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BIGASH/FF-Racing X85 Clio Cup Racer Project



  Cup In bits
Immaculately turned out James as I have all ready said and congrats on the job, I would certainly be offering you a placement if this is what you have done on your first attempt.

ps, roof vent arrived fine thanks.
 
  182/RS2/ Turbo/Mk1
Great result, and congrats on the job! What is it exactly you'll be doing?

As its for Will its going to be general racecar and fast road prep, ie I doubt James or Will know themselves exactly what but having seen how well James has done with his car im sure Will would be happy to have him as an apprentice on pretty much any job.

Going to be a lot more interesting place to work than where Will started out at Bar Honda F1 I would think, smaller the better with working for motorsport firms as you get more variety!
 
  XC90, 330d, Trophy’s
^Yes it would.

Ah jolly good.

i do like Will, he always gives me a cuddle when he see's me and our conversations normally consist of food and 2 for 1 meal deals we used to share when I was working in Cheshire, I think he was still at MSD back then.
hes a good egg and very knowldegable, hes helped out a lot with a couple of mates within TA (Warren Kelly & Ronnie Amis)

good place to be James, all the best :)
 
Thanks guys for all the nice comments! Always nice to read when getting in from the garage at 3.30am and up in 3 hours makes it all worthwhile :)
See you tomorrow ;)
Certainly will :D
Glad to see it's all coming together James.

I'll see you at Donnington in August and Oulton x2 fingers crossed.

I'm thinking Donnington in October too.
Do Mallory with FT :)
Immaculately turned out James as I have all ready said and congrats on the job, I would certainly be offering you a placement if this is what you have done on your first attempt.

ps, roof vent arrived fine thanks.
Thanks Morgan and also thanks for letting me know I decided just to send it special as it always seems the most reliable and insured method :)
Great result, and congrats on the job! What is it exactly you'll be doing?
Thank to very much :) As Chip says nothing set in stone but i'm sure things will become clearer as things move forwards and he can see how i'm doing!
Ah jolly good.

i do like Will, he always gives me a cuddle when he see's me and our conversations normally consist of food and 2 for 1 meal deals we used to share when I was working in Cheshire, I think he was still at MSD back then.
hes a good egg and very knowldegable, hes helped out a lot with a couple of mates within TA (Warren Kelly & Ronnie Amis)

good place to be James, all the best :)
LOL we went for the full 3 courses at Pizza express yesterday after mapping :)

He certainly is a great chap and has been a great help to me.

Thanks Kelv!
Lookout for Bi Gash on passionford next.
Git :rasp:
I'll work oulton for you if you need and any other round if you pick me up and buy me bacon. x
Come and play tomorrow (today)

Thanks mate appreciate it :)
 

Chi

  Z4, VW172, R26
Great to see you having some good luck for a change. . Ive got a Transit with a towbar going unused..
 
Great to see you having some good luck for a change. . Ive got a Transit with a towbar going unused..
Thanks I suppose a blown ECU and alternator isn't much compared to the problems of last season lol :) Thats really kind thank you very much but it will do me good to have a few days in the garage rather than out and about with the car.
Are you leaving that roof vent on for TT ?
Yes
I'm on holiday for Mallory, otherwise I would.
That's a shame mate hoping for a big group for Mallory so we can get our own race should be good :)
 
CSS

The car is all loaded up on the trailer ready to go to CSS on Saturday morning. New ECU arrived this morning so its all running and fine now thankfully :) Please come over and say hi if you are attending on Saturday.
 
Mallory Park Shakedown Test:

So after a very long rebuild it was finally time to give the car a shakedown test, with time and money both lacking it was decided to go straight to the location of my first race of this season so Mallory Park morning test was the choice. I had a list of things to check and to validate that the changes made over winter were working such as making sure the full braided brake lines didn't make the brakes too spongy, I could control the brake bias enough with the bias valve etc.

Kindly one of my friends offered to come and help me run the car for the morning so he was doing the pit board and pit to car radio. The day started wet so I was on the R888's and just going out to get a feel for the car. The first feeling was very odd the car seemed to not want to turn in and I was getting vibrations through the car in the corners. I brought the car in and had a proper check over and nothing was obviously an issue. I still to this day don't know what the problem is as everything seems fine, There is slight play in the AST dampers but this is how they were last year when AST said there was nothing wrong with them :( The only other thing I think it must be is the gripper diff as never driven a car with one before but wouldn't of expected a vibration on high speed corners from it.

