Blogs

January 2017

January 3rd, 2017 Spend: £10.00 Visited local welding place Bucks Welding & Fabrication who welded a larger metal plate on the bottom of the mount so there is a better surface cover. January 7th, 2017 Spend: £6.98 Back to the engine mount. This time armed with some additional aluminium spacers I fixed the pedestal into its final location. The engine is mounted! Now concentrating on the exhaust. Started wit

January 31, 2017

December 2016

December 5th, 2016 Spend: £17.26 Refitted the high level brake light and roll bar back onto the car. Also connected up the high level brake light to wiring loom and tested it to make sure it has never have to come off again December 9th, 2016 Spend: £923.00 Got a message from @windy at the beginning of the week telling my that my gearbox and diff were ready and were being dropped off at @Marto303's on Thursday. So quickly arranged wit

December 31, 2016

November 2016

November 5th, 2016 Spend: £0.00 Got the roll bar off using some heat to soften the glue and a putty knife to wedge in between bar plate and body work. Then started to work on the new carbon boot sides. Once I got the holes right, the rest was just fine tuning. Now just the filler itself to do, but I will wait until I've been to the welder to see what is possible November 6th, 2016 Spend: £28.98 Fixed the brake li

November 30, 2016

Is It Spring Yet?

So the season is now over for the year. I’m missing the racing already and this makes me think about the winter upgrades.... On the list is: Carbon fibre tonneau cover and half doors (to help with the aero): Aerodynamix are in the process of bringing a tonneau cover to the market so I might well be one of their first customers Swirl pot: Fuel starvation at Pembrey was an issue and this will allow me to run the car lighter on fuel in Quali. Starting problem: I have an earthing issue I

November 1, 2016

October 2016

October 1st, 2016 Spend: £1500.00 What's the best way to speed up the Mighty Crossflow? You replace it with a Zetec I bought this last month from another WSCC member after he took me out in his car with this engine in it. Complete with ECU, manifold and as much ancillaries as he could spare. 180BHP on the Northampton Motorsport rollers. October 2nd, 2016 Spend: £0.00 Cleaned up the garage and moved stuff about so

October 31, 2016

johnev's Blog

Sport E Sprinting - The rebuild (more welding than wiring so far)

Fixing the car has proven to be quite a task - big surprise! The chassis needed repair and modification to remount the diff, motor and new prop shaft and to add fixings for the new rollover cage. This involves welding - and a lot of it. So far I've used the services of an expert welder but this is expensive. This time I elected to do it myself - how hard can it be? I bought myself a Clark 151TE welder, some CO2 and Argon mix gas bottles and various wire sizes. After two months practice and a

johnev

October 23, 2016

Tel's Tales Issue 071 Ty Croes 1st and 2nd Oct 2016

TEL's TALES 071/16 Ty Croes weekend 1st/2nd Oct 2016 The third visit of the season and the climax of our speed series saw 22 competitors plus Dave Cleaver who was tyre testing. The overall championship had already been sewn up by John Loudon so the pressure was off him but there was a great battle between Maurici Tevilla and Barny Francis which would be decided over the weekend. Derek Hodder was tyring to overhaul me to get 4th overall and Matt Turner was in with a chance of beating me f

October 5, 2016

September 2016

September 30th, 2016 Spend: £0.00 Bye bye dearest Last month: £ 2312.52 This month: £ 0.00 ----------+ Total: £ 2312.52

September 30, 2016

First Podium

This is the final race of the year for me, mainly due to lack of time, family commitments, holidays and a depleted bank balance. So off to Donnington Park I went with my friend Mark. This was a race meeting with the CSCC rather than the WSSCC. The format being 30 minutes practice/qualification and a 40 minute race with mandatory 60 second pit-stop. I was in the ‘Magnificent Sevens’ Group 1, which is for cars up to 185 bhp. Group 2 is for cars above 185 bhp. I was really looking forward to this

September 6, 2016

Still wiring - getting bored now

Progress often seems to be one step forward, fifteen back. My own total lack of knowledge of vehicle wiring doesn't help here so I've appealed to an old friend to come and rescue me. He's a time served auto electrician (handy) and can probably help me finish the wiring with no more than a custard cream and a cup of tea. Mind you, the wipers are now working. Previously only one speed was connected. Following the installation of a new 2 speed switch and a little help from the Car Builder Solutio

August 31, 2016

Tel's Tales Issue 070 Curborough Fig 8- 27th Aug 2016

Tel's Tales 070/16 Curborough Figure of 8 27th Aug 2016 With a late entry for Pete Goulding in his Mygale FF single seater there were 6 of us compared to last year's 8. This ws probably due to the clash with the Loton hillclimb weekend and LDMC's Harewood event on Sunday. In the end it was a disappointing/frustrating day mainly due to the number of cars and the weather resulting in only 1 timed run for most of us. There were actually 80 entries with thousands of Porsche cars and C

