I haven't had time to do any work on the car for a while but did manage to resolve the issue of shocks/springs, stopping off one day on the way home from work to pick up a new set of shocks from Terry Nightingale. They're the new style avos, which seem a big improvement over the old ones and are better than the standard westfield ones.
Since getting the shocks I've found out a little more about some of the spring rates used on westfields. Some people with lightish engines are using 275 or 300lbs on the front, while Ian Crocker in his V8 has 475lbs. Bearing this in mind my measurement of mine at 400lbs sounds about right. I just wish Terry wouldn't be so secretive about his suspension setups. I appreciate he wants to protect his advantage on the circuit but the sort of people he's hiding that from could find out within 5 mins what the settings are if they wanted to. All he's doing is making life difficult for end users and limiting his future sales. Terry certainly knows his stuff and he'll be doing my setup initially but with that sort of attitude to after sales service I shan't be using him more than I have to.
Fitted the new shocks with the springs, applying a thin layer of grease to the adjuster thread in an attempt to prevent any corrosion. Mounted the shocks on the car with the last of the supplied 7/16 bolts. I'd picked up some more 4" bolts to mount the ARB, since these aren't supplied as standard, unfortunately the bar needs a few washers to space it clear from the chassis which mean I'm going to have to find some 4.5" ones. I'm pretty sure that the old chassis didn't need the spacers but then again the new chassis is different in quite a few ways.
John, the car's previous owner suggested that it might be an idea to mount the MAP sensor upside down. The reason for this is to avoid any moisture pooling on the sensor and causing misfires etc. It hadn't been a problem in all the time he'd owned the car but since it was easy to swap around at this stage I may as well do so.
The westfield mountings are of course flush with the top of the chassis rail, so to mount it upside down below the rail I made up some ali spacers.
John had kindly sent on some new turbo bolts and engine mounts. The old turbo manifold bolts were pretty gnarly and removing them was a real PITA and definately not something that you could do with the engine in the car. Once off I took a close look at the pipework that was previously hidden behind the turbo. One of the ali coolant pipes was showing signs of wear where it had rubbed against the turbo oil feed so that will have to be replaced. More alarmingly the rubber hose on the end of the other pipe had melted through to the metal braiding between layers. This particular piece of hose was 9 inches away from the turbo and covered in heat shielding cloth. I guess I'm going to have to come up with something more cunning before I reinstall it.
As you can see the silver coating to the heatshield
is pretty charred and the hose it was covering isn't looking too
healthy either.
Decided to give up on TAS for my coil-clamp to use on the oil seperator so made up one myself out of ali sheet, lined with padding foam and held in place with a couple of stainless bolts into rivnuts in the passenger footwell.
Tidied up a few odds and sods of wiring on the engine loom, adding new tape where needed
After a failed attempt to drill holes for lockwire in the driveshaft bolts I removed them and used the more normal approach of threadlock. To make it easier to spot any movement I dabed some paint on the bolts.
Made up a panel to fill in the space between the pedal box and the main section on top of the footwells. Still need to fasten it in place though.
Drained the gearbox oil ready to drop the gb back in and refill it, of course I can only do this once the tunnel is appropriately heat shielded which is another thing that I'm waiting on TAS for.
Didn't do anything on the car but gave up completely on TAS and ordered the heat shielding I need from Think and Demon Tweeks, the oil seperator parts from Graham Goode. Now waiting for TAS to acknowledge cancelation of my order.
With prodding from various people I got round to buying some proper gas cylinders for my welder, one argon and one co2 one. Financially it looks sensible if I do no more welding than I have so far, if I do any more then it will save lots, particularly if it's steel rather than ali that I'm doing.
Lots of toys arrived from DT, Think and GGR, nothing from TAS or westfield though :-( Fitted the breather connections to the block, replacing the inlet side one with the one that GGR supplied. Then proceeded to add in the JIC adaptors to the breather.
