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| Dr Strangedavey or How I Learned To Stop Spending Money And Go Motor Racing Anyway (Part1) Warning: Incidentally, none of what follows is about going faster. Properly implemented,
this advice won’t necessarily slow you down or speed you up, it
will just save you money. Oh - and neither I nor the Monoposto Racing
Club are in any way liable if you actually do any of this stuff. 1) Avoid Accidents So don’t have them. Be careful out there. More gratuitous advice on this topic…I think the most common cause of accidents is either you or the guy you are racing with taking a lunge down the inside. The lunger is actually relying on the lungee (got the roles?) to actively change his/her line in some way to prevent an accident. If the lungee doesn’t see the lunger coming, or doesn’t react fast enough, or is bolshy and won’t give way or turns in early; then about 2 seconds later one or both of you are stepping out of the wreckage and it’s pretty much random chance who gets off worst. And guess what – nobody but you cares very much. The marshals have a bit of excitement dealing with the mess; if you had got past you would be one point better off but no richer, and approx. three people (at best) in the world will have noticed. My advice? Work at the real skill of motor racing; which is not the same as being able to lap quickly, that’s just the entry ticket to the game. The real skill is getting into positions where you can pass the other guy with minimum risk, and he/she can’t do anything about it. More on this in a later spiel. 2) Collect All The Bits So now you’ve had an accident anyway. There are a million ways to have one and some are even really not your fault. When you hop out of the car, get quickly to the safety of a barrier; but when the race is over and the wrecker turns up make sure you collect all the bits. The classic is to be unable to get a broken upright fixed by welding because you left a small but complex (and broken) part of the casting by the track side. Bill for welding £40, bill for new upright £400. The list is endless. Did you pick up the suspension spring which popped out, the bodywork fixing that got ripped off, the wing mirror that was scythed away etc etc. It never seems important at the time, but later in the workshop a retrieved part can often be repaired, saving ££s. The most vivid example for me was after a major startline shunt at Brands which took out 80% of the grid including me (FF1600s…duh) in the first 200 yards. I harvested 18 loose springs from the field of wreckage before I found any of mine. No-one else was even looking. They were all chasing the guy who had moved over… 3) Be Nice And Always Pay On Time People who make their living out of motor racing – selling bits, preparing cars, fixing the wreckage, whatever; are human beings who will certainly respond well to being treated well. Be nice! Pay what you owe on time and without hassle. Listen to their advice. If you do this, when you next have a problem it is very likely that you will get good service again. This seems so obvious, but I know from my own experiences on both sides of this fence how varied peoples’ approach to this simple situation can be. Don’t short change, false deadline, bad mouth etc etc – it doesn’t save you money at all: quite the opposite. Over the years I have very carefully identified and worked with a whole range of expert suppliers who provide a fantastic amount of help to keep my faltering show on the road – specialist welders (Magnesium Mick), precision machinists (Secret Squirrel), rolling roads (Stanley Baldwin), race parts (Simon Says), tyres (Smithy). The list of people who I need to help me is very long and I have been working with most of them for more than 20 years. They are also very nice people. Build yourself a network and make sure you nurture it. 4) Learn To Weld Welding and brazing are key skills to prepare and repair a racing car. If you need to make a bracket to hold an ecu, modify an engine mounting to clear an oil pipe, repair a suspension arm, fix a cracked exhaust etc etc (you get the idea) then you need welding and brazing. Many such jobs are most easily done on the car or next to it. You need to be able to do this yourself, otherwise it’s expensive and time consuming. There are several types of welding to choose from, the main choices being electric welding such as TIG and MIG, or plain electric Arc; and gas welding/brazing using oxy acetylene equipment. All have pros and cons, but any is invaluable. I’m a gas welding man myself – from years of dealing with brazed space frame chassis. And I reckon there is almost nothing that can defeat you with a gas torch in your hand – worse comes to the worst you can actually cast a new component on the fly with a gas torch and enough rods. The bad news is that all this stuff is potentially dangerous; whether it’s arc eye from getting careless about looking at arc welding flare or the fire hazard from a garage full of fuelled up racing car and a white hot gas torch. I always reckon that the mark of a good gas welder isn’t speed, or weld-penetration; it’s simply the ability to run down a weld-seam without getting third degree burns. I learned my welding in the most demanding of schools; a back street garage making rally cars from shell weld-ups of road car write offs – and I literally have the scars to prove it. It’s probably better to go to evening classes. Whatever, I don’t care. You want to prepare a serious racing car at low cost – learn to weld. 5) Learn To Use Composite Materials Exactly the same is true of using composite materials – and I’m focussing on the polyester-matrix fibre glass most club-spec racing car body work is made of. I don’t have any personal experience of handling advanced composites like carbon fibre/Kevlar, but they look tricky and these comments aren’t directed at them. I’ve just had a trip down memory lane and I honestly can’t remember a single racing car I have bought (and it’s more than 20 now) where I have come across a bit of repaired bodywork and thought: “my word, what an excellent repair”. Without exception the many “repairs” I have been unfortunate to encounter have apparently been the cruddy output of cack-handed idiots; and are far harder to remedy than it would have been to fix the original damage. Common errors include:
The most recent horror I’ve had was with my current Swift. It had minor side panel damage which had been repaired by the above mentioned laminated-oil layer plus dry fibre mat technique, followed by about 5mm of spayed-on body filler, a layer of heat cured vinyl paint, and finally a full vinyl adhesive wrap. The panel was rippled, cracked, weak, heavy and so heat distorted in didn’t fit the chassis. Couldn’t have been a better fix – not. Done well, and in your own garage, it’s perfectly possible to
rebuild large areas of damaged or even missing panels by forming a mould
around the outside of the damage, applying a release agent, and rebuilding
the damaged panel from the inside with gel coat, resin and mat. The biggest
job I’ve ever done like this was to “coke bottle” the
voluminous side pods an F3 Ralt when converting it from ground effect
to flat bottom spec, which involved making a pair of aluminium “moulds”
each about three feet long and two feet high. Simon Davey
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"Dr Strangedavey" - Simon Davey is known to us all as our administrator and paddock co-ordinator. He has, over more than 30 years, had enormous success in single seater racing and rallying, and without going broke.
Peter Sellers as Dr Strangelove from the film, "Dr Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."
BTCC, British GP round , 1993. Toyota led 1-2 until an overambitious move on Hoy by Bailey took both out. (Actually, Toyota loved the publicity.)
Ralf Schumacher at Melbourne, 2002. Brother Michael won 7 world championships.
"Always collect up the bits" - if the car's not repairable you can always sell them to a collector.
Colin Chapman was not renowned for paying suppliers on time, so sometimes didn't get bits when he wanted them. Team Lotus always had a reputation for reliability and probity. Didn't they??
All pix but Simon and Dermot's garage from the internet. All captions by assistant ed, so Top Gear fans attack him not Patrick or Simon. Part 2 follows shortly |
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