Thursday June 17th 2004

Sorry I've been a bit behind with the site updates,  mainly because I lost the transfer cable for my Digicam, so couldn't get the photos out of the camera onto these pages.

The other thing that has become apparent is that I really must finish the car in the next 6 weeks or so, for no other reason than the button bar at the top of this page is just getting too big!

On the car front, the surge tank\swirl pot is now complete,  I just need to mount it on the car.  This evening I welded on a couple of mounting bosses for the brass hose unions.

While the tank was cooling I assembled the pump assembly to the tank lid.  The pump is the standard one from the Kawasaki bike.  In the bike installation it is accompanied by a high pressure fuel filter, but I shall be mounting the filter outside the surge tank so I only need to worry about the fuel pump itself.  The pump is mounted on a piece of sturdy fuel hose, and will  be completely immersed in the surge tank.  I extended the cables using epoxy sealed  crimp & heat shrink connectors and then brought the new cables out through the bulkhead fitting. Lastly the pipes were jubilee clipped together and the cables zip tied into place.

With the surge tank now cool enough to handle I tapped out the mounting bosses and fitted the brass pipe unions.  All that's left now is final assembly and to find a suitable mounting place in the engine bay.

Saturday 19th June 2004

Today,  Dave Hackett, who has built a Blackbird powered Westie at www.megabird.co.uk popped over.  Dave is another Cam7 dude who had came over to help out, gawp and generally pass the time with me while I fettled the car, although my wife's traditional Saturday lunch of a bacon & eggs may also have been some influence!  Twas very nice to have some company in the garage. Later on I Matt Buroz (also from Cam7) popped in to say "Hi" too.

Most of the morning was spent completing the fabrication of the fuel tank.  In this picture I'm tapping out the mounting boss for the fuel return connection that allows fuel to overflow from the swirl tank bank to the main tank.

Next was to cut the large hole for the filler neck. Cutting large circular holes is always a challenge in ali,  but this time I had  acquired a plumbers  tank cutter, which worked much better than the the very chattery hole saws that I normally use, and is extremely adjustable to boot. This hole took all of 30 secs to make, having the right tool for the job makes a huge difference.

So next it was time to weld the tank up.  Having carefully removed all the swarf first.  Now having Dave around was a God send.  TIG welding well is all about comfortable body positions, and having Dave there to hold the tank in odd orientations so I could weld it easily was really really helpful.

TIG welding is very slow (or at least it is the  way I do it, it must have taken nearly two hours to get the tank to its finished state.

Here it is filled with water and sat on some blue workshop paper looking for leaks.  The paper changes colour when wet so leaks should be easy to spot.

So while the tank was being left to stand for a while, Dave, Matt and I set to on the car looking at fuel pipe routing. 

As can bee seen the fuel pipe feeds to and from the fuel rail are quite close to the exhausts, so we spent quite some time trying to think of an alternative solution.  Including swapping the unions around on the rail,  mounting the bodies, upside down and all sorts of other wacky ideas.

In the end we just decides to heat shield the pipes really really well.  This is what Tim Pell does on his other racers, and he hasn't had any problems in three years of racing.

So on to the coolant pipes.

I'd previously welded some hose beads on the ends of all the pipes, so towards the end of the day, I spent an hour reinstalling the existing pipes, connecting the radiator at the front of the car, completing the pipe runs to the expansion tank and fitting the water pump controller to the the thermostat housing.

The electric water pump is controlled by a sender inserted directly into the thermostat housing,  the wires are then brought out of the union and lapped over the end of the pipe.  This arrangement looks like it's a disaster waiting to happen and has no hope of sealing at all.  In fact I may slap some tiger seal in between the pipes to help promote a seal but it's a pretty poor arrangement.  IT is however exactly how the manual specifies it should be.

Just between the union and sensor just above it can be seen the starter motor,  it needs to be connected, before the water feed on that side of the car can be connected, and I haven't yet got an appropriate cable.  Damn! However I do spend sometime bending Ali pipe to feed the heat exchanger on the back of the engine... this took a surprisingly long time but eventually I ended up with these three bits of pipe. So as soon as I can get an appropriate cable for the starter motor I can finish the coolant system.

So it's back to the fuel tank to check for leaks.  #

Ar$e!  there are a couple of small pinholes, so the last job of the day was to re weld the tank and repair these flaws. Another hours testing with it filled with water and sat on blue paper show that it's now leak free and ready for installation tomorrow.  The red union is the tank breather valve\anti rollover valve that should hopefully stop me being soaked in fuel if the car is ever inverted.  A procedure known in CAM7 as the Bromilow Position after a friend who rolled his Fury and doused himself in Optimax.

He's building his next race car with "Please Turn Over" on the underside of the floor pan and a "This way up" arrow on the roll cage.

All in all a very successful day. :-)  The engine's not yet running yet though :-(

Sunday 20th June 2004

I didn't have a huge amount of time today,  but I did manage to get the fuel system installation moving forwards.  The tank was loosely mounted in the car, but  I needed to first install some riser blocks to lift it over the gear change cable. You can just see these below the tank in the picture.  The fuel feed pipe exits from below the tank and passed through a big grommet in the passenger side of the car.  Ultimately the tank will be retained by some Ali straps, and the whole unit will be covered by a second skin of ALi to form the fireproof bulkhead that regs insist  must separate the fuel tank from the passenger space.

Next I mounted the completed swirl pot in the engine bay

I'm not keen on using tie wraps to mount major fuel containing components, so I may well get a couple of large jubillee clips to hold it in place.  However Tim Hoverd assures me that tie wraps are great pieces of engineering, so I might just fit some beefier ones and see how it goes.

