Well, in the entire build so far, today was my most irritating and non-productive :( Actually, I'm probably exaggerating, but my fingers are still sore! (more later).
Today was going to be a nice mix of fitting/trimming and then the simple task of bolting bits together. I say 'was' for good reason. First job, was to clip various loom cables down and also to extend the fuel pump conections on the loom. The original fuel pump locations were against the engine bulkhead (which is where the connections are), but this made them a bit noisy as the vibrations they produced were transmitted through the buklhead panels. So now they're positioned under the engine mounts directly on the chassis rails. Unfortunately, my loom has them in the original positions. I gather that the factory now supply extension leads, but seeing as I didn't have any, I made some instead. No great task, I just took care to ensure good connections (crimped, soldered then re-crimped) and taped up the pair of cables to make a neat loom extension. The ring ends were bolted to the pumps using nylocs, as I don't trust the spring washers. Once everything was connected, the various bits of loom for the AC radiator/dryer etc. were also cable tied into place where they wouldn't foul anything.
Next, came the task of fitting the extension cap to the bulkhead. I made a dummy cap out of stiff card, then marked out the necessary pieces (all two of them) onto aluminium sheet ready for welding. I don't have any TIG equipment, so a set builder mate of mine helped me out there. The end result (as I'm sure you'll agree) looks almost too good to cover. Still, tough luck as it will be insulated and carpeted! By the way, I used 4mm aluminium sheet for this to add some strength to the cover in case the Supercharger belt should snap at some point (I hope not though!). Although the cap had tabs welded to it, I replaced them with some others which were rivetted in place to made fitting easier (it was impossible with the welded ones in place!). After plenty of 'fettling' of the bulkhead GRP/ally cap for a good fit, it was finally rivetted in position. The fixings are hidden, as I managed to ease the carpet (and insulation on the engine side) back far enough to drill and secure with rivets. Last job was to trim the engine side with insulation and the cockpit side with carpet (the factory kindly sent me an offcut). I have to say that I did the carpet side on Sunday (tomorrow) when my temper was better! With contact adhesive, you get one shot at fitting it and I was in no mood to try it today. So the following morning, after much trial fitting, I got it right first time and I have to say, the end result looked fantastic. I was VERY relieved. You even struggle to see the cap from the cockpit side!
Great, so now onto some bolted-together-bits. First job was to fit the adaptor plate. No great story here as the beautifully machined ally plate went straight on with the bolts provided. Next was to fit the spigot bearing to the crankshaft drive plate. After some procrastination as to which way round it went, it was finally tapped home with a suitable drift (read socket!). Making good progress (I thought), so next up was the flywheel. With the adaptor plate in place, this is a bit fiddly (note to self: fit flywheel 1st THEN adaptor plate) which resulted in me dropping the flywheel more than once, until I finally managed to crush one of my fingers - cue much swearing and loss of blood :( Still, it seemed that I'd finally got it into place and started to do up the flywheel bolts. They went in by hand OK (or so it seemed) until I got to the fourth bolt. Something didn't feel right and sure enough it wasn't. I don't know how I'd missed it, but the flywheel was sitting 'skew' on the drive flange. This normally isn't too great a problem as the bolts tie it all up square. But, the flywheel was far enough out for me to have knackered the threads on 2 of the bolts - BUGGER, BUGGER and ARSE!!! I was SO annoyed - mostly at myself. In my haste, I'd now pretty much screwed the rest of the day, as I could no longer fit the flywheel, so no ring gear, no clutch and no transaxle :(
Further investigation showed the cause. The flywheel was so accurately machined, it was TOO accurate to fit over the flange on the drive plate. Despite rubbing off the paint on the crank with Wet'n'Dry and applying Copperslip, it wouldn't fit. Eventually, I had to use a Dremel (a Godsend this tool is!) to carefully grind away the inner hole until it 'just' fitted. The lesson here is, 'Dry fit first!'. So, once I'd done this and consequently came to a full stop on the engine side of things, I concentrated on the bulkhead cap trimming (this diary is a bit out of chronological order) and went home. Still, we did go out to dinner and get pissed - so that sort of made up for it :)
With better spirits, I set off to the workshop to try and get something useful done. Despite not being able to permanently attach the transaxle, I needed to trial fit it in the car to make sure that I had enough clearance at the Supercharger end, as without the transaxle fitted, the engine leans backwards (with the sump resting on the lower chassis crossmember) which 'pulls' the top Supercharger pulley away from the bulkhead. This wasn't a one man job if you want to avoid back injury, so a mate (cheers Mart) stepped in to help. Before we could start though, we had to put the engine abck in. Now that all the cabling/pipework was clipped into place it could be permanently (I hope) mounted. A straightforward job although, I've yet to fit the A/C pump - so I hope it goes in ok afterwards!. Some 100mm high tensile bolts were bought (again, thanks Mart!) for the engine mounts and with a bit of juggling, the lump was secured in position.
