Top plate of chasis

Had a little time left so marked the top plate ready to drill the hole for the gear shifter
marked the centre of the shifter and drilled a 90mm hole to give me plenty of room
filled smooth and refitted will be coming off again to fit some rubber round the hole and will be a lot easier to fill the gear box though the shifter hole once the oil arrives.
 Note Manual gearbox but needs ATF dextron III oil 4 litres.

Add caption

Filled out and temp fitted

cooling system part 1

Fitted the radiator  but didn't have the fixing kit (2 bits of pipe!) so used 16mm grommets which seemed to work so I could figure out haw the pipe work went.
Again Dales blog to the rescue
And I realised that the header tank needs rivnuting  to the cross member ,used 8mm rivnuts  and made sure the pipe was in line from the engine .

Header tank fitted with pipes still loose

Then it was just a simple task to fit the other side again only loose as it will all have to come off when I collect the heater pipes .

Pipe fitted but will need trimming level

 

Fitting the Cooling Fan

I Bought the fan from GD together with the kit and it was a 16inch one that can fit in front or behind.
After studying thermo dynamics on the internet and confusing my self it doent appear to matter were the fan goes but slight favour to the fan sucking the air though !!


 So I decided to fit one fan behind the radiator.

Mounting the fan

 The kit comes with 2 stainless bars pre drilled for pop rivets and has bolts welded for the fan

The principle is to fix the bars to the radiator, then fix the fan to the bars.
First issue I had was the fan has curved blades and clearly marked as "pushing"  but I wanted to suck
so simple job of reversing the blades  


Blades reversed and now will suck to the cardboard

Next the cheek nipping bit. I fitted the fan to the bars  placed the fan in the middle of the rad marked the position of the bars and drilled the holes corresponding to the holes already drilled at the end of each bar onto the radiator frame. All the blogs I have read say that you cant go into the radiator but it looked to me like there was a chance so very carefully drilled the holes and fitted pop rivets .

Engine work

Started fitting things to the engine to reduce the boxes !
Started with the alternator easy job with the supplied spacers to keep everything in line

Alternator fitted top bolt and spacer can be seen

Followed by the tensioner

Thought this was a good time to swap the thermostat housing over so removed the angled one carefully as to save the thermostat inside and simple case of fitting the new unit

Only goes on 1 way due to a little cut out

 And then the belt
Easiest way I found was to put a spanner on the tensioner to hold the spring while fitting the belt

Followed by the Starter motor

Gearbox mounts

Had issues with the gearbox mounting but an M12 Tap sorted that out and all fitted fine

Gearbox mount with the M12 bolts Loctite in

When I measured the gearbox to make sure that it was central in the frame I found that is was over to the LHS this I thought would present a problem as the gearshift is not level anyway so this would only make it worse .
Problem sorted by slackening everything off again and lifting the engine up slightly to rejig it until it was in the centre ,
The engine mountings are suplyed with 3 washers assuming for spacing as there is a gap between the mountings and the bolt ,when I had my enging in line I had uneven gaps on the mountings .double checking the mesurments and the gear box was within 1/64 " and the engine was level and centrered .so not moving that and ended up with a washser at the front on the RHS and washer at the rear on the LHS.

Enginee mounting tight with washer spacing at the front

Engine work (Gear box)

Attaching gearbox to engine

 The end of the gearbox output shaft was lubricated with lithium  grease and  using the engine hoist and a couple of slings, the gearbox and bell housing were offered up to the engine.

 

 





 Making sure that the shaft was lined up, the bell housing was then twisted a little and pushed home over the locating pegs. The bell housing was then bolted up to the engine block using high tensile bolts and torqued to 40  ft lb. Thread lock was applied to these bolts before tightening.

Fitting the unit in to the chassis

 The radiator support frame and the two removable cross member from the front of the chassis were removed (the top brace and the diagonal).


The engine mounting adaptor plates were  fitted to the engine and only go on one way ,  Each mount has to have the bump ground off and then I painted these with stove enamel .

 

The gearbox selector was removed and the hole covered up with masking tape

 

 

 Using the hoist and the load leveller which is a great piece of kit  we manoeuvred the assembly in to place. Never took any pictures here as was too busy  with the 10k Engine and the 10K chassis .

