Monthly Archives: January 2012

Just the two Jon’s today.  We started the day attacking the Rivet Racing IT.  The first job was an easy one mounting the web camera to the wall of the garage.  Then it all started to go a little bit wrong.  First of all getting the wireless repeater to work required witch craft.  We could get the repeater working, but not the main router or the other way around but never both!  In the end we got there but hit a stumbling block in trying to work out the stream relaying so it could be served out from the data centre…  Humph!

Tail between our legs we decided to seek solace (and lunch) at the pub.  A couple of pints and a fish finger sandwich each later we were fed up with IT and decided to do some work on the car.

The afternoon was good and productive and we finished up a few more carbon panels, the evening ended with beer taking priority over the car

An impromptu get together of James, Paul and Jon S following some unexpected evenings out of partners and a change of plan for Paul’s evenings entertainment.  So in true team style they both volunteered to invade the garage and carry on with getting some build done.

It ended up being a bit of an epic nights work finishing up at midnight but we got a lot of fiddly bits done.  James and I managed to get the rear panel blank cut out and fitted up which took hours of trial and error to get a good fit, end result look really good though.

While we were doing that Paul painstakingly removed the rear wishbone bushes to get rid of some more powder coat to see if we could getter a better fit.  Again all the hard work has paid off with the fit being far looser to cut down pre-load but still without any lateral movement thanks to the nylon bushings.  Managed to damage a couple of the bushes removing them but no problem they will be with us shortly next week.

Pictures to follow as they are currently all on Paul’s camera…

Another build day was scheduled but this time it felt a little different.  With the chassis returned it was the first day that the we would actually be building the car rather than demolishing it or welding seemingly endless pieces of steel to it!

So Paul and I were the first to get going as for some unknown reason we had decided to start at 0930 on a Sunday morning…

Paul managed to waste at least two hours being prised away from his cups of tea…

But finally we got under way and decided to take the easy pickings first.  The front suspension setup had been removed in one piece so we thought we would just bolt that all back up, et woila…  We had not planned for the powder coat factor!

So we found that everything that came apart originally no longer went back into the same hole as it had about 2mm of powder coat on it…  Cue some frantic sanding of mounting brackets.

After all the powder coat was removed on the mounting faces we tried again, still problems of unfathomable resolve.  Then the eureka moment, some of the top hat inserts were smaller than others, see:

Blink and you wouldn’t notice, so we got the calipers out and measured all the mounting bracket widths, china-graph pencil in hand they were all marked up and the smallest ones has the smallest inserts used on one side.  As if by magic the whole thing was assembled very easily everything falling into place correctly.  Front roll bar was also assembled and everything left loose.

The car has front suspension again!

By this point a couple of the other guys had arrived James and Chris F.  After the resounding success on the front suspension they embarked on the rear bushes.  More powder coat removal needed.  While this was all going on I though I would give the new press ago to get the main rotor bearings out.  The bearing tools from pineapple racing are great bits of kit and a fraction of the price of the Mazda SST.

Wasn’t really expecting 10 tonnes to be needed but they did let go in the end, pressed the main bearings out of the stationary gears as well.  More than happy with the press even if I did need to get it out of the autosport show in Toby’s pram!  Sorry Toby…

The guys were hard at work on the rear suspension.

While Chris F had embarked on making the templates for all the carbon panelling we needed on the chassis.  Never have I seen such a happy chap armed with nothing more that an old cardboard box and a sharpie marker pen!

Templates in hand Nigel and Chris F got the jigsaw out and started chopping up the home made carbon sheets.  The first attempt left a lot to be desired but they soon go the hand of learning top from bottom and churned out the front bulk head sheets.  One thing we did notice is the carbon sheet we have manufactured is about twice as thick as the aluminium panels that came off the car…  The layup I used was carbon, carbon, foam, carbon, carbon and was really stiff but maybe a bit too much for the panelling.  We did however do a comparison with these sheets:

And discovered that regardless of the over engineering the carbon panel with the large grommet was 150g compared with the ali panel at 190g.  So no problems although doing it again I would not use the foam core in the chassis panels just floor pan.

As you can see the new panels look a million times better that the battered old ones that came off.  More panels where made and we have most of the front end done and ready for gluing…  No rivets allowed here ;)

While this was all happening I thought I would take the easy job and re-assembled the pedal box.

It was a long old day but the progress was massive, the quality of the work everyone is doing is great.  Things are coming together…

A special mention must go to Jonny Mac who did turn up although spent the whole day dealing with support calls for work on my dining room table!

 

Hopefully the facebook app should make the blog and facebook page all join up….  Fingers crossed!

The chassis has been returned today as well as the rear wishbones.  All have been sand blasted and powder coated.  The results look stunning, let the rebuild begin!  A very special thanks to Andy who has been excellent in turning this around in 10 days.

I have some pictures back of the fuel injectors.  They have been flow tested and ultrasonically cleaned by L.E Cramer in Watford, Herts.

This is what I sent to them:

They will be coming back to me looking like this:

Apart from them looking pretty I know that they will be within flow specification and the spray pattern correct.  Injectors are often overlooked and can cause no end of problems; idle stability, lean flatspots, lean knock leading to detenation.

It only costs £18/injector to have them tested, cleaned and re-tested for complete peace of mind.

Give Nick or Pip a call at L.E. Cramer – 01923 254318

Well the parts have starting rolling in. I have received the throttle body from the US and it looks like a nicely engineered bit of kit!

A great day had by all – The main aim of the day was to get the RX8 engine stripped down and inspect the mode of failure.  Full gallery

Work was slow to start as we descovered removing a flywheel bolt @ 300 lbf ft is not easy:

First we tried with using a traditional approach with a couple of breaker bars…But we destroyed the smaller of the two

So we manufactured a flywheel stopper using a handy gate hinge we had hanging around the garage.  Although a galant effort by Craig and Josh (After applying the correct saftey gear) still no joy as we could not stop the engine rotating.

So next plan was to apply some fat buggers to the top of the engine.  Cue Chris F and Jon…

We even drafted in the big guns, Suzie even had the safety’s off

Finally the nut was beaten after Josh told us all to stop tickling it and grow some.

At which point the dismantling began, pictures speak a thousand.

So after a bit of head scratching and inspecting the internals it became clear that the engine had suffered a huge stationary gear bearing failure.  Maybe RX8 owner really should keep the oil topped up…  Oh well more engines for us

And that was that one 13b-msp engine in pieces…

Time to order some rebuild parts one thinks.

At the weekend, we set up a webcam. We are working on making it viewable on the website, so you can tune in on build days and keep up to date with the latest action… watch this space!

The first post of 2012!

A man in a van turned up tonight and picked the chassis up.  It is off to be blasted and painted should be back with us next week.  Bring on the weekend of engine breakdown and general cleaning of bits.