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Wheel colour change for the summer. Satin black to satin bronze. Think it looks good against the green

Out of hibernation

See you tomorrow

put my rollcage on yesterday the lads at my local meet said it would be much safer than my rac bar not so sure about that banged my head on it 3 times already just doing some work on the interior.

Had a pop up to Oulton Park today for a look about. This Westfield caught my attention, talking to the owner Quentin, turns out it had been in storage for over 10years and was last raced in the BARC Westfield championship.

That will be an awesome trip. There is a small group of mixed kits located across the central belt between Glasgow, Edinburgh and Fife. Three Westfields, MK, Raptor etc that meet for up for drives now and again. Maybe we could meet up at some point if everything aligned. A run up to Braemar would be awesome. All the best Andy

As always in life — “it depends.” A roll cage without a helmet and proper padding foam can actually be quite unsafe. On the other hand, in the event of a rollover, if the safety belts are tightened really, really tight, it does work — see Westfield Cup Racing at Zandvoort.

Weather forecast remains favourable, so this is on, yeay

some little treats for my westie.

The first of this years coffee mornings at GBS Cars is on Saturday 7th March starting at 10am. Great British Sportscars and Kitcar spares Maun Way Boughton Ollerton Nottinghamshire NG22 9ZD

Today we did a 150 mile Historic Rally around Cheshire, including 10 special stages, four of which were on the Oulton Park rally circuit. Good fun, but pretty intense. The Westfield was too new to enter, so we used the Spitfire. Good job too, judging by the number of times we grounded!

Ok it looks like we will be available now, so we will be there for set up to strip down and anything else in between. Two adults camping all weekend.

One week to go. I've not heard back from the Motorist since I was told that we are in front of the restaurant, turn first right after entering. There should be marshells on to direct you, just say you're with the Westfields and they'll direct you. I'm hoping to get there for 9. Hopefully the weather will be good and not raining. See you there.

Anyone else joining us at GBS tomorrow? The home-made cakes are excellent!

Suns out

Holme Moss Summit a SEiGHT and a Westus

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

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

A pair of new wiper blades for me, ordered from Kitcardirect a couple of days ago and arrived today. Looks like they shipped from MK sports cars, is there a link or just drop shipped direct from their supplier? Anyway, fitted already and much better than my old ones which could be classed as ‘smearers’ rather than’wipers’

First time out of the garage since before Christmas. On it's new tyres too.

Couple from yesterday’s track day taken by my brother….

Not for me Working