By way of a reminder, here is a fantastic man maths example... Now we used to do 7 or 8 meetings a year, so about one a month in the season. This is me and daughter Jen in very similar Reynard FF2000s and very lovely they are too. But being a gullible soul, I was persuaded to get other shiny stuff. This is a 1963 Lotus Elan Mk1 GTS complete with an utterly nuts 180bhp 600 twincam. Then came the complete madness with a March 742 (1974 F2) complete with 280bhp 2.0l BDG (essentially refuses to run below 8,500 and goes pop at 9,501 rpm - not really!). The man maths is that the cost would be the same as we'd still do the same number of events. I'm sure that's right! Here's the March...
Here's the Lotus:
Here's Jen's Reynard:
And to the season story so far. We've not been out in the Lotus or March yet. So a tale of two Reynards awaits.
At the end of last season all was going well, but I had a mishap in testing (FFS) caused (in my view) by a daft person on a cooldown lap not looking out behind him. As I passed, he moved over and took me off. It was a fairly big off, but no human bodily damage fortunately, but the car was a bit of a mess. All in all nothing individually too serious, just a lot of bits required for the rear. Rear upright, radiator, wing main plane, wing end support plates, wing beam, rear chassis crossmember, radiator, radius arms, gearbox casing. So quite a lot to do. Also the engine was at the end of its hours (nothing to do with the off) and was sluggish and not that happy to rev - probably abuse to the valvetrain at some point. So the motor had a refresh too. Nothing too serious, new bearings, rings, set of valves all good.
Jen's car was in ok form, but again at the end of its hours, so the same refresh but including a cam for hers.
The 2.0l pinto engines at 130bhp are not sophisticated enough to get dyno time, but they do get a rolling road session to get them run in and set up properly, which is where the weirdness starts. Jen's engine didn't fare well and the OP started going down before the end of the session. Mine seemed ok and gave top BHP as expected. Hey ho. Then we were out at Donington for a pre-season test - at least I was, we cancelled Jen's for lack of engine. All was good in session 1, I exactly matched my previous best with more to come on the newly resurfaced track. Session two was a bit messy with a couple of snagging issues. Went again in session 3. No lap time in sight, engine didn't want to rev past 6k, oil pressure dropping. Same problem, so we packed up and went home.
On inspection, both engines the same, failed bearings. No obvious reason why. Both rebuilt with bearings from a different supplier in case it was a parts failure. No big deal, cranks ok, just new bearings needed.
You will have lost the will to live at this point, so I will break now. They said smile it could be worse, so I smiled and it got worse. But before I go, I also had a mild refresh of the BDG in the March which is sophisticated enough to have a dyno run. Here's the flattest torque curve in the world, with 278.5 bhp
And here it is doing its thing:
VID-20230517-WA0001 by graham Ridgway, on FlickrThanks for listening, next episode coming!
It was pretty horrible, slow pace, yuk. Put down to tyres, but probably not. Managed a few places better to 15th I think. Worst quali ever (apart from when something has previously gone wrong).