With that done, it was time to try and get the transaxle in place. You need to tilt the engine forward a bit to get the transaxle past the lower chassis rails, but this isn't possible with the Supercharger! So, we had to get the transaxle into position with the mounting studs loose in the top mounting holes, then carefully screw them into the adaptor plate, with the transaxle suspended from the engine hoist! There's probably an easier way to do this, but it worked for us! :) Before long, we finally had the transaxle in place - woohoo! The chaps at Ultima had kindly (and quickly) made up a special gearbox rear mount, as my engine installation sits 25mm further back than normal. However, as this setup is the first of it's kind in the UK, it's all a bit trial and error! The consequence was that it was just a fraction too short and no amount of persuasion could get it to fit. Just 10mm out, but that was enough - damn. Still, the great news was that with everything in place, the Supercharger still cleared the bulkhead cap. So finally, I felt a lot happier about the flywheel bolt fiasco especially as I would have been unable to final-fit the transaxle anyway :)
Thanking Mart for his help, I spent a while plumbing in the radiator coolant and heater pipes to the water pump and top manifold. At first, I was going to use an in-line adaptor in the top hose to take the water temperature from, but, as this is after the thermostat, I would only see an engine temperature after the 'stat had opened. Needless to say, this is far from ideal and the top hose temperature would probably be a few degrees cooler than the block. More of these shenanigans in the next update.
It's a truism of building cars that the last 10 percent of the build takes about 90 percent of the time! The plan of attack was to try and get this monster fired up before the weekend was finished. So did I? Well, read on...
So, where to take fit the water temperature sender. The top hose was discounted, the drain bung was (in retrospect) just daft so I was left with only one real option (well, 2 really but more of that later) and that was to fit it into the blanking plug on top of the water pump. Basically this involved drilling through the 1/2" allen-headed bung and tapping a 1/8" NPT thread into it. But, you have to do this without destroying the allen head, otherwise you have no way of screwing the bung back in! I managed to make life very complicated for myself fo no real reason. Still, such is life. The first problem was actually getting hold of a tap for this purpose! A local(ish) engineering supplier came up with the goods for the princely sum of £18.27 - bargain, NOT! :( Still, I needed it for the oil temperature sender too so no harm done. It's available for hire now at a rate of 5 quid per hour ;) Anyway, the hole was duly drilled in the drill press to keep it square to the bung, then it was tap'd for the sender. It was a tricky thing to get right and I had to cut down the bung to get enough of the sender thread in to keep it watertight. Anyway, it all went well in the end and I screwed the bung back into the pump housing and then put the sender in with some PTFE tape. Job done. Well, errr... no actually. For some reason, I managed to completely miss a 3/8" bung in the top of the manifold which was put there for just this purpose - what a pillock. I don't know how I missed it 'cos it's bloody obvious! Still, you get channeled down one solution and that's what you persue. So, for all my work, I could've simply removed a bung and put in an adaptor :( Still, the only upside is that the wiring for the sender comes off the alternator spur which is at the front of the engine. I could extend it, but it would be a bit convoluted. So I've decided to stick with this setup unless it leaks ;)
That mess finally done with, I moved onto the oil pressure sender. Now, nothing with this Supercharger installation seems straightforward! The takeoff for the oil pressure sender is just by the distributor and is tapped into the oilway in the block. The trouble was, the Supercharger intake manifold sits very close to this point, far too close to fit the sender directly into it in fact. So, the solution was to fit an extention (which the factory kindly sent me). Except that was also too big to fit! I needed something with a narrow neck about 25mm long, with the takeoff for the sender above that. I couldn't cut the factory supplied one down as the right-angled takeoff was too near the bottom. So, I had to order an extra long adaptor which I filed down (oh to have a lathe in the workshop!) to clear the manifold. This text probably makes little sense, but if you look at the photos, you'll see why I had a problem! Anyway, once filed down, it was PTFE'd and screwed into place and the oil pressure sender was fitted to it.
