build diary

September 27, 2005:
The Se7ens are coming!
The group should be trickling in to town today. One car has already partially arrived in the form of a damaged head. It should be sorted out tomorrow. I also have a thermostat coming for an R300 that's having trouble. Always an adventure!

Some scrambling around yesterday and the hood is now punched with louvres! I had to change the layout a bit because the spacing between the louvres was different than I had assumed. These are hot rod louvres and they're bigger than the ones used by the Seven makers. Still, the layout looks good - except for one small detail. It turns out that hot rods put their louvres facing forwards (why?). Those who know something about aerodynamics put them facing backwards. Well, these were punched by a hot rodder so they're backwards. I just never thought to specify even though we were laughing about how it was important to get them the correct way around. The problem that both of use considered the "correct way" to be different. This will work fine at a walking pace, but at speed it'll actually make the airflow worse than before. I'm going to be very embarassed showing up amongst the Se7ens this afternoon with a backwards hood. Kent, the guy who did the work, has bought a new piece of aluminum so I can fabricate another hood. I'll have to work fast, I'd like to have the proper setup for the race this weekend and definitely for the high-speed trackday at Aspen on the 15th. I also have to change the brakes on two cars. It's going to be a long week. Oh well, if it was easy everyone would do it...
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Whoops.
The louvres look good, but they're the wrong way around. There's also a misalignment in two of the center groups. I'll be busy trying to duplicate this hood late at night this week.
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September 28, 2005:
Anyone near Moab this morning would have seen a very dirty orange Seven roaring out of town at about 7:30.
I'd accidentally stayed the night. But let's backtrack.

The Se7en tour group hit their first rain on the way out of Vail. Not just a little bit of English drizzle, a full-on Colorado thunderstorm. Some were able to dodge the weather, others were not. By the time they started to roll into the Sonic drive-in in Grand Junction, everyone was at least a little damp. The appearance of all the little cars caused a bit of consternation in GJ and from the reaction of the Se7en drivers, none of the questions were new ones. To my surprise a number of the Se7en owners recognised my car! That was flattering.

I was planning on running through the Colorado National Monument with a group and then on to Moab. A couple of drivers wanted to borrow the Flyin' Miata garage in order to do a little work on their cars so we stopped by there first. It became obvious that I was distracted by the gorgeous car on the lift so the group took off, leaving about 4 Se7ens hanging around the shop. While one Duratec car got a new thermostat, I watched as Mike changed the oil on his car. His car has a massively powerful RST V8 underhood and has been modified in just about every possible way - you can see a number of photos of it on the RST website. Everything went well until he started refilling the dry sump tank and fresh oil started leaking out of a fitting. The suction pipe for the dry sump had to undergo some strange contortions and a custom fitting had cracked. We headed off to a hydraulic store, picked up a couple of pieces then started heating, bending and welding. By 5:30 or so we had a replacement fitting and the car was happy and leakproof once again. Mike and I were the only ones left so we took off to Moab under ugly skies. He has no windscreen and was wearing a helmet. I had a windscreen but no wipers. Not a good pair.

The route in to Moab is one of my favourites. Well, usually. Earlier rain had washed some of Moab's signature red dirt on to the road and turned it into snot. All we could do was just aim the cars straight and let them surf through. It was getting dark enough that a bit of local knowledge of the road helped considerably. By the time we arrived in Moab, the cars were totally encrusted in dirt. Mike offered to buy me dinner in exchange for the fun I had playing on his car, so a group of us went out in a pickup leaving the Se7ens behind.

We got back and there was lightning everywhere. A group of the drivers were standing under the car port in front of reception where I'd left my car and it was obvious that truly massive amounts of rain was falling all around. A number of folks offered me space in their rooms so I ended up crashing with Ben from Rocky Mountain Sports Cars. While we were hanging out in the lobby and talking about cars (really!), the rainstorm outside turned completely biblical in proportion. The decision to stay was a good one!

After a dry early morning run home, I was able to vibrate in to work. It's too bad I had to leave the group as they're a fun bunch and have some great days ahead of them. Maybe I'll have to head over to Europe for one of their tours someday.

