Well, after a rather busy Christmas break, work could start again on the car. Well, not straight away as I had to take a trip to Wallingford Raceparts to buy some more aluminised insulation material for the rear bulkhead - more of that later but it wasted most of the morning. But before I could crack on with the work in the engine bay (and to reclaim some space in the workshop), I concentrated on getting the bonnet back on. The mounting rivnut was now bonded into place, so the driving lamp pair could be fitted with the rubber tubing which allows adjustment of them when in situ. Now, a word about the wiring. The headlight sub-loom runs between the light clusters through the strengthening brace which is bonded to the underside of the bonnet. The headlights have been upgraded since the loom was designed, consequently, the black plastic headlamp connector blocks can be cut off and discarded. There are a pair of holes pre-drilled in the brace which allow the sub-loom to pass through, connecting both sets of lights together. Orient the loom so that the weatherproof connectors are on the correct side of the brace (left for a RHD car). Select a suitably sized grommet and, after checking that it's the right way round, slide it onto the loom. Now pass the loom through the hole in the brace from the right side to the left. You'll need some stiff wire to pass through the holes first, onto which you can tape the loom securely and pull the whole lot back through. Now that you've fed it through, slide a second grommet and secure in the brace holes. Now you can wire the lights. The main driving lamp (next to the indicator) simply mates to the loom using the existing plastic connector. As I mentioned, due to some legacy in the design of the loom the dip beam driving lamp (the larger of the upper pair of lamps) only uses two of the three wires allocated to it. Namely, the blue and the black wires. Just tape up the blue/white wire connector that's in the same bundle. The outer lamp of the upper pair acts as a sidelight and full beam. I had to make some adaptor tails to connect the sidelight wires as the tails on the lamp are of the micro type (about 2.5mm wide). The blue/white and black wires connect to the main contacts on the rear of the lamp. That's it!
That done, I could move onto the final fit of the splitter. I gave it several coats of lacquer to protect the marine ply from the ravages of British weather, then mounted it in place. Subsequent conversations with Ted revealed that I didn't need to cut the mounting plates in half! The factory method is to purely bond them to the GRP in the relevant positions! You must need to firstly secure all the plates with the countersunk allen headed set screws provided, apply the bonding compound to the GRP, then fit in place and wait to set. Hmmmm... Still, hindsight is a wonderful thing and I decided to continue with my original approach. The only consequence of this is that the splitter extends about 10mm further forward than it should. Having drilled out the holes in the return 'lip', I just slid the mounting plates into position and screwed through into them, sandwiching the GRP between the splitter and the mounting plate. The whole thing is very secure, which probably means that the front of the car will break off if I snag it! :)
I had a couple of visitors in the afternoon. The workshop is becoming quite a curiosity these days! Two local 'Daves' popped round to have a look at what they would be letting themselves in for as they planned their respective GTR builds. Still, work must go on, so it's back to the bonnet fitment. The week before, I'd positioned my brake reservoir and windscreen washer fluid bottles on the front bulkhead of the cockpit. After studying the build CD, the bottles appeared to be positioned with the washer above the master cylinders and the brake fluid reservoir offset towards the steering column. I preferred to have the brake fluid reservoir directly above the master cylinders so looked for alternatives and fortunately, there seemed to be one. Recently the factory have started supplying a much smaller battery than the 'Red Top' ones that they used to. The nett result of this was that I believed that it was possible to mount the washer fluid reservoir directly above the battery. The bonnet vent is directly above this point and slopes sharply down towards the rear of the fans, so I decided on a position that I thought was low enough to clear the top of the washer bottle. Unfortunately, when I cam to fit the bonnet, this wasn't the case!! It was so close, but just enough to push a 'bump' in the bonnet when it was clipped down. This would crack the gelcoat in time so had to be resolved. I realised that I had another 10mm or so between the bottom of the washer bottle and the battery, so drilled another mounting hole in the bottle bracket to get it as far down as possible. But, this still wasn't enough. Damn bugger and blast! Reluctant to go back to the factory positioning (serves me right - 17 years or so of development means that if they're in a certain position, they're there for a reason!) as I'd have some ugly holes in the bulkhead, I looked again for a solution. I realised that if I could cant the bottle back slightly then it would clear. So, a quick bit of bracket fabrication and the problem was solved. The bottle is tilted backwards slightly, but looks good and, being easily removable, makes getting at the battery a simple task.