Right, enough of modifying things to bloody fit. Onto something that would go straight on. Namely - the clutch. Now that my flywheel was finally on and torqued up to 65 ft/lbs, I could fit the clutch. Now, this uprated item is damn heavy! So, unless you're quite, quite mad, get a clutch alignment tool to hold the friction plate in place so that you can fit the pressure plate. Mine's a Sykes Pickvant and came from Halfwits (Halfords) for about 16 quid. This makes the job a doddle. Just choose the right adaptors for the spigot bearing and clutch and put it in. Slide the clutch and ring gear over the clutch taking care to align the holes which are arranged in sets of 3, then tighten the bolts. For a change, this was dead straightforward! I did manage to forget to take a picture of the final setup though - doh!
Right, so with the coil in place, it was time to fit the ignition module. The MSD 6AL module combines ignition control with a 'soft' rev limiter. Different plug in modules control the rev threshold - mine's set to 6500rpm. This should've been a five minute job, but as you know, nothing on this car takes five minutes! Once I'd decided on a position for the module which was a bit higher up the bulkhead out of the way of road crap and the worst of the weather, I marked out the positions for the anti-vibration mounting bobbins which hold it in place. So, in simple terms I had to drill through the bulkhead and put the captive bolt in the bobbin through and secure with nuts on the cockpit side. The nuts on the cockpit side are behind the passenger seat, so they're out of sight - I blackened them with a permanent marker too so they're hard to see. Anyway, the problem is that the bobbins only have about 10mm of thread to attach the nut to. In a normal GRP bulkhead this wouldn't be a problem, but with about 6mm of insulation on mine - things are a bit harder (no change there). I ended up having to cut disks of insulation out for the bobbins in order that they protruded enough on the cockpit side to get a nyloc on (again, I replaced the nuts supplied with nylocs as I can't stand crimp/spring washers). To tidy up the insulation edges where I cut it out for the bobbins, I even made up disks of adhesive metal tape which made it look as if I'd planned it this way ;) Anyway, once the bobbins were in, the MSD ignition module was attached to them on the engine side. Guy Thompson had popped round to pick up some bits that had arrived with my exhausts and he kindly gave me the wiring details for the MSD setup - so cheers for that mate. Still, wiring it up would have to wait for a while longer.
The checklist for startup was gradually getting ticked off and to add another tick, it was time to sort out the oil temperature sender. This had me scratching my head for a while I can tell you! Why? Well, hands up who knows which side of the sandwich plate is the input TO the block and which is the feed FROM the block? Well? Come on, don't be shy....
Well, it's like this. If I tap'd the wrong part of the sandwich plate, I'd be reading the oil temperature AFTER it had been cooled which would be rather misleading. So, I needed to find out which was the in and which was the out in order to take the reading from the out (this is also important for the accusump as you want it to pressurise oil going into the block). Got that? This one even had Ted scratching his head, but, after a bit of research, I found that oil filters take oil from the outer ring and then pass it back up the centre. Fortunately, this means that the thick adaptor ring that has to be used on the Chevy (because the oil filter takeoff is recessed a little way into the block) is a nice big reservoir for hot block oil :) Go to the top of the class Mr. James :) So out came the drill press and the tap and a fresh sender hole was made in the adaptor ring. The sender was PTFE'd into place and the whole assembly fitted to the engine. A happy consequence of my engine being on adaptor plates (which move it back) is that it also sits a little higher. I'd heard that some owners have to jack the engine up on the filter side in order to remove it as it sits just above a chassis rail. No such problem on mine however. The whole lot is easily accessible with the engine sat just where it is - result!
Another tick then. Last of the ancilliaries to fit was the air conditioning compressor. Once I'd figured out how to assemble the bracket and adjuster (see pic) I removed the Chevy fuel pump blanking plate ready to take the carrier bracket. No great story here, just bolt in on in place of the blanking plate taking care not to damage the gasket which you'll find there. The compressor belt tension is adjusted by a short plate which bolts between the block and the 'snail' channel in the bracket. All I need to do is find out what length belt to use!
