Ben's second-car thread - MR2s and Westfields inside...

[pistol pete]

awesome buddy..
looking forward to next year..

[Ben]

Feels like time for an update:)

Unfortunately the awful winter we’ve had means I haven’t been able to drive the westy a huge amount, but I have managed to brave the greasy roads once or twice. Had to test out the new GoPro as well




(cameo by Pete)

After this, with Christmas and NY out of the way it was time to set about the winter improvements needed for the next season of the Javelin sprint series. Best take it to bits then…





First on the list to be sorted (again) is the suspension setup. The temporary rear shocks have helped, but are a bit short, and the adjusters on the fronts are shot. A quick call to Nigel @ Avo confirmed that they were serviceable units, and a week and £108 later I received these back in the post:



I’ve since swapped the new, soft springs onto the refurbished longer damper units, so now I have the best of both worlds: decent suspension travel and decent ride height! Kudos to Avo as well, who got the coilovers back to me in half the quoted time and for less than the quoted price





It's all a little finger-in-the-air, but the whole setup owes me about £150 so I can't complain too much - and I now have a pair of 'spare' dampers and springs should I need them. Might need to raise the front up a bit, though…



I’ve also finally gotten round to fitting the tow strap. A minor thing I know, but aside from anything else, this should make loading it up onto the trailer easier!



Speaking of which, I've also treated the trailer to a new set of LED rear lights. It's the small things...



The exhaust manifold cracked just before Cadwell last year and was quickly patched up by a local garage. It also measured 105dB, which is too loud for most tracks, so really I need to invest in a new system. I’m still investigating this, but need to get a move on really…

Otherwise, all that’s needed (hopefully!) is a comprehensive fluid service (job for this weekend I think) and a geo setup. Then it can be out terrorising the locals again

[JD]

Very interesting. This looks like a peach to work on. I reckon it needs some silly stickers on it

[pistol pete]

Very interesting. This looks like a peach to work on. I reckon it needs some silly stickers on it

always needs silly stickers..... needs some zombie stickers

[Ben]

This looks like a peach to work on.

It's like having a toy Meccano car - even I can work on it

[pistol pete]

(cameo by Pete)

broom broom that was fun..

[Ben]

Well, that's it all loaded up and ready to head off to the nice exhaust man tomorrow:



Whilst it's still a bit of a pain to load up on my own (mostly due to a sloping driveway), the addition of the tow-strap now means I can at least do the whole thing without having to start the Westfield up. Which isn't a bad thing when you live in the centre of a village, and the 'exhaust' is just a cracked manifold and no silencer

[Ben]

Totally forgot to update this – not that anyone appears to have noticed

Things have been picking up for the Westfield over the last few weeks. A week after dropping it up to Graham at EBD I was back to collect. To say I’m pleased with the new exhaust is an understatement – the new 4-2-1 manifold is a work of art and came complete with a much larger re-packable silencer. I’ve not yet had it measured but it’s certainly markedly quieter than before – from the driver’s seat (next to the exhaust) I can now hear a decent amount of induction from the R1 carbs, something I could never hear before. It has also eliminated the terrible exhaust drone I used to get whilst wearing a helmet – on long trips the noise seemed to bounce around inside my lid, meaning I’d turn up places half-deaf….





Coupled with the new suspension I was keen to get it on a pre-season shakedown to see how it handled. Cue a well-timed Silverstone Sunday Service with 40-min ‘taster’ track sessions. An early start in freezing temperatures was a bit of a shock, but we had a good (if cautious) run up with a couple of local PHers. After skating around the icy paddock for a bit it was decided that the first two sessions would be cancelled – meaning our ‘third’ session was to be the first of the day. At this point it was hovering around 2-3 deg C, and the track was soaking wet. After almost missing my slot, getting my paper slip lost in my overalls and then going the wrong way at Becketts on the sighting lap I was beginning to wonder what I’d let myself in for. Fortunately I managed to catch up with the rest of the procession and work out where I was going!



DSC_0019 by Jason.Easton, on Flickr

To say it was slippery is an understatement – I’ll let the below video do the talking!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uswoRCi ... e=youtu.be

The benefit of the complete lack of grip meant that I could really get to grips with the car’s handling characteristics. I’m please to say that it’s very predictable – a touch of understeer through Luffield would shift very easily to mild oversteer approaching Woodcote (a touch alarming in 4th going past the pit wall!) but it always gives plenty of time to dial in the necessary lock. It’s really very flattering.

After managing to stay out of the pit wall and getting me home safely, I was lucky enough to be invited along with my Dad to the 74th members’ meeting at Goodwood. After driving down to Surrey at Midnight on Friday having spent the evening taking pledges for Sport Relief (driving a car with no windscreen through the woods at night is a surreal experience…) we had another early start. Our little convoy of E-Type, Morgan 4/4 and Westfield had a lovely drive down via Petworth, spent the day watching hedge-fund managers blatting around Goodwood, and then set the nav to twiddly mode for a very enjoyable drive back.



