You’re gonna need to get Scuffers a G-Suit to stop him passing out :lol
Full team report from the weekend:-
Round 3 – Snetterton – another adventure!
After the disappointments of Croft and Cadwell, I came back from holiday in somewhat trepidation, really need to get on-top of the car and it’s niggles, or it’s goodbye to any hope of doing well in the championship.
Having got back home from Holiday late on Saturday already in the knowledge that Matt and Jamie were already on-route to Snetterton, all I had to do was get some sleep and get there early Sunday. I arrived at the circuit to find they had pretty much everything covered and all I had to do was sign-on and get my kit scrutineered.
After Croft, there were a myriad of small jobs that needed doing, from changing out the battery cut-out and cleaning though the pneumatics of the paddle-shifter, to various other bit’s of bodywork, wiring, etc and the guys had been working solidly through Saturday PM to get though the list (not sure they got much sleep).
Time marched on and 1st practice loomed up fast only for us to spot an oil leak whilst warming up the car. The oil feed to the turbo would not seal… goodbye practice 1! Turned out to be something under the seat of the - 4 fitting (actually looked like a shaving of the fitting itself?) All sorted once cleaned out (where does this stuff come from??).
Went out for Practice 2, started to feel my way round the car/circuit again but engine seems to have a mis-fire under boost. I could not stop to deal with it as the session is too short and needed the track time to asses the rest of the car, so I went round on part throttle to keep under the miss and spent the time feeling the handing though the corners and under brakes etc. As it happens, even cruising round like this bag me a time of 1:13.394 and top of the table, which was somewhat of a surprise…
Once back in, we spotted a small water leak from one of the turbo coolant lines, so that then took the next hour to resolve (why do they have to make the turbo cores so dam narrow making it almost impossible to get at the fittings?). The miss-fire was traced to a couple of the plugs which had opened up their gaps a little, so an easy fix. That done, we made some setup changes and waited to qualifying, this came round quicker than you think when you’re doing stuff…
As I went out onto the cct, I immediately noticed that I had a pretty bad vibration. I had had what I thought was a wheel out of balance earlier, but this was much worse, and I quickly realised that it’s the start of a tripod joint failing – great!
Knowing that I probably only had 2 laps at the most before it would fail, I set about at least getting a time on the board, however, my only flying lap got somewhat wiped out when I got baulked at Coram, and the joint went at turn 2 next lap. Not good… After being towed back in, looking at the timesheets, I had managed a 1:15.865 - this put us 7th overall and 5th in class – 10 points… not great.
Now we had the job of changing the tripod joint (on a car that’s still stinking hot) and just to make things worse, part of the tripod that had failed had spat out onto the under-tray, slid to the other side of the car, and off in front of the back wheel as I was being towed in, and then embedding itself in the back tyre – great, another new tyre written off! The guys got the joint changed and ready for the final and I was just praying I would actually get to ‘drive’ the car as opposed to nursing it round again.
Got out early for the final, only to immediately feel that telling signs of the (new) tripod failing. So once again, I had to get a time in before it failed, and once again, my only real flying lap was compromised coming into Coram. The next lap round, the joint let go at Murray’s, leaving me nothing to do but coast into the pit-lane with no time to change the joint and a time of 1:12.176 on the board, something I though would be trounced.
As the clock ticked down, it became apparent nobody looked like getting there, and as the flag dropped, I was somewhat in disbelief that my time was still at the top.
Whilst I did not want to win a round like this, a win’s a win, and with our current track record this year, I’ll take just about anything!
As usual, a massive list of thanks to all, not only Matt, Jamie, Josh and Sam for being the pit-team this weekend, but also to all the people/companies that have come up with all the parts and support we need:-
Eliseparts.com – our title sponsor and primary parts supplier.
Pro-Alloy Motorsport – for all our cold-side pipework, intercoolers and just about anything else that needed fabrication.
Quantum Racing Suspension – for our 4-way ‘X Series’ dampers.
Torque Developments Int – for use of their dyno and for technical support.
Turbo Dynamics – suppliers of the Garrett turbo and Tial parts.
Think Automotive – suppliers for the oil system parts.
The Wing Shop/DJ Engineering – For help with the design and setup of the aero package.
Geartronics – for gearbox the Paddleshift system.
Exon Race Engines – for building us a great engine.
Nortech Exhausts – for the fabrication of our bespoke exhaust system.
