March 3

- Modifying the front uprights -

Before taking the uprights to STM, I need to remove the top section - thanks to the notes on Chris Bradley's website I got it pretty much right first time - I didn't cover myself in oil, and didn't try and chop through the nice hard inner strut. - Thanks Chris

A bit of GUNK later, and they're about as shiney as a 20(?) year old lump of steel can be,

Before		After

Mar 16

- 2nd visit to STM -

My chassis is due today, but it's not ready - Ian has been busy trying to get the 4 race cars ready in time for the opening RGB race of the season at Donnington. So, I've popped up anyway, to take a look at the race cars, take some pictures, and drop off some other bits.

I gave Ian the uprights. He mocked me for cleaning them - perhaps I've caught some sort of nasty infection from DH2.

IanG was impressed with the Audi calipers - they are about 1lb lighter than the Sierra ones, which isn't a great deal, but nonetheless noticeable when you heft one in your hand - no doubt the effect is even more marked when you're bouncing them up and down as part of the car's unsprung mass. In a trial fitting on one of the cars without brakes, we found, much to our surprise and delight that the mounting holes are in exactly the same place as the Sierra ones, and the gap for the disc to fit into is nearly right as well - so no custom bracket will be needed - just some sort of jiggery pokery with spacers.

I'm left the calipers with Ian, in the hope that he'll have time to dry fit them and investigate and other problems. He also seemed keen to try out the routing for the handbrake cables - as standard they've got a hard outer casing at one end, and it looked like this might just fit through the Phoenix chassis in a convenient way.

IanG wanted me to drop the diff off today, so that he could give it the chassis manufacturer, to make sure that the mounting holes end up in the right place. Fair enough - I did.

The Audi calipers are physically larger than the Sierra ones, which may mean that they won't fit under 13" rims very well. As STM have a selection of wheels lying around, Ian said that if when they're investigating fiting the calipers they'll try various wheels on as well, to see what will fit.

I took a seat in the most complete car, which is fitted with STM's own GFRP seats. Now, I'm no fatty, but that is a squeeze! I see why so many Striker's are modified to have a wider driver's side than passenger side. With the seat in place, there is no way for me get comfortable - the sides of the seat make it too narrow. Hmmm. Looks like a foam seat might have to be the way forward.

Mar 17

- Inspiration -

As I was looking at the Kirkey seats in a Demon Tweek$ catalogue, I realised that I don't actually need a seat at all - if I can manufacture a squab to support my legs and a back to support my, erm, back, then I've basically got something that looks a lot like a Kirley, except that the sides are the side of the car, and the tunnel. Steve 'Goat Fiddler' Wiseman suggested that I could add a bit of Yoga mat as padding, and that seemed like a remarkably good idea.

Mar 18

- More Inspiration -

Another catalogue - this time the Encyclopedia, which contains all sorts of cycling esoterica. I noticed that lots of the recumbant bikes have seats that might just work in the Phoenix, such as this one:

They're light, supportive, certainly narrow enough, fairly cheap, and weatherproof - could be perfect! The only downside I can see at the moment is that most of them are raked back too far - car seats tend to have a back at 15-20°, whereas recumbants are at 35-45°.

Perhaps what I'll do is make a foam or aluminum seat initially, and then investigate using a bike seat when I can take the car to the bike shop and try one in-situ

March 19-31

- Garage -

This is kind of a boring entry, but every other Tom, Dick, Chris, Tim, Adrian and Harry have got one - this is a club that they can't stop me joining, so I'm gonna...

Actually, it's just a little thank you to Tim, kit car builder extraordinaire, who said "you'll be painting the garage white then - helps with the light". "Of course" I realised replied.

And he was right - it's much lighter in there now

And whilst I was at it, I added an inch to the height of the floor in an attempt to both level it and to stop rain getting in round the edges, completely redid the electrickery by fitting a proper consumer unit instead of a couple of junction boxes which had been my previous effort, doubled the number of overhead lights, quadrupled the number of sockets, installed a dehumidifier, a PC with a 802.11g wireless card (for music, webcam and Cam7 in the garage) and built a studly new bench using some of Steve's cast off EMC chamber panels.

This page last updated on: Thursday, Aug 24 2006