With a bit more time to spend on the car over the bank holiday, we were out in the workshop early on Saturday to make a concerted start. I struggled the exhaust headers on then bolted the engine into position. Next up was to mount the diff. I mounted the diff in, and then realised that I had forgotten the chain! D’oh!
So I then took it all off and wangled the chain back in. Its quite a fiddle, but is possible!
We have got another bike engined car that we are working on, it has an R1 engine and built to the power to weight regs, but it is quite light nevertheless, so I have been trying to drill holes, chop things off etc or anything to make the car lighter. Well apart from diet! So I took the opportunity to chop the suspension bolts to the minimum length and drill a hole through it. OK not much on its own, but I have been drilling other things aswell. I should have done this when I built the car but to be honest I just forgot and was too excited to get it out on track!
I then decided to respray the rear support frame. I also decided to paint the ally chain guard. Yes the paint will come off eventually, but with the sprayed wing mounts aswell, I think the rear end all looks a bit slicker!
When I designed the rear diffuser I specified a certain angle. However when it arrived it was quite a lot larger. This basically means that it will not have worked correctly and will have actually created quite a lot of drag instead! So I have now trimmed it back to what I intended. This however means that the mounts now don’t fit, so I have chopped off the diffuser stays and remade them.
To make them I set the diffuser at the correct angle etc and simply joined it all up. Eventually I will make a jig for these, and the rear body supports, and make these all out of ally to save some more weight. The rear body support is already made from ally, but it is rather fragile stuck out the back, so any slight knock might bend it, so a jig would be rather useful!
So this is not what the rear looks like. Again I should have done this before but was just too keen to get out and try it!
here is another view of the new rear end all painted black. Again, perhaps in the future, I will remake it all and get it anodised.
I then reinstalled the lights, after cleaning it all. After the wet/snow testing the car was covered in small grit particles and water marks etc. Unfortunately the ‘non corrosive’ de icer seems to have corroded some of the ally panels a little, but nothing too major!
The newly trimmed down diffuser looks a little wimpy compared to how it was, but it should be better! I then cleaned and reinstalled the rest of the exhaust.
Tags: Bodywork, Chassis, Differential, Suspension
