October 2019

My S242 turbo has been inspected and it will cost me £200 + VAT to have it overhauled, and as soon as its returned I'll put it up for sale, so the replacement can be bought. Since the clocks changed at the weekend, the weather seems to have nose dived, and its now heater-on when I go out to the garage. More incentive to get the car put back together before the Christmas break when the winter blues really set in.

---

I’ve chosen the size of the replacement fuel tank, and I am going to run the same Fiesta ST180 in-tank pump that is used on the sister car. The reason why I was getting fuel surge was I believe down to the installation of the Peugeot pump in the Mygale bag tank. Looking at witness marks on the underside of the bag tank, the plastic bucket at the base of the fuel pump was pressed hard down on the bottom of the bag tank, so the inlet on the underside of the bucket, wasn’t able to get fuel 100% of the time. From the open top design, fuel could overflow in to the top of the bucket, but as the fuel level dropped inside the tank, the bucket relied more and more on the fuel entering the bucket from underneath. But with the flexible bag tank restricting fuel flow, I’m sure that this was the reason for the sporadic fuel supply on some corners.

For 2020 the fuel system will be engineered to eliminate fuel surge and will provide fuel to the direct injection rail at ~5bar. The rebuilt engine with the larger turbo will have an increased thirst for race fuel, so the tank will still have a large capacity of around 11.25 litres, or around 8Kg of fuel in real terms.

I recently spoke to Turbo Technics, and returned the S242 turbo so it can be inspected and serviced. We chatted about the replacement, and I've now decided on which turbo I'll be running in 2020.

---

The engine block was being worked on today, with the cylinder liners being replaced. The head and block will be returned to Area Six next week for the assembly. I've had to make some more decisions regarding the specification, and I need to hurry up and return the turbo to Turbo Technics so they can service it. I'm trying to work out what size of tank I can squeeze in the gap in front of the engine, there's not a great deal of space to play with. Pete's tank was 300mm x 200mm x 200mm tall, and he still suffers from fuel surge. I'm still toying with getting away with the in-tank fuel pump and running an external pump fed from a bottom collector.

---

The floor has been removed, pop rivet by pop rivet, and the fuel tank is now on the garage floor, so I can start looking at replacing it. The engine block and cylinder head are at the machine shop, the engine should be back in November.
This is an analysis of the Run Off finishing positions, vs the class of the cars that ended up in those positions. The championship is still dominated by the V8 cars in the ULSS class, and the 2.0 cars in the 2000SS class. The 1600SST EcoBoost cars need to work harder next year to improve finishing positions.

---

I finished 8th this year. Well I actually tied for 7th place with 78 points, but I was bumped down to 8th by the other driver's higher finishing positions in a couple of rounds. Never mind. The 5th to 8th places were covered by just 5 points, it was that close this year.
My congratulations to John Graham for winning the 2019 championship. Couldnt have gone to a nicer bloke. And he's long overdue the win.
Other news, my Mountune engine and head are at the machine shop and the Area6 engine build is officially under way. The rebuilt engine should be ready for the dyno in November. I need to chase Life up in getting the ECU wiped, I'm still waiting to find out the price! And I need to order the larger turbo. I cleaned the intercooler out at the weekend, thankfully there were no metal pieces inside, just lots of engine oil.

---

Ian@Area 6 reports that the cylinder head is cracked in two places, between the plug hole and the exhaust valves on Cyl1 and 4, and the exhaust valves were coated in aluminium. It really did fail quite spectacularly.


I sent the data from the Knockhill weekend over to Sam at Life, and he's has had a look at the data for me and says there is no 'smoking gun' that he can see in the data. I've agreed with Life that they are going to wipe the ECU to remove the Ford ID, and all the remaining security settings, and they are also going to supply a 1600 EcoBoost map, which means I can take the car somewhere else for the tune. The ECU will be returned with the paid-for features, plus I'll have access to all the other config, which is handy as I'll need to setup the data stream for the dashboard. That'll be fun.

I'm not going to be at Anglesey this weekend, so as I'm missing the final two rounds of the BSC, I'll drop from 5th to maybe 7th or 8th place overall. Thats really disappointing, since I was hoping to finish in the top 5 this year. Its not a great return for all the spend, a number on your car. I'm runner up in the Saxon Cup, runner up in the Britannia Cup, runner up in the 1600T class, and unlike last year, where I had a trophy, this year, diddly squat. But I have some good memories, I improved on every event, with new personal bests at every round. I qualified for every Top 12 run off. And I had a few spins along the way. I won my first Javelin event at Croft, landing the FTD. The low point (lower even than blowing up the engine) was the crash at Abingdon, where the rear suspension collapsed on the afternoon course, when I hit the same culvert I hit last year, resulting in the same retirement whilst leading the event. In 2019 I made big improvements, averaging >2s quicker every where I went and breaking records, but I let myself down with a couple of poor performances, which I've only myself to blame for. The car got better and better after I re-fitted the rear anti roll bar, and once the front wing support bracket was replaced with a solid version, the aero started to work properly.
Lets see how much quicker the car will be in 2020 ;-)