Saturday April 24th 2004

I've been very busy this week and so haven't had much of a chance to get anything done on the car.  However I have been collecting the necessary bits and pieces to fit the engine to the car.

So today was the day ... it's time to get the engine in.  Tim had kindly delivered his hoist last weekend so it's all systems go.

First job was to fit the exhaust mounting brackets to the headers.   Tim Pell had previously fitted the headers to one of his racers, and when he had stripped the engine out he had robbed the headers from the downpipes.   Martin at the Kitcar Workshop had sourced me some new flanges and I now had to fit them to the pipes.  

The flanges are simply slipped over the piped and are a loose fit at the mating face.  Unfortunately the joint between the headers and the rest of the exhaust is held together with springs, which hook onto nuts welded to the side of the primary.  My new flanges wouldn't fit over the welded bosses on the pipes, so it was out with Mr Sparky angle grinder and the bosses were removed.   The flanges were then slipped over the pipes and new nuts for the mounting springs welded on.  I also filled a couple of pin holes in the pipes while doing this.

Just as I was finishing the welding Dave Hackett turned up.  Dave is a Cam7 buddy who has built a Blackbird Westfield (his website is here).  Dave had popped over for some advice on fitting some -10 hose Mocal fittings to his Blackbird's dry sump system .   I also wanted to see the fittings so that I could start to visualise the pipe routing for my system.

So after having "ummed" and "aahd" over some shiny red and blue Mocal fittings for a while and solved Dave's problems he offered to help out fitting the engine  to the EVO.  This was despite the fact that he really wasn't dressed for garage work & he had stuff that he could be doing on his own car instead.  What a top bloke!

Next on the agenda was to wrap the exhaust headers in heat retention tape.  This is necessary because the orientation of the engine means the headers are quite close to the main cockpit bulkhead.  Any one who has ever done this will tell you two things. 

You'll use waaaaay more heat wrap than you think you're going to need, and  it's a nasty nasty job as the itchy fibres get stuck in your hands.

Any way Dave and I set too and started wrapping the primaries  It very quickly became apparent that I hadn't ordered enough heat wrap so we only wrapped the primaries for cylinders 2 & 3.  I can reach the exhaust ports for numbers 1 & 4 quite easily with the engine in the car so I'll wrap and fit these later.  God this is a nasty job, but so much easier when the pipe isn't on the car and you have a willing helper to hold the primary and keep the tension on the heat tape.

OK with two primaries wrapped it's time to start building the engine up.  I fitted the primaries to exhaust ports two and three with new copper gaskets and did up the retaining nuts.  Next I fitted the front engine mounting frame.  This bolts to the cylinder head using 2x M10 (fine)  bolts that go into the original mounting holes that held the engine to the bike frame.  It then mounts to four brackets on the chassis via metalastic bushes.  A bit of careful measuring indicated that the bolts wouldn't bottom out in the head if fitted with a spring washer.   The engine then looks like this.

Ok so it was now time to fit the beast to the car.  It is mounted to the main bulkhead chassis rails at the front and onto the diff carrier at the rear.  (And in this photo it's hanging the wrong way around on the hoist.)

So with Dave's stirling  help we managed to get the engine in the engine bay.  Now came the usual engine fitting woes. No matter how well prepared and practiced you are it always seems to take a good couple of hours  of jiggling, positioning and repositioning the lump before it gets anywhere near  the right place.

Here the main problem was aligning the rear diff carrier brackets, so that the drive wheel on the engine and the chain wheel on the diff are in alignment. While simultaneously lining the up mounting frame on the front of the engine with it's brackets.  After much jiggling we got it somewhere close, although we had to remove the front frame in the process and the engine could be left resting in the engine bay.  Dave had to shoot off having already stayed much later than he intended.  Once again thanks  for the help

But as is often the way with frustrating problems a short break from it, and a cup of tea is often the best troubleshooting approach.

Half an hour later I returned to the garage and the engine, moved sweetly into place with just a few nudges and a bit of gentle persuasion. 

Refitting the front frame was a bit nerve racking as I had been warned by Tim Pell not to cross the fine threads.  

I still have some work to do fitting spacers and sorting out final alignment but the major part of the engine fitting process is complete..  

However, I did discover while fitting the drive chain that the nut on the main sprocket needs tightening.... it came off in my hands!

Here's a picture of the Pace dry sump in situ.

At first sight everything looks fine, but if you look closely you can see a red oil way dust cap below the pump, which is perilously close to a chassis rail.

This is the main high pressure input from the the pump to the sump and engine.  there is no way that I am going to be able to fit a -10 fitting and hose on this. :-(

Here's another picture  (although not massively clear) of the clearance between the rail and the dust cap.  Pace specifically say "put no sharp bends in the oil pipes" so it would appear that I can't use this HP input.  However all is not lost.  An alternative method of feeding the engine is through the filter port on the back of the block.  However this means that I need an external\remote filter mount and I will probably need to use a separate air-oil cooler.  Also this picture shows that I may need to do some rethinking about the gear change linkage, as my intended route under the engine is pretty congested

As for oil cooling ... I had intended to use the existing oil\water cooler unit that is fitted as standard  at the base of the filter mount. Pace have said that this works fine, but if the oil is fed directly into the main gallery via the filter input then the oil\water cooler is not in the circuit hence the need for an external oil cooler.  Still two steps forward only 1 step back, and it will make the coolant plumbing simpler.  Lots more cash though :-(

Friday 30th April

I've had a very busy week with some long days so I haven't had either the time or inclination to do much to the car. But the many hours I spent hacking up and down the motorways have given me time to think up a solution for my oil feed problem. Two possible solutions in fact.

Option 1.  I've had Pace send me a couple of short lengths of bent tube, 2 weld on -10 male fittings and a steel mounting plate and O ring that matches the dry sump.  My plan is to remove the bolted on aluminium -10 port on the sumps HP inlet, and replace it with a  rigid tube which relocates the -10 fitting to a more accessible location.  If I use pre bent tube, the bend radius is much tighter and I may be able to clear the chassis rail. 

So tonight, I've spent a couple of hours measuring, cutting, fettling and welding this piece of tube. It should move the HP input away from the chassis rail, and clear all the scavenge pipes too.  Tomorrow I'll paint it up and fit it to the sump, unfortunately I may have to take the engine out to get it properly bolted in place.  As you can see from the second picture the tube exits the flange at a angle which should hopefully lift it above the chassis tube.

I'll also thoroughly examine it for pin holes and other flaws, as I'm basically betting my engine on my ability to weld this tube together.   <boggle>

Option 2

If tube fails to fit then I can remove the heat exchanger from the block and using a remote filter take off plate mount the heat exchanger & filter unit somewhere in the engine bay.  I can the take the  HP feed to the heat exchanger and filter in -10 hose and then feed the block at the filter union with another filter take off plate but this time with one of the bores blocked off.

The heat exchanger and filter is fitted with an M20x1.5 thread.  Which coincidentally matches my MI16 engine's heat exchanger, so if I need filters or take off plates anything suitable for a Pug MI16\ 205 1.9GTI will fit.

Option 3

Is to use a remote air-air oil cooler and remove the heat exchanger completely,  but this will likely cost 300+ GBP  so this is definitely the option of last resort.  However monster oil temps may force me down this way anyway, but I won't know that until testing starts.