So, what have I decided I "need" to do after looking at these cars? A lower windscreen for sure. Possibly some sort of different front suspension setup as well - I love the clean, light design of the Caterham control amrs but my shocks are not the right dimensions. They'd work as a pushrod setup, though. That would be sexy and might not cost much more than putting on 500 lb springs like Heikki has done. I might also run a smaller radiator to lighten the front end because my cooling system is total overkill right now. Another suggestion was to cover my exposed timing belt given the amount of debris that ricochets around the engine bay - good plan. Also some more bracing for the front suspension. Heck, maybe just cut the nose of the car off and re-engineer that whole thing!

I have to say the group was extremely welcoming to my weird little one-off car. They were really interested in the Miata engine and it was thoroughly inspected by everyone who got a chance - some of the underhood wiring that resulted from the throttle body swap was embarassing! Even Ben from Rocky Mountain was welcoming despite my cut-price version of one of their cars, consistent with how he and Nathan have treated me since I started this project.
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Se7ens invade the Sonic!
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Se7ens descend on the FM shop for various fettling.
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Caterham art by Simon Bell.
The blank canvas can be seen in the previous picture.
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Mike in his RST V8 Caterham after enjoying the roads in Moab.
Paved roads.
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The Seven meets a Caterham SV!
They look more alike than I had expected. Yes Eric, I really need to make a grille.
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Seven and SV from the rear.
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The most obvious difference between my car and a Caterham is the placement of the scuttle.
The steering wheel is in approximately the same place on both cars. This explains why my engine appears so much further back than the Caterhams and why a Caterham shift knob always appears to be so far forward. Due to the rearward placement, the scuttle is wider and this is one reason my windshield looks tall. Despite appearances, the wheelbase is almost identical.
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The result of driving to and from Moab.
My poor car. Remember how shiny and nice it looked a year ago?
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The world's first adobe roll bar.
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September 29, 2005:
I cleaned the Seven off last night.
Cloth seats are not a good idea in a car with no weather protection. Yuk.
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September 30, 2005:
I installed new brake pads and rotors last night.
The good thing about Miata rotors is that they're only about $10 each! Starting with new rotors prevented any material transfer from the kevlar-metallic pads I'd used before. The pads are Carbotech Panther XP8s that I've mentioned before. The pads proved to be just a hair too fat on the front to fit the anti-squeal plates on one of the two pads, but that's no great problem. The rotors were given a splash of black paint to keep them from rusting. The front rotors I took off the carI headed out (now in the dark) to bed them in.

Now that was some childish fun! The first couple of stops felt normal. On the third, it was like the Seven had grown little claws and sunk them into the pavement! Holy cow, there was certainly something wrong with the previous setup. I realise now that the other pads were probably never bedded properly as they were installed very early in the car's build and I was paying too much attention to everything else once the car started moving. I'll scuff them up and put them on Janel's Miata instead. Breaking in the Carbotechs was very entertaining, though - there were sparks coming off the front wheels as the exhaust blew fireballs on overrun. Quite a show!
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October 3, 2005:
Another track day.
This one was "Octoberkross", a two-day event put on by the same guys who ran the autocross a few months ago. They're still new at this and it did show on the first day. The event was aimed at the "sport compact" crowd, so it was a younger group and there were a lot of FWD cars. Most of the drivers were complete track novices. It's good to see them out on a real track, learning performance driving. In many cases, their exposure to high performance driving has come from watching showy videos - that's good and bad. The format of the weekend was a practice/qualifying/tech day on Saturday and the actual race on Sunday. I'll go chronologically.

After some confusion and some frustration on my part, I was allowed on to the track at around 5 pm on Saturday. They had saved the big guns for last, the Fiat (remember him?), myself and a collection of Subaru STis and an EVO8. My own driving wasn't good. The new brake pads apparently have much greater front bias and I had to make massive changes to my bias setting. It didn't help that there is little weight on the right front wheel and that my hardest braking took place on a slight right turn where it was unloaded. I'm tempted to install a proportioning valve in the front lines to help balance this. I also had bad understeer on a couple of right corners while the balance felt pretty good going left. Probably has something to do with the location of the driver! Elsewhere on the track was mayhem. A number of self-styled "drift specialists" were going off the track (usually nose first) all over and the EVO8 was a total loose cannon. I suspect that if he'd tried to go 5 seconds slower, he'd have gone 5 seconds faster. I finished the day with a time in the 1:05.99 range with an STi hot on my tail at 1:06.06. Too close for comfort and 0.4 seconds slower than my best. It is good for your confidence when the starter recognises you, shakes your hand and says "You still own this track!". Janel did well, taking nearly two seconds off her previous best. She's a smooth driver who takes care of her car. She was appalled at how much some people beat up on their cars. Rick Weldon showed her how it's possible to be smooth, gentle and extremely fast when we were at Thunderhill and she took it to heart.

