Right, nearly 6 months since my last update. 2 more races to report on (sort of).
Donington was a bit of a gamble as we put a late entry in because of the misfire issue and consequently arrived there as 4th reserve. This meant that the grid was full at 40 cars max but we would qualify with everyone but only get a race if 4 people retired from the race after quali or didn't turn up at all.
Donington is always a popular race so everyone turned up! But we were hopeful as its not unusual for retirements. (I've done it a few times myself) But the good news is that if you end up not getting a race you get your entry refunded less £20. So, other than the time and cost to get there it was worth a shot. plus we needed to test the car to see if it was fixed.
It wasn't!
We went in to qualifying feeling positive but after 2 laps we were back to square one. So frustrating! The car would fly most of the time but then cough and splutter out of the corners. We did a painful 17 laps and qualified 11th in the end. No where near where we should have been but we still didn't know if we would get a race and we had a few hours to try again to find the issue.
By race time we still had no confirmation whether we had a race or not so we were instructed to gear up and head for the assembly area.
We still had no idea if the car was fixed - such is the nature of an intermittent misfire. But we lined up at the back of everyone else and as they headed for the grid we were directed to the pitlane where we would start behind everyone else "If" 4 cars dropped out.
At this point it seemed ridiculous that no one knew if the grid was full but apparently that's the way they do it. Literally counting the cars on to the grid!
We were held in the pitlane as the race started, eagerly waiting to see if we would be released.
1 lap went by and we were still being held, by which point I was fuming. i didn't want to start the race 1 lap down- we had enough of a challenge with a sick car. But I didn't want to just pull into the paddock only to be told I had forfeited the race entry fee.
Anyway, to cut a long story a little less long, we didn't get to race and I did get my money back. So I had another month to search some more into the wiring.
So through the remainder of September and most of October I went through more wiring, replacing the main lead to the starter and alternator and recrimping and heat shrinking more connections.
It was at this point that things got worse!
After connecting everything up one Saturday morning I turned the isolator on to check all was ok. It wasn't. The Cartek isolator made a strange hissing noise and then promptly burst into flames! It burnt like a roman candle and wouldn't stop even after switching the power off again. Clearly the internals had melted and a permanent short circuit was about to burn my car to the ground.
The only way I could stop it was by grabbing a 10mm socket on an extension so I could get through the flames onto the ground terminal and disconnect it. (the yellow wire in the photo)
Once the adrenaline had ebbed a little I promptly emailed Cartek with a WTF type message. It was always my impression that these isolators should cut out at the slightest whiff of a short.
So on Monday morning I was put at ease to some degree when Cartek emailed back with an apologetic email stating that it should not have happened and a new one would be sent out over night.
True to their word I received it the next day.
With this now done and the car apparently working again we booked onto the race at Castle Combe on the 24th October. We also booked the test day on the Friday before so we could A - check the car and B - refresh my memory of the track and for Jonathan, drive it for the first time.
It is a great circuit but the weekend promised to be wet unfortunately. (and cold)
You might be able to predict how things went by now.
The car still wasn't fixed!
We continued to try more things. I had bought a whole new set of injectors which we swapped out. No joy.
Then, the new isolator packed up again! At that point I knew something had to be wrong with the cable I had changed to the starter and alternator. It had only happened since I had changed that and no matter what Cartek said - something was causing this that was not down to the isolator.
I found it at the starter motor.
The new terminal for the starter was rubbing on the body of the starter and that is what caused the short.
Fortunately Merlin Motorsport are based at Combe and £300 later I had another new isolator.
To add to our woes the short had also fried the starter, so we spent the rest of the day push starting the car while organising for a spare starter to be sent down to us for the morning.
With the isolator fixed we continued to struggle throughout the day with a combination of getting out to do a few laps followed by some more time diagnosing.
I spent a good hour or so on the phone to my mapper Steve Greenald who tried to hook me up with a guy he knew who was supporting one of the Caterham teams testing that day. He was too busy to physically help us but he did give me some good pointers to help eliminate certain things and try and identify which cylinder was misfiring by looking at exhaust manifold temps.
Of course with an intermittent fault this is difficult but Steve had his money on an injector.
Just to round the test day off, Jonathan went to take the car out for one last session before the circuit closed. Unfortunately he didn't qute make it and was stopped at the pits by the marshalls as the track had just closed. He went to pull away and BANG, a drive shaft snapped.
So more phone calls and a fellow racer promised to bring one to the circuit in the morning.
So, an early start on the Saturday. I arrived from the hotel to the circuit in the dark. We had a drive shaft and a starter to fit before qualifying. I had an extra pair of hands coming down too so we cracked on and had it all done with an hour or so to spare.
At this point we had the car warming up with the bonnet open when Jonathan did something we had already done a hundred times. He wiggled the wires to the injectors... And the car spluttered!
2 minutes with a careful blade revealed the culprit that has caused us a season of woes.
A broken soldered joint (this is why you don't solder joints on race cars) that had been tightly held in heat shrink for several years had finally broken down. In hindsight it seems incredible that it took so long to find this and it had crossed my mind on a couple of occasions to strip these back and inspect them. But that part of the harness had been quite intricately put together and the aforementioned "wiggling" hadn't born any fruit up until now.
Amazingly, this solder joint was carried out by a garage that did some maintenance on the car after the last time I raced at Combe and we had exactly the same problem. - a broken injector wire. that was in 2014!
We went onto qualifying with all guns blazing and a car that was working. (for a bit)
It was wet of course but our laps the previous day helped and after I finished my stint in quali we were sitting in 3rd. Jon went out and held our position until a few laps later he didn't come round again.
Our fear was that he had gone off. Quarry is a notorious corner and in wet conditions anything could happen.
"Thankfully" it wasn't an off that caused his retirement but a gearbox failure.
After everything we had been through I didn't really care though. This was to be the last race of the season for us and I knew I could go into the winter break looking toward some upgrades and a fresh gearbox rather than more tedious electrical work.
