Jeremy's new car is causing a bit of a storm in the press. It is really what the kit car industry has been waiting for; traditional in appearance but based on modern mechanicals (no Sierra diffs, gearboxes or uprights here!).

The picture above shows a Riot and a XYZ chassis side by side. As can be seen the ZYX chassis shares critical suspension dimensions with the Riot. However the main difference is the chassis sides, the XYZ are parallel. This will give a more capacious cockpit and allow the fitting of seats from suppliers such as Tillett or JK Composites. Another benefit is the tunnel is slightly wider at the front of the cockpit. This is a blessing as there is not much space in a Riot tunnel.

The XYZ has out-riggers which give enhanced side impact protection and provide mounting points for the body.

So out of the box the XYZ will be endowed the fine handling characteristics of the Riot.

And now for the body. No question this has been influenced by previous JP creations. Being mid-engined, the bonnet can be low and elegant. At the rear, the engine and gearbox are mounted to give sensible ground clearance without the need for expensive sumps or bellhousings.

In case you are wondering, yes this new body can be fitted to existing Riots! Of course you won't get the enhanced cockpit space and you will have to fabricate some outriggers to support the body, but the wheelbase and track are the same.

I will certainly be considering a XYZ body once my Riot SE has been SVA'd.

Jeremy's best? The XYZ chassis weighs slightly more than a Riot, but it will be very strong and roomy.

A shot of the controversial rear end!

No progress made on the car. However I have invested in a Emerald K3 ECU, a full set of VDO instruments and a Premier Wiring Systems loom. I hope to have a bit of a blitz over the Christmas period. It would be great to get is started this year.....

I'm going to mount the ECU as shown here on the Sylva demo car. This requires a bracket to be fabricated that bolts to the upper seat belt mounts.


Things to do before start..

• 15mm header tank bottom hose take-off - completes cooling
  
• Temperature sensor fitting head mounted sensor for ECU
  
• Header tank mount
• Air filter
• ECU / engine wiring - not part of the purchased loom
• Install main loom with fuel pump and fan relays
  

BTW, we did have a fun bonfire night!

She did it raising nearly £6,000 for The Parkinsons Disease Society BTW! See Sarah's fundraising page here. 

It's Tuesday 14th and she's coming home!

Below you can see the finished fuel pump. I have extended it with steel rather than aluminium. Also that is in-tank hose being used!

So there it is, tank in place. The fuel system is complete. Just need to get some pipes made up by Ally Fab and the cooling system will be done too.

5/11 - Charca Huaylla Pass
No work on the car. A big walk for others.

Good progress was made over the weekend. As can be seen in the photo above, I have fitted the sender to the fuel tank and mounted the fuel filter. I also have plumbed in the radiator. I have had the hoses for ages but not managed to fit them because I could not finally fit the radiator as I needed something to put in the fan switch hole. I eventually got a switch from eBay. However I have just found out that Moss Europe sell an M22 x 1.5 blanking plug part number RFC014. In the picture you can just see that I have fitted the pedal box cover. This was made possible following the purchase of a rivnut setter. I bought a cheap rivnut tool a while back but it did not last long, the mandrel snapped. This time I bought Gesipa tool that should last a lifetime.

Another job waiting for the rivnut tool was the dash. Just need to fit the instruments and switches.
I have ordered a wiring loom from Premier Wiring Systems . I think £120 is good value for a loom with the correct colour wires. They are putting in extra wires and relays for fan, speedo and fuel pump and wiring the hazard switch! I'm going to use microphone cable to extend the Vepor speedo sensor cable. It is a VR sensor so has very low output and is suseptible to interference. Microphone cable is shielded twisted pair with very good noise rejection.

4/11 - no mobile signal. Will be another productive weekend!

11 days to go......

The master cylinder that Sylva supplies for a Riot originates from a Caterham 7. It is Girling part number 74066147. I am led to believe that is has an 11/16", 17.46 mm bore. Since driving the latest Sylva demonstrator, which is fitted with a Willwood 1" bore master cylinder, I'm keen to increase the master cylinder size as I really liked the feel of the brake pedal. I could just fit the Willwood cylinder, but this means modifying the pedal box, something I'm not keen to do. 

I noticed that Caterham supply a 13/16" 20.64 mm bore master cylinder made by AP racing, part number 77176. From the picture below you can just make out that it even has an SVA compliant cap.

