September 2023
26Sep
Ready for Anglesey
I've completed a couple of jobs on the car, one of which was to replace the pair of blue battery isolator buttons that sit on each side of the car. I have had a couple of instances where the ignition has suddenly turned itself off, not during a run, thank goodness, but when the engine was idling. So I've replaced them both, with ip68s versions, which are waterproof to a depth of 1 meter, so I'm hoping not to have any more problems. They are push to break switches, so if there is a fault in the wiring, the power cant be turned on. And of course, if there is a bad connection in the switches when the power is on, the power will turn off! Which is what happened twice when the power cut off during the warmup cycle, which I decided must be a dicky switch. They were £20 each from Radio Spares, which is the going rate for fully water proof switches.McMurtry guest driver, Alex Summers, is in my sights this weekend, driving his new P4t hillclimb car, and I'm very hopeful of beating him; that will be something to tell the grand kids :D
Below is the running order, and I'm the first car on track on Saturday, as the BSC goes first, and we start at 09:30AM, and on Sunday we start at 9:00AM. I was expecting Alex to be the first out not the last, as his car is above 2000cc, and the most powerful cars in Class 5E normally go first. I wonder how he'll cope with no tyre warming.
25Sep
Blyton success
I won three out of the four run offs at the weekend, one on Saturday on the Eastern layout, and two on Sunday on the Outer layout. I also won FTD both days. The Mygale required no attention, I just added fuel and air, and drove the socks off her. What a great weekend. I should have easily won the second run off on Saturday, but for some reason I pulled 6th gear on the approach to the finish line, which cost me at least 2/10ths with the extra downshift in to the corner. I need to stop giving wins away.I'm just 2 points behind the leader, and require one more win to draw level. Goulding had an electrical fire, numerous gear shift issues, then failed to qualify for one run off on Sunday after he slid off the circuit. The pressure is now back on him to widen the gap between us.
Boy was I knackered at the end of Sunday, but two days of very high pressure on me were definitely worth it.
It was great to catchup with so many friends, and to see Glynn Sketchley win the National B FTD both days. His times were quicker than some of the National A drivers.
The next event is Anglesey this weekend, and I've a few more improvements to make to the engine calibration. I reached 145 mph on the approach to the finish line on the Eastern circuit. That was pretty exciting from where I was sitting.
I now have nine run off wins, and can drop one more 3rd place; after that, only wins will increase my score, and of course bonus points.
Results from Saturday here
Results from Sunday here
Onboard Video from Saturday
Onboard Video from Sunday
19Sep
Blyton ready
I've refitted the SWA potentiometer and disabled logging for it in the ECU. I then spent a while checking everything over, and the car is as ready as it can be for Blyton this weekend. There were 10 BSC drivers entered, but it looks like 2 or 3 may not be going, so we could be down to 7 or 8 drivers.
I booked a garage for Anglesey last night, luckily I was quick on the draw, as the booking form opened at 8pm, and it said there were already only 7 garages remaining, and by 8:03pm they had all gone! I am sharing my garage with Rob Tonge and championship winner John Graham :-)
The car used 7.114 litres of fuel on Saturday at Pembrey, and 7.481 on Sunday. So far this year, she's used a total of 102.9 litres, and covered 169.45 miles, at an average of 7.42 miles per gallon. When you consider the 102 RON fuel costs almost £7 a litre, thats around £669, which is £3.95 a mile! Ouch.
I have kept a spreadsheet for this year, of all the costs, and I'm now over £7000 including all the ferry costs, garages, one set of tyres plus a front tyre and inner rim, the entry fee's etc. And I havent even looked at days I've not been able to invoice due to having to miss work for travel. Thats an expensive hobby. But can you put a price on having a bit of fun at the weekends eh :-)
18Sep
Steering wheel angle errors
The steering wheel angles reported by the ECU have been somewhat erratic recently, and I've had to re-zero the sensor from LifeCAL and ignore it, as I rarely use SWA in any of the analysis that I do. But I wanted to understand why the values were inconsistent, so on Saturday I took the potentiometer off the front of the steering rack, and turned it, and the ECU reported the analogue voltage was changing accurately; so I had a look at the mechanism in the front of the rack that the sensor push fits in to, and it turns out the mechanism to turn the pot, was loose. No wonder I was getting odd SWA angles reported. I contacted James Abbott to ask if he remembered what Radical had done to the rack to fit the pot, but he couldnt remember. He thinks its just a push fit in to the pinion on the rack gearbox. I'll have a quick look again, but I dont want to disturb the rack, so if it cant be fixed for the final four events, I'll just refit the potentiomer and turn off the logging of SWA in the config.Speaking of turning off channels, I deleted around a dozen channels that I no longer need to log. I also increased the sample frequency of RPM to 100Hz during High Load, and TPS1 is now logged at 20Hz continuously. These channels are used when doing deep dives on the data, and werent being logged at a high enough frequency to allow a proper diagnosis.