Next job was to try and add in a 3rd port onto the seperator to go into the catch-tank, freeing up one of the primaries for the second block connection. After some time practicing on thin sheet with the new welding setup I had opened up a 20mm hole in the top of the seperator and attempted to weld in the male connector. It took ages to get a reasonable seal, mainly I think due to my lack of experience welding an effectively thick block to a thin sheet at right angles but it's now water-tight, if not terribly pretty.
Applied some heatshielding to the drivers footwell, which being behind the turbo is likely to get rather warm. Cleaned up the welding I did yesterday to the breather, first by filing, then a little sanding then a good session with my compounding machine, a medium paste and a firm sponge. As a result the rough edges are knocked off and it shines but it's never going to bare close inspection. Having done this I manouvered the gearbox into approximately the right position so I can measure up to make some inspection covers for the filler, drain plug and speedo connection.
Located the gearbox and drilled a hole for the cover, stripped down and cleaned the calipers and mounts. I don't have the correct bolts to rebuild it all so that will have to wait until I put an order in, unfotunately the Mr Fastner web site has been down for a while so I'll have to find another source.
A selection of parts turned up from westfield which enabled me to build up the uprights for both sides. It's now obvious that each upright is a whisker different as they need slightly different spacers to get them central on the discs.
Fitted the breather filter after adjusting it to fit the screw thread on the catch tank. The filter is really intended to be fitted to a pipe but once most of the rubber connector is cut off it and the jubilee clip removed it will screw onto the thread and is low enough to fit under the chassis rail.
Now that the gearbox is in the right position I can cut the hole for the gear lever. First I marked the extemeties of movement of the stick with masking tape across the tunnel, then I took the lever out and placed the panel in place, marking the positions of the tape on the panel. Because I had the old panel I was able to transcribe the shape and size of the required cutout onto the new panel, using the tape as guides. To cut the hole I first drilled a starting hole, then used a jigsaw to cut the rough outline. The fit was almost perfect for the rubber gaitor first time, I just had to file a small quantity from one side where I hadn't cut close enough to the line I'd drawn.
Much faffing for no obvious progress, although I think I've decided that it be beneficial to have a shorter catch tank. The place I had earmarked for it is going to make changing the oil filter more difficult than I would like and the ideal position against the bulkhead doesn't leave space for the oil seperator.
Looked at the manifold connection for the old oil seperator and made up a blocked pipe to blank it off out of some old heater hose and a sawn off bolt. Once I'd done it I realised that it was a very heavy solution to the problem so rummaged further to find a bolt with the right thread to screw in place of the one-way connector. Unfortunately it seems to be an odd thread, it looks like 1/8 NPT but isn't and none of my other adaptors/bolts did the job either. Since the plenum is cast ali it would be very easy to tap a new thread in there but it would be an irreversable process. Instead I found a bolt that would go about 4 threads in before stopping and chopped it down to just those 4 threads plus a slightly tapered section. This could safely be smeered with hylomar and screwed safely into the hole creating a hopefully airtight seal without damaging the thread.
Attached the propshaft, thredlocking as I went and then marking the bolt heads for a visible check for movement. Decided that my fuel pump mount was a little loose for my liking so removed it and refitted it. I think I'm also going to refine the mount a little to ensure that there isn't any chaffing.
At the donnington show I saw a couple of cars using rod ends to make up the alternator adjuster arm. This is a brilliant idea and I just had to copy it. So I spent a couple of hours trying to drill and tap an ali rod. After a number of broken drill bits and a lot of cursing I gave up temporarily, pending a rethink.
I've given up the idea of tapping the rod and have ordered the relevant parts from Rally Design. I also decided that I can't put off putting in the engine to measure up any longer. I had to re-arrange the garage slightly to allow me to get the engine up high enough to clear the chassis on it's stands. Even with the re-arrangement the engine only just scrapes in, that's the big problem with using the trestles. I still need to fine tune the position, prior to drilling the holes for the mounts. It looks like westfield have changed the way they do the bottom rails so the old holes in the mounts clash with the rails, it may be sorted out once I've fine tuned the position of the engine.
