RGB Racer

My replacement front uprights have just been delivered, shiny objects of desire they are too, with no visible cracks and nice chunky mounting points for the callipers. I shall feel much more confident with these than I ever would have with the old ones.
A quick visit to the bathroom scales shows them to weigh 2Kg each, it will be interesting to see how much more or less they weigh than the old ones.

So fitting coolant pipes, adjusting the handbrake and replacing the front uprights would seem to be the plan for tomorrow.

Tonight, I only had about an hour to get something done on the car. So I set about doing a trial installation of the newly modified handbrake calliper.
Step one was to weld the actuation lever that I broke last weekend, 10 minutes with my trusty MIG welder resulted in this which I’ve also sprayed with chassis black paint. The cranked lever should nor clear the mounting bracket nicely. I then reassemble the calliper to it’s mounting bracket and started fitting it to the car.

Whoo hooo it fits! The clearance between the mounting studs and the bike chain is not huge but it should be fine!

Right I’m out of time, so there’s little more I can do tonight. But the calliper appears to be working fine, it might require a narrow shim to get the non actuated pad to “float” correctly over the brake disk. The last jobs to get this thing working will be to connect and adjust the actuating cable and fit a lever return spring. Hopefully I can get that sorted out by the weekend.

Lastly I talked to Hi-Spec again today about my callipers, and guess what? I was promised a call back with some details…. but none materialised , although in fairness I was out of the house for 5 minutes today.

Some 32mm rubber pipe turned up today, so I can now start to run the coolant pipes from the rear\mid mounted engine to the front mounted radiator. Or at least I can make a start on it this weekend.

Today my Mini Wheel studs turned up, they are of the correct length but very slightly oversize in diameter, in that while the threaded section of each stud will fit through the mounting holes in the handbrake calliper the shank will not. So I eased the holes a bit in the drill press using a 10mm drill and also put a shallow countersink in the mounting face to take the head of the stud.

Now the bolt passes nice and snugly through the mounting holes until it reaches the splined section where it jams solid. This is why the stud in the picture has ali marking around the base of the splines… it’s from a test fitting. So it’s time to take my courage or rather a big hammer in hand and knock the studs permanently into place. This goes surprisingly well and you can see from the picture on the right, it looks like a “Riiiight Proper Job!” to use a phrase from a well known UK scrapheap based TV programme.
A quick test fitting on the car shows that the calliper now clears the drive chain by about 5mm… wonderful. Unfortunately I don’t have time to complete the fitting tonight as I’m off out to a CAM7 meeting, but I’ll finish it tomorrow, and I can at last say that I’ve completed at least one system on the car …. Wooo Hooo

I’ve had a brainwave about my calliper mounting bolt problem. While doing the 3 hour drive to the office I was musing on the problem of finding a bolt with a very narrow head that would allow me to clear the drive chain. And then I had a light bulb above the head moment… What I need is not a bolt but a wheel stud. Wheel studs have a very shallow but wide cap instead of a bolt head and are splined to grip the base material, so you don’t need to put a spanner on one end when you do the wheel nuts up. I knew that the existing bolts were 80mm long and 3\8th inch wide (9.???mm). Hmmmm….can I find an appropriate stud?
So I had a look on Trackstore’s Website and blimey they actually do an 80mm*3\8ths UNF wheel stud designed for Minis. So I ordered a couple up and hopefully this problem is solved.
I also had another fruitless conversation with HI-Spec today, I be called back tomorrow I’m told, but in Hi-Spec land tomorrow never comes

Firstly here is a picture of the of the new dashboard taken in the daylight. I’m not sure you can see much more detail than the night time pictures above, but you do get a better impression of how it nestles neatly under the lip of the front bodywork.

Right on with the day’s work.

I had such plans for today but commitments elsewhere reduced my available time substantially so much so that I only got a couple of hours work done on the car.

My main aim was to get the dash and all the front looms interconnected and permanently bound up and p clipped in placed, along with the main feeds from the battery, the FIA ignition switch and the feeds to the engine management loom. Erm No it wasn’t going to happen, firstly I discovered I hadn’t got the right size connectors for the FIA switch, then I can’t bind up the dash looms as I haven’t yet got all the sensor wires in place for the ECU loom and I can’t put the ECU loom in because I haven’t yet got the mounting brackets sorted and I need to check the regs for appropriate positioning. It was one of those days when you just get lost in a big trail of dependencies that prevent you doing the jobs that you had got planned. Faff, faff, fafffing about and thinking about what needed doing….. not the most productive of spannering time.

