As January draws to a close we can finally say farewell to possibly our least productive month for a while. The temperature out in the shed has been so cold that over the last few weeks we’ve spent time chasing potential sponsors and awaiting news from America about the rule changes.
As a result we are very pleased to announce that Hammersleys have agreed to supply us with a trailer for our adventure this was one of the major problems now solved, so thank you very much Jason and the team.
On the second score we have finally got the new rules around the roll cage and are making plans to get the cage installed at the earliest opportunity. The car took a quick run up to Doncaster to have a quick spin on John Sleath’s rolling road. As a result the car is now running perfectly again and we have a good ‘emergency’ tune if all else fails and we have to run with the existing ‘small’ engine.
Whilst there, we collected the run engine in preparation for installing it into the car. Rather than doing all the prep work on the engine dyno, it makes sense to have it in the car so that all the various elements can be checked too. Rear axle, clutch, gearbox and electrical systems.
During January we also started work on the front splitter. The big problem with this was that nobody listed a fancy front splitter for a 1965 Jensen C-V8. Apparently it’s easier if you have a mini or an impreza. So after consulting with a few aero experts on the www.bloodhoundssc.com project the design was carefully calculated and drawn in exacting detail. The next step was to build it. This was a major learning curve for all involved.
Step 1, Find out who you are talking to. We all meet a lot of people throughout our daily lives and all these people have skills and talents in many strange and interesting ways. In this case, during a rehearsal of Tilly and the Washingtons Ian was chatting to Mike the drummer, as it turns out as well as hanging around with musicians (sorry!) Mike is a very skilled decorative plasterer. He has done an amount of film work which involves making fancy decorations from plaster.
Step 2, Making a model. The first step to a mould is a model. The space below the front of the car was blocked out in wood, filled with expanding foam and then covered in plaster.
Step 3, Once the model is dry, cover the entire assembly with a releasing agent. In this case unsalted butter! Then a mould can be taken of the model, strengthened with strips of wood and hessian.
Step 4, Once removed from the model we can use the mould to create our fibreglass masterpiece!
Step5, All we need to do now is trim the part to size, test fit, work out exactly where to put all the fixings, add some metal strengthening and we’re done. We are currently undecided as to whether to put a metal shield on the front to prevent the salt form wearing too much of it away.
All this is thanks to the sole effort of Mr Mike Warren, drummer extraordinaire and now an official member of the team. Once we’ve got some time away from this project we have agreed to help Mike out with some ‘go-faster’ work to his beloved Mk 2 Cortina!!