I then spent a few minutes trying to work out fuel pipe runs.  The last job I managed to get done was to fit the Y union in the coolant system between the water pump and the inlet. This feeds the oil cooler.  I can't complete the oil cooler plumbing until I get that pesky starter motor's cable though as I'll only have to take the plumbing off again to get at the connectors.

All in all a very productive couple of days, engine startup day is beginning to feel quite close now :-), although I've stopped making predictions as to when it will happen.

Tuesday 22nd June 2004

More incremental progress towards starting the engine. 

Today I have been mostly plumbing fuel pipes.  But before I could do any work on the fuelling system and TBs I had to complete the  coolant connections that connect to the block directly below the TBs, and before I could do that  I had to fit the new starter motor cable that Tim H had kindly made up for me on Monday night.

so have completed the above jobs the coolant pipes looked like this. With the exception of the small rubber hose just to the left of the exhausts the coolant system is now complete...... oooh things are moving onwards.

So on with the fuelling.  First on the agenda was to mount the lift pump which feeds low pressure fuel from the tank to the surge tank\fuel pump assembly.   After some musing on the issue I found a nice location for it inside the engine bay, I've deliberately placed it close to the other fuel components so that I can place an extinguisher jet that will smother the whole lot in one go.

Next was the low pressure return pipe that goes to the brass fitting on the top of the main tank, this allows excess fuel to flow back to main tank.

Both of these pipes were then P clipped into place.  Now on with the High Pressure fuel routing.  This basically goes passes fuel from the pump exit on top of the  surge tank through the fuel rail and then any unused fuel passes back into the surge tank. However in the case of the Genesis they have to pass under the main exhaust manifold so I covered them in heat protective sleeves.  It all looks very shiny and "NASA".  I have some spare so I may also cover the water temp sensor and the injectors which are also in close proximity to the exhausts.

And that was about it really, the fuel system plumbing is complete,  the water system is complete bar a few hose clips..... just a few electrical connections left then.......I've really run out of excuses.  The main tank still need to be fixed permanently in place though and I think I'll build an Ali heat shield to go under the exhausts.

Friday 25th June 2004

More progress on completing engine based systems.  I remembered that I hadn't put any filters in fuel lines so these went in first.  The second job was to assemble the  alternator wiring, however I can't complete this diary entry as I've had a digicam nightmare and all the  picture have been lost,  so I'll take some more over the weekend tomorrow and complete this entry then.  However read on as Sunday is very interesting :-)

Sun 27th June 2004

Today I completed the wiring for the fan at the front of the car, connected the electric water pump and mounted some rubber all around the fuel tank to prevent it chaffing.

After that I couldn't put it off any longer, so I filled up and bled the coolant system.  Next was to fill the fuel tank, with 10lts of unleaded, I also pre filled the swirl pot with a couple of litres to prevent the HP fuel pump inside the tank from running dry and burning itself out. I powered up the ignition and fuel pump a few times until I could hear that fuel was being returned to the tank via the swirl pot overflow.  So this was it..... Fuel pumps on,   ignition on...........contact!  I thumb the big red button.    Click!  hmmmm my previously fully charged battery now hasn't got the juice to turn over the engine...as it was second hand and came with the car I think it must be a dud.  I'll order a new one tomorrow.  But after all of these weeks of anticipation I'm not going to give up that easily.  A bit of car shuffling on the drive and I can get the racer in range of a pair of jump leads to one of my other cars. 

Right jump leads connected, let's try again ... Fuel pumps on,   ignition on...........contact!  I thumb the big red button again.   The engine thrumbs into life at the first press.  Wahooooooo!  Considering all the interlocks in the system I've obviously been reading the circuit diagrams correctly, and thanks to Cam7 and the Bike Cars list for their advice too!

I check the oil dry sump tank, the level is good and oil is returning from the engine,  oil pressure is about 25PSI, I check over the coolant system.... no leaks not even from the ultra dodgy water pump sensor in the thermostat housing. This is looking good.  So I let it warm up.  water temp 80......85...90....95....100. 105!!!   ermmmmmm what is going on!.  I kill the  engine and then spot the disconnected connector on the electric water pump, as soon as I connect it the water pump starts running, it's on an un switched power feed, along with the fan, so that I can kill the engine when I come off track but the cooling system still runs to prevent heat soak.

Time to start it up again. I poke the big red button and the Kwak heart starts to beat beautifully again,  in fact it's a bit uneven so the throttle bodies probably need balancing.  But its running nicely.  This time it warms up to about 95 degs and stabilises there with both the water pump and radiator fans kicking in properly and the oil temp lagging the water temp by about 10 degs.  Fab! It appears to be able to develop a stable idle and temperature equilibrium while sitting in my drive in the very hot sun.  Wonderful!

The only fly in the ointment is that the hot idle oil pressure drops off to about 18PSI so I may need to adjust the Pace Dry Sump pump pressure relief valve, but a blip of the throttle sends it up to 75PSI so it should be fine.  I also find a slight oil weep from a union in the dry sump hoses, but this is soon fixed as the union hasn't been done up tight enough. 

The only other thing that's apparent is that the throttle cable is a bit sticky and the engine isn't returning to idle as quickly as I'd like after I blip the throttle.  So some additional springs and a lube of the throttle cable should make all the difference.

Oh and the sound is fabulous!  Here's a video of the engine starting,  (after I had warmed it up a bit)

So flushed with success and wearing a very big grin I put the car away.  no more work for me today!.

Next week I'll start work on binding up and finishing off the wiring loom.