The engine in it's approximate position.
You can see how broad the engine is, the
actuator, the compressor outlet hose and the exhaust limit it's position
over to the drivers side and the throttle limits it's movement over to the passenger side. Re-positioning the throttle would solve that
issue but then the clutch release arm will start to foul the chassis.
With the engine in place I can finalise the position of the catch tank. Originally I had considered making a tray style mount but decided that I'd be better off welding up some mounts. My first attempt used some fairly heavy-weight L-section ali with a small plate welded onto the bottom that would be rivetted to the chassis rails. However once I'd completed it I wasn't terribly happy with the finish and they were very over engineered. As a result I made up some more out of much lighter grade right angle ali, with an inch square section cut off, rotated 90° and welded on to provide the bottom mount. I then added some rivnuts to bolt the catch tank on.
I still wasn't happy with the finish and once installed it wouldn't have looked as good as I'd have liked. So onto the third iteration and my original plan for a folder sheet tray, after all I've got nothing to loose in trying it. I took an oversize sheet, marked it up and folded it into shape making a small cutout to allow the bottom to fold up. I then cut it down to a closer fit and put a spot of weld on the tabs to lock it all in place. I then trimmed it down with a hacksaw and file. It looks pretty neat and professional now although it's at least as heavy as my initial mounts. I may drill out the back plate of the tray to reduce the weight, but it's not really that important.
My 3 different sets of brackets in order of manufacture from left
to right.
Finished off the bracket for the catch tank and mounted it, making use of a small shim to compensate for the extra thickness of the engine mount plate on one side of it.
Finished off re-doing the fuel pump mount, the ali bracket is now very solid and the pump itself is held off the bracket by a foam lined half-pipe that I formed out of some thin ali sheet. The curved mount allows me to locate the pump much more solidly than previously and alleviates my concern that the pump would wear against the U-shaped bracket. I used a crossed pattern of cable ties which also helps the solidity, it's so solid now that you can actually rock the whole car on its stands by tugging at the fuel pump mount.
With the gearbox now in the correct position I extended the hole that I had made for the gearbox filler tube. I'll now need to make a small panel to cover the extended hole.
Tidied up some more odds and sods of wiring where the binding tape had come loose or where more protection was needed.
The turbo actuator is a very tight fit against the side of the bonnet and it had actually worn right through the GRP on the old bonnet. It looks like at some point someone had filed the mounting holes on the bracket out to move the actuator inboard by a mm or two. I extended them out some more but theres still a fair amount of overlap in the current position. I may yet revise the mounting to give me some more clearance.
As usual Rally design have been billiant and the parts have turned up next day, as promised. With the parts to do the alternator adjuster I cracked on, cutting down the provided rod to 46mm, which was the minimum distance with the two rod ends touching. Looking at the old arm it appeared that about 30mm of adjustment had been used which is well within range of the rod ends and the 46mm minimum was going to be a perfect fit. With the tube cut I put the threaded inserts in place and filed down the ends of the tube so that they were a close fit, ready for welding. I then used some old bolts loosely placed into the inserts to keep any splatter from damaging the threads, marked the tube so that both rods ends would line up when screwed all the way in and clamped it into the vice and welded it up. I perhaps could have used a little more heat but the results are just fine. Once cooled I cleaned it up with some thinners and painted it, then once dried I squirted some grease in and tightened it all up.
You can see here the components used on the bottom and then on the top the
welded up item prior to painting.
Here's the completed adjuster ready for fitting.
Played around with engine positioning some more but I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and make up a new actuator mount. I swapped the drivers side rubber mount over again to see if that help, it did, but only by a few mm. I just don't think I can get enough movement from the current one to properly clear the bonnet.
Removed the front uprights and painted up all the ball joints and the rack ends to prevent them rusting, which they appear to do very quickly if left unprotected.
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