Pagid – for supplying us with our brake pads.
Anglo American Oil Company – for supplying us with Joe Gibbs Driven lubricants.
And finally, Amanda (SWMBO) for putting up with me leaving her to clear up from our holiday whilst I rush off to play!
We now have another long jobs-list to get though before Oulton, and I pray we will have a decent issue-free weekend there!
PS. Once again, with everything else going on, we have very little video from the car, just the practice session and qualifying.
View on YouTube website
View on YouTube website
Just to say that we have our 4th round of the year this Saturday the 20th. It’s at Oulton Park on the international circuit and should be a great one for us. So, if you’re at a loose end, please pop over and say hi. We’re in pit garage no.1.
More development work has been done in the last few weeks and we’re gradually working through the little niggles that have occurred. Quantum have made some changes to out development dampers and also checked them over etc. We have also gone up in spring rate quite a bit due to the cornering grip that we now have, and to avoid anymore horrible driveshaft angles.
We’ve also addressed the melting issues we were having with our turbo water/oil feed pipes and have had our manifold Zircotec coated to get rid of a bit of radiant heat. Think Automotive have also made us up some ‘proper’ pipework to give them a better chance of holding up.
The other main thing that we have done, is to fit an adjustable Toda exhaust cam gear to our engine. Unfortunately we now don’t have time to go to the dyno before the weekend, but when we do, it should allow us to have a proper play around with the power characteristics of the engine and also release a few extra bhp.
Sounds good Jamie.
Good luck at the weekend matey!!!
Can’t wait to hear how it all goes.
Yeah good luck guys, the car should be epic around Oulton. Scuffers better pack his tightest fitting brave pants as deploying that machine around there is gonna take serious cahooners. Make sure that camera is running!!!
Good luck ill be watching the timing all day.
Cheers guys.
Here’s part 1 of a nice little feature on the car done by racetech:-
http://racetechmag.com/features-1/item/535-maximum-attack.html
Jolly good read,
Well done, Andy Swift - our man ChevronB37
Looks like they posted quickest time of the day in Practice…almost into the 1:30’s eh Jamie, and over a second clear of the competition.
Qually saw them do one flying lap 5s off the previous pace, pit and then stop. No show in the final so I guess summat broke 
Look forward go hearing what happened as once again the car demonstrated very dominant pace.
I hope to be at the next round instead of watching the timing online wondering wtf is going on…
No, we were out in the final. They were just split onto 2 sessions. Unfortunately we got a puncture on the front left but still managed 2nd overall. Still ended up with fastest lap of the day too, but there was still a good few seconds to come off that. The whole of qually was done on 3 cylinders by the way.
I thought what Benja said was correct flying in practise then out early in qualifying session. Then i thought it broke as the engine all of a sudden sounded strange right in front of me like a mis-fire. It never came out after that?.
I couldnt get any shots of it in focus it was that bloody fast. 
Top Cat, were you the chap I was speaking to who has an original S1 Exige and and Honda SC S1 Exige (very jealous!!)? If so, very nice to meet you and thanks for your support.
Anyway, a full report will follow when I’m back from holiday, but basically we have sorted all the handling issues/driveshaft problems etc, but we still have an annoying on/off misfire problem and without Matt Bentley our race mechanic, we struggled with quick fixes yesterday. Anyway, very quick explanation of what happened:-
Friday test day we had our new Bosch 044 fuel pump fail on us which was causing the engine to run rough all day before it finally gave up. We also managed to spill a tiny bit of race fuel in the engine bay into the gearbox area, which we later found out had eaten through a 4 core gearbox cable which is impossible to fix without removing the engine. This was then earthing on the chassis and giving loads of intermittent gearbox fault signals.
Warm-up on race day we had our turbo boost pipe come off. End of session.
Practice, car was faultless and we set the fastest time of the day.
Qually and we had a misfire straight away, so only managed a 1.45 running on three cylinders on boost.
Final, we swapped coil packs, fitted new spark plugs and the engine was faultless. However, the front nearside tyre went flat just to add to our bad luck. End of session.
So, next on the list of upgrades is proper motorsport coil packs. Our standard ones seem to be working fine when they are cool, but once they have been through a few heat cycles during competition, they seem to give a bad spark, causing a misfire. Apart from that, we seem to be in pretty good shape now. Just a shame we didn’t have time to find all this out before the season started!!!
