Just like buses.........

.....aint it true.  You do one post then have the inspiration to go on and continue to catch up past events.

So here goes!

So the shopping list grew and grew.  One thing and another, the odds and sods and the cost of rebuild started to mount.  Lucky for me I was able to sell a lot of the parts I had inherited with the car.  I had quite a lot of stuff to sift my way through, kept what I wanted and sold the rest.  Plus the sale of a spare set of 13" wheels and tyres meant up to point I have been able to do all the rebuild pretty much cost neutral   Well, that's what I tell myself.  I am sure its cost a lot more!

So other than my the bits I had to buy in my last post.  I can add a new set of diff bearings.  Renewed these more as a precaution really.  We made some substantial changes to the back end of the car.  Before the reverse gear was mounted on the diff.  In effect the diff was encased in a cylindrical tube with what was effectively a fly wheel attached to it.  When I first saw the car I had identified this would have to go.  The weight of this big lump of metal (purely there to enable a electric reverse to work, which consequently may only be used once in a whole season), was in the region of 6kg!  Couldn't believe it.  That's like having an additional wheel on the car.  The extra mass that is rotating hampers acceleration, saps the available bhp thus giving you a slower car.  So that was gotten rid of and AB Performance supplied me with a tiny tiny tiny spur gear that bolts inline to the bike sprocket on the output shaft of the engine. So I have high hopes for this mod.  In making the changes it was necessary to now mount a reduction starter motor to work off the spur gear bolted in place.  This involved a bit of clear well thought out welding to make it just so.  Well done Tris!


What with relocating the reverse mechanism, this proposed a problem in that the gear linkage now required some modification so that it could navigate round the reverse motor.  After a bit of ummming and arrrgghhhing I came up with the brain wave of installing a cable operated stick gear shift.  This decided I ordered a push pull cable from Cable Tec.  Very prompt service i have to say. Would well recommend if you are considering a Paddleshift gear change especially for bike engined cars.  Instead of buying a set of paddles i decided that I would keep the push pull gear stick and have the gear shift and cable mechanism mounted from that.  I would love to take credit for all the work that went into installing it....but, credit should be given to Tris once again.  I just came up with the idea!

One of the things on the shopping list was a new bespoke fuel tank to replace the rather leaky one.  I phoned round numerous companies that do bespoke tanks with the response mainly with two forms.  "OOooo.....it'll be expensive" and "sounds incredibly complicated".  I was horrified.  £630+vat for the tank I was quoted by one company.  On talking with them (i wont mention which firm it was), I simply burst out laughing.  'You got to be kidding right?!'.  I can only liken my reaction to someone getting their first ever car insurance quote.  A sense of anger, betrayal, despair........and the like. I began to wonder if I would manage to get one made.  I persisted in phoning round and started to get the quotes down.  I had a quote for £150 which was very good, but on calling MK Sportcars to see if they would consider doing something, my faith in humanity was restored.  Danny (owner) said.......'yeah we can do that no problem'  'jot down a diagram tell us what you want.....no problem mate'.  It cost £200 but i was more than happy with the result.  Big thumbs up for them.


Another job was to ensure I had a handbrake mechanism.  With removing the flywheel that was the reverse gear, this left a dilemma   The flywheel had a caliper mounted in line to it, which acted as the handbrake.  What with only having 2 pot calipers on the rears I set out to find out if Wilwoods did a 2 pot caliper that had a handbrake mechanism built in.  Short answer.....NO.  Bugger.  Some contemplation time later I had convinced myself that if I had 4 pot Wilwoods PowerLites on the front why wouldn't I have them on the rear too?  So it was decided.  Purchased some 4 pots for the rear with one of them having handbrake mechanism built in.  However this posed a couple of challenges.  How is Tris going to mount the darn things.  Some head scratching later and a little ingenuity some ally mounts were made to take the caliper.


As a result of having the same calipers on all 4 corners this would allow for making brake bias adjustments a bit easier to phatom out.  Well that's one of the excuses i had made to justify the expense!














Next on the list of jobs was to remount the exhaust, but not before taking a peak inside the silencer.  From having seen and more importantly, heard, of the car out on track....it was exceptionally noisy.  On removing the end of the silencer revealed, what wadding was present was rock hard, disintegrated and the total volume of silencing material would not have even filled a pint glass.  So, once again, i decided to brush off the mothballs and buy some Acoustafil wadding.  This stuff is great.  The website provides a calculator help determine just how much of the stuff you need to fill it.  Surprising little.  The idea behind it is as it heats up for the first time, the strands that hold the matting together burn away and it expands filling the voids.  Simple.  However, it is yet to be seen if the wadding will sap any of the power.

Next up was a new bespoke side mounted rad supplied by Radtec.  Beautiful piece of engineering and tig work. Excellent service and very very knowledgeable helpful people in general.  Doesn't look much from the photo, but believe me it is the dogs you know whats!

Next up was to weld a bracket onto the roll bar for the rain light.  Luckily, whilst at the Autosport show and talking with Andy Bates I noticed the Sabre had the light mounted on the roll bar and asked AB, why there?.  "Easy....it has to fall in line with regs." so having it bolted in-between the rear lights on the chassis was no go.

However this was a blessing in disguise to be honest as it made a perfect mounting point for the new GPS receiver I had decided to take the plunge on.

See below.






GPS receiver............. that's right folks.  A GPS receiver   One would argue this is a rather pointless purchase especially when you consider the car had an Aim Sports dash and it would not cater for one.  But, one has to these things and when in Rome (or rather AutoSport 2013) and you have Race Technology there offering me an amazing discount, its really hard to say no.

So now i am the proud owner of a DL1 Sport with Dash 4 Pro by Race Technology.  Oh yes!!!
With it steering wheel mounted, its just how a race car should be.  Looks pretty good uh?!

Again....hat off to Mr Kipling.  Although he had wired the car using the old dash already, he duly went on to stripping it out and started again.  Good lad!  (I am paying him btw).

However, its not all been plain sailing. Turns out the Dash 4 Pro has an inherent bug in the software, in the sense it doesn't like zero values apparently (so i am told) which makes custom config of sensors a little tricky when you don't actually know why the software keeps crashing.  So once that had been determined  hopefully the rest is plain sailing.

There is a whole load of other work that has been done on the car, but these were the biggie's.

Next up is get all bodywork back on and get a track day booked for a shakedown and pray it all behaves.  I envisage a lot of set up work will be required and testing the balance of the car.  Previous owner, Steve, mentioned to be that the rear end and a tendency to snap away mid corner so hopefully as none of the suspension was removed i can replicate this situation and start to make adjustments to help resolve the issue.

There are a number of things i would like to address in terms of balancing the car....not only mechanical but i think the aero has a massive part to play in all this, so i will be experimenting to say the least.