Final job was to modify the bonnet stay bracket. With the splitter fitted to the car, the bonnet stay length has to be shortened so that the splitter doesn't foul the chassis. Basically you can't open the bonnet as widely with the splitter on. With Hels holding the bonnet open in the desired position, I quickly marked and drilled a new hole where it mounts onto the chassis rail of the radiator box. Once refitted, it works perfectly and holds the bonnet open without fouling the splitter. Job done!
Last job of the day was to make a template for the insulation material that will be bonded to the rear bulkead. I'm doing this for two reasons - to reduce heat transmission into the cockpit from the engine bay and secondly, to reduce noise. The latter of these is especially important as the supercharger (known for their characteristic 'whine') will be close to the back of the occupants heads. I then cut out two pieces of insulation material to match the template ready to be bonded together. I felt that a single layer, whilst being fine for the heat side of things, wouldn't reduce the noise by much. Sound insulation material is about 12mm thick and I couldn't afford to lose this amount of space due to the length of the engine. Anyway, by this time I had hands full of glassfibre and needed a nice hot bath. Work continues tomorrow!
After a brief shopping trip, I managed to persuade Hels to give me a hand in the workshop for an hour or two as I was keen to get the bulkhead insulation in place. I'd bonded the pair of sheets together and carefully taped up the sides with the metal tape which you can but for this purpose. Whilst I was doing that, Hels laboriously masked up the rear canopy ready for undersealing. I masked up the engine bay bulkhead so that I could get glue right to the edges (where it usually fails) without getting contact adhesive all over the rest of the GRP which would have been a bit of a disaster. I was a bit unsure about whether this was a good idea or not, seeing as I'd taken great pains to keep the panelling and rivetting neat and was now about to cover it all up!! Still, I hoped that it would look as good with the insulation on as it did in bare GRP and ally panel - gulp! So after avoiding the inevitable for a while, I slopped the first bit of contact adhesive onto the GRP of the bulkhead :( No going back now, so I continued with the rest of the panel. The same was done to the insulation backing and it was finally time to put the two together. I hate bloody contact adhesive and trying to apply it to a vertical surface is no easy task. It gets everywhere!! Anyway, the insulation was lined up and pressed into place. I carefully worked down the bulkhead, following the contours of the GRP. The masking tape did it's job and pulled away leaving no trace of the glue and I could finally sit back and look at the results. Well, I'm happy to say that it looks the dogs-danglies (that's good by the way) as well as being functional. Phew!
That little nightmare out of the way, my attention turned to the rear canopy. Well, it would have but Hels had already sprayed it for me - bless her! :) So, another job out of the way. Next up is to fit the rear lights and then the engine bay can be fitted out ready for the engine. Not long now!
Blimey, midweek work on the car. Whatever next! I heard today that the factory have sent me the last few bits needed to carry on with the engine installation, so I thought it wise to get the rest of the engine bay bits in so that I could drop the Chevy in at the weekend.
First up was the aircon radiator and fan. This comes pre-assembled on ally brackets. The lower bracket gets sandwiched between the sidepod foam wedge and the fuel tank, whilst the upper bracket is fixed with a allen bolt and nyloc to the upper face of the sidepod, just in front of the wheelarch. I trial fitted the radiator first and found that I had to compress the foam a bit to get it in. This was straightforward enough, just make sure you leave enough room to connect the radiator feed hoses (the forward edge of the radiator should approximately line up with the front edge of the fuel tank). Next job as to insulate the upper face of the fuel tank. Why? I hear you ask. Well, when the aircon is working overtime, the fan will draw quite a lot of hot air through the radiator fins. The orientation of the radiator is such that this gets blasted against the fuel tank before disappating around the engine bay. Now, whilst the effect of this on the fuel itself are probably negligable, to my mind it's worth doing. Besides, it looks good too! :) So, I decided to insulate the top face with aluminised glassfibre matting (I have shares in the company that makes this stuff now!) to keep those vital fluids nice and cool. The fuel consumption will be bad enough without vapourising the stuff too!!!! ;) Once it was all glued together with impact adhesive, I set the assembly aside ready to fit the sidepod grill.