Getting close now. Things were pretty much all done on the right side of the engine, so before the day was done, I decided to fit one of the beautiful stainless steel exhaust headers that had arrived the day before. Knowing how liable these things are to distort in manufacture, I expected to have problems (it had been that kind of day) fitting it to the exhaust manifold with the ARP studs supplied. But, thankfully it went on with no fuss once the gasket was in place. It looks phenominal. Still, I'd run out of time for today and was ready for a beer and some well earned grub!
Time was running out if I was going to get her going, so an early start (7:30am!) saw me back down the workshop. Some tidying up to do first. The wiring loom for the ignition module needed routing away from the heat of the exhaust header and tidying up with some convoluted tubing that I had to hand. The connections had been identified and are as follows:
With the alternator re-fitted (I'd removed it when we put the engine in) and the wiring routed with p-clips, the water temperature sender was now also neatly out of the way. The ignition module wires mostly went back to the distributor, so I bundled them together into the convoluted tubing and clipped them (not too tight!) to the left hand fuel line which runs along this side. The only problematic area was the battery live that was needed for the ignition module. Guy had said that he took his from the alternator, which is conveniently located just below the module. However, the manual that came with the MSD unit said otherwise, so I decided to err on the side of caution (although Guys has done more than 10k miles with no problems) and run in another live. I bought some 27amp cable and ran it back through the passenger sidepod, under the dash and to the switched live post of my FIA kill switch. How damn fiddly was that! Space is at a premium in this area and it took quite a while to get the post nut off. Still, patience (and not a little swearing) paid off and the 'proper' live was in place. I spliced the two wires together at the MSD end and soldered/insulated the connection. Much more satisfactory! Still, next time I reckon I'll just stick it on the back of the distributor! :)
About this time Martin turned up to help refit the transaxle. The clutch release fork was cleaned up and held in place on the release bearing with an elastic band. This time, we jacked up the rear of the engine a bit more to try and locate the 'box on the adaptor plate studs, without having to put them in with the box in place and laboriously tighten them with a pair of grips. This worked and with just minor lacerations (to Mart I hasten to add - sorry buddy!) courtesy of a nice new, sharp ring gear the transaxle was slotted home. The lower bolt on the left side had to be cut down by about 10mm to avoid fouling the sump on the other side of the adaptor plate. The acid test was the fitment of the new support bracket which Ultima had specially fabricated (again!) for me. Well, class job chaps because it fitted bang on! Finally, the whole lot was ready for the driveshafts :) Errr.. except I still wouldn't be able to go anywhere because the linkage was about 140mm too long! No idea why this should be (probably because I've got an older 'short' 'box) but the final rod in the gear linkage is way too long. I'll need to get Ultima to send me another one down to replace it.
Time was rapidly running out. Mart left me to it so I cracked on with the final routing of the oil lines. I'd gone for an unconventional routing of the lines from the cooler so that they ran under the top chassis rail in the gap above the fuel tank. I was careful to make sure that they wouldn't abraid the tank and added a rubber strip to the top of the tank, just in case. Some rubber lined p-clips finished this part of the job. The next thing that became apparent was that the front mount for the Accusump would have to be moved over to the left as it would foul the adaptor plate. No bog deal, just a case of drilling another pair of holes for the cap headed bolts about 15mm to the left of the original ones which were now a handy weight saving feature ;) So finally, I could link up all the connections making sure they were sealed with PTFE tape (again, just in case!). I was careful to be sure that the lines for the Accusump ran into the input side of the sandwich plate (the left side) and tightened up the anodised fittings with an adjustable spanner with insulated jaws.
