November 2007 Continued..........

Whilst I had the engine mocked up, and various problems to resolve (like the oil filter issue!!), and before I lost myself in wiring as i was going to attempt to make my loom from scratch, I wanted to tackle the exhaust manifold.

I had never made a manifold before, more so i had never really done much welding before!! I was looking to do something different to the normal with my exhaust. I wasn't planning to have a passenger seat and thought about the possiblity of running the exhaust through the passenger footwell instead of traditionally outside the car and having the tail pipe just poking out the side of the car flush with the body work! The clean cut look!! No conventional manifold would work, and space, this was extremely limited!!!!!!! I considered out sourcing the job to a local exhaust manifacturer but this would mean i had to transport the car to them and also but more so that they wanted £600 for the job of making a manifold!!

Money aside i was quite dubious about getting someone else to do it as i wanted to do as much on the car myself as possible, let alone spend £600 for the pleasure. So, i ordered some mandrel bent 2" tubing from Jetex, borrowed a MIG welder from a friend, locked myself in the garage for the day and the result was, well as pictured!!! I was sooooooooooo pleased!! Especially as i did it myself!!! I then gave it to a friend who TIG welded it all and put a collector pot on the end! Total cost for the manifold - £119! Once all is finally in place, box on and the 90 degree tail pipe that pops out the side is on all will be covered in exhaust wrap.

November 2007

Scuttle and Pedal Box

With the engine in place and some of the minor problems fixed it was now time to look at fixing the scuttle. My intension was to make up the scuttle with the firewall in place along with the dash but i wanted to be able to remove the dash to allow access for me to make the wiring loom and secure the fuseboxes.

It was a fairly tricky job. Both the scuttle and the dash come flat and need to be bent to shape. After folding the tabs on the firewall it was a case of lining up the scuttle to the fire wall, mark, drill and screw. Once the first screw was in i repeated this right round until the basic shape had been formed. I then mocked up the scuttle on the chassis to get the positioning right. There are quite a few bends on the Zero dash and it come in two parts. The first has the teeth around the edge and none of the middle section and these need to be folded to secure to the scuttle. The idea is the first part of the dash secures to the scuttle and the second effectively sits over the first part and rivets on. Once all was secured in place i unscrewed the dash section and removed it to allow easy access to the loom. Once i put the first dash section in it would be a while before the dash facia was put on which i'll write about in this blog.

Finally the pedal box. This was very straight forward. Bent the ally to shape, and secured in place.

27th October 2007

Problems discovered after dry fit!!

I borrowed an engine hoist from one of the club members who was very kind in lending it to me (snapperpaul) and lowered the engine in. After the initial struggle of getting the engine to slide onto the gearbox shaft (which it finally did!!) a number of 'issues' presented themselves.

1) When i came to put the engine mounts on i bolted them to the holes on the block as instructed by GBS and ffrom personal research on the t'internet but the £60 mounts i had bought from GBS were wrong. Firstly they got the angles wrong and secondly the lengths wrong. So the net result was if the engine was seated it would have leaned to the left, but, the main inssue was that as they were the wrong angles if i tightened the mounts to the block coupled with them being to long meant they missed the plates on the chassis to sit on adn were hanging out the sides of the car!!! I have a friend who is a steel fabricator so i took them to him with fresh measurements and had the cut and re-welded!

2) The oil filter. This caused me a lot of headaches and trips to the motor shop down the road. On the silvertop the oil filter is angled down. Unfortunatley the steering column runs right across the face of where the oil filter screws to. I had to find an oil filter 55mm deep!! After searching high and low i found one from a renault 5 but this was just a tad to long at 57mm!!! I called Burton Engineering and bought a remote oil filter adaptor (49mm!!) and the appropriate hosing!! Mounted the new filter adaptor to the chassis and screwed on the new adaptor to the block.

