D-Day: Part I

This is it, the last chance saloon day to get the car ready for warm up at Snetterton at 9 something am tomorrow! That’s less than 20 hours away…

Paul came to bed at around 3am this morning and all he said was ‘it’s been running’, I squeezed his hand and went to sleep. If Paul was home, he must be happy!

I am told that there was a lot of cursing and stressing last night, as the team tried to chase down a wiring issue… At some ungodly hour, once everything was on and connected, Paul went through and tested the function of everything from injectors to cam and crank sensor, which is where a gremlin seemed to develop. It was sorted enough to get the oil primed and at about 2am the car was fired up. Tongue in cheek Mike commented to me this morning that it ran surprsingly well on 1 cylinder! Although he hastily added it went well on 4 too

Unfortunately the scavenge hose from oil tank to pump leaked as soon as the engine was commissioned. Serious blow with a brand new hose and only Saturday to sort a replacement. Teflon lined, braided stainless hose in -12 is not something we have just lying around because it is too damned expensive. After bacon and egg and a late start this morning, Paul was on to it - a puncture in the hose that looks like it may have been there since we bought the hose at least, if not a manufacturing defect! Phonecalls were made and fortunately, Trident Racing Supplies at Silverstone were open and had hose. Hooray for that!

It’s quiet here at the moment, with Mike and Paul getting on with various jobs. Gareth and Sam, race mechanics for the weekend, will be over later after they have done various family things. Everything still to do!

20 hours to go till we are out on track

Sorting the connectors

Spot the missing parts!

Ren woz ere

Cracking on

Playing catch up as ever, today has been one of running around, making things, collecting things and fixing things. Its not a lot to talk about but quite a lot to do, if you know what I mean! Richard O’Donovan is here again, along with Mike Latimer. Cheers lads.

Oil pump (number one on the list), was stripped and rebuilt by the manufacturer at ZEN this morning. A simple pinched o-ring was soon set to rights. On dropping the oil from the tank, Tim found ally swarf. Despite being cleaned 3 times, we clearly had not got the tiniest last bits out of the tank! So, off with the tank and all the lines to be re-cleaned, checked and cleaned again. A slow but absolutely vital process. Although the pump had been turned over, the medical grade filter inserts in the pick-ups ensure that no nasty debris can get any further. Amen.

Next was speccing and ordering the turbo oil feed line and speccing and manufacturing a washer to keep the oil pump drive belt in place (a simple off the shelf item that despite plenty of advanced notice ordering, was still not available from the supplier!) Next the remade exhaust manifold had to be wrapped (no time for ceramic coating which would always be our first choice) and then start getting everything re-assembled and back on.

Exhaust manifold on - a mix of ceramic coating and wrapping

Turbo is on

Space at a premium as ever!

Super tidy engine loom via David Wallis

Talking of which… David has done a thoroughly tidy job on the loom. He has been texting me quite a lot these last couple of days. Variations on the theme of ‘is the engine running yet?’, ‘has it fired yet?’ and of late just simply ‘now?’ He is like an expectant father stuck away from home! I keep telling him I will let him know when it is up and running. I’m sure I can have some fun with that

Its 6:30pm now, so about 36 hours until we definitely need to be well on our way to Snetterton for the final showdown. Here is the to do list, slightly smaller than the one I posted this morning…

36 hours to go!

I am off out now. Hopefully when I get back, the car building fairies will have popped by I will leave you with a funny quote from someone working on the car…

‘Cars? I fookin hate em. Horse and cart, that’s the way forward! If anything goes wrong, shoot it through the head and sell it for glue!’

Slow and steady… but will it win the race?

On Wednesday we were sure the car would be running by Thursday night. As Thursday wore on, we knew it wouldn’t happen A few small but vital pieces of the puzzle were missing, without which the engine could not be fired. But not to worry, still huge amounts to do!

A small and determined band (Paul, Tim and Rich O’Donovan) worked late in to the night finishing wiring and the long task of fitting the engine ancillaries - dry sump pan and pump, oil tank and associated lines, oil cooler and remote filter, coolant header tank (front), intercooler, turbo, and so on and so forth.

Oil cooler and remote filter

To accomodate the dry sump pulley system, we needed extra clearance between engine and turbo, so the location of the oil cooler and remote filter needed to be reworked. This was no easy task, given that we have side exit exhaust silencer and side exit wastegate. Everything is a compromise  - we are happy with this one thus far.

Custom dry sump oil tank

The custom oil tank is a piece of art. We are reluctant to offer an ‘off the shelf’ tank with our retail dry sump kit as every application is so different. The exacting spec of this tank is proof of that.

Mmmmmmmmm Perfect Pizza!

That night when the pizza delivery driver said how often he cames to us late at night, I seriously thought about getting some Perfect Pizza decals on the car. Coriander Chilli Chicken pizza FTW!!

