So A brief race report. LOL
Saturday the car presented itself with a range of electrical faults that kept changing every 30 mins. Much consternation ensued and also much changing of everything we could think of and then changing it again. I missed scrutineering and then qualifying and then the race and we kept at it. I was pissed
OFF
12 hours later Rob and I sat looking at each other and I said what havnt we checked. The relays he says. OK lets check em. He sticks his head behind the panel they are mounted on and says hmm there is a big thick earth wire here mounted onto a bulkhead bolt. Hmm the 13mm nut is loose on it.
Tighten it up and et voila everything works.
MORAL:
NEVER GIVE UP
LESSON:
Electricity is like magic and I f**king hate it, a lot.
Sunday.
The starter motor I bought on Saturday as part of the things we changed won't engage and needs modyfying so Rob starts to do that. He then sits in the car and presses the brake pedal 15 mins before we go to scrutineering and says to me should the brake pedal go to the floor like that. No I say, I look in the back and one of the rear brake lines has come off and shed all its fluid in the car. I run up to scrutineering to ask if we can be late while they fix it and bleed the rear brakes in 15 mins flat!!!!
We pass scrutineering and I set about qualifying. I have new front pads so did the first 5 laps quite slowly so as not to glaze them up and then pit. We check tire pressures and I set off again and start to push on, the power steering rack fails again! Smoke everywhere and I have to pit again, session over and back for repairs.
Quali in 41st LOL out of 44 My teamate and partner Darren is on Pole and I am at the back which is a very novel experience for me I can tell you. He laughs. A lot.
Back to the pits and we discover the rack has the wrong fluid in it and we can't fix it. Ill drive it with a manual rack I say to which I get some guarded looks! Now I know why.
Race on and we are off. I settle in at the back and start to pick people off wrenching my arms from my sockets as I struggle to turn in. It's actually a very good experience as you get to learn to handle lots of traffic which you don't get from the front. We do our pit and I am in 20th I think and moving through the field. The car is overheating for some reason and I notice the alarm on my dash at 125c and slow down and do the lap back to the pits. The car cuts out as I pull in and race over. I will strip the enigne now to check its ok and figure out why it keeps overheating, air lock we think.
So all in all a great weekend which I enjoyed a lot. I did a grand total of 15 laps and it has cost 15 MSU's in total which in motorport terms is good value for money!
The car is actually very fast and now I can develop it, fix the issues we teased out of it and put it on pole in 6 weeks time at Silverstone. God I LOVE motorsport a LOT.
Engine Strip
Big end destroyed
Rod fucked and both either side according to Arrow
Block fucked
Piston busted
Piston hit head underside fucked
Great
Total rebuild
LESSON
Don't ignore your f**king alarms you f**king moron just because you're enjoying yourself on a hot day