The Cable Guy

I had a friend of a colleague join me in the workshop this morning.  Neil Sharp is a proper auto electrician. Perhaps surprisingly he wasn't brought-in to fault find.  Not yet.  I needed to get the battery cables made-up and rather than buy them in and then find that they are all the wrong length, I'd asked Neil to do it on the car. Neil, being a pro, felt that it was a good idea to (a) fit a big fuse and; (b) use 300amp cable for the first leg, on the basis that if I ever engaged the starter and the reverse at the same time it might need it.  It looks whopping and is a nightmare to get tidy but who am I to argue?

In theory I should be able to test the bike-side of the loom now; see if the throttle bodies will cycle, the fuel pump will energise etc.  I didn't do it yesterday as I had to knock-off early to do some other stuff and then get to dinner with the in-laws.

Just to re-state the point, we are some p-clips and conduit short of a tidy job.

Honest.

Yawnabore R1

If there was ever a signal that I've spent too much time building this car, or more specifically too much time thinking about it, here it is:

On the bottom here is the water-in pipe which fits into the bottom of the engine on a 2007/8 R1.  On the top is the same part for a 2004-6 R1.  While the bottom-end on the two models is, in material-terms, the same Yamaha have obviously improved the packaging of the motors.  Unfortunately, for someone sticking these engines into a front-engined car, it's a pain in the arse as the water flows from the front at near-floor level rather than from up-on-high.  After harassing Austen Greenway for months, he finally sent me one of his spares and I fitted this today.  The water system is now pretty much as far as I can take it.  The aluminium fabricator wunderkind needs to do the rest. 

In other boring water-pipe news. I took a hacksaw and flap-wheel to one of the other water pipes today. I've removed the leg that took water to the oil-water cooler, since I don't have one any more.  I didn't want to have a dead-leg; if the water pump is a bit marginal, I want to make flow as straightforward as possible.

I need to get the hole welded-up now.

Dave has done an amazing job with the carbon airbox - it wasn't quite wide enough for the throttle body trumpets and was yet too wide for the throttle servo motors.  A couple of small moulds and a bit of cutting'n'bonding later and its a bonza job - if you need something similar, speak to Track Developments.

I'm not sure what it's cost me yet bit it has to be worth it.  There's a bit of a debate about inlet trumpets on the RGB forum at present.  I will be furious if mine aren't permitted next year but I can't believe it will happen.

Something which hasn't gone my way is the the oil system; having tried to marry the fittings on my oil cooler with those of my take-off plate I gave up and bought the same cooler with smaller fittings to suit the rest of the system.  I could only find one single unit that would do.  It arrived.

And is going back, leaving me with a problem.

TC

Olibobs

The lack of activity has been due to two much-needed weeks island-hopping n Greece.

Car-building recommenced yesterday with a couple of minor-looking areas receiving attention..  Firstly the bus bar for the accumulated earths from the bike loom was finished-off.

Then I set about finding a place for the EXUP and airbox motors to live.  Neither are actually being used in the installation but at least the EXUP needs to be kept.  I've received conflicting information about the trumpet servo so it's staying just-in case. 

The bracket is a piece of aluminium angle manipulated to suit.

TC