Fettling the dry sump oil pump

Assembled and ready to fit

Whilst we had already completed one dry sump installation on Duncan’s Club Challenge car, the set-up on the race car is slightly different and hell, we are still learning! So, slowly and methodically, Tim and Paul assembled the pump, fitted the pump the sump pan and fitted the whole kit and caboodle to the car…

Dry sump pump and pan fitted to the car

Close up of the pump and pulleys

View of the drive pulley from the front

At which point I cleared off home leaving Tim fitting oil lines between oil tank and pump, Tim and Rich finishing and tidying the wiring in the engine bay and cabin. Paul was not home till 1:30am, so lots obviously got done!

Moving towards Round 2

Having been plagued by various niggles at Oulton Park which stopped us from getting more than a few circulating laps in, it was clear we needed to keep up the momentum on the car build in preparation for Round 2 - no time to rest on our laurels! Before we had even left the track, we were discussing what we needed to do to improve the car, eliminate the issues we experienced and move forward. A flurry of conversations, emails, text messages and spreadsheets between members of the team and friends ensued and by Monday, the plan was formulated. In no particular order: sort out the issue of smoking from the engine / turbo; sort out the plumbing around the inlet manifold / front mounted turbo; fit bigger injectors and sort the fueling; re-do the loom; test.

On the Monday after Oulton we decided to do a cylinder leakage test at the end of the day. Not one of the cylinders was outside the bounds of what is acceptable, although number 3 was higher than the others. So, out came the borescope to get a visual check on the cylinders and pistons. It was clear immediately that there was a definite lack of running-in, as the honing marks were still visible. Having already discussed this possibility, we already had a plan: Drop the synthetic oil, refill with mineral oil and run the car in again on the dyno, before performing another leakage test. This has now been done with bells on!

On Wednesday I spent an hour or so combing the web for 1000cc high impedance injectors - the ones we had ordered from a UK distributor some weeks previous still not being available. Once I had negotiated the minefield of lbs per hour rather than ccs per minute, found stock *and* someone across the pond willing to accept Paypal rather than a tedious wire transfer,  I placed our order. They arrived on Friday, yay! 48 hour delivery is not bad transatlantic As hoped fitting was very straightforward and Paul jumped right on setting them up and on to mapping. Meanwhile Tim put in to practice his plan for the plumbing around the front of the engine, including re-mounting the alternator which had caused the aux belt to be spat off at Oulton and switching the turbo oil feed routing which had made changing the belt so damn hard at Oulton!

The car has had about 4 hours running on the dyno and by Saturday was running very sweet indeed, minimal smoke and sounding solid as a rock, nothing untoward on the datalogging. Even without the AVCS activated the car is making a healthy 700 and something horsepower and just wants to go! This is 200 horespower more than we had at Knockhill in 2008, so that was enough to put smiles on our faces. We expect more torque and quicker spool once the AVCS is brought in… As the car is taxed, tested and insured, Paul took Rich out for a little taster and he definitely had a big smile on his face when he came back The car has not lost a drop of oil, which looks good and clean.

On Sunday, Paul had a bit more of a fiddle with the wiring that we had struggled with so much over night before Oulton and got the AVCS working, woooo However, he performed a cylinder leakage test again, followed by a compression test and in true Paul style, decided it wasn’t quite good enough to leave as is, so he decided to pull the engine - strip, clean, inspect and take it from there.  He was not overly concerned just wanted a sanity check as much as anything. Swift call to Rich and he was over on his bike to give Paul a hand. By around 10pm the engine was out and on the stand and Paul just got home in time for me to pop out for a girl’s (heavy) night

On Monday everything was stripped, cleaned, inspected, dressed and made ready to go back in. The effect on the compression appears to have been caused by very slight bore distortion (we are basically experimenting with the EJ257 block and trying to find it’s boundaries) but nothing that careful honing by hand could not cure. The banjo on the turbo oil feed was not in great shape and looks to be responsible for the smoking, so that’s another thing off the list. I also arranged for a good friend of Team ZEN - China Dave - to send some connectors for the loom which David Wallis is working on at home in Leeds. Unfortunately, China Dave was not able to physically look at the connectors and had to order from memory… Connectors left China on bank holiday Monday and were with me on Wednesday morning. I am loving these delivery times, putting the UK to shame! Only problem is, the connectors were not quite right. In fact, Dave called me this morning to say that he had traveled from Nanjing to Shenzhen, took one look at the connectors he had sent and laughed! Ah well, replacements are winging their way from Shenzhen to Leeds as we speak

So, it’s Thursday night now, and Tim and Paul (maybe Rich I’m not sure, sorry Rich) are at ZEN putting the engine back together and in to the car. When I left at 6pm, work on customer cars was just about wound up and Tim was preparing the block, Paul the crank… Did I mention yet that we are testing with Tom at Silverstone tomorrow?

