Fitted the floor panels and rivnutted the intercooler scoop in place.
Bought a couple of cabinets to store the nuts, bolts, washers and other assorted bobbins that I'm accumulating and spent a fair amount of time organising things into them. Should make life very much easier.
Taped the fuel tank in place temporarily so I can work out how the fuel system needs to plug together and thus where the pipework needs to go.
Modified the seat-back panel to give enough clearance for the fuel filter mount and fitted the mount. It's a damn sight heavier than it has any right to be (it's a standard ford part) so could be a candidate for replacement with a GRP or ali part later on. I think I've managed to work out how all the fuel system is going to plumb in now and it appears I'm going to need some adaptors to get the right threads on the tank outlet and return.
Made up and fitted the rear brake pipes using Richards pipe bender. There's a bit of a knack to using it, in that you can't just line it up and create a bend but after a while you get to judge the amount of space it needs before the bend starts. After juggling the brake line and the fuel line around a bit bent and fitted the front to rear brake line. I've left the front end till later as its exact routing will to some extend depend on where it needs to go to get around the engine. I've also discovered that I'm going to need an aeroquip to M10 fine adaptor to cope with the banjo arrangement that's needed to clear the exhaust.
Fitted the front brake lines after cutting the front pipes down to the correct length for the top mounted pedal box.
I've realised something really daft, at present the chassis is upside down and on the trestles. When I turn it back over the weight of the car will be on the front-rear brake and fuel lines. Not sure what westfield intend you to do about this but I intend to remove them and refit once the car is on the ground, should be an easy enough job now that everything else is neatly plumbed in.
Tidied up the garage, setting up my new toy (a pillar drill) and getting ready to flip the chassis back over. Removed the fuel and front-rear brake line as the final position in the engine bay can't be fixed till the engine is in.
With Catherines help I flipped the chassis back over and tried to work out how best to mount the oil cooler. After trying quite a few permutations I came to the conclusion that it wouldn't fit in the ducting behind the radiator after all. The ducting in front however is just a perfect size to accept the cooler vertically. The rad and the cooler also fit perfectly, such that none of the fins touch but are securely located about 2mm apart. It couldn't have been better if I'd designed it that way, it will require me designing some funky brackets.
Carefully cut some holes for the hoses to come out through the shroud and for the mounting brackets. After much head scratching worked out a neat way to do the mounts securely, made up 2 of the 4 brackets required but I'll need to weld it all up, which means I need the parts I've ordered for the new welder to turn up.
Finished making the mounts for the oil cooler and got impatient, deciding to weld up the mounts on the old welder since it was perfectly capable of working on the 3mm ali I was using. The mounts may look fairly agricultural but they're not terrily heavy, will double as the mounts for the nosecone that used to be another attachment to the rad and as my first practical use of the ali welding I'd been practicing I'm pretty damned chuffed.
Took a look at the layout for the fueling system now that things are back up the right way, it appears that two of the odd looking tabs are pobably for the red-top fuel pump, certainly the spacing is just perfect and there isn't anywhere else obvious for it to go. My only hesitation in fitting it is clearance for the drive-shaft. In playing with it I also noticed that the connectors supplied with the red top kit were the correct fitment for the tank, another mystery solved, if only I can find out what they are. They're right angle connectors and for the tank I really need straight, but thats easily sorted once I find out the size.
Decided that soon I'll need to to fit the diff as that will help answer some of the questions I've got about locations of the fueling system. Got it out to have a look at and decided on impulse to give it a more thorough cleanup than I had previously and to paint it. I'd seen this done on both Richards rush and Williams Tiger and it made things very much cleaner and more pleasant to handle as well as looking good. The tool to get between the webbing is a fine wire brush attachment for the drill. Created a huge amount of dust and dirt but got down to reasonably shiny metal, left alone this would rapidly have picked up much so got straight down to giving it some red oxide primer.
Next thing by the build manual is to fit the loom. Having been on the car for some time the loom was pretty grubby and in need of some tarting up. There are also some slightly dubious modifications to it to cope with different components. I'm going to have to take a thorough look at it all, clean it up and re-apply loom tape where needed. Some of the modifications, namely those to put more lighting behind the dash can all go because of the dash lighting loom that I made up a while ago. For now though I've untangled the loom and laid it out in approximately the right place.
A couple of coats of top-coat on the diff, finished cleaning up the engine, fitted the oil cooler thermo block, twiddled the loom and fitted the handbrake lever, gaitor and pre-positioned the cable. The handbrake will have to come off to give access for the prop fitting but it's another job done for now.
Fitted the inertia cutout switch, red-top fuel pump, ignition block and MAP sensor. This was all possible because I'd managed to sort out a sensible route for the loom. At the rear and through the tunnel I've put in the cable tie mounting blocks but only loosely attached the loom for now. Once I've got all the route exactly set up and adjusted it to and fro I can tighen up the cable ties.
Gave the diff it's last couple of coats of paint and put the bush into the diff mounting bracket. Or at least I tried to. It wasn't until I got the diff past the point of no return that It occured to me that it might be a good plan to clean up the powder coating from the inside of the mount. Oh well. At least I have a perfectly good old one to use while I look at getting the now distorted bush out.