The GPS board is reinstalled, and it works, so I've now got acceleration data, gps coordinates etc restored.
14Sep
GPS board - replaced
I've swapped out the 10Hz GPS board for the spare, and its working, with no CAN errors. Soon as the conformal coating arrives from Radio Spares I'll water proof it and fit it back on the car. I was offered a 100Hz box, but to be honest, it really doesnt need that level of accuracy, as none of the systems on the car rely on GPS or acceleration data, so I'd just end up logging data for the sake of it.13Sep
Next up - Blyton Park
The pressure is now really on for me to produce some more wins and class records. To that end, there are more changes to make to optimise the car's performance.I'm now settled on the traction control settings. The changes at Pembrey oddly really upset the system, and caused it to take too much torque away, or rather, made it less tolerant of the errors in wheel sizes. During Saturday, after the first two runs, where TC was causing some issues, I remeasured the circumferences of the Pirelli and Avon tyres. The best way I could find to do that, given I'm at a race track, was to use a length of Gorilla tape believe it or not, wrapped around the outside of the tyre. The tape doesnt stretch, so if you can place it around the circumference, and cut it where the two ends meet, then take it off the tyre and stick it on the garage door pillar, the length can be measured very accurately using a steel tape measure.
I did that first for the Pirelli 250 rear, and the length was exactly 1800mm. I then wrapped the tape around the Avon 250mm rear, and that was also 1800mm.
Moving on to the fronts, I wrapped the tape around the Pirelli front, and trimmed the length to make the two ends meet again, and measured it at 1700mm. So, on to the Avon front, and that came in at 1650mm. Thats different to the sizes I measured when I first did it at the start of the year. So I then reprogrammed the dry tyre sizes in the ECU. I had them set to 1695mm front and 1815mm rear. I changed it to 1700 front and 1800 rear.
Why do they need to be accurate? The calculated Wheelspin % is used by traction control to determine how much wheelspin there is. If the programmed tyres sizes dont match the sizes of the physical tyres on the car, then as you are driving along, the wheelspin % (which is the difference between the speed of the front and the speed of the rear wheels) is going to trigger traction events, if, the wheelspin % is higher than the wheelspin % target, which is derived from several tables, the traction control switches, etc. So I aim for anywhere from 2% (min) to 15% (max) wheelspin against speed. As the speed of the car increases, so does the wheelspin % target. So at low speeds, the amount of wheelspin allowed is minimal, and as the speed increases, the amount of allowed wheelspin increases.
So what I was getting, was a large error in the actual wheelspin % vs wheelspin % target, and with the more aggressive Torque reduction clamp being trialled, that meant the traction control was interfering with power delivery, which can be heard on the Youtube video where I tried to select a less agressive setting after setting off, and selected TC Off without realising, and I span off when 550Nm of torque was delivered to the rear tyres.
By adjusting the tyre circumferences, it did reduce the interference; however, for my FTD run on Sunday in the dry, I fully reverted to my original Torque Reduction Clamp settings, and the car was over 2 seconds faster than Pete Goulding in second place, so it goes to show that it is needed, and has to be working properly, all of the time. Lesson learnt. The car is incredibly fast, but it needs all the toys on, and working, all of the time, to get the most from it.
Based on the other changes made to the calibration, the car was certainly accelerating faster than before, and looking at the data from Pembrey there is scope to improve this further. For Blyton, leaving traction control alone, I will be running some other changes to optimise the performance again. I will be simplifying the number of available traction control switch settings, to avoid any further mishaps. On Saturday I reprogrammed the Traction Control Gain Tuning to remove 0.0 for switch position 12, which means I can no longer turn traction control off, but based on the experience from Pembrey, that really is the last thing I want anyway.
The 10Hz GPS module has been removed from the car, and is being bench tested. I do have a spare, and if the unit has completely died, I'll swap them over. The data doesnt affect the performance of the car, as I use a seperate Yaw angle sensor for the Traction Control, but it is still useful for drawing track maps and for showing acceleration and braking forces.