High hopes for tomorrow.

Peace. Out.

24 hours of build and prep time left!

At 5am this morning Paul and David let themselves in the front door of the house, and proceeded to laugh and chat. Seeing this as a good sign I went off downstairs to be told that, after some initial teething troubles the engine had been running. Thank god for that!

After the school run I left them in bed and went in to ZEN, expecting to see Tim and Rich asleep on the sofas. Instead, I discovered they had decided not to bother sleeping, choosing instead to refit the wing, bumper and splitter to finish making that up. When that didn’t go according plan they decided it was not right to run without the Cosworth inlet manifold, so set about making the necessary changes to get it on.

It looks bloody awesome but as I pointed out as soon as I walked in, was totally not going to let the bonnet shut! Not wishing to be defeated, by the time Paul and David were in at 11am pipes, hoses and brackets had been adjusted but there is still a long way to go before it is properly sorted, with various plumbing routes needing attention to ensure nothing gets too hot and brackets to be made up to secure the turbo.

David has got the rear brakes mounted up and is now working on the ECU and loom.

I have been fighting all day to get Rich and Tim to rest and at 4:30pm, I have just managed to boot Richard off home for the night. Tim is back to work on the brackets for the turbo after a power nap! Paul is resting on the sofa and with luck, preparing himself psychologically for tomorrow! We need him to be fresh, ready for running the car in and mapping on the dyno early evening (at which point I hope to send Tim home for a full night’s kip!)

Too close for comfort!

It’s Thursday afternoon, Time Attack starts early Saturday morning and I have just found out that there is absolutely no chance of our Rays wheels arriving in time This leaves us wheel-less, as Duncan Graham is running the Hyper Zeros from last year on his car! I have some limited options. The first, is to run a set of Hyper Zeros we have here with not quite the right offset… but we seriously need some spot on wheels for the Superbattle. Fear not, we have 1x Rota Torque Drift in exactly the right size. I just need to find the money to buy 3 more and someone that has them in stock for next day delivery! Erring on the side of caution, I have already chased down a possible source and I am waiting for them to call me back. But I am getting twitchy and having left umpteen message more than a little impatient! (How frustrating it can be to be a customer, I promise I will remember this!!)

In other news, today we have a complete engine to go in the car. On the downside, sometime between me leaving at 9pm last night and 3am this morning when work stopped, it became apparent that there wasn’t time to fit the Cosworth inlet manifold (as it requires some modification of the exisiting set-up due to the constraints of the front mounted turbo.) Ah well, at least we have something to do for Round 2

Paul was mapping a customer car at midnight last night, which he finished off this morning for the customer to collect at lunchtime. Now Paul and Richard are working through the other 3 cars requiring mapping and setting up this afternoon! Together with finishing off an exhaust install on a car that suffered accident damage in the snow in February. Tim and David meanwhile, are working on fitting the engine and modifying the brackets for the rear brake calipers. The latter ground to a halt however when the machine shop drilling the brackets locked up and went home for the day with our brackets inside their shop!

Still, there is an engine in the hole now Tim has sprayed the front wing and bumper with the rattle cans. Good enough colour match and OK finish!

All cars mapped and customers off on their way home come 7:45pm, so work stopped for a quick BBQ again, to recharge the batteries before commissioning the engine…

I think today is the only day where, despite progress, there has been an air of despondency. I hope that the mood will lift tomorrow once we have that engine running!

Day 20: To do list

No more weekends left! Oulton Park is in 5 days.

Today the following arrived:

• Rear brakes - unfortunately Paul ordered the wrong bracket so we either need to modify what we did order, or return for the correct part.
• Toyo R888s - 1 set, so we now have 2 sets of tyres (no budget for more than that, should do for next couple of rounds)
• Paint - high pressure rattle cans for speed and cost.

Recap of what is left to do to commission the car for running in, mapping and dyno testing:

• Paint the front wing and bumper
• Get heads drilled for larger studs
• Build long engine (waiting on cam followers, ordered today)
• Assemble fuel rails (waiting on injectors)
• Refit fuel tank and fuel system
• Fit remaining ancillary parts (waiting on wet sump, query whether we need to re-fabricate exhaust manifold, which may mean switching to one big wastegate)
• Modify existing loom to fit Solaris - making a new loom specifically for the Solaris has been axed in favour of speed and budget (waiting on new map sensor)
• Drill brake disc bells for correct stud pattern
• Fabricate front anti roll bar
• Commission new brakes (waiting on pads, ordered today)
• Fabricate remaining mounts for front splitter
• Final flat floor install
• Engine etc install

Luckily Fred was able to help again today and he was worth his weight in gold driving to and from the machine shop with heads and bells, all drilled and ready to go now. Further afield Steven Darley kindly removed his wet sump set-up over the weekend which has now been picked up by David Wallis, for delivery on Wednesday. Team ZEN has the greatest friends and seriously, I would be willing to place bets on it being the biggest team effort in all of Time Attack (as well as the most last minute )

In other news I have been crunching the numbers and so far so good. To date the money spent is just under half of the income derived from selling parts of the 2008 specification of the green car, combined with the income from selling the blue car shell and some of it’s component parts.