Well, at this point, I realised that I didn't have enough time to go for a trial start. I didn't want to hurry it and I still had to calibrate the fuel level sender, test the electronics, fit the starter motor, fit the exhaust system etc.etc. Still, I was a hell of a lot closer and I reckon a day's work will see it ready. So, in a fit of 'gotta try something' I decided to connect the battery for the first time EVER, to see if the ignition circuit worked. The earth cable was fitted to the chassis and battery terminal, whilst I took care to make sure that my kill switch was set to 'off'! After making sure I had a fire extinguisher handy (not on my lovely alcontara!!), I connected the 'live'. That done, with a good deal of trepidation, turned on the kill switch - nothing smoking, no smell of burning. Onto stage 2. Turn the ignition on (gulp!), click - WOHOO!!! The Stack lit up like a Christmas tree (without the baubles) and helpfully told me I had no oil pressure but more interstingly, 5 litres of fuel ;) The red warning light was on, as it should be, as well as the orange which extinguished after a few moments, again, as it should. We tested the circuits for the ignition and starter and all was A-OK! :) Well pleased with this, I tested some of the other switches, the headlights were a bit err... confused but I think that I've wired the relay incorrectly, but the hazards, brake fluid test, windscreen wipe/wash all worked as they should. The fuel pumps also behaved properly with a very quick test as they were dry. I even tested the steering wheel remotes and the indicators all worked fine! You may think I'm getting a bit over-excited about a simple power up test, but considering all the loom modifications I had to make, connections re-soldered, wires extended it was a great relief to see things working.
So, not quite a 'startup' but at least I'd seen some life in the car. I aim to get the exhausts done in the week but am away on business next weekend :( So very close, but you'll have to wait a while longer!
Well, I'm sure I'm not alone in being a bit disappointed that I didn't fire her up. So, I've been cramming in the odd hour here and there to try and get things ready for the 13th (this Thursday) which is my birthday! To that ends, I had an early present (except I bought it!) arrive today, that being the shorter K&N filter. As you can see from the pic, it's a hell of a lot shorter than the one supplied with the engine. In fact, it's only 51mm (2 1/4") deep. It fitted directly in place of the other filter and even though it sits on a lowered baseplate, it was just fine. All I needed to do was to cut down the threaded mounting post by about 10mm. Hopefully this should now miss the rear canopy when it's clipped shut!
Another minor job which needed doing was to connect up the Accusump solenoid. The loom comes with a block connector for the solenoid, the my solenoid itself had no reciprocal connector? Anyway, it just meant that I had to strip down the solenoid from the plastic housing, by sliding away the metal clip on top of it. This reveals two terminals which you can secure the takeoff wires to. The other ends were terminated in spade connectors in the usual crimp, solder, re-crimp manner. Then the assembly was put back together and connected up to the Accusump and loom.
That done, I moved onto the left hand exhaust header. Once again, this should've been straightforward, but, I found that with the header in place, the dipstick would be impossible to remove! The problem was that the bracket which holds the nicely engineered dipstick in place, was too short. So, another one needed fabricating. What made this a real hassle was that when I removed the dipstick, the damn braided hose pulled straight out of the block fitting!!! I was hardly held in at all :( So, after looking at the splayed braid, I ended up having to cut the thing down by a few mm to finally get it back in the damn fitting. The smaller the hose diameter, the harder this is to do and this braid is damn small!! It also has a hard inner sleeve which made things doubly hard. Anyway, it ended up taking about half an hour to get the damn thing back on. I was not impressed! Anyway, once that was sorted I could move on to the fabrication of a new bracket. I trimmed of a piece of scrap ally panel that I had to hand and drilled/filed/shaped it to fit. You can see in the pic just how much longer the new one is. Anyway, it was bent into shape and refitted to the rocker cover stud. With the header back in position I'd got the position just right.
