air intake

Getting ready for the body on day so need to file out the front part of the body for the air intake .
used the rubber hose to mark out what was needed then the trusty Dremel comes in again to help



Trusty Demel and Steve

final bits

Body fitting day looming up so getting the final bits sorted .Sponge rubber need to go on the top of the chassis  for the body to sit on.

Adam coming to the rescue fitting the sponge

last job was to make sure that there was a hole for the gear leaver was cut out in the body as the gear leaver is off set but want to appear in the middle on the finished car the hole is cut in the middle even though the gear leaver will poke though at the left hand side

Steve again as someone has to hold the camera! 

Gearbox oil filling

my gearbox is a manual but the instruction specify using ATF so strange but hey ho
Instaed of messing about trying to get to the filler and level plug used a trick from one of the American blogs and poured it in though the shifting plate until it came out the level plug .a lot easier

weird putting atf in a manual gearbox

Engine prelube

Needed to thing abut pre lube  the engine as the alternator has t come off anyway to acess the last bit of the loom on that side .
Opted for a fuel priming nozzle as an experiment ( Steve's idea)
undid the bleed plug

Bleed plug behind alternator

the wrapped some tape round the outlet to get a good seal

and then pumped and hoped for the best ?
What a success after about eight pumps the oil started to come out of the oil pressure hole

oil coming out of the oil pressure hole

stopped pumping and put the plug back in used about 1/3 of a 4 pint container

pre lube done

dead happy Steve right again

Wiring part 2

After the success of the speedo sensor did exactly the same thing with the reverse lock out sensor.
Lots of mixed feelings about this do I :-
1 :- Leave it as reverse can be still selected its just hard to push across.
2:- Do a mod to weaken the spring and then leave it.
3:- wire it in on a switch to be somewhere on the dash .
Didn't fancy option 2 as once modified  it's do or die and knowing me it would have been die !so went for option 3 and  wire it and then I can decide later .
Once wired it was a simple case to feed the wires to the right hand side and loom everything together on the right hand side and I used the brake pipe to tie wrap the cables to reverse lock out the speed sensor and the reverse light switch all together

reverse lock out switch loomed up

speedo sensor with the reverse switch wires from the other side

wiring continuing and picking up the reverse switch

Used self amalgamating tape as think it looks neater than adhesive tape.
Moving on to the left hand side it was a mirror image of the right until I got to the end of the engine .
extra cables were the air intake sensor ( which goes in the intake tube) alternator wires and the cam position sensor.

wires at the front of the engine

 Again used SAT and "P" clips in any hole that would do ,the right hand side cables are the alternator ,the left cable is for the air intake and the middle one goes down to the cam sensor .

Mine didn't fit and looked like a completely different plug , After a beer and a think realised that the cam sensor has a link extender wire on it ,once I removed that the cable fitted no problem .

Cam sensor with the extender cable still in place

Wiring done good day in the garage .

Wiring part 1

Been putting off the wiring loom but can't any more. Getting it out of the box was the first milestone and then I needed a beer! .
Using other peoples blogs and pictures that I took when at the factory I sorted out the staring point was were the loom splits to feed the two banks

loom laid in the right position  loom is marked nearside and off side

 Then I started laying the 2 sides and hoped that things would fall naturally into place which most things do.

off side loom with the injectors and coil pack falling just right

The loom splits up just before the first cylinder and goes down the off  side of the engine  for the O2 sensor knock sensor the starter motor cables and the all important crank position sensor. The only way I could gat the CPS fitted was to take the starter motor down again.


Crank position and the knock sensor ( with starter removed ) the bottom one is the unused oil level

I noticed a wire that said coolant temp with nowhere for it to go eventually  I found a blank on the right hand side with a temp sensor in the box of tricks , hey presto the supplied sensor fits in there with the  doughty washer

coolant temp sensor (for the gauge not the engine ECU which is the other side

Following on from this was the starter cable  together are the alternator supply cables  and the other cable is the start request signal really tight for space to clear the exhaust.

showing the alt cables and start cable ( used "P" clips in any vacant hole to try and tidy up the loom

moving back to the top to finish off was the last 2 sensors which nicly fall into place on the throttle  body and map sensor

 

off side done

Last job on this side was to fit the off side O2 sensor which connects up but way too much cable so coiled it up to keep it away from everything and tie wrapped it to the frame.

O2 fitted and all the cable tie wrapped out of harms way

Before moving to the near side I had the speedo sensor to think about ,The plug is special order from the US with an extra 30 dollars to get it here yer right, so a bit of thinking later and !!

speed sensor

took out the speedo sensor and cut the shroud off to expose the pins

and then crimped 2 red though connectors on to it

crimped happy days
 

then is was just a matter on putting the shroud back on and filling it with epoxy proper job

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