Test day

Team ZEN headed over to Silverstone on Friday to put the new car and driver combination through its paces. Matt Allison requested a test if at all possible, to give him the chance to get used to the car when it doesn’t count. We couldn’t have agreed more!

Matt’s first impressions were fabulous and boosted our confidence no end. He had a good look around the car and got in and couldn’t stop commenting on how ‘touring car’ the specification and level of preparation was That’s before he had even driven the thing! So, we sent him out to do a few familiarisation laps, start bedding the brakes in, then return for a checkover and feedback. 6 laps later, he is in and he is very happy. New Alcon brakes 50% bedded in, so off out again. At the end of the first session Matt had several comments: The brakes were going to do the business just fine (you really don’t know how pleased we were to hear that!); the handling was extremely neutral and planted with no traits needing attention; and whilst the blue car was amazing the first time he drove it, this car was on a whole new level and completely race car. YAY

In advance of the the second session Paul and Matt spent time discussing the set-up, power delivery and brakes, as well as examining the data logs to discuss exactly what was happening at each position on track. With some minor adjustments made and a teensy bit more power, Matt went out again. This time he was putting in some proper hot laps although issues with the beacon prevented us from getting any lap times. Usual format of put in some laps, return, check over, out again, ensued… Until Matt came limping back in to the pits with an issue! The car was running on 2 cylinders and had suffered a stall out on track. With not much time remaining Matt got out and left Paul, Andy and Fred checking things over.

Paul immediately checked the fuel level but that was fine. Checked the breakers for the fuel system, all fine. Checked the voltages and the alternator was running quite hot and down on voltage, so more than likely the cause of the stall. We left the car to cool down, before running through everything mechanical and meanwhile, Paul plugged in the laptop to check all the engine parameters. Having suffered a stuck cam at Knockhill that produced similar symptoms, this was number 1 on Paul’s mind. However, we did not have that problem again and we had fuel, air and ignition. All the plugs and coils were pulled and checked regardless and once the alternator had cooled sufficiently and was showing full volts again, we started the car up. Still only running on 2 whole cylinders and 2 half cylinders… With the cylinders in trouble those on the side where the variable cam system stuck at Knockhill! Unfortunately, this led us to believe that the issue was down to compression and we surmised the most likely chain events to have been some valve damage at Knockhill when the cam was fully advanced, which held out until now and developed into a more serious problem on the test.

We called it a day and packed up to go home and pull the engine out, strip and rebuild the head on that side! It was a shame not to have got down to more set-up work in the last session, particularly as we wanted to give Matt a bit more power to try. Philosophical as ever though, we were glad to have encountered this issue at 3pm on Friday, not at 3pm on Sunday at Time Attack! Best bit of the day was when Matt asked Paul how much more boost their was to come. Paul said easiest way to describe it is this… ‘today you had 560bhp Matt, on Sunday you can have 700bhp.’ Matt said something along the lines of blimey

Mini blog-a-tron

Just a short update on what we have been up to…

Most of our evenings and holiday weekend were dedicated to sorting an engine for Duncan in Club Challenge. Relatively speaking, it was quick and painless, although I’m not sure the experience was quite so for Duncan!

Meanwhile, Paul and I become temporarily obsessed with brakes and for a time, found it difficult to talk about anything else - sorry chaps. Paul has a spreadsheet full of formula for just about every brake combination possible (I am talking all the leading manufacturers, different caliper, piston and disk sizes and the corresponding master cylinder capacities…) The long and short of it, is that we are giving these babies a go for Silverstone. They are heavier than we would like, but they fit straight out the box, they are beefy as hell and should certainly stop! It means a bit of a swap out on the master cylinders but that is a relatively easy job to do.

Paul has reworked the diff controller and we have gone ‘back to basics’ with a driver adjustable rotary switch on the steering wheel. To eliminate any possible laptop to ECU interface issues, he has also added a cal switch to the centre of the steering wheel for selecting 8 pre-programmed map settings - its kind of funny that Paul does this as a matter of course for every customer Solaris installation but has only just got round to doing it for our own car… For good measure there is a third switch on the steering wheel too, as yet unallocated.

Tim has added larger mounting plates to the front splitter and is working on much more secure fixing in general, so if we do scrape along the ground this weekend as per Knockhill, we wont be grinding off the rivets and losing the splitter Fred has made some changes to the lower arms and other suspension bits to make them easier to adjust, as well as moving the seat (Matt is in between the height of Phil and Tom).

Roy has been over and has polished and protected the car to within an inch of it’s life, and I have added a few stickers we hadn’t previously got round to. I have left Tim and Paul at ZEN doing all the finishing off bits, which should end up with full alignment (we have a super fandango wireless computer alignment jobbie now), spanner check and test drive. Tomorrow is pack up spares and go for a jolly at Silverstone.