Wednesday June 2nd 2004

I only had a couple of hours today. So I thought I'd get on with a simple job that I could complete in the time available. With the oil system completed and the ECU wiring 80% there, I decided that it was time to start work on the engine bay coolant pipes.

First job was to remove the thermostat from it's housing on the front of the cylinder head, this is necessary as I will be using an electrically controlled water pump to control engine temp.  First I had to remove the coolant input connection to the block to gain access to the bolts holding the thermo housing.

I then removed the thermostat, which looks uncannily like a car one, though that should really be no surprise.

Now I spend some time pondering how to get pipe work to and from the water unions on the head.   The exhaust pipes are in the way and the water pipes will need to make a sharp turns as they leave the head. Hmmm.  

However often the simplest solutions are the best and it dawns on me that the thermo housing mounting face is actually perfectly square, and it is sealed with an O ring rather than a paper gasket. Therefore the housing can be turned through 90 degrees  to give a nice clean exit from the head which avoids the exhaust pipes.  In the picture the pipe would normally point to the right, but now points out at a very convenient angle. The small rubber pipe is the thermostat bypass hose, that I'll connect directly to the expansion tank in an attempt to get the system to self bleed.

So I can now start work in connecting the engine to the radiator piping that I started running way back in February\March.

My first thought is to run a pipe straight out to the edge of the engine bay and then route it downwards using 90deg bends, as in the photo.

However a shorter route is to use a couple of 45mm elbows instead, to route the pipe diagonally down to the corner of the engine bay and it's connection with the pipe that runs up the side of the car.

On reflection this seems a much neater solution, as it uses less pipe, and therefore it holds less water.  As water weighs a Kilo per litre and these pipes are quite high relative to the centre of gravity, it's got to be the sensible thing to do.  The down side?  I can find a supplier for 45 deg bends in anything other than Samco  silicone hose and these are 10-15GBP per bend.  I could weld up the angles in Ali but I think having the rubber connections is better, as welded joints could well fracture with the High frequency vibration generated by the ZX12R.  Oh well more cash to be spent.

The coolant input is actually smaller in diameter (25mm vs 32mm) than the output, and it's lower position on the block should mean that it's pipe work from the pump can dive underneath the NS exhaust pipes.  The only other thing I did was start to fashion some 15mm copper pipe into the convoluted shape required to reach around the  side of the engine to the oil cooler.  But all I did was successfully mangle a length of copper tube ... so no pictures of that I'm afraid.  I don't like to see copper on a race car.... it really rather stupid,  I know that copper is easily up to the temps and pressures, is cheap, easily bent, thin walled etc etc  but I really prefer to see Ali tubes rather than plumbing fittings.    Hmmm I might have to reconsider.

Saturday 5th June 2004

Today I've been doing plumbing.   I had a bunch of 45deg fittings and other swanky blue silicone bends arrive from Demon Tweeks yesterday so today I've been finalising the coolant piping.  

The first job was to weld some 4mm bar onto the Ali pipe for the main top hose.  This was to be drilled and tapped to take the temp sensor for the Digi dash,  the Peugeot 110 deg overtemp warning light switch and also for a  bleed screw.  This took me about half an hour, and just as I finished I ran out of Argon, so finalising the coolant system will have to wait until next week, as I also need to weld a couple of other T pieces.

This picture also features a different type of coolant :-)

Next  it was to finalise the pipe runs for the top and bottom feeds.  The top hose was easy, as I mentioned previously two 45 deg bends  and a solitary 90 deg one did the job admirably.

I should add that the brake lines that are flapping around in this pic are the original ones that I haven't yet replaced

Next I spent a good deal of time deciding on the location of the electric water pump.  Ideally I had wanted it to be inside the engine bay,  but things on this side of the engine are very cramped and doing the pipe runs would have been tricky. So in the end I decided to locate it in the nearside side pod.  I'm not totally happy with it here as it'll get covered in all the rubbish from the tyres so I might build an ali shield for it, but it seem the best compromise.  The short blue Samco hose is a 35mm-32mm reducer to convert from the water pump outlet to the main 32mm hose runs.

With inputs and outputs to the block sorted out I can now connect these to the radiator at the front.  Here I've used plain old rubber 90 deg bends,  if I'm feeling flush I might order a couple of silicone ones but I'm not convinced that they are really necessary.  The gap on the right is for an oil cooler, but I've initially opted to use the Kawasaki heat exchanger on the engine block. So at the moment it gives me the option of  a larger radiator.

