Light duties at present since I'm inflicted with a cold at present, thankfully it's warm at present and there's lots of lightweight things to do. First thing was to add the switch for the intercooler fan to the dash and to replace the cable ties on the dash loom with proper loom tape. All this was something I could do in front of the TV which was nice.
Finished fitting the brakes then spent a while looking at the immobiliser wiring. On more recent looms there is a plug for the intercooler and also for a radio! Naturally this isn't present on my loom so I'll have to wire it in from first principles.
A very productive day at last. Started out by wiring in the engine side of the imobiliser wiring, rewrapping a number of sections of loom to further rationalise it and it's now looking very tidy. I haven't connected up the immobiliser itself as I've had a slight change of plan and will be swapping for a slightly different unit in the next week or so.
Looked at the fit of the bootbox and realised that the seatbelt mounts have been revised so the cutouts in the box are incorrect. In particular the turrets for the inertia wheels are in the way. The obvious solution is to cut off the turrets since they're only adding weight and will never be used. In order not to risk damaging the crossmember I covered that in tape and either side of the turret I used some thin aluminium sheeting to raise the saw blade up and prevent the blade scratching the powder coating. Rotating the blade by 15° meant that I could get a full stroke in and in conjunction with plenty of cutting fluid off came the turrets. If anyone else is going to attempt this make sure to have plenty of saw blades handy, sawing through 2" of steel takes the edge off them very quickly, to make things as easy as possible I'd change blades half way through each turret. The other thing I learnt was to only saw from one direction. This means that you end up with one smooth cut all the way through rather than a messy hatching from the directional cuts. Filed down, filled, sanded, primed and painted it looks fairly neat and tidy.
Since I'm going to have to make up a lot of new material for the boot box I decided to get a head start on myself and make up a sheet of GRP that I can bond in later. I had the cunning idea of using one of the old ali panels as the base, not only is it nice and flat, with a mirror finish but it can also be bent slightly to help release the GRP once cured. It will be interesting to see how it works out.
The sheet I made up yesterday has come out very well and is a much more dry, thus stronger and lighter than my previous efforts. The next thing to do is to make up some right angled sections for which I'm using a piece of right angled ali as a former. I've only waxed it up in preparation so far but it will be interesting to see how the wax helps.
The latest version of the intercooler design is now done:
I've had a bit of a rethink though and after taking advice I think I may go for the chargecooler after all using a large oil cooler as the pre-rad. As and when I've decided how well that copes I can upgrade to a fullsize pre-rad and move the current oil cooler elsewhere.
The man from the DVLA called today and had a chat, seemed a very nice chap and agreed that my car didn't need an SVA or inspection and he'll be sending me out a letter confirming that my car is all legal! All in all this is excellent news.
As promised the letter from the DVLA arrived, it's nothing more than a note on a complements slip but it's good enough for me.
The new immobiliser arrived and has duly been wired in. I'm still not completly happy with the way I've mounted I'll attack that another day.
Did the first stages of layup on some of the right angled GRP I'll need for the boot-box. I'm now convinced that the first layer really does have to be surface tissue, it make everything so much easier.
Tomorrow I'm off to help fix the bonnet from Craig's Caterham 21 and possibly Dave's seat so it was fortuitous that all my fibreglass bits have turned up. Through some confusion I've managed to end up with 7 bottles of catalyst, they'll get used eventually though.
Finished making up the first of my L section GRP panels for the boot box and started trimming down the old sections for a better fit. I get the impression that the trimming process is going to take quite some time!
I think I've now worked out roughly the required design for the boot box, the key thing is going to be the new panel that I'm going to be making up. This will join the existing panels together and cover the encroachment of the roll bar supports into the boot, all in all it should be pretty neat. The one thing I've realised is that I need to find something to use as a mould for some 2.5" diameter half-pipes. I suspect I'll end up using a length of guttering or similar.
Re-fitted the immobiliser, it's now totally solid and well hidden and seems to be work as it should. With all the loom wrapped up an attack on it is going to be pretty much impossible.
Connected up the washer jet which is far fron trivial due to the clearance or more to the point the lack of it.
Removed the first section of angled GRP from the mould, it looks like I'll need to do another 2 sections to have enough. I've made a strategic decision though to leave that till later since it will be easy to do with the car finished and back on the ground. Right now I want the car on the road and the boot box and weather gear are definately not critical to that.
Started nervously cutting the GRP for the exhaust, it's a delicate operation that requires a lot of measuring, cutting a bit, measuring some more and so on. I've hit a minor hitch in that it looks like for the exhaust to clear the chassis rail it needs to be aimed a long long way down at which point it fouls the chassis diagonal brace. Another thing to look at tomorrow I think.
Finished cutting the exhaust hole, unfortunately the mount on the new chassis is about 4 inches forward of the rear of the silencer. As a result I've had to engineer a substantial new mount, I've done this in ali and drilled it to try and keep the weight reasonable. In reality it's about 15% lighter than the old one. A sleeve and a threaded rod connect it into the captive nut on the chassis.