Fastened down the loom and wired in the fuses. In some places the loom tape had got a bit tatty so re-wrapped that with proper loom-tape then because the loom-tape isn't sticky secured the loose end of each run with some ordinary insulating tape.
Fitted the diff. Happened to discover that Westfield have welded the front brake pipe supports on the wrong side of the chassis member for the type-approved bodywork that I have. The reason the positioning is different is to clear the fairings in the GRP for the shocks so the tabs should have been weldde on the rear of the upright bracing rather than the front. Annoyingly I've already bent the brake pipes to fit the current position so I'll have to bin them and start again. Grrrr. Even more irritatingly it's not easy to just buy a couple of metres of steel brake pipe.
Fastened some foam padding for the fuel tank to rest on, then cut some more to size for the tunnel top.
Attacked the rear suspension, firstly stripping off the old wishbones from the uprights and shocks then by putting the new bushes into the new wishbones. Now I remember from the tiger that getting the bushes in was hard, but quite how I managed to do it without a vice and without knowing the proper technique I'll never know.
Westfield don't actually describe how to get the bushes in, which is a bit of an oversight given how easy it is to make a nasty mess of it so I'll describe it here. Firstly because the bushes are an interferece fit with the wishbones all the powder-coating inside the tube needs to be removed. A file, followed by sandpaper seems to be the best way to do this, it's very tedious to do it for every single bush but if you don't they just won't go in. Be especially vigilant for any lumps caused by the welding penetration and file these flat.
The next stage is to rub the bush against a piece of course sandpaper layed flat on the workbench, this takes any peaks off the bush that might otherwise cause a problem. Now clean up both the bush and the tubing, using copper slip, cutting fluid or WD40 to lubricate it. Put the bush and wishbone carefully in a vice, lining it up and squeeze it gently in, any slight misalignment will soon be pulled out of it and it will start to get harder to push the bush in. If you grind to a halt half way down the bush don't worry too much, my 1 tonne 4 inch vice started bending under the force on some bushes even after all the prep.
If you did get stuck just remember to do more careful prep on the next bush and use the following fallback technique. Take a long, say 6 inch 10mm bolt and a pile of suitable penny washers, thread the bolt through the bush, using 2-3 washers to spread the load over the full diameter of the bush. Next find a piece of 5mm thick scrap metal and cut a 15mm diameter hole in the middle of it. You'll use this to spread the load on the end of the tube you're pulling the bush into, the hole in it is to allow the central metal portion of the bush to stick out slightly to get it evenly located. Whack another couple of penny washers on the outside of the plate, add a nut and start tightening it up. The nut and washers will get quite hot so its worth using some lube but it will slide in reasonably with a large spanner. After a few bushes like this the chances are the nut, bolt and washers will be scrap so start again with new ones.
Finished putting all the bushes for the back end in and then started on the rod ends. Unfortunately the thread for one of them is a bit mucky so I'll have to find an imperial tap (mine are all metric - grrrr Westfield) to clean it up.
Fitted the wishbones (except for the one without the rod end), the shocks and then the uprights. Once the final rod end is sorted I'll come back and tighten it all down. I now need to get hold of some new bolts for the lobro joints on the driveshafts. I've had so much gried with the torx bolts over the years and have heard good things about the allen headed alternatives that I'm going to swap to those once I've sourced some suitable ones.
With the back end on you can see how crowded things are back there,
particularly with 2 fuel pumps, the filter and the swirl pot all
located around the diff.
Obtained some new M8*50mm allen head bolts to secure the lobro joints and fitted them, initial impressionds are very good. Also got hold of a decent 1/2 inch UNF tap to clean up the remaining wishbone, the difference between cheap and cheerful and decent taps is amazing, I'm certainly not going back to buying cheap ones when my current ones break.
With the latest deliveries from Rally Design and Burton I was able to start sorting out the oil and fuel piping. Fitting the 90° connectors to the oil themoblock meant removing the oil remote and engine mount for access. This was no bad thing as it allowed me to remove all the old breathing system and fit the new breather connector to the block. With all that pipework gone you can actually see the block again, not that I'm gaining any space, all it's doing is shifting the clutter away from the block with the addition of the seperator and catch tank.
I hadn't realised quite how big the oil connectors were and it's going to be tight at the block but very do-able. At the cooler end I'm going to have to check that it they don't stick out too far and foul on the nosecone. I think it'll be ok but even if it's not I can just add another set of holes on my fabricated mounts.
Fitted the new unions to the tank and the red-top pump. The 90° unions on the pump don't end up in quite the perfect orientation so I might loosen them off and use some PTFE tape, providing I can verify it to be fuel tolerant.
Fabricated new bracketry for the swirl pot, making use of the existing chassis bracket for the red-top to fix one of the brackets to and used rivnuts to fasten the swirl pot to that and another point on the chassis. Now that I've got the hang of the rivnuts they really are a brilliant aid in mounting things in awkward places and I wouldn't be without them. Do use the splined ones as the cheap ali ones tend to slip and spin round in the hole. With the swirl pot position fixed I should now be able to organise mounting mechanisms for the high pressure pump and the filter.