In the meantime I had better fit a blanking plate.

The lack of jubilee clips is because I haven't had a chance to put a hose bead on the ali pipes due the the lack of Argon.  So next week the Ali pipes will come off and have a hose bead welded on and then get permanently refitted.  Most of the rest of the afternoon was spent P clipping the pipes in place.

The engine bay now looks like this, although the sharp eyed amongst you will see that I took this photo before I fitted the tube with the sender bosses into the top hose. 

All that's now required for the cooling system is to fit the pipes to and from the oil cooler, and connect  the expansion tank.  I will fit the expansion tank into the  top hose  via a T piece.  Coventional wisdom seems to be that it should go into the bottom hose, but I can't really see why.  Comment on the Bike Engine Car list seems to indicate that it doesn't really matter.  Even so I'll fit the expansion tank with a swept bend to ensure that the pressurised flow is not aimed directly into the tank, so I spent a while making up this joint in preparation for welding it later.

So continuing with the theme of coolant I started work on connecting the cabling to the water pump,  this is driven by a electronic controller which has a sensor inserted into the  thermostat housing. So before I could decide on the controller's final position  I had to fit  the throttle bodies to the engine so that I could decide on cable runs .  While I was at it I connected the throttle cable and sat in the car to get the feel of the loud pedal.  It was very nice with about 2 inches of travel, although I think it may need some  additional springs at the pedal end to supplement those at the throttle bodies.

With the TBs in place and the cable runs sorted out I could fit the controller.  In the end I decided to mount it on the passenger side of the drivers compartment.  It's got several large ventilation holes in the casing so I thought putting anywhere else where it might be exposed to spray was a bad idea.

I ran out of time before I could complete the wiring though. So that's a job for tomorrow.

I feel I've achieved a lot today.  Coolant system is 75% complete.  The water pump is mounted and cabling sorted (if not yet completed). The TBs are in place and the throttle works nicely.   Hopefully by next weekend I'll have finished all these jobs and I can start working on the fuel system.  Once the fuelling is complete I can then actually start the engine.  This major milestone is now starting to feel within reach.

Monday 7th June 2004

Today another major milestone was reached.  I rolled the car out of the garage, filled it with 50 quid's worth of superbike oil (Putolene Syntec R+), removed the plugs and turned it over on the starter motor.

So the engine went crank crank crank  and the Digidash showed no pressure!  Hmmm.

So I wound in the pressure relief valve on the pace dry sump pump system and tried again ....... crank crank crank ... No pressure  oh dear oh dear.  Time to call on No 1 son.  Right laddie you crank the engine and I'll look in the dry sump tank.  So crank crank crank and oil is being returned to the tank by the scavenge pump.  So the scavenge stage is working, and the high pressure stage is working to pump oil into the  engine, or else there would be nothing for the scavenge stage to pump... but why no pressure? 

I've heard from another user of the Pace system that he's had a problem getting any pressure so it could be that, but equally it could be an instrumentation problem, or HP oil is leaking from the transfer unions between the sump and engine or it could be that the engine just isn't primed properly yet.  So lets check the easiest things first.... instrumentation. 

Set numpty mode = on  :-) I've got the oil pressure sender cable connected to the low oil pressure switch not the pressure sender. I swap the connections over and give it another go.   Crank Crank Crank and 16Psi of pressure  Fantastic!  That proves the sump, and unions are working!

So things are moving on quite quickly , the oil system is now complete, although it needs final adjusting with the engine idling.  The water system should be completed in the next 2-3 days when I can get some Argon to weld up the unions. So my thoughts are now turning to the fuel system and I spend a few minutes designing the fuel tank and  swirl pot.  Hopefully tomorrow I can visit Steve Wiseman (who has a metal folding machine) and can get the tank bent to shape.

Other news today is that I had a chat with Tim Pell, and he's going to send me the components for a clutch bracket, as well as some new bolts for the front hubs made from turned down CV joints. 

Tuesday 8th June 2004

This evening I spent a couple of hours at Steve's house  cutting and folding a new fuel tank.  I've decided to replace the one I welded up previously as it has a shape that means it is rather unstable and when full it wants to fall over which will stress it's mountings.  While at Steve's we also rolled some Ali into a roughly cylindrical tube to use as a fuel swirlpot.  Tomorrow night I hope to get these items welded together, and then I can start installation of the fuel system.

Friday 11th June 2004

Tonight was spent with lots of Ali tube, the fuel tank, swirlpot and my Tig Welder. The first jobs was to remove all the existing coolant pipes from the car, clean them up and weld on a hose bead at each end. 

