2-3rd May 2010
Session 328 - First show - National Kit Car Show - Stoneleigh
Done the first show with my car over the May Bank Holiday weekend. I was good to meet people that I had conversed with over the internet via the forum, email over the last five years! Thank-you for taking the time to have a look at my car and all the positive comments made. Even had a visit from Tiff Needell.
Mark J and Vicki Butler-Henderson. My car's in the background. Where was I? getting a burger!
My car before the gates and opened.
Westfield's concept electric car.
Talking to Tiff Needell about my car and engine.
Tiff Needell in my car.
The show is quite large but I really didnt get much time to have a look around and take photos.
7th May 2010
Well actually bits that I wanted to change over but after the IVA in case of issues!
Here's a photo showing the upper wishbone camber angle adjuster rose-joint uncovered. What you see on the floor is the rubber, tie-wraps, tape that was covering them up along with that used on the headlamp brackets. I am actually going to leave most of the protective covering on but this looked ugly.
I removed the padded sill protectors, well they were annoying me as the vinyl keeps coming unstuck. See I replaced with carbon fibre equivalents. Which are more in-keeping with my carbon fibre fettish! Actually much lighter of course.
Next up was to replace the ugly black plastic motor-cycle mirrors with, yes guessed it, carbon fibre ones.
You'll note that I have no holes. Forward planning, I knew I was going to swap these over so I actually bolted the mirrors that I have removed to follow the line of bolts fixing the aeroscreen down, result, nothing look out of place.
And finally tonight I was brave enough to cut a 54mm hole in my carbon fibre dash to install my lamda guage.
You will recall that this is a digital read-out in the centre showing the air fuel ratio mixture with a LED bar-graph display round the edge which is multi-coloured with different colours representing lean, ideal and rich mixtures. A little gimmicky but it does show exactly whats going with regard to the air fuel mixture in the engine.
Here's a video of the AFR guage working.
The nett result of these changes is a 1Kg weight saving!
15 May 2010
My engine is tuned to a higher state the the standard Rover engine. Also idle is a little uneven due to the increased overlap on the fast road/race cam. Althought rhoads blead down lifters help with the increased overlap at idle still the engine rocks side-to-side more than I'd like at idle. I had used Westfield engine mounts as they came with the fabricated engine mount brackets which were ideal to fit the engine to the chassis of course. I later learnt that the engine mounts are standard Rover SD1 mounts. The standard mounts are pretty poor, pretty similar to a metalastic bush, i.e rubber bound to metal. The rubber is not fully encapsulate in rubber, the ends are left as just rubber. You can move the rubber by hand so obviously not ideal in this application.
Photo of Standard Engine mount below
I contacted a company called SC Power who supply performance engine parts for TVR and Rover engines. I ordered some of their Polyurethane performance engine mounts. they do three levels, one for road use, one for road and track use and one for pure race use. I went fo the road/track ones.
Photo of the SC power poly engine mount.
As you can see the black stuff is shiny as its polyurethane which is much stiffer. You will also notice that the outside is solid metal all the way round so the overall stifness is better also. Being encapsulatd in metal also offers some additional protection to the polyurethane from the heat off the exhaust.
Took me four hours to change these over. The result is amazing, engine hardly moves under idle. It also feels tighter on the road when pulling off as the power is trasmitted through the chassis more effectively.
Video of engine running
26th May 2010
Finally D-day has arrived. My Road tax and DVLA registration certificate came today. After work I got my plates made up and installed along with Road Tax and off I went. Did around 40 miles. The drive is fantastic, holds the road very well, predictable, controllable, putting power down to the road is fantastic. Goes without saying very very fast but surprisingly you do not notice the speed until you look at the speedo and then its wow, better slow down. I am hapy to report that my mechanical sympathy for my creation is not too greate to spoil my fun. Its a tool built to be driven.
Go to June 2010