That done, I could fit the left hand header. Again, I was wary that it might give some problems but luckily, the superb engineering did it's work and it bolted straight on. Out of time, the silencers would have to wait for another day (read tomorrow!), so we're almost there. Although, looking at those fat pipes, I'm tempted to leave them open ;)
Silencers, are these a thing of beauty of what. Fitting them should be a simple case of sliding them onto the headers and tightening up the Mikalor hose clamps. But, as with everything else with this build, it's not so straightforward! As my engine sits further back in the chassis, so do the exhausts. The problem with the silencers is, that there isn't enough room for them to sit behind the upper rear chassis rail (as they would normally) where they're held in place by the lovely plasma cut steel hanger - which is mounted via a pair of rubber anti-vibration bobbins and angle brackets. Darn! Again, a 10 minute job turned into a two hour one! The only solution (to my mind) other than paying out for custom length silencers, was to trim the ends of the gorgeous stainless steel headers and the same amount from the silencer inlet tubes :( With some trepidation, I used a Mikalor clamp to keep the cut square and dove in with the hacksaw :( :o ! The headers were easy enough as they're held firm, but with no way to clamp the silencers down without damaging them, they became a right pain! First I had to extend the notches in the input pipe so that it could be clamped down when trimmed, then I had to cut away the excess material. Well, after about an hour of sawing/filing and Dremelling they were on - and fit :) They were still nearer the chassis rail than normal, so I need to fabricate a new pair of brackets for the exhaust hanger where it mounts to the chassis. But, it was almost done, just need to buy some angle pieces for the mount as I had no material in the workshop. I also re-wired the loom back to the coil to include an extended water temperature sender (I'm moving it from the water pump to it's 'proper' position on the manifold by the oil pressure sender) and a new wire from the tacho output of the MSD module to the black/white feed wire on the Ultima loom. That's all for this morning. More tonight.
Well, today is my birthday (Happy Birthday to me etc.) so, by way of celebration, I managed to get most of the afternoon off. I'm off on a business trip first thing tomorrow and wish I could write more, but I don't have time. However, my target for last weekend has at last been met. In fact, a major milestone in the project has been passed
You guess it..... SHE RUNS!!!!! I won't go into too many details here as I've no time to write them up but suffice to say, she fired FIRST time and I've yet to see a leak! All systems present and correct on the dash too!!!
Anyway, enough of my wittering, click one of these to view the moment of truth yourselves. WHAT A GREAT DAY!!!!
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I'll give a full account after the weekend. Enjoy!!!! :)
So here we are again. A server migration has meant that I couldn't give you the lowdown on the engine start, but now it's all done so I'll fill you in. At least you should be able the access the site a bit quicker in future!
So now that the silencers were on and sorted, I could move on to the last couple of bits and pieces that needed doing in order to start her up. I'd been unhappy with my water temperature sender position (on top of the water pump) especially once I'd realised that there was bung for it on the intake manifold near tyhe oil pressure sender! How I missed it before I don't know, but the main thing was that I could move it. However, in order to fit the sender to the water pump I'd had to modify the top 1/2" NPT blanking plug so now, it had a hole right through it! A trip to Real Steel in Uxbridge (which is thankfully near my route to work) relieved them of a replacement for the princely sum of £1.12! This was fitted with some joint sealer (just in case) and I set about removing the manifold blanking plug. No great story here, just remove the 5/8" NPT plug and replace with a 5/8" to 1/8" NPT sender adaptor (which luckily I had already) and fit the sender. The Ultima loom only provides one lead to the sender, so just earth the other connector to the chassis. With some resistivity in the chassis, it will make a slight difference to the sender reading, but not enough to worry about. So finally, it was in the right place! I had to remake the conduit loom to take the water temp. sender wire, so I added the tacho output from the MSD module at the same time to keep everything neat. In fact, the only wiring that can be seen is where it connects up behind the coil mounting bracket!
So with only fuel pressure to do, all the essential senders were now in place. The final job to do before I could start her up was to fit the starter motor. Should be simple enough..... nope. For starters (s'cuse the pun!) the battery cable wasn't long enough to reach the motor live, I think this is because it's cut to length for the other style of G50 box where the starter motor sits on the sump side (which makes it damn fiddly to connect up). So in one respect I was better off as my starter motor is mounted from the rear where there's plenty of room, but I had to extend the cable a bit. Halfwits provided the short battery extension and the two were mated together and insulated well. So, it was ready to fit..... err no again! It quickly became apparent that the starter motor couldn't be fitted as the orientation of the holes in the mounting flange made the motor point straight down and because my engine/box are 35mm further back than normal, this put it smack bang into a chassis rail - !*&^*$&^%!!!! At this point I thought we'd have to call it a day. I was pretty dissapointed I can tell you. But, I had a closer look at the starter motor and realised that the mounting flange wasn't cast to the motor body, but was attached with a couple of cap headed bolts. Additionally, those thoughtful chaps who designed it had put extra mounting holes into it so that the motor body's orientation relative to the mounting could be altered!!! How happy was I! A couple of minutes later and the mounting had been rotated so that the motor body ran parallel sideways to the chassis rail instead of straight down into it! :) Solved!