Next up was the oil cooler. The 25 row Mocal cooler is fitted above the other fuel tank (assuming you have 2!). First, fit the aluminium brackets to the cooler and mark/drill for the 8, short, allen headed set screws and nylocs which fix the two together. Temporarily, fix to the cooler. Then, place the oil cooler in position on the tank (angling it at a 90 degree tangent to the diagonal tank face) and mark the positions for the two spacers on the rearmost mount and the inner face of the wheelarch. Carefully mask the sidepod GRP inside and out where you will drill through for the rear mount spacers and then drill for the 6mm set screws. Remove the mount again from the oil cooler (you don't want to drill though into those nice delicate fins do you?!?) and drill for the rear mounts. Refit the mount and temporarily fit the oil cooler to the sidepod using the spacers. The front bracket needs to be fabricated. With the oil cooler in position, bend a piece of steel/ally to match the angle between the chassis rail and the front oil cooler mount. Drill for rivets into the chassis rail and for set screws/nylocs into the oil cooler mount. Fix the bracket to the chassis with rivets. Mark, on the front mount the position of the mounting holes, remove and drill for the set screws and nylocs. Fix a strip of expanding foam tape to the bottom of the oil cooler and it's ready to mount in position.
I was now ready to fit the grills, but, I didn't have any scrap material that I could be confident in to hold them in place whilst the Sikaflex went off. So, I called it a night. More tomorrow I hope!
Still trying to get things sorted for the weekend, so sloped off to the workshop for a couple of hours in the evening to get the grills in. A trip to B&Q relived them of some ally strips and some garden wire so that I could hold the grills in position whilst the Sikaflex went off. The ally strips were cut into 500mm lengths and 50mm of one end bent into a right angle so that I could 'hook' it over the bodywork to stop them 'creeping' down the sidepods. To stop the wire loops which I threaded through the grills from slipping down the ally, I sawed notches into the strips at regular intervals so that the wire had something to catch on.
Miving onto the fitting, my first discovery was that despite trying every which way, the aircon radiator was impossible to put in place from the engine bay once the grill was in place. Bugger! This left me in a dilemma. With the radiator and grill in place, but unbonded, I would only be able to put a blob on either side of the grill to hold it in place, which would be crap and would make it rattle. After a bit of head scratching, I opted to mask out the sidepod apeture and the grill, leaving about 5mm all round, slikaflex up the grill and then carefully slide it into place from outside using the wire loops that I'd already threaded through to move it. Before you do this however make sure you have the grill mesh the right way round and both sides match!. If you look closely at the mesh grills you'll see that they have a different pattern on either side. Choose the one that suits best and match them up. Back to the fixing: once in place, I quickly removed the masking tape and wiped off any excess Sikaflex from the sidepod/grill and taped the ally straps to the GRP and wound the wire loops around them. A few bits of gaffer tape were used to secure the straps to the sidepod to stop any movement whilst it cured. As there's no return edge on the grill, there's only a small area onto which you can bond it. It's tempting to put huge dollops in but it will just get everywhere and look awful. Better to fix it into place using the method above first and add a bit more later on when it can't move about. That's all I managed to do tonight, so maybe a bit more tomorrow.
And a bit more it is! Managed to sneak off to the workshop for an hour to sikaflex in the other grill. Had a nice delivery from Ultima too with driveshafts/starter motor and the engine mount adaptors. More of this at the weekend!
