I had decided that I would take a year out in 2011 as I had now blown up 4 engines in 5 years due to oil surge and would not go back out in the car until i had got a dry sump system. Dry sumps were very thin on the ground with there being none of the Zen systems available and Cosworth's were all in America. With the cost of a full engine re-build, dry sump and Time Attack moving to those crappy Pirelli tyres it was not a difficult decision to take the year out. My wallet and sanity appreciated it greatly
I did keep myself busy by driving the VIP car for Time Attack which entailed driving someone else’s car round the track with a bunch of people to show off in front of.During the year off, i got in touch with RA Motorsport Developments who kindly agreed to sponsor me for the following season. I cannot thank the guys at RA enough. They have done an excellent job getting the engine and dry sump in the car, tidying up the bodywork including a re-spray and all the extra work involved into getting me legal and competitive in Club Pro. I really could not have done it without them.
I decided it was time to get back into Time Attack and contacted Glen who asked me to go into Club Pro class. As I only got 2 strikes in Club Class i could probably have talked my way back into Club but I decided to ‘man up’ and get myself into the class above. So, with very little budget and talent, I went to give it a shot against the bigger boys in Club Pro
Winter testing - With the engine and dry sump all ready to go in November we decided to do a bit of testing at Knockhill. Andy Forrest put a map in the old Simtec and off we trotted to Knockers. The car pulled like a train, running 2 bar of boost all day long and despite having no geo set up and a passenger, still managed to put in a pretty respectable lap time of........ oh, i forget now
It was not about 6 weeks out from the start of the season and it was time to map the Syvecs. The Syvecs can use up to 8 different engine maps as well as closed loop fueling with a Wideband Lambda (thanks to Tim at JT Innovations) and many other features that should allow me to run the car quicker and safer on the engine. On the 1st mapping session the car developed a misfire. Everything was the same on car as it had run at knockhill, so plugs and coils were changed and we went back to mapping again. The misfire was back, again at about 1.7bar. We did have reasonable power at that so Andy Forest and I decided to move onto the race fuel map. The race fuel would allow Andy to advance the ignition timing and the miss should be less of an issue. We put a can of race fuel into the car and............ it would not start. We pumped the race fuel out of the tank again and it turned out that Santa Pod had sold me a can of what looked like 90% water. Thanks Santa Pod! We were now just over a week from the event and Andy had no more time to map so we were going to have to make do with the power we had and a fair bit of time to try to get rid of the miss. The guys at RA flushed the fuel system and it turned out that no damage had been done to the engine, finally a bit of good luck! They changed plugs and coils again along with the engine wiring loom and went through all the connectors with a fine tooth comb as we had a bit of corrosion in a couple of them. Cam and crank sensors etc were also changed. The day before we left for testing, it looked like they had got rid of the misfire. Happy days
Testing – We were due to test at the MLR day at Cadwell. Giving us a whole day to get over any issues and get the car set up for the new tyres. Unfortunately, on the 1st lap of testing, the misfire reared its ugly head again. I ran through all the different cal settings (Maps) with the Toucan controller. It really is a great piece of kit as it is easy to use even with gloves on and the monitoring and alarms are fantastic. The car was still missing, even at 1.1 bar. The whole day was spent with the RA guys trying everything possible and in horrendous freezing and pissing wet conditions. We did meet some bloke off of the telly though. He is or was on Coranation Farm or something like that? Strangely, he was not the centre of attention at the briefing as Olly Clark was there and there seemed to be much more interest in the fact that Olly was at a track day in the Gobstopper. At 8 o’clock that night we got a message from Andy Forest thought it may be a battery/alternator as the voltage had been a bit low. Now, where do you get a Subaru alternator at 8 on a Friday night????? The RCM truck, they had 2! And it’s not even the ones they use in the gobstopper. A quick test run in the paddock as the car is not road registered and all seemed to be well. We headed back to the hotel where I had a couple of pints and headed to bed. The rest of the lads possibly had one or 2 more as they all looked a bit green the next morning.
