The engine bits arrived yesterday and the build of engines 1 and 2 has started as I type. The bottom end’s will be assembled by students Josh and Alex under the supervision of teacher Nigel. I’m not going to be able to sleep until I’ve heard them running, which unfortunately won’t be for at least a week!

The LR4 is going to start with engine and gearbox 1 and the aim is to have a drivetrain test on the 26th Feb at Rockingham. The car will then be tuned for the correct power to weight for the championship and given a full test in March.

The Alfa went off to have it’s roll cage fitted at Q-Prep today. The engine was removed be a few of our 6th form students yesterday. We had to cut into one of the engine mounts as it wasn’t going to come off, but other than this it was a straight forward task. The plan is to fit a new cam belt and clutch whilst the body shell is away. Once back, we’ll continue to remove the sound deadening and then get the car ready for the championship.

Another addition to our collection of racing cars arrived on Thursday in the shape of an Alfa Romeo 156. It’s a well maintained example of the model with a lovely interior, so it’s a real shame that the red leather is being removed. The race is now on to get the car ready for the 2012 BRSCC Alfashop Alfa Romeo Championship. The roll cage is arriving on Tuesday and, if the students can remove the interior and sound deadening in time, we’re hoping to start fitting it on Wednesday. Once the cage is fitted the dampers are going off to Ohlins to be measured up.

The aim is to be testing the car at Rockingham on their March test day.

Christmas arrived a little late for the LR4. The new clutch and light weight flywheel arrived today from Techniclutch. They should last longer than 15 minutes! The engines are currently at MASS Racing Developments and we have set ourselves the deadline of assembling the engines and fitting engine A for the 28th January. The new rear suspension is in the design phase (still), but it won’t take long to fabricate. There are a few modifications that we are going to make to the peddle box as well.

We may start the gearbox rebuild next week, but I need a longer chat with Cassey to talk through the gearbox niggles. We also need to get Hi-Spec on to the task of making some rear calipers.

Whilst this isn’t really linked to anything other than the fact that its car related I thought that I’d add it anyway. Being desperate to get back to work after the Christmas / New Year break, we found ourselves in Yeovil on the 2nd Jan so decided to visit the Haynes Motor Museum. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let us take anything away with us, even tough the XJ220 obviously wanted to come out for a drive. We did steal some photos though.

It will be well worth a visit when their new building opens. http://www.haynesmotormuseum.com/

We collected the our latest race car project today. It’s a beautifully original 1967 Mini Cooper. The plan is to build a car capable of competing in the Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique. With our other motorsport commitments, we won’t be touching the car until July, but the project will start with a full rebuild of the shell. The final specification will be somewhere close to what I imagined would have been my perfect Mini when I was 14 years old!

I though that it was about time I started adding some education updates. I’ve put on a few images from the Rutland thursday group. They are in their second year now and are a fantastic group who are getting pretty much ready to join the real world. They were working on Cassey’s Nissan, an MGF and a Puma. Some days you’d work for free (I just need to persuade the bank that this would be a good idea). We’re hoping that a few of them will move onto our level three group in September 2012. The plan is to have an elite group of about 12 students selected from the 45 students who’ll be graduating from their level 2 this year.

The 2011 season ended on Sunday and the preparations for 2012 have started. It’s Wednesday morning and I’m watching the LR4 being taken
apart. We’ve a list of modifications that we’re going to make over the winter, but the aim is to have the car ready for 2012 before 2011 is out.

Anyway, on with the Silverstone report…………..

The aim was to get some testing done between Donington and Silverstone, but as usual this season, this wouldn’t be as simple as it sounds.

Friday

With Cassey not able to get time off work, Michael from JC Weldfab very kindly stepped in to allow us to check if the rear end adjustments had worked, and then allow us to adjust the suspension further to improve the handling. However, session one was damp with the forecast showing a dry second session. This put us a little on the back foot for qualifying, but the main thing was to get the car stable. With Michael being new to the car we opted for wets.

Session one went very well with the car being very user-friendly. It was difficult to see how fast the car was as Michael kept having to go off-line to stop the tyres from overheating, but we were promisingly not too far off the pace. On problem cam to light however and it was a problem that would affect us all weekend. The clutch was slipping.

Session two was dry. We didn’t make any adjustments from session one apart from winding the dampers up a little. The car handled well and front tyre wear and tyre pressures were perfect. The only problem was that the clutch was slipping.

We changed the clutch Friday evening and found that there was still plenty of life in the old clutch. The engine was simple producing more torque than the standard clutch could cope with. This was a big problem for us as we only had standard clutches as spares. It was going to be a weekend of clutch swaps.

Saturday

With a new clutch fitted and a neutral handling car we had high(ish) hopes for qualifying; well midfield was expected.

Cassey turned up with an hour spare, jumped in the LR4 to qualify 15^th and then went back to work. This was an even batter result when you consider the clutch was playing up and she had now only done 45 minutes in the car. We felt that the car was beginning to show its potential.

