Here it is.

I’ve designed a bracket that will take a wishbone going into it or rather, the captive spherical bearing in a custom designed wishbone. It’s not easy to design a wishbone well – anything one makes that is adjustable invariably is weaker than the fixed part. However, this means it’s tricky to just got it right out of the blocks.

So, the plan is to design an adjustable wishbone, get the car properly set up by cornering force, then take the wishbones off, jig them and make custom ones that fit the jig. Saying that, here’s the bracket.

It’s been thickened to give good support for the bolt (so the holes don’t oval) and the holes in the back go into a bracket with a set of stepped holes, thus the bracket can be moved up and down to provide height-adjust for the suspension.

So, after watching this video about a BMW test driver taking his wife for a ride, it brought back a couple of times when I’d taken friends out and it surprised them with what a kit car can do.

Firstly, there was my sister in law who announced that I should give it the beans and not take it gently like I did for the MIL. After about 10 corners she was begging to stop. I did before she ate her lunch backwards all over the footwell.

It’s odd how people automatically assume that you’re going to brake for every corner whereas the majority of the work is in positioning and settling the car. Moreso, she wasn’t ready for just how immediate the acceleration is or how brutal and late the braking is; I love it when they reach for the imaginary brake. I’ve frequently got 5s to 60 according to my timing gear (hall effect racelogic jobby) and that’s more than most muggles are wired for.

I took another friend out, a very good friend over many years. When we got back and he got out he fell over; I’d messed with his inner ear. I asked him how this happened (If I knew he had a condition, I would have been easier on him) but he said “we were coming up to a corner at 110 [indicated – probably more like 90] and I was reaching for the imaginary brake when you put it into 5th and planted it – I kept my eyes shut until we stopped”.

I think from now on, passengers will need a safeword, and it will be Nihno.

In accordance with Rule 13, I have bought a new electric screwdriver (Bosch PSR Select) and it’s so good I thought I’d write about it here. However, I’m not associated with anything or trying to flog anything (see – no affiliate links); I’m just genuinely pleased with this.

The great thing it does is keep all the bits in a barrel you rotate, so you can flip one bit into the driver and another out (you can take the bits out and swap them).

Finally, it’s got a little light on to illuminate the piece. Very handy if you’re having to fix something at night at the roadside.

So, my four new injectors arrived, rated as good for 304cc/min.

They turned up from an ebay seller, and are weber iw-058s. They came in Magneti-Marelli packaging, and they manufacture injectors for weber anyway. Looking up the specification, they are rated as 215bhp with a 73.5% duty cycle, so I have room to grow.

Now comes the crappy ebay bit. The photo made them look (taken when the guy got them from the re conditioners) and when they came to me, they looked scruffy (at least they did smell of petrol). When you blow them up though, you can see that they’re missing a pintile (second in from the right).

I’m going to put it into the ebay feedback, but all isn’t lost. I was going to get a refurb kit anyway to add new seals, spacers etc, just to be safe. I can get a service kit from Mr Injector for £11.44 that has all the bits in.

But still, it’s a little crappy shipping them without even arsing to clean them or putting all the bits in.

You know, it’s nice to get good service, but now and again, someone stands out. Fuel Pumps Online stood out. I rang them yesterday (a Friday) at about 13:00 inquiring about a walbro fuel pump with fitting kit. Vicky answered, and guided me to the Nissan Skyline full fitting kit because it was the most comprehensive fitting kit available all in one box.

The best bit was that I was a little cheeky and asked if I could get it on Saturday (bearing in mind most people won’t bother with Saturday delivery because the couriers often can’t back up their commitments). No problem she said.

Sure enough, it all turned up this afternoon (post office were an hour late with special delivery). All sorted, and all for a great price.

It’s tiny as well. There’s going to be plenty of room in the tank for it. The pen in the photo is for scale.

So, I’ve finally got a break since starting work at 06:30, so I thought I’d jot down the fuel system sizing I need. I have taken lots of sizing information from this zetecinside.com article and injector specifications and ratings from witchhunter (weird name).

I have 4 injectors (Weber IW-31) and desire 215bhp minimum with an option to size up to 250bhp later when I supercharge it (ahem). According to the Weber website, I need to flow 269 cc/min and my IW-31s are rated at 274 cc/min. This isn’t good, because it implies a 98% duty cycle. As such, my injectors will be flowing nearly full flow (and therefor full duration) whereas most people aim for a 80% duty cycle. This is a bummer because it means (potentially) 4 new injectors at £80 each. I will need to sell mine on though which will offset the cost.