The last hour or so before start up was spent filling the coolant system with a water/antifreeze mix and then adding the oil to the engine. The engine setup, what with the Accusump, oil cooler and winged sump pan, takes a massive amount of oil about 11 litres in my case! This has to be done in stages however. First, fill the engine until you reach the 'max' point on the dipstick. Then, all the spark plugs were removed and the engine cranked over until we had oil pressure (the great thing about the Stack setup is that you can see the pressure rising instead of just waiting for a light to go out!!). It's always a relief to see that you've got oil pressure and it seems to take an age (about a minute) before that red light goes out! That done, you will have pressurised the system. But, you need to bleed air from the Accusump accumulator which allows the piston inside it to slide back, which in turn, means that you need to add more oil as the capacity of the system goes up. This takes a few goes as you progressively bleed off more air and add more oil, but soon everything will all be filled an ready.
With a few last minute checks for leaks and loose leads it was time to replace all the plugs and see if she'll run. Well, as you can see from the videos above, she did - and first time too!! :)
So, now that I'm back from my business trip, I returned to some good news. The SVA test is booked for the 18th March! Gulp! I'm leaving the windscreen to the factory to fit and with their usual safety checks, the car is due to be picked up on the 6th. I'm off skiing for a week on the 8th so with luck, I'll be coming home to a road-legal Supercharged Ultima GTR! So I'd better get my arse into gear and finish her off!!
Most of the day was spent chasing wiring problems with the front lights. This was a complete pain as the wiring description in the build manual bore no resemblance to the wires that I had! Basically, I had sidelights and dip lights but no full beams. The relay which switches the lamps over wasn't even clicking so I knew something was up, but with no loom schematic I was a bit stuck. A call to fellow GTR owner Guy Thompson put me on the right track (although his loom is different to mine too!) and I finally got it sorted. To make life a bit easier for those who follow, here's a description of the wiring as well as the fuse order:
So about the only things that got done other than this, were the wiring up of the washer bottle and brake fluid reservoir and the polishing of the door skins. Hels helped out here (what an angel) and with a combination of elbow grease and T-Cut they came up like glass. Thanks babe! xx
So not a very good day for getting things done, but hopefully tomorrow will be better.
Right, hopefully some decent progress will be made today. Now that the doors were polished, they could be refitted. A simple enough job although, I found that fitting the top rose jointed hinge first made getting them lined up easier. Now that they were on, I found that I needed to trim the striker pin on the drivers side as it fouled the door. As the cockpit is permanently rivetted down, things have moved about a bit, so the doors need some fine-tuning. Additionally, this meant that I could finally rivet the luggage pod covers into place. The reason that I left them until now was so that I could get a perfect shutline between the lower door edge and the sidepod itself. Despite being rivetting in place along the bottom, you can still move the sidepod in and out a little to get a perfect match. With me pushing the sidepod in a little, Hels drilled through a couple of the pre-drilled holes in the cover, through the GRP 'sandwich' and into the chassis rail. The result, well, have a look for yourself but it doens't get much better than that!! :)
Now that the pilot rivets were holding everything in the right place, the rest of the holes could be drilled through and rivetted to the chassis. Perfect.
The last job of the day was to fit the luggage pod covers. These are laser cut by the factory and are 'too' accurate to fit. A bit of filing took them down a little in size until they sat snugly in place. Once I've added a strip of velcro to the underside to stop them rattling it'll be job done.
I ran out of time at this point before I move onto the electric mirrors. Still, more to come this week.
In order to meet my 6th of March deadline for the factory pickup, I need to spend as much time on the car as possible and this meant working on it in the evenings. I'm now down to a list of 'niggly' jobs, with only a couple of biggies to do. So on with the nigglies:
Well, first off a job that I actually did last week, but had no photos of! namely, fitting the gear linkage to the transmission selector shaft. After cutting down the final linkage shaft which was 100mm too long, I tapped a new thread into it. This was bloody hard! There was an awful lot of material for the 1/2" UNF tap to remove and it was slow going. Still, with plenty of llubricating oil and elbow grease I finally got it done. Now that I could screw the adjusting arm to the end of the linkage shaft, I settled on a horizontal position it in relation to the selector shaft in line with the partially threaded hole in the end of the shaft itself. The arm was removed and drilled out to take the M6 bolt and the whole lot reassembled and the bolt screwed home. I tested the linkage from the cockpit end to make sure that I could select all the gears which thankfully, I could. Which meant that the inly remaining job was to put on my gearshift knob which has been languishing in the workshop for about 6 months!!