The standard master cylinder has an affective bore area of 239.42 and the AP product, 334.63. That is an increase of almost 40%. Sounds perfect! Problem is it is £164.50!  

The picture below shows the Focus exhaust manifold attached to a Sylva silencer as requested. 

You may notice the engine now has a fan belt! As the engine is from a Focus, the alternator and tensioner are from a 1250 Fiesta, it's little wonder that neither a Focus or Fiesta belt fits! The crank pulley on the Focus is larger diameter than the Fiesta. I could have changed the pulley but that means redoing the cam timing; the Zetec SE has a keyless crank. So I investigated a different belt. The standard 1250 Fiesta belt is 1181 long. Looking at the Gates catalogue, the most suitable belt would seem to be 6PK1195, 14mm longer. This belt is fitted to BMW 750i and a Fiat Punto 1.9D! It also fits my Riot perfectly. 

I'm now working on the fuel tank and pump. Just waiting for some 8mm high pressure in-tank hose to be delivered. This is important as standard fuel hose is designed to convey fuel but not to be fully immersed in it! May have the tank in this weekend! 

Above is a pic of the rear of my Riot showing how the silencer with integral cat is mounted (just!).  You may notice that I'm not using the Sylva manifold. My engine came from a 1.6 Focus which has a nice 4 into 1 tubular manifold. Ok the plumbing may look like a musical instrument but it will save a bit of money. Another bonus is I'll be able to put my number plate on the engine cover not silencer. 

Decision has been made on the instruments; I'm going the ultra budget route. A Vepor dash will handle speedo, tacho and water temp. That will be supplemented with a VDO fuel guage and a Bright 6 LED array (indictors, charge warning, brake warning, main beam, oil pressure) . Thats it! 

Today I managed to get the Riot out of the garage and clean the dust off. As the sun was shining I took a picture just to remind me that it is almost there!

Ok be honest, what do you think about the colour scheme? There are some, who shall remain nameless, who have been far from complimentary! Ok the body should have been Oxford blue.

I need to spend some money! It is a toss up between a tumble dryer and and ECU or DigiDash.....  As winter is coming, the dryer may win. 

I have been contemplating instruments. As I see it I have 3 choices, DigiDash, Vapor

or discrete VDO instruments as in the Sylva demonstrator. The DigiDash appeals, but at £375 + VAT and delivery, it is a bit expensive.  I am tempted to go the budget route and fit a Vapor dash, £60 +VAT from Rally Design. I will need to fit a fuel gauge as well.  

A post is well overdue!

Change of job and lack of disposable income due to work on the house has put a temporary halt to progress on the Riot. Anyway my house now has a beautiful new drive and patio and new drains!
I now work for a company called SpringSource as a consultant. They write Spring the open source Java/EE application framework.

Anyway, something top secret! Below is a picture from Jeremy at Sylva. It is a new chassis based on the Riot except it has parallel sides like the Mojo and additional side bracing. It is going to be clothed with an all new body. I think you can guess what the inspiration will be!

More soon,

Mojo Specs - for Yoshi
My Mojo 2 was fitted with a 130PS 1800 (RQB) Zetec E engine from a 1995 Ford Escort Cabriolet. It was fitted with a Weber Alpha Silver kit including 2 X 40 DCOE carbs and ignition ECU. This gives approx 155 BHP with the Sylva exhaust. See here for more info. http://www.webcon.co.uk/alpha/index.htm

Detailed engine information below:
Type: Zetec E Capacity: 1796cc Bore/stroke: 80.6 x 88 mm Compression ratio: 10.0:1 Max power: 130 bhp @ 6250 rpm Max torque: 120 lbf.ft @ 4500 rpm Cylinders: four, in line Cylinder head: aluminium alloy Block: cast iron Installation: mid-mounted, transverse Valve gear: high-lift double overhead camshafts, four valves per cylinder, toothed belt drive

The gearbox was a Ford BC unit originating from an Escort Mk3 XR3. It was rebuilt by Abbey Transminssions http://www.abbeytransmission.co.uk/
The final drive ratio is 3.84 : 1. The ratios are 1st 3.15, 2nd 1.91, 3rd 1.27, 4th 0.95, 5th 0.76 and reverse 3.61.