Secondly I welded up the T Pieces for the coolant pipes in the engine bay.

I'm really becoming quite proud of my Tigging, the joint's are beginning to look like the classic "Stack of  Nickels" that the pros produce, and I even manage to handle the sharp inside corners of these swept joints.

The larger joint is the tope hose for connecting in the expansion tank.

T

he smaller T Piece is for the bottom hose and feed the oil cooler\heat exchanger mounted at the base of the oil filter on a ZX12R.  In the original installation water is forced down this pipe  by the back pressure caused in the main coolant flow when the thermostat closes on the water exit of the block. However on my car I have removed the thermostat so I needed to find a way to ensure that there was some flow of cool water to the heat exchanger. I opted to fit the smaller tube into the larger one with a scoop shape on the end to try and divert some of the main flow  into the heat exchanger.  Tim will tell if it's enough to keep the oil temperature down.

Next it was on to the fuel tank and swirl pot.  I managed to seam the swirl pot's main edge, mainly as practice for the tank. I seamed the top edge of the tank, and welded some 3\8th bar to the top.  The bar will be drilled and tapped to take some brass hose unions and the tank breather\roll over valve.  

There is a similar block of bar welded to the underside of the tank for the exit to the fuel pump.

By now it was 9:30 and I was 30 mins beyond my self imposed "Garage Curfew" and it was time to pack up.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the end plates on the tank and swirl pot.  The tank will also need holes for the main filler pipe and fuel sender.  So here's a picture of the partially completed tank in its final position, it will sit on a couple of raiser blocks made from the Square section ali tube visible in the picture to ensure that it clears the gearshift cable.

Sunday June 13th 2004

I had high hopes for this weekend, with the oil, water, electrical and exhaust systems all nearing completion it seemed I only needed to complete the fuel system complete and I could get the engine running.  So did it get it going?... Erm No.  A number of factors conspired against me, not least laying 96sqr feet of hard patio using  the worlds heaviest 3ft x2ft concrete slabs.   Oooh my aching back!.

But lest you think I've been slacking I did get some work done on the fuel system.

The swirl pot is virtually completed.  I've seam welded the sides together and fitted the top and bottom endplates.  The plates are welded on, but the top plate has a circular opening.  The fuel pump will be hung inside the swirl tank from a stout piece of fuel hose, and the circular opening  in the tank will allow the pump to be changed if it fails.  The circular lid will be bolted down with a gasket and has a fuel transfer union  welded in place.  This will have a brass fitting fitted to each end  to allow the high pressure feed from the pump  to pass out of the tank. 

The swirl pot is nearly complete it just needs the holes tapping M6 for the lid retaining screws (the threads are cut into the blocks welded on the under side that are just visible in the pic), the fuel transfer union needs tapping 3\8 NPTF for the brass connectors,  a separate mounting boss needs welding on the side for the three remaining fuel unions and a lastly a through bulkhead fuel safe sealed connector for the power feed for the fuel pump needs to be fitted

hmm perhaps it's not quite finished after all :-).

I also got one side welded onto the fuel tank,  but I did have to cut and prepare the hole for the fuel sender gauge which complicated things a bit. I did have one bit of a panic,  the tank seems to have come out slightly smaller than I intended at about 17 litres capacity.   This is a bit borderline, but the swirl pot is about 2.5 litres so together they give me nearly 20 litres which should just about be OK I think.  But I will need to watch it carefully in initial track testing.

When I've completed both tanks I'll pressure test them (lightly)

Tuesday June 15th 2004

The swirl tank has made a bit more progress,  I managed to get the lid mounting holes tapped out to M6 and the fuel transfer boss tapped to take the brass NPTF unions.  The picture shows the brass unions fitted along with the fuel safe electrical union that will allow the power feeds to the fuel pump to enter the tank (which I fitted later).  It has a seal in the outer part of the union which clamps the cables as they enter tank. I obtained this from Demon Tweeks

The straight connector will connect to the hose that will connect to the  fuel pump that will run inside the tank.  The 90 deg connector will feed the HP fuel to the fuel injectors.

Before I fitted the electrical connector I bolted up the lit to the tank with it's rubber seal and pressure tested it at 45 PSI.  A quick dunk into a tank of water showed that all my welds were fine and not leaking,  however, all the bolts leaked around the heads, so I will have to finally assemble the tank with some additional fuel safe sealant like Tiger Seal.