Not a great deal to report but I did manage to spend and hour or two in the evening to finish off the oil cooler. I fitted expanding foam tape to the bottom of the cooler prior to fitting to stop any debris that got in there from abrading the fuel tank. Then it was simply a case of rivetting the bracket which I'd fabricated to the chassis rail and securing the cooler in place with the cap headed set screws and nylocs provided.
Ah joy, a whole day in the workshop! Despite it being Hels' birthday, I managed to get a full day's work in (the joy of having an understanding fiancee!). It had been my intention to get the engine in for a trial fit, but, as you'll see, I'd underestimated the amount of work that needed to be done in the engine bay!
First job of the day was to fit the fuel pumps. The Carter pumps provided by the factory are MORE than capable of supplying enough fuel to the engine. The fuel system in the Ultima has been continuously developed over the last 17 odd years and this factory approved setup works! I did a calculation on the fuelling requirements for the engine and worked out that even at maximum demand, my 630hp monster would still only require 63% of the pumps rated output. Got that? Right, then onto the fitting. The factory now recommends fitting the fuel pumps to the chassis members below the engine mounts (to reduce noise) and supplies pre-drilled mounting plates for this purpose. So it was a simple task to mount the plates to the left/right sides of the engine bay ready to take the fuel pump brackets. Once pre-fitted for the rivets, the pump mounting bracket was attached to the chassis plate with the cap headed bolts and nylocs provided and the whole assembly rivetted in place. The pumps were then mounted to the brackets through the rubber grommets provided. I used nylocs to secure the pumps to the bracket instead of the spring washers and nuts provided in the kit. Be careful to orient the pumps so that the 'In' side of the pump is nearest to the fuel tank takeoff. That done, it was time to put the fuel lines in. Errrr... except, you have to make them all up first!!!
Amazingly, I found a method (with some helpful advice from fellow GTR owner Guy Thompson) that avoids stabbing your fingers with steel braid every 2 seconds! Firstly, wrap the braided hose at the point where you wish to cut tightly with PVC tape. Wrap the PVC several times to minimise the 'spread' of the braid when cut. To cut the braided hose, use a Dremel type tool with a thin grinding disk. You'll get through a few of these, but as you get more experienced with this method, you'll be able to make at least 2 hose cuts with one disk. Carefully cut round the hose with the Dremel taking care to cut squarely. Once cut, blow the hose clear with a compressor air line. Then, remove the thick PVC tape wrap and replace it with a new piece that slightly overlaps the end. This helps to draw the steel braid together making it easier to get into the hose fitting. Wrap the PVC tightly, but only using about one and a half turns to keep it as thin as possible. The anodised hose fittings are a very tight fit and the more PVC you use, the less likely you are to get the hose end on! Clamp the sleeve part of the anodised fitting in a vice and push the hose into it, making sure that no bits of the braiding have come adrift. Push home with a twisting action (all the way to the thread at the other end of the sleeve fitting) so that the sleeve is ready for the inner part of the fitting. With the sleeve firmly held in the vice jaws, squirt a bit of lubricant into the hose and carefully screw the inner part of the fitting into the sleeve. If you haven't got aluminium spanners for this, protect the jaws of your spanners to avoid marking the anodised fittings. Easy, only another dozen or so to go!!
For reference, the fuel lines from the tanks to the pump input are 270mm long. After thinking about the hose runs (keep them neat and where you need them) I made up a further pair of hoses 900mm long, which loop back above the pumps to the bulkhead, where they are mounted above the heater hoses. The one-way flapper valves were fitted to the ends of these hoses, but I left the runs from the valves to the central T-piece (which then goes to the carb) for the time being, until I've had the engine in, as it may not sit in the middle.
