OT: Going Racing.. (2015-10-15) - Season Over - 7th :(
Turbo Mini Forums

Just finished a couple of quick jobs on the car. I re-fitted the now serviced fire extinguisher, fixed the indicators and adjusted my harnesses (I had too much excess harness on my lap!). I also gave the car a post-trackday once over and it seems OK - it's got a small oil leak, but I knew about that beforehand.

Also, there was a great photographer at the trackday and he took some nice shots of the car on track.


A few pics from the 'tog (SportStock - http://sportstock.photoshelter.com/gallery...000sbBEAUqM1bQ)








A few pics of today's messing around:

Today I replaced the knackered 'cups' that sit behind the front hub/bearing assembly, as they were rotten and rubbing on the bearing causing a nasty noise.

I sent my injectors to InjectorTune for a clean last week, and today re-fitted them to the car. Top work, and a marked improvement according to their paperwork.

A few pics:

4 weeks until the racing starts, and we've now been told what mandatory stickers we have to fit. I don't have them yet, but I do know what space is mine.

With that in mind, I've thrown some vinyl at the car. I made a total hash of sticking it on, but it'll do for now! - it looks OK from a few steps away

Still need to fit the offical stickers when they arrive (may not even be until the race meeting) as well as my race numbers.

Looking good :)

www.shag.no

The mandatory stickers arrived, so I put them on. I also tidied up the interior a bit more, and gave the car a final checkover. I think we're ready for the first round.

If I had more money, I'd replace the suspension, fit rear discs, and buy a new set of tyres for the first race, but as it stands I am now skint, and it'll have to do as-is.

A few pics:

Took the car to Donington Park yesterday for a trackday with Mr Fenton and friends.

Overall it performed pretty well - it's obviously not a front runner, but it didn't feel hard to drive, didn't throw up any nasty handling surprises and the more time I spend in the car the more confidence I build.

The main issue is that every time I park it after being out on track it leaves a 4" oil puddle under the bell housing.. not sure if I'll make the race this weekend now as I think that means crank case oil seal, and I don't have the talent to sort that myself!

The drive home from Donington was fun, too, with torrential rain..

Here's a few pics:
















And a couple of videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdwBkB2k6Mk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhqyc0r-Q2A

Edited by AlexB on 24th Apr, 2014.

Bad luck with the oil leak - scrutineers wont pass that if they see it.

You could always try wynns engine stop leak as a quick fix. It contains additives that both resoftens hardened oil seals and makes them swell up a tadge.

Many thanks to Mr Fenton Esq, without his help I would not have made it to round 1 of the series. A hero!

There were 30 entrants for our series this weekend.

Qualifying: 18th with a 1:29.8, The lap was 2 seconds faster than the one I did on Wednesday on a trackday.

Race 1: Dry and sunny. Over-drove the car (worked it too hard, broke to late, etc) and finished 17th.

Race 2: Wet and greasy. Kept it on the black stuff, lots of fun slides and overtakes, finished 12th.


Full weekend report here:
http://www.alexballracing.co.uk/post/84112...omplete-i-had-a

Good work! Sounds like a lot of fun.

Well done.

Race 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzBkWXlS4kE
Race 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz4RZRqt8m8

good drive alex just watched race 2. did the guy in the green car hit you he came pretty close to side swiping you.
good dive under brakes to take that guy in the purple car.

well done, keep having fun

everybody likes free stuff

Nah, he didn't hit me but it was bloody close.

This is his on-board - you can see how close he got! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ewu20sV3Uk

I spent the day today checking the car over, trying to find the source of a knock that you can hear in the videos as I go down craner curves and doing a couple of other small jobs.

The knock was very similar to a noise I had at Abingdon, which turned out to be the prop-shaft guibo (rubber doughnut) and replacing it solved it completely. I was hoping not to have to replace it again (as they are £100+vat from BMW) but this time it seems fine and crack free.

The only thing that looked out of sorts was a lose bolt on the bracket that holds the prop shaft centre bearing in place, which was loose. The thread wouldn’t allow me to tighten it, so I re-tapped and replaced the bolt.

I also noticed that my exhaust was sitting very close to the rear subframe and could well have been hitting on that, so I lowered it slightly.

The next job was to cut a bit of the bonnet away after Charlie Brisker, a competitor, advised it might save an argument with a scrutineer when they test my safety pulls. Easy enough - cut, sand-back the sharp edge, and paint with red Hammerite. Not pretty, but it’ll do. I also greased up the lines a bit, and they seem much better. I’ll give them another check a few days before we set off for Rockingham to make sure they still move smoothly.

At Donington I was more focused on just getting round the track than being anywhere close to minimum weight, and I think I was about 50kg over. This time I hope to get a little closer.

The car with half a tank of fuel, the passenger seat, and me with my gear on was 1130kg. The minimum weight is 1125kg, so I plan to remove the passenger seat, add some ballast, and remove some fuel. Solid ballast should prove less of a handling handicap than a sloshing fuel load.

