Sunday 16 March 2014

First Track Day

So after a few nice runs out over the past few weeks I booked myself onto a track day at Blyton Park with some other GBS owners and the factory. The Zero has just covered 700 miles and besides a couple of small hiccups has run very smoothly.

First hiccup was the coolant was disappearing at an alarming rate ! replaced approx. 4.5 lts in 600 miles ? checked all the hose's, connections and radiator for leaks... none ?

After talking to a few other owners and Richard at GBS found that the expansion bottle had been plumbed in the wrong way round, so instead of the coolant returning to the system when cool, it was in fact draining out onto the floor ? Simple fix... swap over the pipes. A note to other builders... the expansion bottle has 2 pipes sticking out of the top, they are different heights and the higher of the two feeds back into the coolant system, and the lower one is the waste. On my bottle the difference between the two pipes is only about 1.5mm so its easily missed, but easily fixed.

Second issue... Possible throttle body icing ? According to GBS it has been reported a few times, in certain conditions that the throttle bodies could ice up ? usual when its cold and damp ? Rather technical series of events but as soon as some warmer air reaches the throttle bodies it all runs sweet again. It did splutter and cough for about a mile and this did get my mind spinning as I had just filled up with fuel the night before and thought of all sorts of possible issues ?

So back to the track day...

The Zero performed all day without any faults ! just over 100 miles on track, (just over 60 laps) and only used 20 litres of fuel ! Had a few "drifting" moments but the tyres really did surprise me how good they where. Is it worth getting some sticky track day tyres next time ?















Roll on the next track day.

Mega grin factor !