Even stumbled upon my engine’s original home!





Another early start and drive home via the PHSS at Mercedes benz World completed a 250-mile weekend – plenty in a GRP seat :hehe:



Final jobs this weekend just gone included a service, general check-over, wash (!) and a few miles on the track wheels to scrub off some of the winter storage. The R888s still seem to have plenty of tread, so I imagine I’ll hang onto them for this season. The first Javelin sprint is at Blyton Park next Sunday – there’s a good mix of cars in my class this year so I’m sure it’ll be plenty fun!

[pistol pete]

i'm in your class too.. can't wait

[Ben]

First sprint of the season yesterday at Blyton Park. Whilst I’m fairly familiar with Blyton (and competed last year on the Eastern Circuit) this was my first time competing on the main circuit, and the first track outing for the car this year after my very wet and slippery taster at Silverstone a couple of weeks ago.

True to form it rained overnight, but the track was already drying in patches by the time the sighting and practice laps were done. This left some amusing slippery patches at crucial points around the track, one notable patch causing me to lock up and straight-line the chicane on my first practice

My first run was a very tentative 1:19.11, and my second run not much better – but much messier 1:18.38. Fortunately the track kept drying and my times kept falling throughout the day (bar a void run after I got a bit too enthusiastic!) and I managed to get down to 1:13.87 and 15th overall - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smS-yXfW7kc

I was less competitive in my own class (6th out of 9) but given that I had one of the least powerful and heaviest cars there I’m not complaining too much

No exciting pics yet, but here’s one showing off this season’s number!

[Ben]

The Westy has been kept pretty busy since our last exciting instalment (no thanks to our lovely ‘summer’). First up was the infamous Kent Coast run. Traditionally started as an MR2 run this has attracted various cars over the years, and this time round Pete and I were leading the run in our two plastic fantastics. A very enjoyable day with some excellent roads (and a few surprised MR2 Turbos to boot )



Not long after it was time for round 2 of the Javelin Sprint Series, at Blyton Park (again, thanks to some calendar issues with another venue!). This time we were using the Eastern circuit – my preferred layout, and the first circuit I’ve hit in anger with the same car setup as last year. I was very pleased to be far more consistent this time around (gradually improving run-on-run) and ended up taking 0.6 seconds off my best run last year, which felt very much like a bluebird at the time! Class position was low – I simply can’t compete with the 220bhp+ cars that were running in the same class – but I was very happy with my overall 15th position and improvement since last year.

Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWTXZSNbloM



After this it was back to the garage for the Westy for a few weeks while I sorted some mild household DIY, and all of a sudden it was a week before round 3 at Croft and it hadn’t turned a wheel in almost a month! I had a quick runout to check everything was still in order (it was) and then popped it up on axle stands to swap over to the track wheels. I’m glad at this point that I did this a few days before-hand, as on the last wheel one of the last remaining original Escort Mk2 wheel-studs decided it didn’t like having thread anymore. xxxx. No way I was going to pass scrutineering with only three wheelnuts!

‘Never mind’ I thought, ‘I’ll just drill it out and re-tap it. I’ve seen it done before. How hard can it be?’

You can guess what happened at this point.

The pilot hole I drilled wasn’t as straight as I thought it was, so when I went for the bigger drill-bits I just ended up making a mess of the stud.

I should have thrown in the towel at this point (well, really I should have done so much earlier!), but the red mist had already descended and RAGE WAS HAPPENING. Nothing was working. More drill-bits fell to the cause in a shower of sparks, and I even resorted to trying to ‘drift’ the mangled remains out with another bolt and a mallet (I know, it was threaded, what was I thinking?!). At this point, sitting on my garage floor in a puddle of self-pity and flakes of mangled steel, I was gently guided into the house and a cold beer by my OH; a broken, defeated mess.

So, three days before I’m supposed to load it up for a four-hour journey up north, and it’s still sat on axle stands. Hmm. I phoned my usual local indies and had the same conversation several times over:

“Hi. I know it’s a bit short notice, but could you possibly drill out the mangled remains of a Mk2 Escort wheel-stud and re-thread it for me? I need it for a race this weekend and I got angry and things happened and…”

*sucks teeth* “Ooh, sorry mate. Sounds like a big job. Could maybe take a look in a couple of weeks?”

*mumble mumble feck mumble* “but but but… it’s a ten-minute job with a pillar drill and a thread tap?”

“No, sorry mate, don’t really touch that old stuff anymore.”

ar$e.