We then set about fitting our second clutch of the weekend. Unfortunately, whilst doing this we found a large crack in the gearbox casing.
This meant that we now faced a complete gearbox rebuild. Luckily, the students love this kind of thing and a fully rebuilt gearbox was fitted at 23:00. This may sound odd, but for me this was one of the most enjoyable parts of the weekend.

Sunday

Sunday was a bit of a mixed bag. The best way to summarize is that a number of issues lead to us missing race one. The big frustration was that had we had 15 minutes more time we would have made it to race one.

Race two did not look too good either as an inner CV joint disintegrated when were trying to set the brake bias. We managed to fit a new CV joint
in time and had a reasonably relaxed few minutes as the LR4 sat in the assembly area for race two. Since we had missed race one we started at the back of the grid, but this weekend was more about getting the car ready for 2012. Cassey made a good start and from lap one she began making her way through the field. It was all looking very positive and a good reward for the student’s hard work. Things didn’t run perfectly though as contact whilst passing a car knocked the wheel alignment out. However, the main problem was the 15 minutes of clutch life in a twenty minute race.

Back to now

Things are looking really good for the LR4. I had a chance to talk through the car with Cassey after the race and now have a reasonable
list of improvements to work on. It’s basically a matter of tweaking the suspension to change it from a nice neutrally balanced car into a fast car. We’re also going to have to fit a beefier clutch. Oh yes, we’re also going to do something about our race one attendance!

The LR4 finally went to the races! It seems like a long time coming, yet still a rush at the end. Here is a brief summary…….

Friday

We’d ordered a new back box for the car to allow more rear suspension travel. We’d paid extra for guaranteed delivery and it was due on Friday
morning. Friday morning came and went. I had a break from teaching at about 13:00 and so rang the exhaust company. It seems that the exhaust was delivered to someone called Alan somewhere at Rockingham at 11:30. I went back to the classroom while the search for the exhaust began.

At 19:00, we finished welding the exhaust together and set off for Donington.

Qualifying

Saturday morning started with putting the championship stickers on the car and checking the car over. There was also a text from Cassey saying that her car wouldn’t start. The car had only done a few laps at Rockingham and then had the front and rear suspension rebuilt and a new turbo, inlet manifold, intercooler and exhaust fitted and Cassey hadn’t even sat in the car. This wasn’t the best way to prepare for qualifying.

Cassey arrived and we hurriedly adjusted the seat to fit her. We were hoping that we’d put all the bad luck behind us, but a few laps into qualifying a turbo hose popped off. The feedback from Cassey was that the brakes weren’t up to much. One positive was that turn in was good so the front suspension is almost there. All things considered, it wasn’t bad for a first run for both Cassey and the car.

Sunday

Race 1

Whilst the weather forecast was good for the weekend, the reality was rain. Unfortunately it was the rain, no rain kind of rain which
makes choosing tyres difficult. We decided that wets were the way to go and that decisions proved to be the correct one.

Cassey bedded the new pads in on the out lap and things were looking good. Unfortunately, the gear linkage broke and the LR4 crawled into the pit lane and we had to retire before the start of the race.

Race 2

With a blown turbo hose and a failed gear linkage, we were wondering what would go wrong in race 2. The hope was for some reliability so
that we could get some idea about the handling of the car. We started the race, we finished the race, and we didn’t finish last. We were also a long way off the pace due to the rear end stepping out at just about every corner. We have however gained a good insight into how the car behaves and can get to work on the suspension set-up. The speed trap figures were very positive so if we can get the handling sorted, a top ten finish at Silvertsone should be our target.

We came to Donington knowing that we had an untested. With more time we would have taken the car testing and arrived at Donington race ready. Because of this it was a very frustrating weekend, but also very positive as we’ve leant a lot about a car which has a huge amount of potential. It was also fantastic to witness some outstanding driving from Cassey.

PS. We still don’t know who Alan is!

Its been a busy couple of weeks and even though the car was away for a few days this week, we’ve still been snowed under. We’ve made a couple of adjustments to the rear suspension and the SEAT Sport front balljoints finally arrived.  We have spent much of today playing around with the front suspension. There are a couple of things still to do, but hopefully the car will be on its way with us to Donington at about 5pm tomorrow. One of the tasks for tomorrow is to fit an improved rear silencer.

Anyway, back to the last week and the cars trip to JC Weldfab. We made a few modifications to the car at the beginning of last week to improve the handling. We also fitted an Audi TT inlet manifold and dropped the LR4 off at JC Weldfab to have a front mounted intercooler made. The extra workshop space was soon filled with students working on other cars. One of which was our van (engine went pop on the A1). I collected the car yesterday and must say that I’m delighted with their work.

The aim is to have an early finish tonight, but we’ll see. We’re currently (well teacher Matt is as I’m typing) remapping the car for it’s new larger injectors and intercooler. I hope that luck is on our side for the weekend.