Things are kicking off and I’ve got a busy week ahead! We’re taking delivery of our car later this week, and sometime before Friday I need to sort out insurance and buy another car that can tow our trailer. I also need to finalize my registration for the championship! As I mentioned last week, we’re taking the car down to Oxford Brookes where Austin and our newest recruit, Adam Painter, will do their engineering magic to make the car super fast and reliable for our next test. Since he knows what we need to do better than I do, I asked Austin to write a bit about what we’ll be doing to get the car ready for Silverstone on March 2:

With car delivery slated to happen over the next few days, and our first test only 10 days away, we have quite a bit of work to do. We need to take a car that Charlie’s never driven, and that I’ve never even seen and ensure it is ready for the twists and turns of Silverstone on March 2nd. Once we have the car in our possession we will perform an inventory of the parts we have available and figure out what equipment we still need to purchase, to ensure we are adequately equipped to handle a variety of situations that may happen at the track. We bought some zip ties, duct tape, and a hammer yesterday so that should get us most of the way, but we should probably have a few more things, just in case.

Once inventory is complete, we will strip down and rebuild of the car to ensure all of the nuts, bolts, and fittings are properly torqued and secured. On a side note, now is a good time to tell you that despite the fact that blue Loctite tastes like candy (Note from the editor: ಠ_ಠ ), you probably shouldn’t eat too much of it. Another benefit of this strip down will be to help us familiarize ourselves with the car itself; even if we were buying the car brand new and assembled from the factory, I would do the exact same thing. Once I am satisfied that the car isn’t going to fall apart we’ll put on a suitable set of springs and a usable gear ratio based on the data we can scrounge from past events. We’ll then fill it up with fluids (engine oil, gearbox oil, coolant, brake fluid, and petrol).

After a systems check we’ll fire the engine up and verify the functionality of the sensors and data logging unit; At this point the car will be drivable but there are still a few more things to do in order to prepare the car for Charlie. We’ll mold a seat using two part foam and we’ll adjust the pedals to his liking. When this is finished I may definitely will push the car around the parking lot and make race car noises before setting corner weights and packing the car in the trailer for the first test. We’re currently working on a test plan; once we determine what exactly that is I will be sure to give you another update very soon.

Cheers!