Panicking now, I turn to Google to search for a local mobile mechanic. And who do I find but Milan, a local man of Serbian/Croatian origin (he explained this, but his accent was pretty thick so I may have missed an important point here) who promptly turned up at my house at 8pm on Thursday night. After staring at my handiwork in disbelief and muttering “Oh my god, Oh my god, ohmygodohmygodohmygod” over and over he appeared to come to a plan of action. 17 seconds later he emerged from the boot of his car with a grin and an enormous breaker bar and, shortly afterwards, had the hub off.

“I’ll take it to my Polish friend, he will fix this in no time!”

“Er, sure! But it’s 9pm now and I’m out all day tomorrow and…”

“Don’t worry! Call me when you’re back tomorrow, I’ll come then!”

And, true to his work, Milan appeared at 8pm on Friday evening, hub in hand, having drilled out the old studs and replaced with new, metric wheel-bolts to match the rest of the car (don’t ask, it’s a bit of a mongrel). Whacked it on the car, charged me a shamefully small amount of money (I had to force a tip on him) and was on his way. Next time I’ll just call him first I think





xxxx photo, but here’s my knight in shining armour!




So, on to Croft! Aside from being bloody miles away from the shires, it’s one of my favourite tracks and well worth the journey. Last time I was here we had both weather and noise issues, so I only had 5 runs (the first three of which I was still learning the track). This time round we had a full nine timed runs, and an excellent day in all. Fortunately my more powerful competition was absent so I managed a far more respectable 2nd in class and 14th overall. There were also two photographers in action this time round, meaning I have some excellent shots of me running out of talent

Again, very happy to have convincingly beaten my time from last year. Looking at my runs there are still areas I can find more pace – I was about 1.7 seconds off the class win and, while the winner was running slicks, I’m sure I could have made this up somewhere. I’ve briefly thought about slicks myself, but with the additional complication of needing a dry sump, plus additional chassis bracing etc, I think I’d rather just try and be a better driver first.

Youtube vid here of my fastest run, again with some outtakes at the end https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biIsKwXb1zk

[pistol pete]

I noticed !!!
Mainly cos I forget to update mine too..
But its always good having a read back through

Love how you drive the wheels off this little car.. Does sound epic. Good work

And we finished as a draw

[Ben]

Well, the season is over and I’m currently sat in a hotel in Cincinnati (officially the most boring city in the world) so I think it’s time for an update.

First up, Anglesey – if nothing else, the biggest pain in the ar$e to get to from the home counties. As one of the other competitors put it, the biggest problem with Anglesey is that Manchester’s in the way

Still, the event was to be joint run with the Toyota Sprint Series, so Pete and I duly schlepped up there on Saturday, eventually arriving late afternoon. There was a 24-hour 2CV race going on so we braved the wind and walked right round the track perimeter, trying to pay attention to the lines the racers were using and generally enjoying a bit of grass-roots motorsport.





The 2CV race didn’t finish until 10am the next morning, so after a pleasant evening of local beer and hearty pie we took a leisurely trip back to the track to be scrutineered, sign on and watch the survivors competitors cross the finish line. After an admirably quick turnaround by the Javelin crew we were out on the practice runs and the first timed runs of the day.

Fortunately, Anglesey turned out to be well worth the journey. It really is a fantastic track, with all sorts of cambers and elevations I’ve never had to deal with before. I quickly settled in though, with my fastest lap being my fourth run of the day – lucky really, as the heavens opened mid-afternoon meaning no-one would be putting any blinders on the board!

Still, I’d gone all that way and it seemed a shame to waste track-time, so the waterproofs were donned and back out we went

Usual video format here – my best run, followed by the two runs I was cocking about in the wet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG4CxmwYdJI

Not my best driving really, looking back. I spent the day really struggling with understeer through the slower corners (not this one though!)



Position was less impressive (3rd out of 4 in my class) but it was a lot of fun. And, understeer aside, the old westy performed admirably.

The next, and penultimate, round was to be at Woodbridge – site of my first ever sprint and still one of my favourite venues. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it as I being rather distracted by something else…



I’m not even sorry.



My homework before the final even at Snetterton (after rattling all the xxxxxx way to Wales and back) was to give the trailer a bit of TLC. This mostly involved stripping some weight by removing the previous-owner-DIY centre section and giving it a general clean up and check over. I think it had seen better days, certainly….




That’s better





The final hurrah of this year was to be a full weekend of fun at Snetterton – a trackday on the Saturday (unbelievably my first this year!) on the 200 circuit and the sprint on Sunday on the 300. Admittedly I did worry a little about whether the car would stand up to a full weekend’s abuse – particularly after a fellow competitor blew the engine on his Elise at Snet a couple of days before – but I’d already started a mental list of things that needed to happen over winter so figured I may as well enjoy it! I packed all the tools I could think of along with my daily wheel/tyre combo (running a set of Federal 595 RSRs which are a few years old now) and headed up.