Next I need a fuel pump. Now I know I’m flowing 1076cc at full chat, I need a fuel pump (internal) that can deliver the goods. The Walbro GSS 342 can flow 255 litres per hour, which translates to 4250 cc/minute. It seems adequately over spec for my needs.

I’m only part of the way there in the build, and not ready to put the roll hoop in place, nor the placement of the cross members. (stick with me – this is leading somewhere).

I’ve got all the steel together for mine in T45 (the proper homologated stuff) which has cost me £50 per metre before bending, and this is at trade prices.

I know I’m doing it right when I see something like this. Click the picture to take you to the website. It’s made from plumbing pipe and has been screwed to the floor with self-tappers.

So, this is what it looks like when you give yourself a partial depth third-degree burn to the neck, whilst welding.

This has been two weeks of healing, using a special one-way membrane dressing to aid healing. For the first week Harrogate hospital weren’t sure if it would heal and if I needed to go to wakefield for skin grafts.

As it stands, it’s going to fully heal and will be red for a while. There was a chance I’d then need a graft for cosmetic reasons, but right now I don’t think I will.

So, as you can see from the picture on the right, this is the chassis before I have added the spider in – if you like this is the before shot. I’m adding the spider in place to provide a virtual cross member through the engine to increase the structural rigidity of the engine bay and also increase the tortional rigidity.

I had several requirements putting this in place. Firstly it needed to be demountable, and secondly it needed to be easy to manufacture and locate. To this end, I went to McGill Motorsports and bought some left hand and right hand 1/2″ rose joints, threaded bungs and 1″ wishbone tube (4m of it just to have lots of spare). All in all, I got 10 rose joints (5 left hand, 5 right), 11 bungs, lock nuts and 4m of tube for about £110 all in, which I think was great value. This kit form approach is way easier than trying to get really accurate location on machined parts. The picture shows the bearing-bung-tube arrangement, just in case you were wondering what I was talking about.

I also needed to manufacture some brackets to attach it all to the chassis, which were cut from 1.5mm mild steel, with the holes reinforced with 3.5mm mild steel plates to be sure the bolt (actually a cap screw) shaft had enough support, so the reciprocation of the application doesn’t wear oval holes in the bracket plate, rendering it useless. These were easy enough to make – weld one to the other, and make 6 brackets the same. If I made 8 the same then I wouldn’t be able to demount the spider. I say 8 brackets in total because each rose-joint will be supported above and below. Remember the golden rule – always support a rose joint in double-shear.

I first of all made a turn-buckle to go from bottom left to top right, as shown in the picture. A turn-buckle is a tube with opposing threaded ends attached. If you turn the tube one way, the whole arrangement expands, and the other causes it to contract. This made it easy-peasy to locate and get the length correct for the first cross-member. The brackets are bolted to the turn-buckle first and then welded into place, ensuring a good fit. Next, on went the tube from bottom right to the existing cross-member. I used hole-cutting software to get this right, and the adjustability in the rose-joint to be sure of location.

Next came the tricky design part because it was becoming clear to me now that I may be welding myself into a corner when it came to making it demountable. as it stands in the picture above, you can see how there’s no bracketry for the top left tube, so the whole arrangement has enough pivot room (pivoting from the top right rose joint) to come loose. If I welded in the fourth bracket then there would be no room to get it out.

I hummed and hahed, and thought of making the top left and bottom right bracket-pairs vertical, but that would mean firstly cutting them out, and secondly losing the extra gusseting support they give. It was only when I was yanking it out to show to a friend did I realise that all it needed was a different bracket-shape that didn’t span the entire angle if a simple gusset were used. It still transfers the load into the focus-node of the space frame in a straight line, so I think I’ve ended up with an elegant, if asymmetric solution.

This whole arrangement is strong – really strong. I’ve tested it by standing on it where all four tubes join and there was no give whatsoever. And that’s loading it in a dimension it’s totally not designed for. I think it’s now strong enough for the job in hand, namely keeping the front of the car rigid enough for the suspension to work well, as well as keeping the engine bay strong enough to cope with the torque reaction of 215bhp.

Happy with that.