I’ll update my website soon with pics and deatailed info, but basically my car now works after a long winter sleep!!!
After a mommoth effort by a jet-lagged Scuffers the car ran properly for the first time last night.
I got the car as far as I could at home and then took it up to finish it off at Eliseparts HQ at the end of last week. As soon as I got there we started work and made a huge list of things we needed to do and parts we needed to order.
I worked on it for a couple of days and then went home leaving Scuffers to work his magic. I then set off at 5am last Thursday again to finish it off and bring it home Friday night. However, after a few issues with faulty new parts and also lots to do in general, going home on Friday was not an option. We had however had the engine running, so that was an insentive to keep going.
Therefore, I decided to stay another night and do a late one. I ended up working on the car by myself until 4.30am and then slept on the warehouse floor. After less than an hours awful sleep I realised that concrete floors are no good for backs and gave up. I just listened to the radio and watched out for the Saturday postman who was meant to be bringing emergency parts.
At about 7am I started work on the car again, Scuffers arriving soon after. The postman turned up with a new gearbox control unit and we were away again. To cut an already long story slightly shorter, at about 4pm the car was ready to test out and apart from few little jobs was ready to go. We new it ran but we hadn’t had it working properly yet.
I turned the key and again it fired up first time again and we rolled it out of the doors. Without hesitation Scuffers then proceeded to light the rear wheels up and head off to do some industrial estate testing!!! Well, the car and gearbox sounds unbelievable. The noise it made whilst out of sight travelling down the road into the estate was something else and gave me goosebumps!!! After a while Scuffers came back looking amused and complaining he didn’t have enough room to get into 4th.
So, a few jobs to do today, ready for the dyno tomorrow and Brands on Tuesday. Then a few jobs to do before leaving for Cadwell on Thursday. Can’t wait.
Car went on the dyno this morning and we had a really good result. Standard engine with some cams. Standard throttlebody. The thing that made a big difference was a straight inlet I made (between the throttlebody and charger). We basically ended up with 340 bhp at the hubs. Amazing really!!!
So, we went to Brands today to shake the car down and boy am I glad we went. We had a rather busy day for the wrong reasons…
The first hour of the day was spent putting on my new barge boards, large undertray and diffuser. Brilliant, they all fitted fine. Then we went out for the first time and after about 10 laps got called in with a black flag. Too noisy. I’ve done Brands more times than I can remember now and have never been black flagged. Plus, I’ve only just re-packed the exhaust. I can only assume it’s the new location of the air filter and the sequential gearbox causing a loud bang on each gearchange.
So, a friend who was with me nipped over to where he works and fabricated a steel pipe with a 90 degree bend to fix to the exhaust tip and point it away from the noise meters on track. At the same time we noticed that the coolant tank kept going empty. Not good!! Probably the only part on my car that I haven’t changed is the standard radiator hoses and they chose to leak now. Luckily Track Club were there and they had an Eliseparts uprated hose we could use. So, front clam off and the hose was replaced.
Both of these fixes worked brilliantly and I got to drive the car in anger for the first time. The gearbox is a really superb bit of kit and a joy to use. Amazing. The road legal, list 1B tyres I’m using this year are also by far the best I’ve ever tried on an Elise chassis. Kuhmo V700’s medium compound. Zero sidewall flex, lots and lots of grip and do not go off. Quite alot better than 888’s, Ao48’s etc and also cheaper. Although I wasn’t completely up to speed as I was getting used to the paddleshift, the new aero package seems to work very well out of the box which is nice.
However, after my session Scuffers headed out to do some fast laps and came in after a lap and a half. He had a horrible vibration coming from the back. After a quick look he spotted a broken tripod joint. Bugger!!! The driveshaft came out and basically one of the bearings had fallen to pieces. There were no signs of excess heat or loss of grease so we can only assume that the bearing was a dud. Anyway, we sourced a new tripod joint and rebuilt the driveshaft, however the day was over and we had run out of time.
So the car is ready to go for the weekend and I’ve just got to bed the new tripod joint in before giving it hell. Hopefully the car will remain as reliable as it has been up to now.
