Cadwell . First track day in the Westy (10 September 2005).
It’s a four and a half to five hour drive up to Cadwell, so the plan was to set off at about two the day before and meet my mate Mark up there. Have good night’s sleep in a B&B and then we will be fresh for the track day. But the day didn’t go start well. My starter motor had been playing up for some time and had just about given up the ghost. So instead of setting off for Cadwell at 2pm I was driving around trying to find someone to change my starter motor.
I eventually found a company (LSUK) who would look at the
car. The auto-electrician (let’s call him Bob: I
don’t know his real name) took off the starter motor and went round the back to
test it. After ten minutes he came round to the reception desk with my starter
in pieces and said that it was dead and not worth repairing, so I should buy a
new one. I agreed.
But once he fitted the new one he couldn’t get it to work. At this point I asked
whether he was sure the original one was faulty and that it wasn’t a battery,
wiring or alternator problem. He said that the old Starter was definitely
knackered, but tested the other things anyway to shut me up and said they were
fine. He then wired in a relay between the battery and the new starter motor,
but still it wouldn’t work. Another half hour passed while he checked the earths
and wiring. Still no progress.
He then connected up a jump starter to the battery, and the starter motor
worked. He told me to hold the revs up for a few minutes. I then turned the
engine off and started it again without the jump starter. It started. Bob then
advised me just to rev the engine up for a few minutes before I turned it off
and it would be fine.
At this point I was quite baffled. Why should I have to do this if the
alternator and battery were fine? Bob just said that the battery was probably a
bit flat where I had been trying to start the engine, and the car had been idle
for a few weeks (which it had). So I paid up (£168!) and set off for Cadwell.
Unfortunately at the first petrol station I discovered that the problem had not been sorted at all. It wouldn’t start. So I got some nice people to bump start me and carried on. I eventually arrived at the B&B at 10pm exhausted. The drive up had taken five hours. Had a glass of wine and a brief chat with Mark, then it was off to bed ready for an early start.
Luckily the car started the next morning, so things got off to a good start. We arrived at the track with plenty of time to spare. This was a WSCC organised track day, so 90% of the cars were Westfields or similar. We wandered over to the track and spent some time trying to work out whether the narrow bit of track we were looking at was a slip road to the track or the track itself. Mark reckoned it was part of the track, but I though it couldn’t possibly be as it was too narrow. Turned out Mark was right. We were looking at the Mountain/Hall section!
I’d read that the first bend (Coppice) of Cadwell could be taken flat out at about 100-110mph, but that it required a lot of courage to do so. But I never managed this. In fact for the first few sessions I not only lifted on the approach to this bend, but changed down as well! Pathetic. I got better as the day went on but never managed to take this bend as well as I could have. In fact I never quite got to grips with the two parts of Charlies either, so never had much speed down the straight. This was the most frustrating part of the day. I should have got an instructor in the car with me early on, but after I decided to do this I couldn’t find him.
Apart from my lack of skill/courage with the first three bends, the day was fantastic. This really is a superb track, and the car performed admirably. It was particularly good in the second half of the track after Gooseneck down to Barns, and I think I really managed to this part of the track pretty well, especially on the last few sessions.
I had a few problem with the gearbox though. It often crunched into second and third, and I sometimes had difficultly selecting third, especially when changing down. On the approach to Gooseneck I couldn’t select third at all, or any other gear for that matter, and just had to brake and let the other cars pass. Also the starter stopped working again, so I had to just roll down the slip road into the paddock and bump start it. Another thing to sort out when I get home!
I will definitely have to go back to this superb track. It probably wasn’t the best track to learn about my Westfield. I would have done better to do an airfield day at Hullavington to learn more about how the car behaves in a safer environment. But I definitely could have gone a lot faster than I did. But with a five hour drive there and a four and a half hour drive home I can’t do this track too often.
Starter motor again.
On Thursday (the day after I got
back from Cadwell) I returned to LSUK and told
them what I thought, i.e. that there was nothing wrong with my original starter
motor, that they should put it back on, give me my money back and find the real
fault. They said that my old starter was definitely faulty and that to make
sure, Bob had retested it again after I left on Tuesday. OK, I said, dig it out,
and show me the test you ran. They did this, and it was, of course, fine.
