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I'll be there, as usual! Anyone else joining me?

Will be there @Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman)

Hello after some black doors for seiw not sure if they are all the same. or just a drivers door worst case thanks dan

Keeping fingers crossed it’s a dry day

Treated the tin top to a full valet Thursday at my favourite hand car wash. When it was done, I climbed back inside and found this air freshener hanging from the mirror: Getting a bit paranoid that I’ll be done for double copyright infringement.

A little teaser of something in the pipeline.... The XI was a pig to start, but once running it performed admirably .

Most of the documents I had seem to have been lost to time, and a major (home) server crash 15 years ago, this is one of the surviving bits of info I have from one of the independent Caterham tests; sadly I can't remember who from, to credit them, not could I find it still on line in just a quick Googling. For those interested! (Obviously, this all pre-dates the fluid analysis modelling that's been done over the last decade or so!) " From Curborough Site I was lucky enough to have my car selected for the test session. Following various conversations with Graham Kendall, who not only manages the Wind Tunnels at MIRA, but also competes with daughter Claire (yes that Claire) in the rapid Metro, I prepared a few add on devices in readiness for the limited time available for the structured tests in the Wind Tunnel, whilst some other lucky club members had a tour around the facility. Apart from the obvious Caterham design I had added a full flat floor under tray and rear diffuser. Previous theories on airflow meant that I already raced with the front number plate mounted low down on the front of the nose cone. Yes I know you are all asking, "Why on earth would you want to do wind tunnel tests on something as un-aerodynamic as a Caterham 7?" Well even though it has the aerodynamics of a brick, there are still very useful things that can be accomplished using a test facility such as the Full Scale Wind Tunnel at MIRA. Armed with a multitude of cardboard cut outs and tank tape I was aiming to reduce lift on the front axle to balance the car and hopefully improve the drag at the same time. The first series of tests consisted of a splitter below the number plate, an additional spoiler below and blending. I won't bore you all with the full technical results but in summary these changes actually reduced aerodynamic drag and lift at the front. The action of reducing front lift actually increased rear lift by pitching the car around its centre of gravity. The next areas of attention were the front cycle wings. The theory was that air flowed both above and below the wing surface acting exactly like the wing of a plane. This caused a depression on the top surface relative to the air below causing lift. Blanking off the gap between the wheel and the wing did indeed reduce lift and drag, but without increasing rear lift. These results were further enhanced with the addition of a low sharp edge towards the back of the wing in an attempt to trip the air up and not follow the contour causing depression. At this stage CD (drag) had been reduced by 3% and front lift decreased by a whopping 14kg. How could I not resist looking at the front suspension? Now obviously I couldn't remove it all so I made covers for all the exposed round section tubes to change them to pear drop section. Although improvements were made, they were nowhere near as big as the effort in making the new sections! Another few kilos of rear lift were lost by adding wheel deflectors to the lower edge of the rear wings in front of the rear tyres, but at the expense of a little drag. Then came the addition of side skirts to the car. I set these to give ground clearance at all times under racing conditions. These had an overall reduction in lift of 9 kg but a slight drag increase. As I stated earlier I had already fitted a very pretty carbon fibre rear diffuser. However the shape of this was wrong based on textbook theory. The MIRA experts decided it was not long enough and the diffuser angle was nowhere near the optimum range. Copious additions of very stiff cardboard went some way to correcting this situation. But no matter what we tried, the best solution was to consign it to a very large skip! (The diffuser, not the car!) From a suggestion by one of the group present, we also added additional blending profiles to the windscreen posts. Although not strictly legal in my racing class, it did improve drag very slightly. Lastly for amusement I removed all of the weather equipment (roof and doors). This increased the drag force through the proverbial roof requiring a further 10bhp at 100 miles/hour, but actually created some more rear down force. I would like to thank Graham Kendall, Ivan Starkey & Paul Atkin for making this very interesting visit happen and for the opportunity to complete these tests, which sadly I have not had chance to convert into road/race-worthy modifications."