That was as far as I could go with the fuel lines for now, so next up was the Acusump kit. The Acusump reservoir supplies oil to the engine under pressure, in the event of oil-pump surge starvation when cornering hard. This is also of benefit on start-up, as the engine is effectively pre-lubed by the Acusump system before the mechanical oil pump in the engine starts working. The reservoir is held in place by two large hose clips, one of which is mounted to the lower rear chassis rail and the other to a mounting plate that's fixed just behind the brake light switch. I mounted the rearmost clip first by way of two rivnuts in the chassis rail. The clip screws directly into these with the allen headed set screws provided. Then, whilst I'd pre-drilled the mounting plate for rivets, I left the final positioning of it to make sure that the two clips were 400mm apart as defined on the reservoir stickers. As it happened, this was exactly at the far end of the plate. So with the plate in the correct fore/aft position, the chassis was drilled for the rivets and the plate removed and drilled for the allen screws and nylocs to hold the clip in place. The plate was then rivetted to the chassis rails and the clip bolted into place. Finally, the Acusump solenoid was mounted to the reservoir using the brass back-to-back adaptor provided and the whole assembly was inserted into the clips and secured.
That done, I could run the oil cooler lines. Well, I couldn't actually as I needed the engine in position to work out the length to the filter sandwich plate! So instead, I started to mount the heater hoses to the bulkhead using some 'butterfly' cable tie mounts that I'd come up with. The hose crossover was put in place (so that the hot water still gets circulated when you shut the heater valve off) and the final runs left until the engine could go in. So that's about as far as I can go until the engine goes in. I'd run out of time for today and wouldn't have the chance tomorrow, so it's going to be next weekend :(
So with the imminent fitting of the engine, my thoughts turned to the transmission, especially as my clutch kit had arrived from the factory. Whilst the gearbox looked pretty good after a thorough steam cleaning, I decided to spray it silver for a 'good as new' look. All the extraneous crap and mounting brackets were removed and the top breather bung filled with epoxy resin to allow the 'box to be inverted without dumping all its oil. I also removed the driveshaft flanges and masked up the holes. Conveniently, the bung from the Carter fuel pumps is exaclty the right size to fill the hole left by the speedo sensor! A word of warning, if the 'box isn't kept level at this point it will dump its oil out of these holes! No prizes for guessing how I know this :) The 'box was already squeeky clean, so I just had to scrape off a few stubborn bits of protective wax off and degrease with thinners. I was going to replace all the nuts with new nylocs, so just taped up the selector shaft and any exposed threads. The whole lot was then etch primed and left to dry. For the finish, the gearbox was sprayed with Halfords wheel silver (hard wearing) which was left ready for a couple of coats of lacquer. I'll finish this off in the evenings this week, so it should look good as new when it goes into the car!
Well, finished off the gearbox by replacing all the old nuts with nice gold nylocs and refitted the breather vent (now the drain plug) and drive flanges. It looks fantastic! However, I discovered that my mounting kit is for the longer G50 which has a rear mounting bush that extends from the end of the 'box. Emailed the factory who are in the process of engineering me a mount which will take into account that the whole assembly will sit 25mm further back due to the engine mount adaptors. Not long now until I see if it all fits! Also made a pleasant discovery. The gearbox isn't a G50/02 as I initially thought which would have made it short ratio, it is in fact a G50/00 with LSD! Should be good for a few more mph on the way to Le Mans :)
So today's the day. The day for what? Well, the day to try to fit my engine!
First job was to refit the wheels (I'd almost forgotten how amazing they look) ready to lift the body off the dolly. My engine crane was back in the workshop ready to do the donkey work of lifting it. I tried looping a strop under the roof, around the roll cage, but wasn't happy with the stress on the GRP (although I believe the factory do this all the time), so ended up putting a piece of bubblewrap covered scaff bar under the rollcage and stropping around the ends. It took 4 of us to get the car off the dolly when the body was prefit, it took two to get it off! (thanks Karly!) Once back on the wheels I marevelled at just how low the car sits. God I love the GTR! Anyway, enough drooling and more working! Now the car was safely on its' wheels and the dolly stored away, we had to load up the van with the crane so that we could remove my 'ornamental' engine from my hallway :) It's become quite a talking point for the various visitors to my door - most of which think I'm mad (the ones that know me KNOW I'm mad!) Again, a 4 man operation to put it in was reduced to 2 to take it out and it wasn't long before it was safely in the back of the van and heading for the workshop. Out of the van again, the GTR was taken out of the workshop (it's longest journey for 3 months!) and the engine put in place behind it, ready to be fitted.