From memory the ECU cannot be in the driver’s compartment, but must be in a position that allows easy inspection by the scrutineers to ensure it is the correct unit, this means in the engine bay, but away from the exhausts, and also largely protected from water..hmmmmm.

Anyway what I did succeed in doing was to wire up the dash to the front bodywork loom. So when I now turn on my headlights they come on, or rather one of then comes on. And when I flip up the main beams, they come on, or rather only one of them comes on too!. There are some bulbs missing…. which made checking their operation with good Mrs M a bit comical. Still all was working nicely.

I also managed to finish painting the diff carrier mounting bracketry so that it can go back in tomorrow, and in the evening (on the Kitchen table because it was too damn cold in the Garage) I put the diff back into the diff carrier. Sorry Mrs M

Today I had one aim. I was going to complete one system on the car, I was going to get one entire system finished and operational so that I could say I had completed something and that the build was progressing, just one system. (Dammit Tim has already got the engine in on his Fireblade Fury!).

And that system was going to be?…….. The handbrake

The handbrake operates via single Willwood mechanical calliper which bites onto the reverse ring gear on the diff unit. So this meant that the diff had to be rebuilt back into the car. I’d fully cleaned it up, lubbricated and reassembled it back into the carrier last night. So it was ready to be plonked into the car. It’s a two man job so enter my willing assistant Duncan.

Before you can mount the diff you have to remove the driveshafts and the easiest way to do this is to remove the camber adjusters from the top joints on the rear suspension wishbones and pull the wheels out like this.

For some reason I think this picture is rather comical, either the car is a “she” and this is a strangely “take me now” moment, or it’s only halfway through it’s transformation into a “Back To The future” style hover car.

The brick BTW is the current handbrake mechanism, you jam it under a wheel to stop the car rolling.

The diff is mounted in the car using a series of m10 bolts, mounting plates and spacers, it’s a bit of a jigsaw really, and after about an hour of finger trapping, diff shuffling, swearing and bracket fitting madness we decided that next time it would be a really really good idea to make a drawing of the installation before removing it .

Still it was in now and the lesson was well and truly learned. Erm “what about the drive chain?” says Dunc. B*gger! So another 10 mins of repeat faffing follows and we get the drive chain in place and the diff bolted up for a second time. Incidentally wherever possible we used new bolts and nylocks as the old ones were a bit “munged.” (technical engineering term)

Right, so now we are ready to fit the handbrake calliper

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The calliper is fitted onto the side of the diff carrier using this bracket

The width of the calliper jaws are controlled by two machined spacers, one of which needed to be removed, (in the picture below I’ve already removed it.)

Here lay the first challenge of the day, the clamp bolts are cap head bolds and take an Allen key of some uncertain imperial size. Certainly none of the standard metric or imperial Allen keys I posses fitted (And I’ve got more than a few!) Fortunately I managed to get the things apart to remove the spacer and trial fit the calliper to the Diff, but the bolts will need to be changed, because at the moment I can’t tighten them up. They’ve got to be something really odd like 13/32nds

So it was time to bolt up the calliper to the diff, connect the handbrake cable, and hey presto a complete working system…. and I can get rid of the brick!

er No!

As can be seen from the two pictures below (which were taken later without the mounting bracket because I forgot to take them at the time) the mounting bolts on the calliper foul the drive chain!. I’m going to need some bolts with very thin or countersunk heads to mount the calliper and avoid fouling the chain. So the handbrake isn’t going to get completed today

The other thing that became apparent is that the actuating lever will foul the mounting bracket and needs to be bent away from the calliper slightly, so I removed it, mounted it in a vice and gave it a solid biff with a hammer…… PING! Bejeezuz it’s like Bagdad in here! There’s a bit of shrapnel flying all around the garage in true cartoon style….. Ping, bing, , rattle.. the broken bit of lever is really doing the rounds. Duncan an I are protecting our eyes and trying to track the broken bit of lever with our ears so we can retrieve it from my clinically clean garage floor.

The lever must have been hardened to be as brittle as that, but with the broken bit retrieved I’m fairly certain that I can weld the two halves together and at the appropriate angle so it’s not the major disaster it first appeared to be. We’ve run out of time, patience and body heat now (it’s bloomin cold) and so the wheels go back on car and she gets put away.

Another weekend has passed without major progress being made.

After Sunday tea I had a brainwave….. I’m sure I have a picture of the calliper’s installation that was taken when Tim was first building the car, a bit of digging around locates it and here it is. It’s not very clear I’m afraid, but it appears to show that the calliper mounting bolts are not standard Cap or Hex heads and that the calliper has been machined a bit, or Mr Sparky angle grinder has been having some fun to relieve the bolt mount faces.