With the new remote oil filter adaptor on i needed to prime the oil pump. This needs to be done on new engines and was recommended as mine had been sitting a long time. Another club member came to aid here in the form of Longboarder (Nigel, who has helped me massively!!!! especially with the wiring!! having never wired before and with his guidence managed to make my own loom!!) and said i needed to wind the crank anti-clockwise to the pump sucks oil in from the filter and primes the pump!! A little tricky when the oil filter has a non return diaphram!! So i grabbed a tin of soup, put a single hole in the bottom, drained the soup (into the saucepan of course!! excellent lunch that day!) then drilled 8 10mm holes around the central hole and made the central hole to about 12mm. Then cut a square hole on the side and screwed the tin can onto the oil filer plate. Filled with oil and turned the crank until it had sucked all the oil in!! Job done. Oil pump primed!!

Finally, out of some thin ally i cut a new sandwich plate to got between the engine and gearbox and the existing zetec plate did not fit and cover all the gaps.

27th October 2007

Time to dry fit the engine!!

I bought a 2.0l zetec (silvertop, as i didnt want to have to run a cat with my exhaust set-up) about a month before picking up the kit. As the zetec came out of a auto Mondeo there were a couple of things i needed/wanted to do to the engine before i could fit it. Firstly i contacted a company called Dunnell Engines who provided me with a shortened sump and a lightened & balanced flywheel adn clutch to suit. I also needed to put a spigot bearing into where the input shaft of my type 9 g'box goes as the engine originally took an auto box. Next was to change the water pump to an escort 1.8 pump as the pump spins in the opposite direction to the Mondeo pump and i could then get rid of the pulley wheels and just have the cam pulleys, crank pulley and alternator pulley i a triangular formation. Finally i had to change the VR sensor to read the 36-1 teeth on the flywheel for the Omex ECU which was a fairly straight forward task. Once these jobs were done i put a new head gasket on and gave the engine a lick of paint!! (rocker cover was done later!!!!)

24th October 2007

'You gotta roll with it....................'

Finally i have the car as a rolling chassis!!! Yay!! The 2.4 quickrack and steering column are all also in place and i've started with the wiring. I'm trying to hide and much of the wiring as possible and am running a lot of it in the chassis tubes themselves.

24th October 2007

I wish........................

Once the exterior side panels were on this meant i could then fit the front wishbones. Fresh out of the paint oven in the same orange as the chassis i repeated what i had done on the rear w'bones and pressed the poly bushes in, inserted the tubular inserts into the bushes (trimming each one to be flush with the width of the bushes) and then 'wrestled' the w'bones onto the chassis and 'persuading' them to line up!! The only difference this time was knowing that i was working around a fresh new ally panel! One slip and........................!

Once on and secured i then had to put on the upper and lower ball joints. These were supplied by GBS with the w'bones. The upper ball joint effectively screwed into the w'bone and was the camber ajustment. I bought on eBay a pair of brand new front hubs for about £70. The cycle wings GBS provide are modified and welded to the stub axles. So i quickly put the stub axle and hub together and mounted onto the lower ball joint. I nutted up the upper ball joint but not overly tight as i knew once the car was complete i would need to undo this again to finalise the camber setting.

I bought a set of Gaz coilovers from Dampertech (who were about £40 cheaper than what GBS were supplying for the same product) and fitted these on. This was a very quick job just ensuring that the front pair were set up the same and the rear pair were set up the same. I would need to experiement with final set-ups when the car was done. Finally i just mounted the wheels and tyres i had bought on eBay. Brand new set of 16" TSW Catalunya's, brand new tyres - £399!! I great bargain i though!!

15th October 2007

More Panels!.....................

The next of the panels to go on was the transmission tunnel side panels. I purposefully left the top tunnel panel off until the last moments of the build to allow access to the prop, wiring and brake & fuel lines and also to change the gearshift to a quickshift which i decided to do after the g'box was in!

Shortly after the trans panels i fitted the rear interior side panels and the exterior side panels. All of the panels come pretty much platpack!! All are cut to size (and may require additional trimming and all will need filing on the edges) but it is up to you to bend and form the panels into shape. There are some that have some 90 degree bends which are pre-bent by GBS but panels like the scuttle and rear panel need you to create the curves!!! Also a lot of the panels have inch wide 'teeth' that require you to bend these to 90 degrees. Make sure these are bend equally to create a flat surface. Any teeth folded to much or not enough will stick out like a sore thumb and affect the mounting of the panel.

The panels in the pics all went on without any real hassles. Just the odd trim job and file and a whole lotta rivets!!