Engineering - Part 1

Last Sunday was the first day of engineering tests. I needed to do some last minute modifications to the exhaust heat shield on Saturday to stop a resonant vibration. Steve "the welder" made short work of this problem. The engineering tests took place some 300km from home, so it was up early on Sunday to load up and head out. It rained all day Saturday, so I was not able to load the car the day before. This meant loading up at 3:30am in the dark and wet. The car got even more wet on the 4 hour trip but I got there on time. 

Upon arriving at the test location, the first challenge was to cross a muddy red clay field to get to the track. Luckily I was towing with a 4wd, but churning across the paddock got the Birkin pretty dirty as it was sitting directly in the path of the flying mud. After unloading the tests begun. There was a whole bunch of other cars being tested including one other Clubman, a scratch build running a Zetec. It was 6 degrees celsius where we were testing, so it was a pretty long day standing around in the cold waiting for my test. 

Once it was my turn to go I already had the car warmed up and the V-box Racelogic system was installed to do the measurements. The engineer was doing a range of tests including general driving, braking, lane change/stability and noise (stationary and moving). It was a pretty proud moment to see my little car drive down to the end of the test track then come flying back up the strip in anger and full voice. Here's a clip of it making its second pass in to the braking test, which requires 15 consecutive stops from certain speeds, where each time it must stop inside a specific distance under a certain pedal load.

It passed the braking tests easily which is fantastic given the brakes were brand new and haven't even been properly bedded in. It passed the lane change and stability tests, although it whacked a cone on the first run. Due to Greg Fraser's (Redback Motorpsorts) work, the tyres didn't even chirp as it was hurled through the lane changes at increasing speed. Alas it failed the noise test, but more so on the induction air box noise rather than the exhaust. It is making some fairly high frequency noise on intake so this is not surprising. Not to worry as I needed to go back for other checks anyway. All in all a long day with another 4 hour drive home in the rain and dark. I now have a very dirty little car!!!!

Next test is this Wednesday, which is IM240 emissions. Stay tuned!