August 28, 2016

Races 3 and 4

The racing continues. This time at Pembrey on the 21st of August. It didn't start well. We stayed at a hotel near to the track and there was an enormous and loud wedding. Not a problem until the bar closed. Not the best nights sleep I have ever had. To top it all off, both my phone and my wife's phone did not wake us and we overslept, albeit only by about 1/2 an hour. Fuelled up with a cooked breakfast, we made our way to the track. The day was organised by the Vintage Sports Car Club and it w

August 25, 2016

Tel's Tales Issue 069 Three Sisters 30 July 2016

TEL's TALE's 069/16 Three Sisters 30th July 2016 This was the second visit to the Three Sisters track near Wigan and used course number 2 again. A total of 9 Speed Series guys were entered and the weather forecast was good and indeed it stayed dry all day. I was on holiday in the south of France and did not leave Nimes airport until 1030hrs Friday and in less than 24 hrs, by 0715hrs Saturday, I was in the paddock and ready to rumble. It was good to see Graham Frankland taravelling north

July 31, 2016

Wiring the dash - actual progress

Starting with a picture, here's the new dash sitting almost in place. In a pun free entry, I'm currently working out wire by wire what goes where. The engine start switch is working fine now, being connected via an ignition switch tucked away out of sight. Having achieved that with a celebratory dance around the garden I pressed on to get the horn working then the screen washers too. Having planned to get this all working so that an MOT can be acquired, I'm drawing a new wiring diagram as I go

July 30, 2016

First Quali and 2 x Races

Well that really hit the spot - what a thrill that was. If I'm honest I have thought about nothing else for the last two years and to finally get to the grid was, it felt, like an achievement in itself. It easy to forget the amount of time I have spent in the garage / transporting the car to garages etc to get it all ready. Not to mention the expense. So I managed to get a place in the general practice session on the Saturday night. It was all a bit rushed as it was my daughters birthday party

July 18, 2016

Pre Race Nerves

So I thought I would write a blog about my venture into circuit racing. Last year I had my first competitive events, in the form of WSCC SS events at Castle Combe and at Blyton. I enjoyed them both immensely, but I have always wanted to race others on the track, not just against the clock. So, I did a bit of work to the car over the winter……..including: 1. Fitting a second kill switch 2. Fitting a fire extinguisher 3. Fitting ARB's front and rear 4. Getting new springs and a full set up (t

July 12, 2016

Tel's Tales Issue 068 - 9th and 10th July 2016

Blyton Westfield Sprint weekend 9th and 10th July 2016 Introduction This was the long awaited Westfield organised Sprint weekend and also a Friday trackday attended by many Westfileds and a few Competitors. Much work had been put in by John Williams and his team of helpers and by this time they have already received our thanks. The weekend also saw a great effort in raising approx £730 funds for “Hope for Cancer” charity which was well supported and offered nice cakes and a raffle. Many

July 12, 2016

An idle hour steers progress

I've got to stop making up daft titles as much for my own sanity as yours. Having said a quick thank you to Mother Nature for the warm and dry weather this afternoon, we cracked into a simple job, steering rack gaiters. Previously on other car projects I can remember mashing a forked tool into the track rod ends to separate them from the uprights. Fortunately, this evil tool has disappeared so the simple use of heat from a blow torch did the job of persuading the parts apart. The rack itself is

July 10, 2016

Dashed if I know

It's almost done. The arcane art of working out how to wire it in comes next. None of the switches have wiring diagrams with them but I'm sure I can figure it out after all, I'm not doing much different to how it was to begin with. The small cut-out in the bottom middle takes care of providing more room for my knuckles when changing gear. When it's in I can fit the choke between the speedo and multi-dial. The ignition goes in the lower hole, or I fit a start button instead, hiding the ignition

July 8, 2016

June 2016

June 18th, 2016 Spend: £0.00 Cleaning the car for its attendance tomorrow at the Earls Barton Classic Car breakfast meet, I snapped my centre mirror off Only had it for a month, so sent a snotty email to Car Builder Solution to see what they can do. June 19th, 2016 Spend: £0.00 Got up early with Q-jr Met up with Richard and Chris Drove for a bit picking up Mark and Jim on the

June 30, 2016

Tel's Tales Issue 067 25th June 2016

TEL's TALE's 067/16 Aintree 25/06/16 Introduction Well Aintree is not one of my favourite tracks since I went bike engined a few years a go. With only 69 ft lbs of torque and a long, long straight its hard to get good terminal speed especially if there is a headwind......and guess what we had one so target times were going to to be very very difficult. My brother Steve quite likes it and we decide to give it a go as he needs the event for the championship following his engine blow up. A