Swapped the hose on the washer jet for a rather skinnier one that is more easily bent and more likely to stay in place. Clamped down the steering column, cursing Westfield all the while for putting the bolt holes so close to the scuttly hoop that you can't get a socket onto them properly.
Made up a dummy of the chargecooler, even without the inlet housing mocked up it doesn't look like the 4 core design will fit
I now need to find a source of a 67mm diameter exhaust clamp and some female-female M10x1 brake pipe adaptors, I'm not sure why but Wilwood seem to fit an NPT to male M10 fitting on their calipers to which you then attach your female fitting. My hoses of course have make fittings :(
After reading A. Graham Bells book on turbocharging it's apparent to me that there is no way that I can get an effective intercooler into the space available in the car. Based on a 100mm thick core and a 240mm core height I'd need a core over 300mm wide to give me good performance. I can almost get there but not quite. The calculations are all in the book so I won't repeat them here.
Clem took me out for a ride in his Cossie powered Quantum the other day and boy was that a blast. He has a Pace chargecooler on his car and it really does do the job, the quantum though has a monster set of rads and fan to cope with it all though. Measuring his chargecooler up it appears the mock up I've made is just about right and in many ways simplifies the installation.
The upshot of all this is that I think I'm going to go for the Pace 4 core chargecooler, initially I'll use an oil cooler as the pre rad for sheer ease of installation. The oil cooler will probably end up being moved to the side of the car though with a naca duct grafted in to get air to it. This will mean I can fit a bigger cooler onto the radiator. It's all more work though...
The exhaust clamp I ordered from Aidpac it seems to be a lovely piece of engineering. When fitting it I had some difficulty in judging how much it was safe to tighten it but it seems to be pretty solid. While I was playing with the exhaust I enlarged the opening in the GRP now that I know the exact fit, the hole is somewhat larger than I would normally make but given the high temperatures that it will see as a result of the turbo I'd rather be safe than sorry.
With the exhaust off I took the opportunity to put some heat wrap around the top section. Wrapping like this does reduce the lifetime of the exhaust slightly but I think that's a fair compromise to help reduce the under bonnet temperatures and to help protect the brake master cylinder.
The proximity of the brake pipes to the exhaust has been bothering me for some time. Long term the solution is to replace the pedal box but in the mean time I've implemented an interim solution. Some while ago I'd bought a stack of brake hose parts and now seemed to be the obvious time to try making up some hoses, once you've worked out the technique making them up is dead easy. You just cut the hose to length, push the hose through the outer part of the fitting, then push the braiding back a bit and push the olive over the plastic inner with the braiding going outside it. Push the olive all the way down then insert the other main body and screw the top part down. It's even easier than aeroquipping.
What I've down is to make up a new flexi hose to go between the solid section of pipe and the master cylinder. This allows me to re-route the hose away from the exhaust although I'll still use some heat shield to protect it further. As a result of introducing this extra length into the system I've cut the solid pipework back by about a foot, the new connection point being on the outer chassis rail. While playing with the connection for the front brakes I realised that I could optimise out the female-female adaptor out of the rear system by fitting a new end on the flexi hose. With this duly done the pedal box is now free to move properly which will help should Catherine ever wish to drive the car.
Next onto the front brake hoses and adapting them to take a nice swivel joint to connect into the caliper. This should be the last of the braking system until I get round to filling and bleeding it.
Spent some more time mocking up the chargecooler system a little further, I suspect I may end up with a 3 core system to try and keep the fit nice and simple.
Fitted the windscreen pillars and mirrors, they'll need to come off again for the screen to go in but to avoid damaging the screen that'll be one of the last things to do. In the process I spent a while with the compounder bringing the GRP back up to a nice shiny finish and taking out all the scratches that have built up over the years.
Finished mocking up the chargecooler design and found somewhere to put the header tank for it that keeps makes it a nice high point in the system. The picture is here.
I tried again to make up some 32mm ali pipework on the new pipe bender but the result were very disappointing. Even packed with sand there is still some deformation of the pipe and it's very obvious that the ali is work hardening. I suspect that it would be fine on steel, but that wouldn't really be all that good unless it was stainless. I think I'll scrap the idea of using the bends for now and use the silicone joints.
Made up one of the two remaining radiator hoses, I've used a fair length of solid tubing for the main section and adapted a 24mm P-clip to hold it in place. This is quite important on this hose since I don't really want it rubbing on the brake lines or any of the other paraphenalia in the area. At the other end of the pipe I've slipped over a spare bit of silicone hose where it would rub on the chassis rail and used cable tie to hold it place about an inch clear of the steering rack.