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Went back out and the circuit was starting to dry out but stayed out and learnt the circuit a bit until the session finished. Came back in and swapped to the Dunlops and also had a quick checkover the rest of the car again and all was well.

file_zpsca0f059a.jpg


Next session came around quickly so got going once again unfortunately I made a mistake on the third lap while following a slow car coming into Gerrards I was fiddling with the datalogger and missed my braking point and went too fast into the corner and it spun round. Could of been a lot worse but thankfully not, I just nipped into the pits to check I hadn't damaged the tyres. Had a few more mishaps in the session but was just trying to learn the circuit limits and also still struggling with the cars setup.

The final session of the day was 45 minutes long so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do a race length test with a quick pitstop in the middle to check tyre pressures. The session got underway and I just focused on consistency, Everyone else seemed to come off track and go home after 10 minutes so I had the track to myself. Every lap was within 0.4 seconds for the whole session. The penultimate lap of the day dipped into the 52's and then the chequered flag dropped and that was the end of a very successful shakedown test. To say the car was on year old tyres, naff setup and lacking power it was a laptime I was very happy with and a big list of area's to move forwards and get plenty more pace out of the car :)

When I got home in the afternoon I got the car on the ramp for a quick check over and only a couple of little issues to fix, the passenger side gaiter where it goes into the gearbox is weeping oil but it was brand new so not too sure why it's leaking. The other thing is the oil cooler still weeping ever so slightly, I have checked the connector again but it's not that so I think it must be the actual cooler that is leaking.

I went to get the alignment checked as it was only done on the Tuesday and it really didn't feel right. Sure enough it had slipped and had lost 2 degree's of camber on the passenger front and also that had induced nearly 2 degree's of toe out. It certainly explains why the handling was a bit odd. This has been corrected again and I helped out this time and checked over all the bolts so i'm confident it will be fine this time. The car now needs a proper check over to try and work out the vibration and also just to finish off a few finishing touches that have arisen and then some more testing time to optimise the setup and get it feeling good so I'm hoping to do another Mallory morning test before the race on the 3rd August :)

file_zps548d07c0.jpg


file_zpsa870b03e.jpg


1044460_10152997016700187_1177295407_n.jpg

I had the camera's running on the day so please see the below video which is just a couple of laps. I am also doing a video of all the mishaps, slides and the more exciting bits but my computer is struggling atm so I will link that when it's finished :)

[video=youtube_share;SyZY4UV290Y]http://youtu.be/SyZY4UV290Y[/video]

[video=youtube_share;I6Nw9dHzLjI]http://youtu.be/I6Nw9dHzLjI[/video]


Thanks for reading :)
James
 
  Lotus Elise
Looks great James! Loving the montage of mistakes, why do you think the alignment was so out after the track session?
 
  WRX
Looks really weird seeing the bridge go that way! So easy to get Gerards wrong by pushing just that bit too much.
 
Great clips...first one was a poop ya pants moment for sure.
Haha yes I had a bad feeling when it spun, thankfully it had been fairly dry so the grass wasn't too soft for the car to dig in!
Hahah you must have had a cheeky grin passing that racer.... I bet they wish they could have bodies lol
Lol I presume he wasn't trying as a cup racer on slicks is a quicker car without a doubt
Looks great James! Loving the montage of mistakes, why do you think the alignment was so out after the track session?
Yeah I thought it was more interesting than a few laps of me just driving round! I don't know but it felt the same all day so I presume it happened even before I got on track.
I'm guessing they didn't torque up the 2 strut bolts enough and the camber bolt spun round.

Possibly caused by jumping kerbs and spinning off lol
Lol me jumping kerbs?? never ;)
Looks good James.

So pleased for you that its all up and running again after all the hard work :)
Thanks mate! Thanks for all your advice along the way :)
Looks really weird seeing the bridge go that way! So easy to get Gerards wrong by pushing just that bit too much.
Yes I still have alot of time to find through there I think but I will keep chipping away :)
 


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