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 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!