build diary
<< | show individual entries | >>March 3, 2007: 
The track is hidden away in a farming area north of Dallas.
It's pretty flat overall, but the track owners found 70' of elevation change. They're super-friendly people and have built a great track. It's a "country club" style setup like Motorsport Ranch, and this is a track you could spend a lot of time on. It's been designed to allow a lot of passing opportunities in racing, which means there are several ways around every corner.
Oh, and since it's not finished, we had to deal with the odd truck.
entry 1339
The reason I'm here - the Ariel Atom.
Grassroots Motorsports had a couple to test and they asked me along to provide a contrast. Visually, it's an enormous difference.
entry 1340
The Atoms get their bath before meeting the press.
The "red" one is powered by a supercharged Ecotec and was made in the US. The "black" one has a UK-spec Honda engine and was made in the UK. There are some interesting detail differences, but both cars are gorgeous. From a gearhead's perspective, anyhow.
entry 1341
The level of detail on an Atom is just as good as you would hope it would be.
entry 1342
Note the nicely shaped cycle fenders, with a proper place to attach the solidly mounted brackets.
You won't see an Atom with a cock-eyed fender! I also like the little fairings for the lights, although I'm told they're very thin and fragile.
entry 1343
Bert "B.S." Levy poses with the cars before all the action starts.
entry 1344
Bert downloads after his first session.
Jim Sharp is in the blue shirt - he's the one who supplied the two Atoms on less than a week's notice after the original car suffered a mishap. Very friendly and generous guy. That's me crouched by the side of the Seven, getting some good news.
entry 1345
Two ways of building a lightweight sports car, designed 50 years apart.
entry 1346
March 7, 2007: 
So, what was wrong with the engine? A lifter failed and jammed in the head.
This held an exhaust valve open at full lift. That lifter is well and truly stuck and the head is pretty much toast. No problem there, I have a spare (doesn't everyone?) and the cams are fine. There's a greasy fingerprint in the picture that looks like damage to the cam lobe, but that's not the case.
So I could just drop the other head on the car with the new cams, or I could be smart and port it along with some new valve springs. I'll probably do the latter - I decided once before to skip the springs and run the stock ones, and look where it got me. This will keep the Seven off the road for a while as I wait for the head to come back from the machine shop. That's a bit of a shame, but I have lots of other things to keep me occupied right now.
I was running this motor pretty hard and it took the abuse for a long time. So I don't mind this. It's not a terribly expensive fix really - cheaper than a new set of tires!
entry 1347
March 11, 2007:
Another track day - but this one wasn't in the Seven.
Instead, it was the debut for the Flyin' Miata Westfield that I've been working on. The engine fired up last Sunday, the car moved under its own power for the first time on Thursday, so the obvious thing to do was to take it to the track on Saturday. Less than a week from the first noise to full throttle down the front straight? Of course.
The car was amazingly good out of the box. It's very comfortable to sit in. There are no squeaks and rattles when driving around, and the suspension does an excellent job of suspending. Amazing. We did have a few little teething problems such as a clunk in the front suspension and an odd behavior caused by a short in the engine management computer that was fixed by removing the backside of the case, but by the time we'd had lunch it was up and running happily.
So, how does it feel? Not bad at all. The steering (the optional quick rack) is very well done and the car responds pretty well to anything you ask. The front track is narrow relative to the rear and Westfield recommended very little front camber, and the result is that hard cornering is ruled by the need to get the front to stick. This means a more cautious approach to entering a corner to make sure you've got front-end grip, and the balance in fast sweepers is dictated by controlling understeer. With some shock adustments and a slight 10mm bump in front track, it got much better. We're going to dial in a bit more front camber (it's currently at about 0.2-0.3 degrees negative) to see if we can get some bite. Westfields are known for handling like this from what I understand, but it could be improved. It didn't stop me from hanging out the tail in a couple of corners and from obtaining a fairly neutral stance in the fast turn 1 sweeper. It just took a different driving style than in my car.
There's also the matter of the brakes. I don't think the rears are contributing much at all and the right front wheel locks fairly easily. We'll do some cornerweighting to the car and see if I can adjust the proportioning front/rear somehow.
Overall, Bill and I are very happy with the car. The two of us went out to play and found that the car was very closely matched with Janel's little Miata. The 1.6 Miata has a supercharger (about 150-155 at the wheels, I'd estimate), upgraded suspension and my poor abused Toyo RA-1s. The Westfield has a bone stock 1.6 with a Link ECU for engine management (perhaps 95 hp) and my old set of Falken Azenis RT-215, a slipperier tire than the Toyos. The Miata is very well sorted, the Westfield had only just come off the build stand. I think there's good potential there.
entry 1348
The Westfield is alive! It's a great looking car once all the body panels are on, and it works very well right out of the box.
entry 1349
They're so pretty when they haven't even been wet yet.