For those that are interested here’s a shot of the Willwood calliper’s components. Left most is the fixed side of the calliper, the pad is permanently fixed to it’s inside face. On the right is the other side of the calliper which houses the actuating mechanism and moving pad. The (now two part) lever is hinged at the right hand side using the bright hinge pin in the calliper, and has a cam section just to the left of the hinge hole. The operating cable attaches to the left hand end via one of the two mounting holes.
The small “bullet” shaped piece of steel passes through the centre hole of the mechanism side and is moved by the cam in the lever. The bullet operates on the steel back plate of the moving pad, which in turn bites into the brake disk surface. The bullet and operating lever are “pinched” by a threaded stud at the rear of the mechanism to allow the pad to float the correct distance above the disk.

I’ve spent many, many hours in the last few evenings wiring up the dash. It does seem to have taken an enormous amount of time, just to make a few electrical connections. Anyway here it is, all the major circuits are now connected, all that’s left to do are the sensor circuits for the Digidash and the extinguisher. The circuits terminate at multi way connectors, which while they add weight and potential points of failure, do allow the dash to be removed\replaced fairly easily. I think I’ll plonk it in the car in it’s current state, if for no other reason than I’m sick of the sight of it on the dining room table. On the plus side it does work nicely , and once it’s in the car I can start interfacing it to the Bike loom that I stripped down and modified waaaaay back in January.

Again, I chatted with Tim Pell today about my replacement uprights, they aren’t to expensive at £160 for the pair which is good news. But unfortunately they are slightly different in design to the ones I currently have, as they are designed for the MKII Genesis Evo. They will simply bolt on to the existing suspension and steering with no problem at all, but the calliper mounting points are different. The new uprights use radial mounted callipers, whereas on the older ones the callipers were lug mounted and needed adjustment brackets. Further discussion with Tim discovers that the radial mounts on the uprights are at 130mm centres, whereas the HI-SPEC Ultralight 4s mount at 129.5 centres, so it seems the callipers may simply bolt onto the uprights. Nah life cannot be that simple……. we’ll see when the uprights and callipers arrive. If the offset is wrong I may have to choose a different disk and bell…. but things may finally be falling into place on the brakes & suspension front.

So it seems the fact that I’ve been waiting for 6 weeks for my callipers has actually worked to my advantage, I’ve rung HI-Spe2 c and asked them not to supply any disks or brackets for my front brakes just the callipers themselves, I’ll fit the callipers and then measure up to see what offset is required after the uprights and callipers are assembled.

Also today Pace rang to tell me that the dry sump tank is ready for shipping and that the dry sump pump will be ready next week. Things are really looking up!

Today has been 2 steps forward and only 1 step back.

22:36 pm as I said earlier intended to fit the dash this evening, well for once my intentions actually came to fruition. I sat the dash on the bench and tested it’s operation using as spare bike battery. Everything was fine except when I operated the hazards with the ignition off. Every time the hazard flasher clicked the whole dash was powering up, including the Digidash and even the indicator light on the ignition switch. I’ve seen this behaviour before and it was a fairly simple task to see that part of the hazards circuit was incorrectly connected to the fuse ways on the ignition switched side. This was therefore powering up all the ignition switched circuits (including the Digidash) via the flasher unit . Removal of the offending wire cured the problem.

20 Minutes later and the dash was fitted into installation from my normal driving position, with all the circuits turned on. I can comfortably reach the reverse enable toggle, switch which is the first red light to the left of the bank of green ones.

It think you’ll agree it looks very nice indeed. I can see all the warning lights very clearly and nothing major is obscured by my hands or the steering wheel, I’m very pleased with it although if it was in carbon fibre it would be just a smidgen nicer

(The pictures are a bit dark, as they were taken on my drive at 10 O’clock at night, I’ll post a daylight shot tomorrow)

Even though the dash needs the wiring finally P clipping into place and the actual car circuits connecting this was a very nice moment, particularly after a week of setbacks.

Finally I’ve built and assembled something onto the car. So far all I seem to have been doing is dismantling it and this was most definitely, indisputably positive progress! Hopefully if callipers and dry sump kit arrive in the next few days positive progress will continue.

Today I talked to Tim Pell regarding the cracked front upright, The uprights are custom made and machined up to his design (which sounds ominously expensive) but Tim does have a couple of them on the shelf, he’ll check up how much they cost and then ring me back with a price. The downside is that the calliper mounts are different as the new MKII Evo uses radial rather than lug mounted callipers, so that the custom made brackets that Hi-Spec have been making for me for the last month or so will not fit. Oh well one step forwards 2 steps back, but it appears that my chances of getting on track anytime before the summer or Autumn are receding.