The engine bay was made ready buy pulling any hoses out of the way and removing the Accusump accumulator to avoid damage. It looked a bit untidy for the time being as I needed to see where hoses/fuel lines could be routed with the engine in it's final position. The next stage was to take the engine off of its stand and fit the engine mount adaptors supplied by Ultima (these adaptors are usually used to move the engine forward when a long gearbox is used). Due to the length of the Supercharger input shaft, Ted advised that the engine should be shifted back about 25mm to avoid fouling the bulkhead. This, being one of the first Supercharger installations in the country, involved a fair amount of guesswork and we were really just making it up as we went along. The engine was hung using the strop loop and some NPT bolts taken from the adaptor plate kit. This would allow us to easily tilt the engine forward/backwards when it came to the prefit. The adaptor plates were attached to the block with the countersunk bolts supplied, then the rubber bushed engine mounts were bolted to these with cap headed bolts and spring washers. Once happy that the engine was secure on the crane, it was time to crank the thing up and get it into position......
So on with the 'will it, won't it' fitting process. Our first attempt was close, but the Supercharger input shaft was right on the edge of the bulkhead lip with the engine tilted slightly forward. The engine mounts weren't quite in position at this attitude, so we tried coming in 'square'. To cut a long story short, it soon became clear that no-way would the Supercharger fit behind the bulkhead without cutting a small hole in it. I have to say, I wasn't really surprised at this as I'd measured up a couple of weeks ago and came to this conclusion. So, the engine was removed again and out came the Dremel. I made up a template using the Supercharger drive belt as an outline. This was transferred to the bulkhead and very carefully, I ground through the GRP. I didn't want to cut through the carpet on the lower edge so it could be stuck over the box that I'd fabricate later, so great care was needed. So about 10 minutes later, the 'flap' was opened. The engine was raised back into position and we waited to see if it would fit.
It did - phew!
Well, at least, it fitted in the engine bay. Before we started patting ourselves on the back, the K&N air filter pancake was put on and the canopy refitted. Bugger, it wouldn't close. It was soooo close, but the air filter was about 15mm too thick. The problem was exacerbated by the carb manifold on the Supercharger which tilts the carb forward (so the rear is higher than the front). This is also where the canopy scoop slopes down and the two together meant that the canopy fouled the air filter. Damn! The solution to this, well, err.. we're working on it. The simplest way is to find a thinner air filter but i need to speak to the engine builder and the factory about what's available. The other would be to have a custom air scoop made. This wouldn't be cheap but would look bloody cool!!
Anyway, it wasn't something that could be sorted today. The whole idea was to see where lines could be routed, how long they had to be etc. so it made no real delay to my progress. It's just another problem that needs to be sorted. So my helpers for the day (cheers Mart, Karl and of course the lovely Hels), left me in peace and I set to work, finishing those little jobs that needed to be done around the car.
So let's start with something that CAN be fitted! Namely, finish the oil lines. Now that I knew where the oil filter sandwich plate would be in relation to the oil cooler lines, I could cut them to length and T-off the feed to the block for the Accusump. Nothing much to tell here as I used the same method as before and escaped with no loss of blood. The lines were fitted to the car ready to be plumbed into the engine. Seeing as I was already coverd in glassfibre, I made up an insulated sleeve to go over the heater hoses as they pass across the bulkhead. This was slipped over the hoses and secured to the bolkhead with cableties and clips. Time had caught up with me by now so it was off home to ponder the events of the day and to work out some solutions. More tomorrow.