This is a stock engine that's simply been cleaned up.
entry 1350
March 15, 2007: 
At the track in Texas.
Burt "BS" Levy (author of The Last Open Road, I'm sure he'd want you to buy his books) gives his feedback on the Seven. Here's what he had to say in a later email:
REALLY enjoying your book, and now understand why the blessed car works
so well. You have a wonderful practical grasp of balance, weight
transfer, bump steer, etc., and the car sure shows it.
Am I bragging? Sure, why not. Thanks to David at Grassroots Motorsports for the picture.
entry 1351
Racing furiously down the front straight...or a staged picture for a magazine? You decide.
Bert is in the Atom while Tim Webb drives the Seven. What did Tim have to say?
I just wanted to drop you a note of thanks. I appreciate you letting me drive your very well prepared car. It truly was a joy to drive. I drive lots of cars and other than my FF1600, I don't get to drive such well mannered "street" cars....
Again, thanks. If I didn't have a racecar, I would seriously consider a Locost.
Okay, enough of that. Thanks again to David at GRM for the picture.
entry 1352
March 20, 2007: 
While I've been patting myself on the back, the Seven has been sitting disassembled in the garage.
I'll take the head to the machine shop tomorrow and see if they can figure out how to get that lifter free - if it's possible. If not, I'll give them a spare head to work up. I might even stick a stock head on the car to make it drivable again.
In the meantime, it's time to get some serious work done on the Targa Miata.
entry 1353
April 6, 2007:
I've decided to install a stock head on the car.
The porting on the previous one was "nothing special", according to Bill. So I just need to pop in some valve springs and swap the cams. I have the head already, it's from a 323 GTX. The way things are going with all the other work I'm trying to get done, it's tempting to simply swap the cams out and deal with the springs later. But I made that decision once before, and look where it got me.
entry 1354
April 12, 2007:
I was driving to work yesterday and I was a bit ahead of schedule.
What the heck, the Seven's damaged head was in the back of the car and I was going right by the machine shop. So I pulled in to see what they had to say about my jammed lifter.
They had good things to say! Joe - the machinist - figured there was a good chance he could get it out. I left the head and went on to work. A couple of hours later, I got a phone call saying the lifter was out and that nothing was damaged other than the lifter and the valve. No worries there, they're littering the place. While installing my new springs, he also found that all my other lifters were showing really odd wear patterns from constant valve float. So he replaced all of them with the set I had pulled aside for the Targa Miata head.
As I might have mentioned, I had the redline set a little high so I could stretch out one of the short chutes at the local track. Down in Texas, I think Burt had been leaning a little harder on the limiter to stretch a longer straight and the abused valvetrain just gave up. Well, I had told him it was safe to work the car hard.
At lunch I stopped by to pick up my repaired head - one new (used) valve, 16 new (used) lifters and a new (new) set of valve springs. The used parts came out of the piles of spares that are sitting around at Flyin' Miata and in my garage. That was faster and easier than I'd expected!
entry 1355
Back in December 2004, I had the head off the car to fix a problem with the pistons and I considered installing new valve springs to handle higher RPM.
At the time, I decided against it. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have suffered a failure at the track in Texas. So I'm not making the same mistake twice. Aluminum seats, titanium retainers and a reasonable $366 retail price. Not bad really.
entry 1356
Preparing the block for the head.
I have to start using multi-layer steel head gaskets on this engine. I'm getting sick of cleaning off the remnants of the composite ones! This is at least the fourth head gasket to go on this engine thanks to the various rebuilds. It should be good for years of hard service now though.
If you look carefully at the exhaust valve cutouts, you can see where the valves were hitting the pistons. I didn't see this the last time the head was off, so the float was obviously extreme recently despite the same redline. I cleaned up the pistons with a dremel to take the sharp edges off and some fine Scotchbrite soaked in carb cleaner removed the carbon. Cleaning the headgasket was done with a plastic scraper and a Shop-Vac powerful enough to lift carb cleaner right off the head. No metal shavings in here! At least, I did my best to avoid it.
entry 1357
The Seven and the Targa Miata, in a race to see who gets on the road first.
Given that the Seven now has a head and the Targa car doesn't even have pistons in the block yet (tonight it will!), it's probably best to bet on the Seven. Soon I'll be able to get back to testing those new control arms.
entry 1358
April 16, 2007:
It's alive!
I installed the new head for the second time, and... second time? Yes, I'd pulled the head off in order to verify some questions about the new valve springs. So it's back on and the car fired up happily. Excellent - now I can drive! Which means, of course, that it rained today. The Seven hasn't lost its magic.
entry 1359