Made up an ali bracket to mount the fuel pump (the second, high pressure one) and secured the pump in place. This job was made much easier by using the pillar drill - top toy and hugely useful.
With that reference point in the whole fuel system starts to take shape and I've been able to decide on some of the routing for fuel lines. By swapping around one of the unions from the tank with a 90° one from the red-top pump I was able to get the angles from them right for the lines. I cut two of the fuel lines to length and trial fitted them pending the proper clamps turning up.
Next job was to make up some tank straps for the larger fuel tank that I've got. Some 2mm ali sheet, cut into 50mm strips and bent to shape seemes to be what westfield sell so that's what I've made up. The one difference is that I'm using rivnuts to fasten it in place.
I've also realised that the westfield instructions are wrong as far as the orientation of the bolts in the rear suspension goes. If done the way they indicate the only way to get the suspension off would be to remove the tank, which would mean taking the body off. Not likely. Swapping the bolts around will enable the removal of the wishbones with the tank in place.
Tried to find a way to fit in the catch tank and oil seperator. Unfortunately there isn't quite room in the obvious place in the triangle of bracing by the passenger footwell. I suspect the solution is to move the catch tank round onto the side of the engine bay.
Finished off making up the tank straps, one of them still needs a little adjustment but they seem to work pretty damn well really.
Since I noticed the bolt orientation issue yesterday I've had confirmation from a couple of other people about how annoying and stupid it is. So I swapped them around quickly and we're back into the land of the sensible.
Started work on prepping the front suspension, only to find that I'm missing a few bits:
So I've put the bushes into 3 out of 4 of the wishbones for the front and drilled the correct holes in the wishbones for the Terry Nightingale ARB mounts - did I mention that pillar drills are wonderful :-)
Somewhere in the above photos you should be able to see the two fuel pumps, swirl pots and the filter. It's not really quite as tight as it looks, but not far off. The tank is huge though, no bad thing but will focus the mind a little to know that it's a few inches behind your head as you're driving around.
Above you can see the thermo block for the oil cooler with the beefy new connectors. In the other photo you can see the new breather take-off in the centre of the shot, to the right of the remote filter housing.
Finished the bushes for the front suspension and dry fitted it all together after pulling a couple of the bushes in a mil or two to ease them into place. Then added on the headlight brackets, the mounting holes for which are some way out, as a result I had to oval out them out to fit properly. Glad I did all this now because it would have been near impossible with the body on. Then stripped down the old uprights and brakes. Discovered that the part that has caused the caliper to fail on the damanged corner is the link tube and the 50p brass recepticle. Unfortunately I can't find a recepticle anywhere at present. More souring of catalogues required.
Adjusted the tank strap that wasn't quite right and it's now a perfect fit.
Found a likely looking position for the catch tank and oil seperator, discovering in the progress that the catch tank uses 5/8BSP connectors, god knows about the seperator though, it's certainly not that. Think I've also worked out what thread the connector for the second breather port is - 1/2"NPT I could still be mistaken though so will double check on that.
Double checked some threads and the catch tank isn't 5/8BSP after all, With Steve Wisemans help I've managed to extract and identify the connector from the caliper so all I need is a M10male->3/8UNF adaptor and the caliper will be working again.
Wired in both the fuel pumps, tidying up some of the wiring patches as I went. Both are reasonably neatly done now. Also measured the spring rates for the front dampers so I can get the right replacments from Tilton (their dampers are 2.25" diameter rather than 1.9"). After some very precarious acrobatics the springs appear to be either 375lb or 400lb which seems very stiff to me.
Added in some wiring for the electronic speedo when I get it since it's a lot easier to do now while the tunnel is empty and the loom exposed. Also measured up for a new intercooler.
Made up a hinged panel for the ECU to fit on. At the top edge it's secured to the chassis hoop with a rivnut and stainless screw and the hinges are drop-out ones. This means that once the single screw retainer is undone the panel can drop down and you can simply unhook it from the hinges and remove it for even better access. I also fitted some additional cushioning foam along the mounting edge and under the ECU to ensure that there's no chance of rattles.
The inside of the P8 ECU, along with the Bajoo Pectel daughter-board. Quite a number of different ECUs were used by ford over the years on the cossie but the P8 is the best of the lot. Ahmed Bajoo is the expert on the cosworth and worked with Pectel on their system. As a result the upgrade chips bearing his name are the ones to go for
The flap-down shelf and the ECU fitted in place.
Finished wiring up the the fueling system and tidying up the wiring at the back end. While I was at it I decided to redo things, adding a couple more mounts to tidy things up and added some spirwrap and convoluted tubing. It's now a lot neater and it should protect the wiring. Added in the engine-side loom and gave it the same treatment, it's still far from pretty but it looks a lot better. Previously the loom was a real tangles mess, presumably because the routing for the subsystems on a cossie is very different to the westie.
The tidied up engine loom.
Fixed in the steering column but left the rack end disconnected and taped to the chassis rail as the rack will come back out again very soon for the body to go.
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