I've noticed that I've broken 300 hours working on the car now which is an awful lot for something that was originally conceived as a quick and easy rebuild, that's without adding on the time spent stripping down and cleaning up the "donor" parts. I guess that says something about the work required to re-engineer things right. By way of comparison I've estimated that I spent around 175-200 hours building the Tiger, admittedly that wasn't finished as well as I would like but it was constructed without mains power and without the tools and experience I now have. It's also worth noting that on the tiger you have to make up all your own pannelling from scratch so I've saved a lot of time there, you also had to make up a lot of bracketry and things like that yourself. Thinking about it logically this build has taken 3* longer than planned so far, in which time I could potentially have built 2 lesser cars!
With the intercooler settled upon I was able to refit the ARB, minor hitch in that one of the mounting blocks has gone walkies. Luckily I have some inch square ali bar which is perfect for manufacturing a new one. Unfortunately my 13mm drill bit is as blunt as a blunt thing so until I get a new one I'll have to leave the ARB.
De-rusted, primed and painted the cycle-wing support that I'm re-using.
With some more brake connectors turning up from rally design I've finally finished sorting out the brake pipes, the new routing giving a lot more clearance from the exhaust.
Measuring up the ARB mount I've realised that it's just a piece of inch square ali with 3 holes drilled in it and sliced in two. Rather handily I have 1 inch ali rod sitting in the corner so after an hour or so of fabrication I've got a new pair of ARB mounts. Unless you look very closely you can't tell the difference between mine and the originals.
Fitted the cycle wing mounts and adjusted the brake hoses so as not to foul. A number of people have used sikaflex to mount their wings, effectively glueing them in place, then have painted rubbercoat over the top to prevent stone crazing. Having seen a couple of wings fall off it's apparent that if following this route proper surface prep is essential. I'm tempted to bond mine in place with a layer of fibreglass, this should make them nice and solid but I need to mull it over a little more first.
Having bought a whizzy new webcam and mounted it in the garage you can now watch me tinkering live, see here.
Naca ducts have arrived courtesy of DH2 warehousing. I've also picked up some cuttering in a couple of different sizes, I spent some time applying release wax and pva release agent so with luck by the end of the week I should have a mould ready to start knocking out new ones.
Bought a cheap and cheeful hoover so I could give the garage a bit of a clean. After filling up 5 hoover bags with rivet tails, GRP dust and other detritus it looks somewhat better and I'm very glad I didn't borrow the hoover from the house!
Toyed with templates for the turbo heatshield without actually coming up with a final design.
Started the process of laying up the moulds I prepped yesterday. The NACA ducts are getting there but I realised I've laid up the drainpipe with black gelcoat rather than the blue I intended. That'll serve me right for having too many moulds on the go, it should be easy enough to add a blue flowcoat and then rub it back down again once it's out the mould. I've also had a go with some carbon fibre, the CF is a thing of great beauty and in cloth form it's a very pleasant thing to work with as long as you're careful about the ends fraying. The test mould I'm using is a bucket and I've also experimented with some coremat in it's construction which is another interesting thing to play with, I'll have to wait until it comes out of the mould to see how sucessful I've been.
Finished laying up the smaller of my two NACA duct moulds and started on the second. Also turned out my CF bucket which was a slight disappointment. The surface resin that I'd laid down had dried out a fair amount before I started adding the cloth, this made it easy to get it into position but meant that it didn't grab properly. It also appears that I needed to use more resin and roller out the CF a bit better next time to get proper bonding. Despite it's limitations the bucket is plenty strong and has been a pretty good learning tool, shame it's not as photogenic as I'd hoped.
Finished up the fibreglassing and turned out the NACA ducts bucks, they really do look pretty good, with a little bit of cleaning up they'll be ready for me to start making up ducts.
Much tidying of the garage ready for the removal of my ramps tomorrow, this will give me back a whole load of space and make life so much easier. I also wired in my PIR into the webcam so as and when there is movement in the garage I automatically get emailed an image.
With the ramps gone from the garage at last I finished hoovering and tidying, I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have a decent amount of space to work in. The final tally for hoover bags full of muck was 10!
With the stagnation of the chargecooler I've pretty much run out of things to do at the front of the car, the only progress at that end was to trim part of the lip on the nosecone so that the expansion tank connection from the radiator can run nicely along the chassis rail. I then focussed my attentions on adding the connectors to the rear light clusters so that they'll just slot in later.
As a bit of a break I cleaned up the bucks for NACA ducts ready for use and started work on the new boot box.
Started attacking the boot box seriously, adding in a new bottom to the rear section and trimming it to fit, then chopping the main front section into two pieces so that I could add an extra 40mm of depth to it. By doing this I should gain back most of the space lost from the larger tank. I've clamped the chopped sections apart using some scrap GRP sheet as splints to hold it while I added new material into the void. For this purpose I'm using sectoions of GRP strip cut to approximately the right size and glassed that in from the outside, this will add the required strength and I can then use resin to fill in the cracks before sanding down. I've realised that I'm going to need to make some more sheeting up so I'll have to prep some more tomorrow.
| Previous | Next |
| G2 home | Chris' homepage | Westfield | Westie Rebuild |
![here](../pictures/diagrams/Chargecooler2.gif"){kind=link}
