Part 3 of my Atom 4 Journey
Anglesey, 21/22 June.
This was my first time at Anglesey and what a great circuit. The Mono boys were there too and it was great to have a chance to play alongside them. They were all great company and had support from the BAC factory on hand. At the end of Day 1 we all stayed behind as Top Gear Germany had booked the circuit for filming of the latest Mono R with a pro racing drivers doing their stuff…just amazing. I think having technical support and coaching from the factory go hand in hand as everyone gets something out of it … especially the customers as not everyone is a racing driver and we do this for our enjoyment and at great personal expense.
So Paul and I set the cars up in an adjoining pair of pit garages. Phil had produced a full agenda for the two days of testing with Marc on hand for tuition and further car development… the Mono boys later commented that they thought we were the official Atom development team… funny that.
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After the last track day at Cadwell Park I asked Ben to remove the radiator fan in an attempt to see if we could improve the airflow out the back of the radiator as it might make a difference on the overall cooling front. And just in case you were wondering, back in the pits we had a powerful leaf blower to fit into the front nosecone and another big fan to direct air at the engine itself. Very F1 …. Not
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Shortly after Cadwell Phil discovered that the AP brake calipers don’t have anti-knockback springs fitted as standard, contrary to what he’d previously assumed. Most AP calipers do apparently have them and they were definitely fitted to the Alcons that seemed to be so effective on the previous Atoms. So a set of 16 springs were then duly fitted at home in my garage by four of us in a bit of a production line process. I think we did ok and had some good banter along the way.
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We also tried something bit a radical with the geo … which turned out to be a big mistake as can be seen by Marc having a right old time wrestling with the car on a proper hot lap, and he still managed a quick time. But we did at least managed to get the front slicks working properly for the first time. Note. Anglesey is a very abrasive circuit and we used a full set of new Avon Slicks over the 2 days.
We were also trying a revised version on the capped engine mounts to see if we could reduce the vibration/harshness and at the same time prolong their life.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bH__Faaifn0
So we all went out for the sighting laps and then to the main business. The weather was brilliant and we had great optimism about how things would turn out. But after just 4 laps Paul pulled into the pits complaining of a noise at the back of the car. It turned out that he had literally ripped his offside engine mount from the main chassis tube! The Mono mechanics kindly helped to remove the broken bolts and Steve at Ariel was contacted and promised to urgently despatch a replacement set of mounts. Unfortunately they arrived too late the following day for Paul to be able get any further tracktime. One very disappointed Paul and unfortunately all the back-to-back testing that we’d planned went out the window.
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However, we did discover that the anti-knockback springs seemed to work well and kept the brake pedal consistently firm and with reduced travel. Anyone still unhappy with their AP brakes might benefit from doing the same, and it seems that the factory has endorsed it as a worthwhile addition. Hopefully, that would now put to bed any further question/concerns over the brakes (well nearly so – more will follow later). At some point Phil has promised to put together a technical piece on the brakes in general, but I suspect many will get bored and switch off after a few sentences lol. Bless him!
My newly modified engine mounts were still causing too much harshness, so back to the drawing board on that one again.
Oil temperatures were monitored over the two days and never rose above 100C, so we were pretty happy at that, but couldn’t be sure as that might be mostly down to having the oil cooler. We don’t think so, but during 2023 we will try running without the cooler and see what happens.
But sadly we were still struggling with excessively high coolant temperatures, so removing the fan to try to improve airflow through the rad core didn’t appear to help, but with Paul’s car out of commission from the get go we once again couldn’t make any back to back comparisons. I don’t think it’s been mentioned before, but as soon at temps exceed an indicated 100C the ecu starts to reduce turbo boost and we’re told that timing is also retarded to some degree. And the boost cut is not by a small amount. At temps below 100C max boost is generally around 1.25bar, but once temps get as high as 106C it’s down to just 0.75bar. That’s a big difference so no wonder performance starts to feel dull!
Overall, however, it was a very enjoyable couple of day, and Paul’s patience and stoicism at going all that way for virtually no tracktime is to be admired. I know we’re all looking forward to this year at Anglesey as things have certainly moved on and the full team will be there including Ben from Corten-miller.
Snetterton, 1st August
The usual team of me, Phil, Marc, Richard and Paul were all there, although Paul opted to drive his Radical that day. After his issues at Anglesey I can’t blame him.
A further revised geo was now on the car and finally it worked and we also found that a set of new Hankook slicks worked really well. At an earlier point in the year we had considered lowering the car by around 10-15mm. However, Phil wasn’t happy with the upwards angle this would result in on the rear lower wishbones. Something about upsetting the dynamics of the suspension, and roll centres but all of that was over my head! Nevertheless I bowed to his objections, mainly because I had discovered that Hankooks have a 20mm lower rolling diameter than something like an A052s. So everyone was kept happy. Plus it worked so well.
The brakes are still feeling great and Phil’s insistence on big G numbers was fully met – consistently -1.2 to -1.3g which apparently is pretty good, although he says his target (for slicks) is -1.5g. Just as importantly the pedal remains nice and consistent and its starting to give me much greater confidence in the brakes in general.