However it all went fairly straight forward  just needs to be tipped in first then leavaled out (load leavaler came in to its own here great tip from Andy ) forgot to remove the brake pipe braket and the engine doesn't go past this so quick break while everything is in the air to move this

 

Got the engine sat on the gearbox mounts then realised that I hadn't fitted the propshaft so had to take it out a bit. The prop shaft was inserted in to the tail of the gearbox, lubricating the gearbox seal with the gearbox oil.



 The engine mounts were then slid in to place, over the chassis mounting points. The long bolt and nut were used to secure the mount to the chassis. The three supplied hex set screws were then inserted through the mounting in to each adaptor plate.

Engine in I can relax now

 

Couldn't get the gearbox rubber mount to fit into the gearbox even after removing the rubber in the threads .

M12 bolts seem to be supplied but the thread looked M10 .

Just left it in place and look at this another day .

Good days work and enjoyed it ! Huge thanks to Steve again

 

Cross braces back in place Note the wheel sliders which are so useful

 

Engine work (gearbox)

Fitting the release bearing

 

The clutch release mechanism is a modified (by GD) hydraulic bearing, with braided hoses fitted.

Mine as other blogs didn't fit so I had to open the bottom slot a bit with a de burring tool . Remembering to protect the gearbox bearing from flying aluminium .

 



Slot opened  in the gearbox



 

Now it fits

 

The hydraulic release bearing was located over the gearbox output shaft, with the outlets aligned with the slots in the gearbox. The release bearing was bolted in place with the two M6 set screws supplied. Both screws had thread lock  applied. The bottom  hose is the bleed pipe.

 Fitting the bell housing

The bell housing was attached to the gearbox, using seven new high tensile bolts. These bolts were thread locked too.

bell housing attached and torqued up ready to fit to the engine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





Engine work (flywheel and clutch )

First job was to change the original sump for the supplied shallow one .
Quite simple job after first removing the original flywheel

Flywheel removed

Then the sump and pick up is changed straightforward job very low toque setting on these bolts only 8 ft lb

New sump fitted

 Flywheel fitting

,I fitted the spigot bearing in the end of the crank shaft only goes in one way with the bevel facing outwards

Spigot bearing fitted to centre of crank

 Fitted the flywheel after checking both faces were clean and e used the bolts that I had just taken off


 The bolts holes on the flywheel were marked 1 to 6.

The build manual doesn't seem to cover any engine work so got the toque setting from the LS website .(https://paceperformance.com/files/pdf/ls3-torque-specs.pdf)
The bolts were tightened in the following sequence 1, 4, 2, 5, 3, 6. Thread lock was applied to the bolts before they were torqued. They were tightened in three passes as follows:

• 1st tighten to 15 ft lb torque
• 2nd tighten to 37 ft lb torque
• 3rd tighten to 74 ft lb torque

For the last pass, the flywheel started to move understandably so easiest way I found was to put a socket on the crankshaft pulley to hold against me  job done .

 Clutch fitting

The clutch plate was put on the flywheel  and was held in place with the clutch alignment tool.

Clutch plate over clutch alignment tool

Thread lock was  applied to the bolts The clutch cover was put over the alignment tool on to the locating pegs.

Clutch pressure plate in place and ready to torque

Again the six bolts were tightened in four  passes as per the specs in the same  sequence 1, 4, 2, 5, 3, 6.
The torque for the four passes were as follows:

• 1st tighten to 11 ft lb
• 2nd tighten to 26 ft lb
• 3rd tighten to 41 ft lb
• 4th tighten to 52 ft lb

final torque

 

 

 

 

 

Chassis

Chassis home safe  first job was to place wax oil in the recess to stop any rust
Did this by removing the body stops and just spraying both ways might help might not

home safe and sound

used 2 tins not a lot

 

Engine hoist

Needed an engine hoist and the promised one fell though so!!! could hire one at £40 a week or buy one at £120 ? decided to buy one and after discussions managed to get Steve to go 50 .50  no brainer really.

New hoist with a box of bits !!