First up was to finally complete the Stack sender setup by fitting the fuel pressure sender. I placed this as close to the carb input as possible and definitely AFTER the filter (which lowers the pressure a bit) so that I now exactly what's getting pumped into the float bowls. Due to the angle of the pipe as it passes up the bulkhead, a 45 degree -6 connector mated to a 1/8" NPT input adaptor with another -6 straight mating to the carb input T-piece (the pics make sense of this ;). I used Aeroquip connectors this time as they were available locally and must say, that they're a lot easier to fit than the Goodridge ones. The Aeroquip's have a tapered inlet on the 'red' part into which you insert the braided hose. This makes it far simpler to get the hose in without spreading the braiding out. Anyway, you've seen the procedure before, so everything was connected up with PTFE tape at the joints for safety's sake as I'd noticed a small leak from the top of the fuel filter. Finally, the connecting cables were rivetted to the bulkhead using cable tie clips and another job was marked off the 'to do' list.
Next up was to fit the inspection covers that fit over the fuse/relay box and the small storage space on the right side which gives access to the dash wiring. No great story here, just prefit and mark the hole positions on the GRP. Drill 7mm holes and insert the rivnuts and secure the covers to the GRP with the cap headed bolts supplied. One thing to note, is that you need to fit the lower rivnut on the fusebox side, to the fusebox mounting plate itself. So whilst the other three are mounted to the bodywork, the lower one bolts through into the mounting plate.
Next up were some important safety items. As you may know, I've got a plumbed in fire extinguisher system for race use, but the downside of this is that it's total-loss ie. when you activate the extinguisher it completely empties with no way to stop the flow. Needless to say, whilst this will hopefully put out the fire, it's a damn messy way of doing it! So, I decided to fit an additional handheld extinguisher in case of any minor 'mishaps'. It's still FIA approved but is only 1.75 litre capacity (the plumbed in system is 4.2 litre!). This was nice and easy. Just drill into the centre vertical chassis rail, through the ally panelling and use self tapping screws to mount the bracket. The extinguisher now sits nice an tightly against the bulkhead, in between the seats. Be aware, that a taller extinguisher will be harder to fit, as the top bracket mounting point will be above the top of the chassis rail. The 1.75l 'just' fits.
More safety, this time harnesses. Now, although the factory supply Willans, I can't stand them! Yes, I know they're British, but the 2" 1920's design does my head in :) So, I opted for some 3" Sabelt 4 point single seater harnesses with T-crutchstraps. This effectively gives you a 6 point harness and the extra strap width I find more comfortable - and women will thank you for it! (think about it ;). I opted for blue over black as the cockpit doesn't have an ounce of colour in it save for the blue lighting of the Stack pod! Anyway, thankfully the mounting points that are welded into the chassis are of the correct thread size to take the Sabelt mounting posts (they're all pretty much standard), so it was a simple case of tightening up the mounting post rings and hooking on the belts. All that's left to do is to drill the floor for the crutch strap mounting posts, but I need to measure the seats to see where the seat base hole is.
Now I could continue with the rear lights. I'd tested these the other day, but unsuccessfully, as I had no bulb holders for the number plate lights which means only half the rear lights would work. So, connectors were soldered to the number plate light wiring and the bulbs put in - voila! It worked :) So now to fit them. The holes which had been pre-cut for the number plate light lenses needed to be widened a little with a file until they could be clipped into place, but no great difficulty here. I need to work out how the ally boxes which are also supplied get fitted to the other side, but that shouldn't be too hard to figure. I was approaching the fit of the rear light clusters with some trepidation, as I thought they might be a pain to fit. But, I needn't have worried, each light pushed into it's mounting holes with no problem. The only issue is that you need the hands of a 5 year old to get all the nylocs on! Still, after some fiddling, it was another job done. Ran out of time at this point, so went home and made a list of the outstanding jobs and the time I expected them to take. I reckon I've got about 12.5 hours to go!!! We shal see....... ;)