Warm up –
After the inital excitement of going out at the same time as the Gobstopper and CPR Orange car, then the thought..... Oh crap, i hope they don’t crash into me! I cruised out for a few laps to get the car warmed up. The car felt pretty good and pulling well even though Andy had to map out some of the mid range torque to keep the misfire at bay. Then, on lap 3, the F***ing misfire returned. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. A quick trip into the pits and they put the car onto wastegate pressure which stopped the miss but the car would only run 0.5 bar of boost. It was about as quick as a week in the jail and I was worried that I may just roll back down the hill on the Park straight. My transponder had not been working so no lap times were taken.
Back to the pits where the guys pretty much stripped Paul from the Pro R teams P1 of all the bits we had already changed as well as the battery from Warren Kellys car. The guys never gave up all day, trying everything possible, re-wiring anything that could be re-wired and checking and double checking everything all day. Paul from Zen kindly came along to have a look. Unfortuntely, we did not have a cat 5 cable to plug in his laptop as someone had taken it out when the car was cleaned.
Practice –
It was pissing down for practice and the organisers had declared it a wet session giving us the option to run the wet list 1a tyres. Being from Scotland, i decided to ignore that advice and go out with the semi slicks on. It was greasy and very slippy but there was not enough surface water to justify the wet tyres. Cadwell is highly unforgiving and by the end of the session it looked like there had been a banger race going on. Russ Pattons plowing services decided that Mansfield needed a bit of groundwork and moved all the dirt from the inside of the circuit onto the racing line. He did kindly leave his splitter for the marshals to put back together and I am sure it will look great on the front of someone’s fiesta. Romain decided that his crazy light, 500+Hp CRX was still too heavy and left his front and rear bumpers in a million pieces. Luckily, i had my bowl of hero flakes in the morning as the conditions were very tretcherous and i was having to limit the boost below 1 bar by feathering the throttle. This was not ideal but seemed to work ok until the point where you are on a nice 4 wheel drift around Chris curve, need a touch more power and just get a bloody big pop. At the end of the session the time sheets came in and I was 2nd fastest in CP only 0.3 seconds behind Andrew Barbour, who let the pack in CP
Qualifying –
More work had been done to try and get rid of the fault to no avail. So it was down to my right foot to keep the boost below the misfire and just go out there and score some points. The car did not feel fast and by the data logs, it was slower than the car in 400hp spec last time around Cadwell. Whiteline had made the car handle great and the track was much drier now so I managed to push onto a 1.41.5 . 5th in the 4WD club pro cars.
Final –
Pretty much the same story as Qualifying. Again, everyone tried everything possible to get to the bottom of the misfire. The RA guys worked right until the last second before I had to leave for the assembly area but the misfire. But like a bad smell, the misfire would just not go away. In the end I managed a time of 1.38.6 and comfortably last in the start finish speed trap which seems to be a good indication of power. The time was a full second quicker than my 2010 time with a fair bit less power, so things are looking very encouraging for future rounds. I finished 4th quickest out of the 4WD CP cars just 1 second from the car in front. We all presumed that the 4WD cars would be in their own class but Glen had decided that all the CP cars would be in 1 big class and just have Club Class divided into about 10 different classes.
The quest for the mystery misfire still continues. Dashboard is coming out right now and that wiring loom will be changed and it looks like we are going to go to new age coil packs. The guys from RA will definitely not give up until the problem is solved.
On the bright side, it looks like we are going to have good pace when a bit of power is thrown into the mix and in CP we can drop 2 scores over the year so all is not lost.
Some Pics from the weekend
Massive thanks to all the people who have sponsored and supported me
RA Motorsport Developments
Andy Forest Performance
Whiteline
J T Innovations
Syvecs
John Stevenson Motorsport
ABC Autoglass
Flat Out Photography
Cosworth