On cooling I knew we needed to start being a bit more imaginative in our approach so decided to create some extra ducting of air into the front radiator. I’d managed to acquire a damaged front nosecone and I asked Ben to mount x2 NACA ducts with 70mm hose directly into the radiator. We then ran back to back with the ducts taped up and then open, unfortunately it made little difference as temps peaked at 108C on both runs. So in spite of our various effort so far we had effectively made zero progress.
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We also tried running with an extra rigid engine mount stay which improved the general feel of things from the cockpit, but then had the unwanted effect of making gearshifts feel very harsh. But at least on this one we seemed to be making some progress.
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Marc annoyingly set an amazing time on the new slicks, and he was almost happy, although he really wanted to get below 2mins.
So back to Ben with a load more challenges to solve - once again.
Cadwell 18th August
Cooling, or the lack of it, was really starting to haunt us, that’s being polite! But with limited time available I asked Ben to increase the size of the nosecone ducting to 100mm, but also to draw clean air in form the front of the car to get a cleaner airflow. However, who really wants to cut holes in the front of their very expensive nosecones. So whilst we gave it a go we didn’t think it could produce a longer term solution. And in light of that we were already on with a completely new plan. Nevertheless, it’s worth reporting that running the same back to back test with the enlarged ducting we did see a noticeable drop in coolant temps – even as much as 6-8degs, but Marc wasn’t on hand on this occasion so the car probably didn’t have as hard a workout as previously.
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One more thing – mainly to keep Phil happy I agreed that Ben should fit a rear brake proportioning valve. The idea was that this would then allow me to run closer than before to 50:50 on the pedalbox brake balance setting – which is a good thing. He has explained to me how these things work, and it’s not as simple as you might think, but in any case it was mostly in one ear and out the other. But in practice it works really well.
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Ben also came up with a very neat solution to the engine mount issue by incorporating a damper into the new engine support strut. In the time available the new version was only mounted on one side of the engine, but the effect was brilliant – all of the plushness of the standard feel, but almost total elimination of the lateral forces on the OE mount which seems to be causes them to fail… a great result. A production version for both sides of the engine will be available through Corten-Miller shortly.
But if it’s not one thing it’s another and this time we could feel another type of vibration coming from the rear of the car. And it didn’t take long to realise the driveshafts were on their way out. So at that point we called it a day…
I’d Just like to say that Steve got the new driveshafts up to CM the next day (excellent service from Steve and the Ariel parts team). I might add that around this time we also discovered that one of the rear Ohlins dampers was leaking, and this was also changed FOC and turned around in a matter days. And that was our last track day of 2022
28th August to 7th September
The amazing Pyrenees trip.
I’ll let Richard Patrick my great friend and ex Lombard RAC navigator do a fuller piece on this at a later date as he’s much more eloquent than me, but needless to say I was a little sceptical about the trip having done similar before – but how wrong I was!
The Atom in the mountains is simply stunning… however we did run out of rear brake pads, possibly because I was left foot braking and having way too much fun .We also took on some dodgy Spanish fuel so the car was then missing, got a puncture on a Sunday morning with everywhere closed and finally the turbo actuator packed up on the way back to the ferry but we got home ok …
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But it was all just part of a memorable adventure, plus other great Atom owners, and all credit must go to Graeme Weineck for organising a brilliant trip.
Specifically for this trip, and in very short order, Ben converted my car back to standard, fitted the new driveshafts and made a pair of side panier mounts which worked perfectly.
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So that’s where we draw to a close in 2022, but we have a few new ideas for the Atom going forward and now that we’re also working alongside Stuart Drewell with big plans including his 500+bhp 4Piston engine, which I know he will document once it’s all running.
I will endeavour to keep you all updated as things progress – in particular re the following….
Cooling - with a new rear mounted radiator specially developed by one of the country's leading motorsport aftermarket manufacturers/suppliers, we will be transparent about in all of our findings. We will also be running with an array of additional high quality temperature sensors whose outputs will be channelled through to a receiving device than can then transmit them via CAN to (most likely) a Racelogic Video Vbox. In the interests of transparency we want to be able to show our collected data in a fully visible and real time way.
New intercooler with better airflow and a different type of core.
Modifications to the fuse box to minimise over heating of the fuel pump relay
New braking system, comprising AP Racing 5000R calipers running specially made Pagid RS14s and the option of a new floating disc and bell assembly. NB if preferred the calipers can still run in conjunction with the OE Atom disc and bells.
Bosch M5 motorsport ABS with a major upgrade to the pedal box incorporating compatible ABS master cylinders plus a bespoke motorsport wiring loom. We believe this will be a major step forward in the braking department, and thanks to Stuart for helping with the joint development costs.
New engine mount damper kit
And last but not least, airjacks, which will just make life easier as the car seems to spend
most of its time with its wheels off.
I’ll also ask Phil to do a piece on wheels and tyres as things progress next year as we mainly run 15" front wheels because there is a much better selection of tyres to choose from compared with the OE 16".
I hope this helps and as ever this is only my opinions on my car. I very much welcome and respect what anyone else might want to throw into the mix.