A different auto-electrician (call him Rob) did a few tests on my car (after I
waited for an hour for him to finish another job). He disconnected the battery
and hooked up a new one. The starter worked fine. My old battery had had it!
Unbelievable! Rob then spent an hour and a half finding a battery small enough,
checking a few connection, and putting my old starter motor back on (which, it
turned out, was only two years old). I was now half an hour late for a meeting,
but the starter worked so I was happy.
They refunded what I paid for the new starter motor, and sorted out an invoice
for the battery (£46 + labour). The attendant walked off to ask Rob how long he
spent on the job and came back and said “four and a half”. “Four and a half
what”, I said. “Four and a half hours”. “Don’t be bloody stupid, I haven’t been
here four and a half hours, and I spent an hour waiting for your electrician to
finish another job”. The attendant went back out. Came back. “Two hours?”.
Seemed like a lot to change a battery to me, but I was weary by now and late.
OK, how much then. Battery, labour, vat…. £175. At this point something snapped
inside and I lost my cool in a way I cannot remember doing for a very long time.
£130 labour to change a battery, and tighten up a connection on the battery
cut-off switch, after the way they had messed me about! The assistant manager
intervened and asked whether £84 would be ok. This calmed me down and I agreed
to pay (apologizing profusely for shouting at the attendant).
Off I went, happy at least that my car was sorted out. But when I got home I
noticed that the refund for the original work was £10 short! They’d even cocked
up the refund! So another trip back down to the local LSUK.
They wanted me to wait while they figured out what had gone wrong. I politely
pointed out that I don’t give a F*** what went wrong, I just want my ten quid.
The manager came out, gave me the money, and off I went.
A truly unbelievable example of gross incompetence. What did Bob do to test my
starter motor? Why couldn’t he spot a defective battery? How hard is it to
refund what I paid, and how could they think it would be a good idea to try and
charge me for four and half hours work to change a battery?
Gearbox again (September 2005).
I wasn’t really happy with my T9 gearbox. Apart from the problems I had at Cadwell, it leaked quite badly. I did a search on the WSCC notice board to find out whether others had had this problem. Some had had it because they did not put a gasket between the bellhousing and the gearbox. I didn’t remember seeing a charge for this gasket on my receipt from the garage that put the gearbox in, so I looked on the 4-speed they took out to see if it had one. It did. It was still stuck to the gearbox. So I phoned the mechanic up and asked whether he put a gasket in. He said he didn’t, but that it didn’t need one. I eventually persuaded him that it did, so he suggested I bring the car round.
To cut a long story short, I agreed to take a day off work to help get the engine and gearbox back out on the condition that he not charge me for the extra work (which was his fault anyway!). The following week we sorted it out. This time I made sure he put enough oil in, as I was sure this was the cause of the other difficulties I had with the gearbox. It was all done by mid-afternoon. He charged me £30 for the oil and antifreeze (I shouldn’t have paid this, but I had had enough of arguing with incompetent engineers). The gear selection was much better now, and although there is a bit of a crunch going from 1st to 2nd when the gearbox is cold, it is fine after a few minutes. No crunches or problems selecting third. Selecting 1st can sometime be a little difficult, but this is not a serious problem. So I am now happy with the gearbox.
Spare wheel
On the way up to Cadwell I took a wrong turn and had to do a three point turn. The curb was higher than I expected and I hit it with the spare wheel carrier while reversing. This broke the support bracket. Since the other one was already broken this meant that the bracket wasn’t really supporting the spare wheel at all. So when I got home I removed it, fitted the number plate and its light to the back panel and left the spare wheel off. I now carry a can of foam puncture repair stuff that should get me out of trouble.
Home-made boot box (October 2005)
I never replaced the bootbox after I fitted the roll bar,
and because it was so scruffy I didn’t want to refit it. So I decided to make my
own from aluminium. So I got myself a 1x2m sheet of 1.2mm ally and set about
making one. The plan was to make the box section first, and then fit wings
either side. These would have to be cut around the roll-bar, so would need
something underneath on the other side of the roll-bar to make it look a bit
neater.
Here’s the first attempt with too many layers of overlapping ally.
The first attempt looked good, but the various pieces of ally rattled against each other, so I decided to take the various bits off and try something more minimal. I also decided it would look more natural if I painted the wings blue. So I did this and was reasonably happy with the result.
Here’s the second attempt with the painted wings.