Good, then bad, then AWESOME!

The Good - It's been a busy week at Richard Lander Racing. We have finished work on the electrics, the bodywork, the datalogger, the steering and we have even built a rolling road type test rig. With all this complete we got the car up and running on the rig with all the cowlings removed. This however exposed a major problem...

The Bad - as Mr Arney was inspecting the drive chain during testing he suddenly noticed he was getting splattered by some sort of fluid. This turned out to be the transmission fluid from the NuVinci hub. Turns out we may have been spinning it too fast and fluid has been escaping from the seals. The fluid turns out to a custom component and therefore irreplaceable. It was looking like we were about to take a massive financial hit...

The AWESOME - Mr Lloyd-King got to it and made contact with Fallbrook in the USA, the manufacturers of the NuVinci hubs, and told them about our problem hoping they would give us some advice on how to repair it. Their response totally blew us away, they were so interested in the whole project that they are sending us out not one but two replacements! America really is the home of customer service. Thanks to this amazing level of generosity we will be back on the road with minimal downtime. For those who want to know more about Fallbrook and the great piece of engineering that is the NuVinci hub click HERE.

It's Free!

The Chassis was removed from the jig today and the boys got to work on fettling the edges and cutting the curve at the rear. We can now start with the silk and bioresin composite process in the next week or two.

Epic Update

Well, so much has happened since the last post that I am not sure where to start! First of all we have a new sponsor to thank, Teagle Machinery of Blackwater have very kindly agreed to machine our drive shafts for us and have also volunteered to sort out the bearings for them too for which we are very grateful.

We also had several deliveries over the past couple of weeks, we are now the proud owners of a new motor and race batteries. At the same time the Nu Vinci gearbox arrived, a purchase made possible by the generous funding provided by Ladds of Redruth, a big thank you to them.

 
And finally perhaps the most dramatic piece of news; a major leap taken just before the half term, with the bulkheads finally complete the chassis could be glued together with the bone glue. It was all hands on deck for this with everyone pitching in to get the bone glue on before it cooled and then clamped into the jig.