Busy Weekend

Between us we spent around 12 hours in the Garage this weekend, but not all of this was working on the car. Some three hours this afternoon was spent pretending to work on it while a photographer with a van load of kit took over 400 photos to go with some profile piece about Tim in some newspaper (now that should get the mickey taken out of him at work!)

Anyway the rest of the time we did actually make some progress. Chrissy finished off the battery tray and refitted it (yet again).

Tim spent an unexciting 30 minutes feeding one grommet over numerous connectors from the ECU loom (it didn't look possible, but a friend from the WSCC had emailed saying it was possible and just that info was remarkably useful - thanks Tony). We have decided, like Tony, to route the ECU cable through the scuttle rather than down the transmission tunnel for a whole variety of reasons.

We have made some major progress on the cooling system and have fitted most of the hoses, in a couple of cases we had to put the hose in hot water to let it expand a bit but generally it was OK. One exception was when putting a lot of force on one of the metal pipes to push it in to some rubber hose it suddenly went in about 10cm i.e. far too far so we then had to spend about half an hour getting it out again!

We have also cut and mostly fitted the front fuel hoses onto the injection tubes, but have run out of the right size jubilee clips so that job will have to wait a little while.

Have run into a few problems (e.g. there is one loop connector whoch says ' chassis earth' but is miles away from anywhere suitable to earth it) and also haven't got a big enough spanner to do up the thermostat switch on the rad. The final and most serious problem is that we (well Tim) has failed to tap out a suitable thread in the radiator overflow pipe - the purpose of the thread is to block it up as it is not used. (Have to phone Mark at the factory tomorrow)

Here is a pic of some of the pipework...

Small steps forward

Been limited progress this week as Chrissy has had exams all week, and Tim had to spend Tuesday watching the magnificent Arsenal show Alan Hansen where he can stick his comments and Wednesday watch Moaninho's Moaners lose to Barca. These events both by necessity involved drinking beer.

Anyway a little progress.

Altered the wiring loom in a few places to change connectors e.g. loop into spade.

Wired up the alternator (had to get some deep 8mm and 10mm sockets as was chewing up the securing nuts)

Found out how to secure the battery courtesy certain friendly folk on the WSCC website and Chrissy has done a fine job riveting the bracket up to the battery tray....

Struggling

Really not going very far fast.

We have been away on the Black Isle for most of the week, so little progress, but the last two days in the garage have yielded little except a headache.

Looking on the positive side we have now finished fixing the battery cables we have also fitted the radiator back on, this time the correct way around. But stuck on

(a) accelerator stop bolt...could get a longer one, but fitted the one they sent?

(b) bottom hose connection (seems to be the wrong shape)

(c) tried out our new £16 rivnut tool, so that we could put in one of the mounts for the metal cooling pipes, only to find it doesn't work at all, and that I have lost the receipt (argh!)

The one other job we did today was to change the water temp sensor, in the engine block, only to forget that one of the electrical connections needed to go over the threaded section before we tightened it (needless to say we put locking material on it as well so that made it harder to get out when much later in the day we realised our problem)

Went in a little dispirited - need the gunners to beat Real Madrid away in the week to cheer us up (we live in hope!)

Did we say no steps backwards?

So after we finished mildly pleased with ourselves on Sunday we realised later that evening that we had put the fan on the wrong side of the radiator (doh!). Thanks to Nick Clark for pointing it out!

Took it all off this evening while we also riveted loom saddles on chassis to mount the battery positive cable and took off the steering rack off to mount the battery negative cable. Had to stop as we took off too much of the chassis powder coating off to get a good electrical connection to the steering rack mounting brackets, and have had to fix up with hammerite now need to wait to dry before putting all back together.

Wish we'd have put loom saddles on for battery positive before we put engine in as drilling the chassis where we wanted was hard to impossible.

Total Man Woman hours this week so far 3.

p.s. thanks to Tony for comments about routing ECU loom through scuttle

Two Steps Forward No steps backwards

Only had time to spend on the car Sunday, though we did put in a total of 7 hours between us today. (Chrissy has mock A/S exams to revise for, Tim and Chris managed to see Arsenal on Wednesday pm - the less said the better - and Tim went to see the Gunners at Birmingham yesterday).

Anyway the car -

We finished off fitting the radiator, one of the problems here was that M6 bolts were required, but the holes in the two welded on chassis mounting brackets were much bigger ca. 10mm. Mark from Westfield said to use some big washers on each side of the hole, but this still seemed a poor mounting, so we improvised a rubber collar around the relevant part of the set screw by cutting about 5mm of the tubing supplied for fuel tank breather (which was overlong anyway).

You have to bend the welded steel chassis brackets fairly enthusiatically to get pointing in the right direction and with the bent end sections in something like the right plane.

The finished article is here....


We were also able to finish off the rear fuel system, as Westfield had sent us the missing breather tap that goes in the top of it and fixes to a breather tube that needs to be fixed on the chassis. Therefore we finished securing all of the fuel pipes and putting convoluted plastic tubing around them.

We have trial fitted the battery as we have also started on fixing the main battery cables (as Westfield have also supplied us with the loom saddles ....little plastic things with holes in that can be riveted into the chassis (which then allows you to fix cable ties onto pipes, wires etc.)

We also now think we have worked out all of the wiring for the engine and the ECU by asking Westfield some further questions this week, we now have three separate loom diagrams, which almost, but not quite, tie up with what we have.

They have also at our request sent us a replacement temperature sensor which is specific to our (as yet undelivered) dashboard dials... [this is punishment from the Gods for our vanity for ordering white dials, which has meant a number of sensors need changing as they are specific to them] ...

Current worries...

1. How to secure the ECU loom in the transmission tunnel, give gearbox is already in it.
2. How to mount the ECU mounting plate onto the circular tube at the front
3. Can't find an M8 x 70 bolt to use as an accelerator pedal stop
4. oh too many to list...

Bye for now