Alas it was not me Jamie, i had my 3 year old son with me so was unable to stop anywhere for more than 2 minutes. Your car was visually faster coming out of turn one than pretty much everything, the only car getting close to my eye was the TVR, it seemed to match your Exige for traction. Most of the other big BHP cars were going diagonally trying to get the power down.
Also posted on Seloc:-
Morning all,
I could really do with some help with ideas please:-
The team would really, really like to enter ourselves into a massive event which is new for this year. It’s called the ‘European Time Attack Masters’ and is being held at Zandvoort circuit in the Netherlands on the 5/6th October.
All the top teams/cars from across Europe are being invited to compete. It’ll be run in a similar way as it is here in the UK, with several different drivetrain and engine classes, but with the addition of an overall, outright European champion (awarded for the overall fastest lap of the event) We feel that we could certainly challenge for overall honours and it would be a great way of finishing off the season and getting our sponsors names out there.
Now, due to our big fire incident a few months ago, we have been left with almost zero budget and I had therefore already ruled out attending this event. However, yesterday I decided that it might be worth just trying to somehow get the money together so that we can sign up for it. I reckon we could probably do this event for around £1,250, possibly less, which would include the test day, race day, fuel, ferry crossings etc, so all in.
Can anyone think of any ways we could raise this money. My imagination isn’t all that great for this sort of thing, so any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Out of interest, the car will be on display at the Lotus festival at Brands at the end of this month, so maybe this would be an opportunity to do something, make people aware, I don’t know. We are open to all suggestions…
Thanks in advance for anyone who can come up with something.
Paid passenger rides? Although to be honest I used to a similar thing with my drift car, people used to pay £10 to have three laps in the car with me. However it only just about covered the fuel and tyre costs!
What about a raffle for passenger rides?
Or what about a Raffle competition for a load of Elise Parts goodies?
what about talking to geary that 10% of any orders placed with them in ex period goes into the pot?
Guys, Geary has been more than generous for a number of years now, so I’m not going to involve him with this event.
Well, so far, the ideas I like are listed below and could all be done in conjunction.
-Names on the car. £5-£10 per name sounds about right to me although I have to factor in getting the sticker made too… What location on the car though? Perhaps down the length of the engine cover??
-Raffle off a space or several spaces for some passenger laps. (Anyone got any ideas on how I should do this. i.e, how many spaces for how many tickets and at what price. I suppose we could do this at the Brands Hatch Lotus festival too)
-Several large spaces for company logos/names. Sold at between £150 and £200 depending on the location.
Jamie,
This is a nuts situation mate! 
I believe we all belong to a ‘community’ on Exiges and even those on Seloc do too! (tounge in cheek of course!) I think that your efforts are brilliant!
This is not just about ‘doing a track day’ as we all enjoy doing, at our own cost, knowing those costs. You have made a contribution to the greater Lotus community through you competing in the ‘Time Attack’ series and your posts etc etc have all been read and enjoyed by all of those of us on those forums!
As a fellow ‘Exiger’, if I was wandering about the paddock having a chat with you, I would be just minded to have a ‘whip round’ amongst your Exige mates! And I would certainly kick that off with a ‘tenner’ in the hat! So why don’t we all just do this too! FFS! All you need is 125 peeps to do the same on here and Seloc etc etc and you are all set! I will probably ‘waste’ a tenner today that I would be no worse for not having done so! Yours is a better cause than another bottle of wine!
So, perhaps just set up a TimeAttack PayPal account mate and see what happens ok! 
Oh… get an http://www.exiges.com suns trip on the car too! 
Gets my vote. Have a whip round at Brands. I will stick a tenner in. Let people know you will be doing this, so they can put aside a tenner (or what ever).
Give me a PayPal address and I’ll send a tenner. If you don’t make the amount required, pass it to a charity of your choice
Well I never would have come up with that idea!!!
I really don’t like the thought of asking for money (for nothing) and am nowhere near cheeky enough to do so either…however, if you are honestly all of the opinion that it is appropriate for me to do so and set up a ‘Time Attack’ PayPal account for donations, then I suppose it is well worth a punt. I really don’t know how to go about posting this up on it’s own thread though, especially on Seloc. It’s rather embarrassing to say the least!! Help required with wording please…
Thank you so much for the idea and for those of you who have offered to get the ball rolling.
…ABSOLUTELY AMAZING…