackartdesigns.com, this was a interesting and difficult task.

I started on the front of the car, there are 3 nuts holding the strut on at the top, and 2 bolts with a bolt and nut at the lower end, I managed to remove all the nuts and bolts, apart from the nut and bolt at the bottom of the strut, this would not budge, so I thought after hitting it with the english spanner (hammer for all you not in the know), I would move to the other side, this also went the same way, and I was left with the same bolt/nut in both sites. The only solution I could think of was a trip to the local ‘B and Q’ to get a blow torch and introduce some heat to the nut and bolt in an aim to free it up, this took a further 3 hours to remove the bolts on both sides.

When I compared the new suspension to the old, there was quite a difference in size

It did fit on though, and the front was bolted back together, I put on the new disks as I had to remove the carrier to get the suspension off, but left out the pads, as I want to refurb the calipers before fitting it all back on.

The next day (Sunday) I attacked the rear suspension and this was relatively straight forward compared to the front, and the hardest part was removing the spring from the rear arm, and it needed a lot of pressure to move the arm far enough down to enable the removal of the spring, drivers side was easier as the spring had broken.

At present I think the rear may be a little low, but will look at altering it another day.