The last weekend!

Friday 17th April 2009

I was at home with the kids today and so Paul had a very hectic time coping with all the office stuff and all his tech jobs!

I popped in at tea time because the brakes arrived today from Compbrake (well the fronts at least :o)) and I had to check them out and take photos - they look fab. We are very pleased with them, just need to sort some pads… Performance Friction please….

Early night for Paul and the lads tonight.

Saturday 18th April 2009

Paul had a full schedule of customers till 1pm, so the morning shift was left to the fabulous Mr T. Extra afternoon helpers were Fred and Santa’s Little Helper. Jobs tackled included: Filling and sanding drivers door. Re-moulding all polycarbonate windows. Making the definitive choice on how to mount the splitter. Mounting front brakes and adjusting lines to suit. Completion of the short motor. Sustenance was provided by Mr R McDonald.

Sunday 19th April 2009

Paul, Rich and Andy took the £0 time and half Sunday shift today

Richard has been giving some attention to the Cosworth heads - for speed we had to go for un-shimmed, and so we need to build up and check clearances and make sure we have the right cam followers to shim them up correctly. Turns out we need a full set, so a bit of a hold up on that now and more spending

Andy has built up the individual throttle bodies, cleaned and inspected any components that are being re-used and so everything is set heads wise now, just as soon as we get the followers!

Rich and Andy have also put all the basic ancillaries together such as water pump, oil pump and so on.

The drivers door has been sprayed and looks great again and the refitted poly windows look and fit better now too.

Paul has turned up some brackets on the lathe for fitting the front splitter and some interim flexi-MDF inserts have been cut.

By 7pm, there wasn’t much left to do bar eat a huge Sunday roast

The build gains momentum

Just 9 days to go…

Another full day of work work - it’s nearly midnight and I am still here (complete with the 6 and 8 year old kids) trying to get the admin back log cleared!! Tim, Rich and Paul were all working on customer cars till 7pm again too!

So updates…. We sorted the brakes today, yeeeeha! Going back to the weight saving principle of our 2009 upgrades, one of our main concerns when choosing a new brake kit (apart from the obvious stopping power) was opting for something lightweight. So, after much research (and elimination of a lot of kits due to lack of funds) we settled on a front and rear system from Compbrake. With luck they will arrive tomorrow. That makes Compbrake the fifth new supporter for ZEN in 2009 and a new supplier for stock products too.

Andy T made a huge difference to the team effort again today by kindly picking up the block from the machine shop, post- bore and hone. Even better than that, he also delivered our Cosworth cylinder heads and pistons. Andy set to cutting out the frame around the drivers window and then together with Paul they layed up some carbon fibre to re-attach the frame as desired and with extra strength.

Leaving that to go-off, Andy scooted home and Paul has begun to build up the bottom end of the engine - he had hoped to use last year’s crank but as soon as he put it in the lathe for a cleanup it was blindingly obvious it was no longer straight! That’s the budget stretched again! Paul got the new crank out the box at about 10pm and now at midnight the bearings and rods are on. More tomorrow.

Whilst Rich and Tim attacked the aero fitment issues… Starting from the back, the bumper was cut to make way for the rear diffuser and new fixing points were found. Next the main piece of the flat floor was affixed as per last year and then on to deciding how to make the front splitter work (yeah we are still umming and ahhing this one)

Bedtime!

Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey

Hooray! Last night sometime after midnight Tim, Paul and Andy finished re-setting both rear quarter panels and the original WRC bumper fits and at last we have the wheel clearance we always intended. Paul also spent time taking a heat gun to the drivers door and has improved the fit no-end.

Today was another busy one at ZEN, with Paul mapping 5 cars offsite and myself, Tim and Rich putting in another long day. I did spend 5 minutes finalising a deal with Rays on a set of TE37s in bronze, for warm up / practice wheels. The set is half ‘old’ stock and half new, so the price was blistering

This evening was Richard’s turn to stay late, so after regular work was done for the day at 7pm, it was all hands on deck again on the race car.

Mr T busied himself with cutting back the drivers door to complete the refit and make a better recess for the perspex window. Rich made up a test rig for the 2x Bosch 10 bar fuel pumps he is lending us. Good news is they work, flow and run at the required pressures for our plans. 10pm rolls around all too quickly at the moment, so Andy and I left Paul and Richard to it….