Latest Riot SE pic from Sylva

Note the screen! This car has a brand new 1.4 Sigma engine and an Emerald K3 ECU (which has yet to start). I think it looks great!

Not much done recently. The chassis is being powder coated and I'm assembling a of the donor parts.
One of the issues with the Sigma engine, iB5 gearbox and Mk2 XR2 driveshafts combination is the offside inner CV boot fouls the engine block. This CV joint must be repaced. There are many posts elsewhere on the Internet about this. I'm going to add to them!
The joint that is needed comes from a variety of sources, early Fiesta Mk2 XR2, 1.3 and 1.6 Mk3 Escort and Orion and 1.1 Mk3 Escort van. The good thing about inner CV joints is they don't wear as much as the outers. So if you come across one of these cars in the breakers, it would be quite straight forward to remove the joint and save yourself at least £30! (and get covered in CV grease - yuck!) Oh and believe it or not, Radical also use the same inner CVs!

Here are the part numbers:
Ford - 81TT-3K167-AA
Hardy Spicer - C7840
AMK - TDL3602R
Drive Line - DL3602

The CV boots are all the same and have an AMK part number of TSB31.

My Riot is going to have a light blue chassis and a royal blue body. Not totally sure how it's going to work out!
Anyway, while I was in Lincolnshire, I went to my favorite scrap yard, Roger Windley's. By pure luck there was a freshly rolled 1.6 Focus with 44,000 miles on the clock. £175 + VAT seemed a good deal for the engine, so I bought it!
So I now have all the major mechanical bits, 1.6 Sigma from the Focus, iB5 gearbox from a 1.4 Puma, XR2 driveshafts and hubs and Capri struts. I'm going to the factory again in a couple of weeks and should come back with a rolling chassis.
Another bit of luck is the Focus has a tubular exhaust manifold. OK the primaries aren't very long but I'm going to try and use it. It will save me over £200 and I won't have the manifold poking through the engine cover so I can mount the number plate and light on the engine cover rather than the silencer. We shall see...

I've been too long without a car project!
Time to plan the next one then! There was only one choice, the Sylva Riot.
It is available in 2 flavours, bike or car engined. The bike option uses Yamaha R1 or Kawasaki ZZR power. I'm going for the slightly softer option, a Ford 1600 Zetec SE (AKA Sigma) engine. I'll source the engine from a Focus. It delivers 100PS in standard trim and should give about 140BHP with a decent exhaust and an Emerald K3 ECU. The car will weigh about 475Kg. 140 BHP will be adequate! I plan to use a Ford iB5 gearbox from a Fiesta.

So far I have sources all of the suspension uprights and hubs, not an easy task as the front hubs come from a Mk2 Capri and rears from a MK2 Fiesta XR2 along with drive shafts. The steering column is from a Ford Sierra.

I'm off to the factory next week to sort out the chassis. Fun!

Edirol R-09 SD cards

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding supported SD cards for the R-09.
I contacted Edirol support and was informed that I should stick to Kingston, SanDisk or Lexar. I have tried both Kingston and SanDisk Ultra II 2GB SD cards and they work fine. I have firmware revision 1.03 in the R-09.

Edirol R-09
Nothing to do with kit cars!

I needed a highly portable recording device to record the choirs I sing in. I have used a succession of technologies over the years including a Sony Professional Walkman, Sony MiniDisk and Edirol UA25. I wanted uncompressed recording at 44.1 / 16 in order to create CDs completely in the digital domain. The UA25 is great but can not be regarded as a portable solution.

After a lot of deliberation, I chose and Edirol R-09. The main reasons :

• AA battery power


• Uncompressed 48 / 24 WAV


• Uses SD cards up to 2GB


• USB 2

The only negative with the R-09 is there is no support for balanced mics. This is not really an issue for me as I intend to use an Audio Technica AT 822 mic, an unbalanced X/Y stereo condenser mic.

Another issue is one of ruggedness. The case is of lightweight plastic construction. The most delecate part is the battery door. This is fiddly to open and is very fragile. I would have paid a bit more to have a more rugged device. I'll just have to be careful!

The end of the Mojo story!

This is a pic of my Mojo at Berth 22, Dock gate 4, Southampton Docks waiting to be loaded on the Sirrius Leader. It is bound for Yokohama in Japan.