That night, I added a touch of camber to the understeering left front and gave it a turn on the spring perch, hoping to add a bit of weight. I also dropped the tire pressures a touch. This track is a weird one for tires, being a bit too fast for autocross but not as demanding as a real track.

Sunday worked like clockwork in stark contrast to the day before. Being on "pole", I was the first one out. I shaved a tenth off but still had some balance problems. The STi was a bit off yesterday's pace. A turbo Civic turned a 1:06 and made it quite clear who the target was. The Fiat was struggling a bit. Even the out-of-control cars from yesterday were behaving themselves a bit more.

While spending some time flagging, I thought about what was going on. I realised that it all came back to braking. I had been relying on trailbraking to rotate the car on these tight corners and it just wasn't working all that well. I still had too much front bias. I turned it back fairly aggressively and lined up for my next session. The car immediately felt much better, turning in harder and being easier to toss around. My biggest problem was coming from the turn on to the front straight, as the understeer there was costing me a lot of speed. There was a short, fast left just before this 180 degree right, so I used this as a "scandinavian flick" to get the tail out. On the second and third laps, I got the tail out a bit too far and ended up going around the last corner on full opposite lock. I'm comfortable driving sideways and the Seven really takes care of you in this situation, so it was easy to control the slide and smoothly exit on to the front straight. It wasn't any slower than the understeering method judging by where I had to shift on the straight and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. I knew it was a quicker lap - not my lap record, but fast enough and consistent over all three timed laps. The end result was a 1:05.7 or so. Nobody else dropped below 1:06.

At the end of the day, I got the chance to go out and play. I was mostly driving like a meathead but I did find a few spots where I picked up speed. I was disappointed that my final result - with better brakes and more horsepower - was not faster than my previous best but since I only managed to get about 10 laps in, I wasn't as sharp as I had been at the Open House.

One piece of news from the Se7ens on the USA tour. Two couples got married at the Little White Chapel drive-through in Vegas, one couple in a Caterham and one in a Westfield. That's my kind of people!
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October 4, 2005:
Reading over what I did to try and set up the car this weekend, some of it sounds backwards.
The tire pressure changes were based on reading the tread. Given the length of the track (a "session" was only 5 miles!) it's possible they only barely reached full temperature. Lester Seal reports that he is running much higher pressures on his RA1s on his car and I'll start off there when I'm at Aspen in a couple of weeks. The real opportunity for tuning will come at a Pueblo event in a month. Hmm, maybe I should hunt down a pyrometer for this. I really need to get the suspension sorted. Lester reports he is running much less camber than I am.

Naturally, there's work to be done before the next track day. The car ran well - flawlessly, actually - but I still have to sort out the hood. I'll try to get a start on that tonight.
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One of these cars is a visitor to town.
Guess which one.
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My first hot laps at the Octoberkross event.
Still lots of roll here and I'm having trouble getting the front wheel to stick.
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By contrast, the left turns are nicely balanced.
This photo was taken later in the day, after I'd added a touch of front camber to both wheels and removed the windscreen for a bit less wind resistance and a big psychological shot at my opposition. That rear wheel looks questionable.
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I managed to sort out the understeer - this is the same corner as the picture taken earlier in the day.
This attitude was no slower than the grinding understeer but it sure was a lot more fun. The black stripes on the corner are from the previous lap.
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Gratuitous? Not me.
Never. This is a different lap than the previous picture. The best part is that the tail was still coming out but the next photo in the series didn't turn out.
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During the fun runs at the end of the day, I was harassing this Neon.
I figured he'd enjoy the view more if I gave him something to watch. The best part is that the owner of the Neon is riding with me...
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