August 2013
Had a great day at the ASDA 'On your marks' charity event on Saturday, where my kids had rides in Lotus cars, Rally cars, I had a go in a Maserati and a TVR Tuscan V8. The best part was the OffRoad course, in a £1000 Landrover Discovery 2.5, which went through deep water and up and down gradients I'd never had dreamed a 4x4 could get up. I want a Disco, its a shame they're so thirsty as it'd make a lovely daily driver. Stories of 50 miles on £10 of fuel do put me off though.
Removed the front air-dam and chucked all the stones away that had become lodged inside from the last outing to Lydden in May.
The front suspension looks to be ok, so I'll focus on connecting the ECU up to the Gearbox sensor.
I just need to wire in a second sureseal connector, so I can unplug the sensor (should I need to do so) from the ECU wiring loom.
After about 15 fittings, I now have the rear door fitting nicely against the wing support brackets. I had to file four slots in total, in the edges of the glassfibre door, two each side so it would fit flush the door rubber. Now I can finally start work on the front end of the car. I may turn the endplates around so the carbon side is against the inside of the wing, and spray the outside in Sumburst Red. Just an idea.
I've fitted both of the end plates. The formula I found (that determines the optimum height of end plates) worked out that they needed to be 0.75M tall, which is totally impractical, so I've just drilled and fitted them without trimming their lengths. I may radius the corners, and I certainly need to black out the rear and the edges of the plates.
The A4 carbon sheets turned up from ebay. Its not true pre-preg carbon, its just a sheet of carbon bonded to a 3mm thick sheet of fibreglass, but externally, it looks like carbon, so for the price, it doesnt really bother me. I've removed the original end plates from the wing, and discovered that the wing is actually solid, but for a couple of hollow tubes that run across the entire width. Its a nicely made wing for sure. I've done some reading up on the shape of end plates, and from what I understand, the rear tip of the wing needs to be at approximately the same height as the top of the end plate, and the plates dont need to extend downwards too far otherwise they cause drag. There is a ratio of width to height that needs to be considered when measuring them up. I'll cut some carboard out and try a few different shapes, and when I've settled on one that looks right I'll cut the two A4 sheets to size and attach them back on the wing.
The 19mm diameter bosses turned up from Altiss Engineering on Friday afternoon, and Nigel's done another great job of them. He made me two sets, one set of 35mm long, and the other 40mm. He has drilled them all out and tapped them to M6 thread. I've fitted the set of 40mm bosses to start with and the wing seems to fit really nicely inside the brackets. So I think I'll stick with these for the time being.
The Scooby has started playing up in the last two weeks. I've seen three times now the P0600 Serial Communications Link error on the ODBii port, which suggests that the CAN bus on the car has had a glitch. On Friday, the engine warning lamp came on again, with Err HC on the odometer, and the water temperature off the scale, and both the engine and stability warning lamps illuminated. Not only did the engine go in to limp mode, but I also lost the power steering. I use the Torque package on Android to read the error codes, and this also allows me to clear them from the ECU. So thats what I did, and after restarting the engine, the power steering came back again, and the warning lamps all extinguised. However on Saturday morning I found that the warning lamps had come on again, so I had to perform another ECU Clear. Its odd, she never did this before the accident two weeks ago. I wonder if the impact has made any electrical connections come loose behind the front bumper.
I've ordered a couple of A4 sheets of 3mm thick carbon fibre from ebay. These will be profiled and bolted to the ends of the rear wing. The idea is that they help contain the flow of air over and around the wing. The existing end plates at present dont do a great deal. The next article for Retro Ford magazine has been penned, and its a few words appropriately enough on Aero. There's a picture of the Fiesta in this months (August 2013) Retro Cars Magazine, on their report on the Apex Festival at Lydden in May. I'll need to get a copy for my collection.