One of the issues that's been found, on the couple of wind tunnel sessions I know of, that used Westfields, (and kind of backed up by one I'm aware of that used a Caterham) - all a long time ago now, was that the cars had a lot of nose lift at speed. ANd that the common practice of flat flooring or adding a diffuser to the back of the car, while some what beneficial at that end, could effectively exaggerate the front end issue! Interestingly, one front end treatment to reduce some of the lift generated, that was found in both Caterham and Westfield based testing, was the ducted in radiator, with it's air flow exiting on top of the car and away over the bonnet, and not just generally into the engine bay. Both marques introduced ducted noses, though arguably Caterham got the form and packaging much better, as far as fitting the actual cooling packs inside went. (It's the same testing, that on the Caterhams led to the development of the "CSR Style" front arches, to manage airflow at the front wheels. Though practical realities stopped them being able to go as far as was really needed, I believe.

3 miles from j11 m6 or 1 mile from j1 m54

Where are you based please for pickup?

I hope it's one of these.

Deposit taken

I’ve put a sticker on it

Hello all, The March meet is tomorrow, should have said earlier, sorry, Sunday, 1st March. I’m away on holiday so won’t be able to make it, don’t let that stop you from meeting though. See you next month Thanks Rhett 7pm, 1st March at the Dudley Arms, Himley. DY3 4LB.

Meet as usual, at the Golden Pheasant roughly 7pm if you're eating, 7.30 pm or so, otherwise. See you there!

Very impressive @Davemk1 we look forward to seeing the update after you've tested at speed. I really like how you're incrementally improving your car for it's task.

I can take some this morning

Just looking at the map. A592 is closed indefinitely due to a landslip. Could be several months it says. Alternate route over kirkstone pass. Edited to add, just read the posts. It's been mentioned but still closed Landslip

Yes please, but don't need to stay over.. I'll aim to set off real early and grab brekky over there before setting off.. Excited now..

Any pics of the seats Ashley?

Winter is long here in Montana so it’s the perfect time to design and make stuff. I complete in autocross with my car and one place that needed improvement was when braking from high speed (70 mph-ish - 90 mph-ish). If I simply stomp on the brake at that speed I tend to have one of both of the front wheels lock up. This never happens at lower speeds and the brake bias seems great. I think that there’s plenty of front end lift at speed and this could be the cause of the issue. So I came up with a plan and using CAD (cardboard aided design) I made two different things - - the first is what I suppose are called fender spats. The backside of the front fenders acts like a parachute and air being parted by the nose of the car gets pushed into the backside of the wheel and fender. This certainly causes a lot of drag and I suspect it causes some lift also. So I made a cover for the backside of the fender to keep air from going into the wheel and up under the fender. The material is 1/32” carbon fiber sheet. It was fussy to make cardboard template to fit but once that was done make the real ones out of carbon sheet was pretty simple. - the second and much bigger part of the system is the splitter/canard/diffuser mounted on each side of the nose. They mount to the splitter at the bottom and at the top they bolt to a bracket that is held by the front sway bar brackets. They are made from the same 1/32” carbon sheet and epoxied together to form a hollow box. What you can’t see in the photos is that the underside of these boxes is curved upward like a diffuser. These were not easy to make but it was a fun challenge. I wanted the boxes to reduce lift at speed and to divert the air up and around all the exposed front suspension stuff to reduce drag and wind noise. And the air that spills over the sides can no longer go up and under the fender creating drag and lift. I just drove the car for the first time with everything in place and I’m very pleased and there are a few unexpected benefits. The first is that there is noticeably less wind noise coming from the front of the car. I imagine this is from so much less air passing through all the suspension bits. It’s hard to say for sure but there’s less noise any way you cut it. The second thing that I noticed once moving is that I have less air hitting me in the face. I was shocked. It feels like air flow is now higher and further off to the side which makes it miss my head. It’s a pleasant feeling really and one I never expected. It’s much more calm now just cruising. I’m very sensitive about adding weight to car and make every effort to keep the weight at the minimum for my race class (1400 lbs or 636 kg with me in the car) so making these new things as light as possible was important and worth the effort. In the end the fender back spats weigh 1.1 lbs for the pair and the two nose boxes weigh 2 pounds in total. So the whole mess added just 3.1 lbs. Not is bad. Will it help with high speed braking? I think it will but will need to wait a few months until race season starts. Fingers crossed. Thanks for looking. Dave

Sorry Glynn, can't guarantee the the weather, but be good to see you.

If it's modified, you're in.

So finally got the gear indicator sorted and tyre pressure monitoring system