I removed the passenger seat, and set about finding something to use as Ballast instead of the “full fuel tank method” which I employed previously. The easiest solution looks to be a “Vibration Damper” from an E30 Cabriolet - essentially it’s just a big 22kg lump of iron, with 4 holes to allow it to be mounted. Perfect! I’ll find one and mount it in the passenger foot-well with the correct bolts as mandated by the regulations. (I left the seat rails in place as they are nice and heavy, and low down so won’t do any harm).

I also gave it a clean and a bolt-check so there are fewer jobs to do before the next round at the end of May.

I had the car weighed at X-Sport, a local race prep garage. The car is 1031kgs with a 1/4 tank of fuel, no driver and no ballast. I need it to be 1125kgs at the end of the race with me in the car. With me at a rough 70kg kitted, I still need to find 24kg.

The easiest way is to add ballast, and that's exactly what I've done. I've added 23kg of lead, in the form of an E30 Cabriolet Vibration Damper. It's mounted, as per the regs, in the passenger area with some hardware from my friend Phil - a top job too - bespoke 80mm washers for the top, and 40mm ones for the bottom. I need to get some slightly shorter bolts, but the current ones will do for now.

I will make up the rest of the weight using fuel, hopefully not going under weight at the end of the race! Eventually I will fit a swirl pot in the boot and that'll also take up some of the weight.

Only a few days now until Rockingham!

Where does that vibration damper originally fit?

Under the boot floor, I think

I've only just seen this thread Alex - its brilliant, I love the choice of car as well!

My race report is here:

http://www.alexballracing.co.uk/post/86884...ionship-held-at

All my race videos from this weekend:

(VERY!) Wet qualifying for TTRS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sTnRjWu88U

Qualifying for PBMW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swAbB0PPiGk

PBMW Race 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb8B6V1Ec9Q

PBMW Race 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3_K-azEEc4

Many thanks (again!) to Tom Fenton who made the trip down and helped with the spannering. I will need to start paying him soon!!

Edited by AlexB on 26th May, 2014.

Looks great! It's shouting nurburgring to me!! The Germans will.love it!!

A few photos from Rockingham:

What does Toyo tire of? Sorry I'll go and sit in the corner...

I've spent the last week or so taking the rear of the car apart. I noticed a knock from the rear end, and it turned out to be the rear trailing arm bushes. I thought I may as well replace the drum brakes with discs while I had the rear arms off, and got to work.


I bought a rear disc setup from a guy on E30Z.
It looked alright at first glance, but as soon as I started looking closer it was obvious that the calipers would need rebuilding, and the handbrake bits would need replacing, so that was the first job.
I also decided to rebuild my front calipers too since it's easy and cheap.














After the calipers were re built and painted, I removed the bushes from the arms, and fitted the new ones.




I then got to work fitting the rear end to the car. It's a funny job - it's easy in theory, but everything is a bugger to reach, and there are loads of things to remove. Handbrake cables are a bastard as they rust in place. Brake line connections round. Then you get close to the end and you realise one of the arm bolts will foul on the fuel tank and the beam needs to be dropped anyway.. I wish I'd done that to start with as it would have been easier!
Re-fitting was easy enough as I knew where everything went.












I then bled the brakes (with the help of Nicky!) and the pedal is now nice and solid.. finally!


Next job - replace the gearbox and linkage.

I’ve now finished the gearbox and linkage swap.

Getting the box out was easy enough - after raising the front of the engine the bolts aren’t too hard to reach (with the starter motor being the exception!). Pulling the box free took a little bit of effort, but once it was free it was easily dragged out from under the car (with only about 2mm spare before hitting the underside of the car!) and then taken away to loot the shifter parts from.



I then gave the new gearbox an oil change, cleaned it up a bit, and went to re-fit. This is a real pig of a job compared to the removal. Getting the splines lined up and the box properly in place took me hours. I worked alone on the car, and finished fitting it at 11:30pm in the pitch black. 10 minutes after I finished was the biggest thunder storm I’ve ever heard, so I suppose I got off lightly.

Anyway, the day after I finished fitting the ancillaries such as the starter, the clutch slave and the rear support, and then I set on the gear linkage and short shifter.



This is where I hit a slight snag - I followed a guide online for refurbishing the linkage and it had missed a few parts out that I wanted to replace - I got on the phone to Mark at Cotswold BMW and ordered the missing bushes.

While I was waiting for the parts I spent a bit of time freeing up the suspension, and lowered the car about 1 or 2 cm all round. I will get it corner weighted soon, so freeing it up was mainly for that, but I knew I wanted it to sit a bit lower anyway.

The parts for the shifter linkage arrived today so I fitted them to the car. Changing gear now feels so much nicer!! The gearbox and shifter linkage have made probably the biggest difference to the car out of anything I’ve done to date. It feels brand new.





After fitting the linkage I re-attached the propshaft and exhaust, and then bolted the wheels on and took the car round the block to see if everything worked. Nothing fell off, so I’ll take it for a longer drive tomorrow and see how it feels.

So far, so good.

It’s nice to have the car back on it’s wheels again. Also; weirdly the car feels TINY now it’s not up on stands - really low.