another attempt to shift gear found 5th rather clunkily. my panic eased slightly. this was good. this meant the clutch was not locked out. something else was wrong though. it didn't take long to realise that the only other thing that could be wrong was a snapped clutch cable. but, it must still have some connection if i can change gear. i tried again. the resulting thunk was the last strands of the cable giving way . bugger!
the surface at woodbridge airfield must be fairly slippery because once the tyres were up to temperature, it was a real struggle to get the rear end to break free, despite them being at the end of their life and me showing them no mercy. another thing i noticed is that i'd left the nitrons up three clicks at the front and the back and it shows on the road.
oh, and the repacked exhaust? the car is louder than it has ever been . even i'm shocked at how loud it is. i guess i'll have to take another look inside. 21st september
spent a large chunk of the morning integrating the accessory wiring and in-car video behind the dash.
i made it home, put the car in the garage and had a well deserved beer. a proper fix can wait for another day. 22nd september
popped home at lunchtime to replace the clutch cable and pick up the car to get the tyres changed after work. i fabricated a bracket to fit to the pedal, which should keep the cable run straight and avoid it wearing through in the future.
also made a few changes to the digidash2 configuration following the trackday. the main one is to shift the oil level pressure warning light as it kept coming on at junctions and traffic lights when idling. i've moved it to below 20psi above 3000rpm. lowered the water temperature alarm from 110ºc to 105ºc. moved the fuel level alarm up from 5% to 8%.
having removed the footwell plate, i could see the nipple had detached itself from the cable, resulting in a cable that was now too short to be much use. i unclamped it at the engine end and used every last millimeter of spare cable to get some spare cable that might possibly be clamped to the pedal. i don't think you could solve this challenge, if you hadn't built the car in the first place but, i found the means to clamp the cable to the pedal, by stealing bits from other areas of the car. the parts where there is an element of redundancy and not by disabling essential functions or safety features . in less than 15 minutes i had clutch pedal action, so i set off rather nervously, with a plan to minimise the number of gear changes required just in case my improvised fix should fail. the consequences were going to be a lot higher as i headed back onto the busy roads that led to home.
i still can't quite believe it but 200 yards down the road, i passed another fury. the first i've ever seen on the road in this area. i was probably a bit too enthusiastic in greeting my fellow owner but, round these parts ferrari enzo's and audi r8's are a more common sight!
picture of completed item to follow ...
went out for a quick drive as it was a nice sunny day. i'd assumed the trackday speedo reading of 135mph was optomistic because my gearing calculations show i would need to be doing over 12,000rpm in 6th to reach this speed. i used my gps device to check the speedo today and sure enough it was reading about 78mph at a gps 70mph. this makes my 135mph a more realistic 121mph, about what i'd expect given that i wasn't actually trying to reach the top speed. i reckon a real 125mph is probably the maximum. there is little point in trying to correct this until the new tyres are on the car as the extra diameter of the new rubber will make a large difference. the speedo was calibrated using new tyres and the sva rolling road, so it will be interesting to see how accurate is becomes with new tyres on.
i now had time to ponder my predicament. ordinarily, these are the kind of engineering challenges i relish but, this was bad timing and i wasn't really equipped for the task. kind of like scrapheap challenge using the contents of your glovebox alone. it wouldn't make for interesting tv. a quick call to my wife set her mind at ease (i was only supposed to be gone for 30 minutes), whilst i thought about how i could get myself and the car home.
gear changes seemed to be a bit of a stuggle and as i got nearer to home, it got to the point where i could only change up and down when accelerating. a quick check when home showed that the clutch cable had slipped slightly. easily fixed.
having successfully negotiated the accident which was still being cleared up, i had a little more time to evaluate my options. i could slow down and even brake or i could go faster. no clutch means stopping is not really an option. simply turning off the engine is going to have consequences and i don't know what the result would be in a bike engined car. it's not something you do very often!
i carry an emergency toolkit in the fury, in an old wash bag. it's minimalist to say the least but, it contains a small socket set, three spanners (8mm, 10mm and 13mm cover 95% of the nuts in my car), a few odd nuts, bolts and washers just in case, some tiewraps and a puncture repair device. no clutch cable though . and in this situation not enough washers. oh, and a drilled 6mm cable clamp bolt would have been handy too.
took the car out for a spin this afternoon, to see if the clutch action had improved. there was a huge difference, enough to encourage me to extend my drive, something i soon regretted. as i pulled onto the a14 towards felixstowe, the clutch stayed down with a shift up to 4th. my first thought was that i had locked the clutch out, as i had done once before, by allowing too much movement on cable. my second though was one of panic as i realised that the car was stuck in 4th gear, heading towards felixstowe with no where to stop the car safely. the mild panic increased somewhat as a 'police accident' sign loomed up ahead!
it's a well known fact that you can change up a gear on a motorbike without using the clutch, so long as you are accelerating quite hard and then ease off the throttle as you change. it's a less known fact that you can change down under the same conditions. it's a bit noisier though! having successfully negotiated the trimley roundabout without needed to change out of fourth or touch the brakes, i took a familiar slip road to levington, which has a nice long layby half way down it's length. i managed to get down through the gears and into neutral and pulled the car up. this was a big relief.