With a nice early start, I was determined to make some discernible progress today. Now that I knew where to route things around the engine bay and bulkhead, I could crack on with the swirl pot, expansion tank, AC dryer and fuel filter. The swirl pot is of the usual Ultima high standard and comes with a mounting bracket, fixing nuts/bolts and rivets. The bracket was drilled for rivets and set aside. I then drilled the holes for the mounting nuts/bolts in the appropriate flanges on the swirl pot. I transferred the position of these to the mounting bracket and drilled accordingly ready to be secured together. Position wise, once I'd got it as high as I could up the bulkhead whilst still being able to remove the cap, I also made sure that I left enough room to the left of the swirl pot to attach the expansion pipes and drilled the bulkhead for the mounting bracket rivets. As I'd already carpeted the cockpit, I took care not to drill too far and as soon as I'd penetrated the GRP, I stopped. This worked a treat and the bracket was rivetted into place and the swirl pot bolted to it. The expansion lines were attached and jubilee clipped into place, then secured to the bulkhead with the cable 'bowties' that I'd prepared earlier. These worked a treat and were very neat. One down, 3 to go.
Next up was the AC dryer. After rerouting the hoses (doh!) to pass below the top chassis rail next to the gear linkage - not above the rail as I'd left them when fitting the cockpit. I positioned of the dryer using the measurements designated by Ultima (180mm down from the return 'lip' on the bulkhead and 60mm in from the right side). A hole for the hose was drilled into the bulkhead side for the AC hose from the AC radiator and the hose secured to the radiator mounting bracket using the rubberised p-clips provided. The mounting bracket was drilled for rivets and the bulkhead, once again, drilled carefully to avoid damage to the carpet on the other side. With the mounting bracket rivetted into position, the dryer unit was put in place and the clamp secured with a bolt and nyloc nut. The input and output hoses were finally attached and secured to the chassis which completed the AC system, bar connecting the hoses to the pump driven by the engine.
That done, I could fit the engine coolant expansion tank. This takes any overflow from the swirl pot and recycles it into the system thus eliminating any airlocks. Again, the high quality swirl pot was drilled for the mounting bolts and nylocs and these positions tranferred onto the mounting bracket which was drilled for rivetting to the bulkhead. The bracket was positioned next to the AC dryer with the top of the expansion tank matching the height of the swirl pot (it's so long that it can't go any lower anyway!). Again, rivet holes were carefully drilled through those in the bracket and the whole lot secured to the bulkhead. The expansion tank was bolted to the bracket and the lower pipe secured to the takeoff in the bottom of the tank with a jubilee clip.
Finally the fuel filter. This was bought from Demon Tweeks along with a spare filter (to replace the original after the first hundred miles or so where most of the crap accumulates) and some -6 fittings. It's important to get a high flow filter otherwise it defeats the object of having powerful pumps! This one is rated at 66gph. The filter line was offset to the right of the bulkhead to avoid the engine pulleys (although they're miles away with the engine mounted 25mm further back than standard) and to give a simple route to the carb. The two fuel pump lines were T'd together on the right hand side and a short line runs vertically to the filter. The filter comes with a polished bracket which was again, carefully rivetted to the bulkhead. Once all the hoses, were in place, they (along with the cable release for the left hand side) were p-clipped/cable tied into place as neatly as possible. The final result looks great as well as being very functional.
Last job for the day was to fit the cable release clips and secure the cables with the solderless nipples supplied and to secure the relay strip to the fusebox bracket and fit the headlamp dip relay. The cable releases were very straightforward (although I did realise that I needed to reduce the length of the bonnet bracket again as the splitter touched the floor). Just drill and countersink holes for the bracket and secure with the cap headed screws and nylocs. I looped the ends of the cables as to my mind, they look neater and mean that you don't risk stabbing your hand on the exposed ends. The relay strip was attached to the fuse bracket by removing the first, middle and last relays and drilling/rivetting the plastic strip through the holes provided into the ally bracket. The headlamp dip/full relay was mounted to the rear of the fusebox bracket with a cabletie clip (the relay has a clip on the rear which hooks over the cabletie clip). The whole assembly was then bolted into position with the countersunk allen headed bolts provided. Job done.
So there you go. The Hokey-cokey engine installation (in-out, in-out shake your fist about). Come Monday I'll be on the phone to try and resolve the air filter problem as well as looking into fabricating a box for the hole in the bulkhead. I will NOT however, be making the box out of perspex and shining disco lights at the Supercharger pulley :) Cheers!