12Sep
Pembrey FTD video
11Sep
Pembrey report
That was a very hot, and tiring weekend, which netted me a single 2nd place to allow me to drop a 3rd, a third which was of no use at all, and an FTD on Sunday on the only dry run on a rain interrupted day.Saturday
I was trying new traction control paramaters on Saturday, which ended up interfering too much with the power output, and sadly on the first run off, I selected what I thought was the least aggressive setting to allow for more wheelspin; unfortunately it was the Off position on the switch, which I hadnt realised until I nailed the throttle on the exit of the Brooklands hairpin, and the engine sent all 550Nm to the rear wheels, and car instantly lit the rear tyres and spat me off the track on to the grass. Doh. That was my first run off fail of the year. On the second run off, with the original settings restored, and the switch reprogrammed to prevent any further accidental turning off of traction control, I was 2nd place earning me 24 points. So not a great day, oddly everyone struggled to get near to their PBs and were seconds off the class records. The track was very heavily rubbered up, from a recent drifting event, and it didnt improve the grip levels one bit. But the new Avon tyre worked far better than the one it replaced, and in general the Avons worked really well.I almost had FTD from my first timed run, but was pipped by 0.15s on the final run to finish 2nd fastest overall.
Sunday
The day was interrupted by rain, with on and off drizzle in the morning, and I was trying the new traction control settings again. I was second fastest on the first timed run (qualifier) and third on the first run off. So no points dropped there then. We then had the third timed run in the dry, and I reverted the TC settings to my original ones. This run was on Avon slicks, and I finished first, over 2s faster than 2nd place, and the run bagged me the FTD for the day.Halfway through the third timed runs, it rained heavily, and even accounting for the 1 hour lunch break, everyone was on out wets for the second run off, and I had to be 1st or 2nd place to drop a 2nd or 3rd place score.
Simon Bainbridge was the odds on favourite to win; however the Chronos had suffered a diff failure on the first run off, so he didnt run with the rest of the batch at the start of the third timed runs when it was dry.
Simon's car was repaired during the lunch break, and he was allowed to do his delayed qualifying third timed run in the wet, immediately before the Run Off at 2pm and quite rightly so given the car was repaired.
Simon completed a very quick sighting lap, and knew exactly how much grip there was, and joined the back of the pack, ready for his run off. He was easily fastest on his second run, taking the win by some margin. Same with championship leader Goulding, his wet run off run was baulked by Simon Wallis who he caught on his second lap, so he was given a rerun, and again, the benefit of knowing the track surface and with hot wets, he capitalised on the opportunity, went even faster, and came second.
Maybe we should all qualify and then do the run off back to back in the same conditions? Wait a minute, isnt that similar to the old run off format, two runs back to back?
So when I went out, I decided it wasnt worth the risk of pushing for second. If I'd have finished 3rd or lower, then I would have scored zero, so I just drove the circuit, improving as I went around, and returned to the garage.
With the next four rounds over four consecutive weekends, I needed the car to be in one piece so I can complete all remaining runs. And going off in the wet for potentially finishing 3rd or lower, just wasnt something I wanted to risk.
The car was again mechnanically faultless all weekend. But the GPS module appears to have failed, with numerous CAN BUS errors, so I have no GPS Speed or coordinates or acceleration data, so I'll swap the board out for the spare.
So FTD and 2nd fastest overall, wasnt too bad in the end; its just a shame I only managed one point all weekend. Thats the issue when you are looking to drop 3rd and 2nd places. I need firsts and seconds to improve. Not impossible, but the weather, and circumstances conspired against me. I will try again at Blyton to win some more run-offs. There are 12 more goes, and I need four wins to close the gap to the leader. At Knockhill we are joined by circuit specialist Stewart Robb, who has registered for the BSC so he could take two wins away from me. And at Anglesey we have Alex Summers, also recently registered, who again, could take four wins away from me. This doesnt bode well. But it isnt over yet.
7Sep
New tyre fitted
I wish it had been that easy. Unfortunately the tyre fitters I use in Leicester managed to damage the inner rim section on the Force Racing Wheel whilst wrestling with a tyre that simply wouldnt slide in to place to allow them to inflate. They tried their best, but the end result was a mishaped rim section, which meant the tyre had to be removed again, and the rim dismantled. I replaced the inner section with a new 6" one supplied by Carl. The latest design features a 2mm step along the width of the rim, so tyres can be slid in to place without getting stuck. After building the rim up, and carefully applying the silicon sealant and leaving to cure overnight, I then had the tyre fitted and re-inflated with no issues. So I am now ready for loading the car up for the trip to Pembrey on Friday.This is a graph I've produced of the possible final scores for all drivers. The issue we have is there are 41 (was 42) rounds, and only the best 18 count, which means we discard over 55% of the scores. However, the bonus points are kept for any dropped round, so currently, any driver could still win the championship, but those with more bonus points are the ones most likely to do that.
What the format ought to be, is similar to the british hillclimb championshp, with 30 rounds and the 24 best scores, so six are dropped, which is 20%. This still allows for mechanical mishaps, and clashes for some drivers who cant make some of the rounds. And it would be a far more exciting, and closer championship in my opinion.
3Sep
