Initial Modification

Initial Modifications:

We made a few small modifications before attending Avon Dassett to help us improve in the small areas due to the minimal time we had.

Our first modification we made was by swapping out the tyres to some new smaller and lighter weight tyres with a lower rolling resistance. They also had a higher PSI rating meaning we could get some more pressure out of the tyres when needed.

Our next big modification was with the brakes. Our old brakes were too inconsistent in not retracting back far enough so they were rubbing along the brake disc even when the brakes were not applied. We believe the cause of this issue was the brake calipers and hydraulic cylinders were not big enough so could not provide a big enough force to pull the brake pads back. Therefore, to stop this issue, we swapped out all the hydraulic elements of the system and bought some cable bike brake calipers to give us the reliability we needed as well as the stopping power. We had to adapt our brake setup slightly to ensure our cable brakes worked without having to get a whole new system. So, we made a bracket to hold the cables together and a bracket to hold the calipers in place. We needed two of these brackets which needed to be tapped to allow the bolt to tighten properly.

Apart from these two modifications we just touched everything up before racing. E.g. Swapping race numbers, checking tyre pressures, checking how tight the wheel nuts are, re-gluing our steering wheel etc.