Well, it's been quite a busy weekend here in the garage.
The car came home from the sparky's on Saturday morning all wired up and running. This is quite a big milestone meaning that it's the very last of the big fabrication type jobs that needed to be done.
This weekend, mostly today on Sunday, we've managed to:
Re-assemble the interior, putting glovebox and parcel tray back in completing the interior once more.
I'm pretty pleased with where and how the ECU and loom has gone in. You cant notice it at all, from inside, it's all factory. The way it should be.
We got the modified water pump pulley installed. To re-cap, I'm running a Starion water pump and as such, the pulley does not line up with the crank pulley, nor does the pcd of the bolt holes line up. I tried redrilling on myself but it wobbled around in an oval shape. In fact, the other day at the auto electricians when we started the engine there it threw the belt off within about 10 sec of it starting
So, using some contacts through contacts I got hold of a bloke that does engineering ad fabrication jobs for race cars. In his workshop he had an 80's Porsche 911 that looked like it was being preped for tarmac rallies, a Ford GT40 replica that was completely in bits and not one but TWO Nobles!
If anyone can make a pulley that spins true it's this guy.
Here's what he made for me to space the pulley out to line up with the crank pulley
It simply slips onto the water pump and the pulley goes on top with the bolts going through to secure the whole lot in place
Works a treat! Threw a belt on, tightened it up and it spins nice and true.
Then we got to work on finishing the plumbing.
Earlier I posted a picture of an L shaped pipe that was going to transfer water to the heater and also to the throttle body. The old fella finished welding all the little tabs and bits and pieces on it and we set to work bolting it in place. It comes out the back of the water pump and follows the block under the extractors. When we were mocking it up it just slid in under the exhaust from the front but after it had the mounting tabs welded on it just would not fit. The only way to get it in was to jack the drivers side of the car up and thread it up between the gearbox and the extractors, trying to slide the other end of the pipe up over the top of the gearbox whilst squeezing the corner of it between the exhaust and the floor. With one hand. With only one eye.
To say it was a pain in the arse would be an epic understatement. Oh, and we had to do it four times, firstly to measure and mark it, then to test fit and then to paint it. And THEN we discovered a massive leak from one of the joins
we lost about 3 hours to the damn thing.
Once it was in, all the connections and caps on it (I'm blanking the heater connections off for now) we were able to get the radiator in and fill it up with water. Luckily dad has an old radiator pressure tester. Just a big pump with a pressure gauge and a connection that fits the neck on the radiator. Pump it up to operating pressure and go find the leaks! way easier than running the engine only to get showered with hot water.
And that signalled the completion on the actual assembley!
it's all bolted in and working!
Sort of....
When we did start it up and run it for about a minute it started (much to my annoyance) to burn the paint of the extractors smoking out the garage. What worried me though was that only three of the runners was burning off, the paint on number three was intact
We pulled the plug and it was clean and dry so, after testing it to make sure we had spark (we do) we were sure that the injector wasn't uhh... injecting. Dad whips out a stethoscope with a long needle instead of a flat thingy like a doctors (seriously, is there anything that guy doesn't have hiding in a tool box somewhere!?!
) and a quick listen confirmed that indeed number three injector was not doing it's thing. Shit.
It's at this stage that I called it a night. My back is calling me things that'd make a biker blush.
I'll refer to my manual to check the signal on an injector wire. It's more than likely the wiring as I had the injectors themselves cleaned and supposedly tested.
My other main concern is that even after running it for a about 2-3 minutes the lifters are still rattling like all hell. How long do they take to prime with oil in a freshly built engine? I don't think it's been run long enough to get the oil up to operating temperature so it may still be a little thick. What do you guys think?
Now the last little job is a mounting bracket for the throttle cable which the old fella looked after whilst I was at war with a leaky water pipe. It's completely different to my idea, plus he's made it from 3mm angle steel
which is way heavy but he can weld it rather than trying to bend and shape it out of a single piece of flat sheet.
More photos and video later, I'm off to watch the F1!