Barring a few mishaps, such as the loss of electricity one morning on my drive to work (thanks to a fractured alternator cable), the car drove well and I was definitely getting a proper feeling for the handling.
The attention to weight loss continued, and I moved my focus to the front of the car removing all trim retaining brackets, and additional random bolts that don’t seem to do anything except fill up surplus bolt holes. I even started removing as much of the redundancy in the wiring loom as I could…I was aiming to go hard core, every gram counts and wire is heavy!
The bonnet then got the same treatment as the boot lid, with pins to replace the locks and the inside webbing cut out…and this is one part I would do differently in the future. One of the hallmarks that would emerge on this car was a strip of black tape along the leading edge of the bonnet; I was teased that I was trying to improve aerodynamics across panel gaps, but it was actually needed to stop the air being forced under the front edge of the bonnet and the whole bonnet arcing up like a tunnel at any speed...mildly disconcerting! In hindsight I should have left the webbing at the front of the bonnet to keep the rigidity across this panel gap.
At this point I decided it was time to bite the bullet and (reluctantly) put some weight back in the car in the form of a roll cage, which does have the added benefit of stiffing the whole chassis up (as well as something about protecting you in the event of a large crash). To go with the cage I managed to find some proper seats courtesy of Wug, a friend of my brother who is big style into rally driving…two (slightly used) Motordrive carbon Kevlar race seats, oh yes!
And of course- some harnesses to keep driver and passenger strapped in place, as kindly modelled by my brother…
Installing the roll cage was actually pretty straight forwards with some good guidance from Matt Wishart, bolt it in measure, take it out and drill some holes, weld some plates, bolt back in again and repeat half a dozen times until it's in solidly. I followed Matt’s advice and opted to bend the bottoms of the front mounting points in towards the sills instead of welding them to the floors, which seems to give a stronger install.
It was around now that I (as I am prone to doing) became overly stressed with the project, I had booked up for a track day at Anglesey scheduled four days after we came back from a family holiday to Florida…and the week before we were due to go the engine starts knocking! I instantly suspect a big end bearing is giving up, but I have run out of time to pull the engine and replace it before I leave…so I have to do the unthinkable…
…I pick up the phone to Matt at Rogue: “can you take a look for me?”
Damn, after all my insistence that I would do all the work on this car, and I get caught out with the choice of getting some help, or cancelling a track day I had been planning and looking forwards to for ages. Never mind, I bite the bullet and trailer the car up to Rogue and set off on holiday having just managed to get the cage finished, and both seats mounted in time...talk about cutting it fine!
I returned from holiday, and the nine hour overnight flight and drove from the airport straight to Rogue, where I dropped of a replacement set of pistons for my new turbo engine build (which I’d brought back from Wiseco in the US), and picked up my track car. I had got ‘lucky’ and the engine was fine, just a knackered water pump which had been knocking…and a surprisingly large bill for full engine removal and water pump replacement…ouch! But such is the way with cars...
The drive back home from Rogue was my first with the cage, new seats and harnesses, and I remember being very pleased- the car was literally transformed, rock solid…what an experience despite the mad jet lag!
The track day was a real eye-opener, and the first I’d done in a car I had prepared myself (my prior build being a road rally car that never saw the track)…I was driving so far within the car’s limits you wouldn’t believe it, the car was so much more capable than I was and I came away with an inkling of just how much I had to learn driving wise. That and the fact my better half kept falling asleep in the passenger seat next to me- I remember thinking "I nailed that corner!", only to look over and see her catching zeds! Apparently it's because the bucket seats are just too comfortable, although I suspect it was more a reflection of my driving...
That said, it was a very nice feeling knowing the car had so much more to give.
I was lucky enough to be booked in at Anglesey again two weeks later, and this time I was in for a true epiphany…that being the joy of driving on track with decent tyres! I had scrubbed in a set of Toyo R888’s (a road legal, track day tyre- basically the bare minimum tread patterns required to make them road legal, so as close to slicks as allowed).
The day started wet, and I kept my Toyo T1R’s (road tyres) on until lunchtime, then swapped to the R888’s and it is difficult to describe what happened next. It was one of those times in your life that you just know you will never forget…it was like driving a different car, and I felt like something inside me had clicked, and hard! My speeds significantly shot up and carried on increasing all afternoon.
I was really dialling into the car’s handling, and felt I was sliding round every corner in a very predictable, controlled manner, balancing the car on the throttle pedal…this rear wheel drive thing people go on about was finally starting to make sense! I have no proof of how big the grin on my face was, but if my passenger’s reaction was anything to go by, then it was struggling to stay on my face!
Well and truly bitten by the track bug!