The trackday itself was excellent – very few stoppages and minimal idiots (aside from one chap in an E36 compact who WOULD NOT move out of the way) and a good mix of cars on track. While I’m not one for giant-slaying I was pleased with how we got on. I think being able to overtake through Coran (by consent) really helped as I wasn’t relying so much on more powerful cars letting me by on the straights. Managed to keep it mostly on the track as well



The Federals, as predicted, took a couple of laps to warm up and were a bit squealy compared to the R888s I sprint with. More worrying was that after 6-7 laps I was starting to see a brief, but still alarming, dip in oil pressure after the long right-hander of Coram going left into Murrays. It was only momentary, but led me to keeping stints fairly short and has put paid to any ideas I might have had about running slicks next year without going for a pricy dry-sump setup.

For the last couple of runs I swapped over to the soft-compound R888s to scrub them in for the following day. Mindful of the oil pressure I kept the stints down to 4-5 laps but they’re still such an improvement – not bad for a £200 set of second-hand wheels and tyres that have lasted two seasons!

After a very pleasant day, those of us who were doing both events managed to get scrutineered as the sun went down…



I was feeling pretty confident at this point.


We all know how that ends! The scrutineer made a few ‘hmmm’-ing noises as he pointed out a bit of oil here, a touch of coolant there, and a few other little bits that had been fine all season but were now mysteriously not OK. In fading light I gave everything a clean up as best I could, tightened a couple of jubilee clips here and there and headed back to the hotel, mildly concerned but so knackered after a day hacking around in circles I was asleep by 9pm! Arriving the next day I was heartened to see that the spreading pools of liquid I was half-expecting to see under the car had not materialised, so after a quick check over it was time for the sighting laps.

Oh yeah, did I mention it rained?

After tip-toeing around with everyone else I tried to use the untimed practice solo run to see if a wet Snet really was as bad as everyone said it was. I ended up facing backwards, twice, but still evidently had better luck than the chap who went before me as I caught him up a few corners from the end

Worse, though, was being waved down by Peter Jebson on the way back in with the words I really didn’t want to hear: “you dropped some oil on the start line.” Arrrrrrrrse.

Really not wanting to ruin anyone’s day by being ‘that’ guy, some slightly more drastic measures were necessary. So I spent an hour, in the rain, checking, cleaning and tightening everything I could get my hands on.



That waterproof romper-suit is definitely the best £25 I’ve ever spent.

After checking everything I could and taking it on a test run around the perimeter roads eventful in itself, as I’d elected to leave the bodywork off in case anything needed attention and drove straight past a visiting police car!) all seemed ok, so I crossed my fingers and headed out just in time to make run 2.

Did I mention it was wet?



Fortunately lunch brought with it some sunshine, and my previous day’s homework really paid off. Run 3 was a big improvement and run 4 was bone dry, and fortunately everything came together into a run I was very happy with. Well, apart from the crow that I hit at 90mph which led to a brief track closure while one of the unfortunate marshals has to go and, er, scrape up the remains(didn’t lift, mind!).
I didn’t realise it at the time but I’d actually managed to put in a faster run than both of my two main competitors (by which I mean, the two in my class who have beaten me at every other round!), and when the rain inevitably came down later it was clear the positions weren’t going to change. A few of us headed out to have a play in the wet (it’s always the ones without roofs who do this!) but with the weather worsening the team called it a day and we started packing up.

A mixed day in all, but I was very happy with 3rd place in by far the largest group my class has been all year





As an added bonus, I also ended up third in class for the season – despite dropping a round.

So, SORN has now kicked in and I need to get my ar$e in gear with an ever-growing list of things to fix – first and foremost being to swap out the gearbox for my spare and also send the diff off for a rebuild (any recommendations for English diff rebuilds I’m all ears!). Plus servicing, giving the chassis a rub down and re-paint, fitting flared side panels and a rear diffuser, and sorting out some new tyres.

Naturally, the only thing I have achieved thus far is putting some new lights up in the garage and giving the ever faithful tow-car a clean





Until next time!

[pistol pete]

Awesome write as usual ben.. lights looks miles brighter in the garage

So when we dropping gearbox.. ive done 2 in the last week

Well done for 3rd overall great result

[craig]

Great write up Ben, that Scoob looks super clean for an '06!

[Draven]

Yep great read really enjoyed it.

[Ben]

Thanks all!

Great write up Ben, that Scoob looks super clean for an '06!

Cheers Craig. Yeah it does ok, considering I bought it 2 years ago on 54k miles and it's now on 98k!

[Ben]

Awesome write as usual ben.. lights looks miles brighter in the garage

So when we dropping gearbox.. ive done 2 in the last week

Thanks dude (and thanks for putting all the wiring in for me! )

Don't know yet, could always bring it down for a weekend I suppose...

[gavsdavs]

I have man-cave envy. Cool write up - glad you've had a good year

[Ben]

Happenings have been happening...