Saturday May 1st 2004

First job today was to trial fit the oil feed pipe that I had fabricated yesterday to the sump.  After a bit of trial and error I got it on the sump and just pinched up into place,  then a squint at the engine from all angles revealed that,  yes yes it fits!  In fact it fits extremely well.  The pipe entry angle that I guestimated not only clears the offending chassis rail, but also clears the scavenge pipes and the oil pressure sender union on the side of the block.

It's the middle one of the three red caps in the photo.

I pronounce myself "Well Pleased",  at least now I can test the car without an external oil cooler.... it may still be necessary of course,  but I haven't been forced down a development route that will cost 300+GBP without first proving it's required.

So I now remove the tube for painting, and at the end of the day I refitted it and it looks like this.  This shot is taken from below after I removed the old engine bay floor.

Ok next on the agenda was to finalise the engines positioning in the engine bay. 

The engine is held at the front by  a rigid steel frame and at the rear by two C shaped brackets that bridge the gap between the diff carrier on the car and the and the frame mounts on the back of the engine.

Most critical in this operation is the alignment of the output sprocket on the gearbox with the chain wheel on the diff.

These two circular units need to be in perfect longitudinal alignment and also  in matching vertical planes.   I can check the longitudinal alignment easily enough with a straight edge between the sprockets

I can get the sprockets into perfect alignment in the fore\aft this plane to about +\-  0.5mm,  but it proves extremely difficult to get them aligned in the vertical plane.  To check this   I clamp a straight edge to both sprockets and "sight" the gap between the two edges.  If the gap is parallel then the sprockets are aligned,  if not then the engine is twisted in relation to the chain wheel.

Now things really start to get tedious :-(

When I can get the sprockets aligned fore\after, can't get them aligned vertically.  And vice versa,  so I spend a hugely frustrating afternoon removing a shim here and a washer there.  Each time I seem to introduce a new twist between the components or I find that I'm spot on vertically but the chain wheels are nowhere near. 

Eventually I arrive at a point with the wheels in line for\aft and only about 1-2 degrees out vertically.  And now I'm sick to death of this job so I'm going to give up for a while.

However I do hit on a plan to test how the chain runs.

If I install the electric reverse, and jack the car up,  I can put the gearbox in neutral and run the reverse.  This will allow me to see if the chain jars or catches due to sprocket misalignment. 

The reverse mechanism is basically a Bendix type starter motor  (the one where the pinion flies out along a spiral shaft) which engages with a ring gear in the diff assembly.

Before I can fit the reverse motor I have to fit and correctly tension the chain. The starter motor is fitted to the diff carrier, and the complete diff moves backwards in the carrier when the chain is tensioned.  Only after the diff is in its final resting place can the reverse motor be adjusted  to engage with the ring gear.

The thick starter cable on the right needs replacing as it's too short so I'll fit a protective boot to the +ve cable end then, also I've currently connected it directly to the battery and it will need to be connected via the FIA isolate switch.  Ultimately the reverse will be run from a push button  near the gear lever, with a "reverse enable" toggle switch on the dash preventing accidental engagement. If I'm feeling really swanky I'll also link it to a clutch interlock.

So with the chain, and reverse motor engaged I jack up the car and give the solenoid terminal a positive feed.  Hooray! for the first time the car moves it's wheels under it's own steam! Ok  so it's backwards, and it sounds like a milk float, and no hydrocarbons were burnt in the process but it's a start!  The chain runs pretty smoothly too.    Final adjustments may be needed later.

The last two jobs I managed to complete were pretty straightforward.  Firstly I've completed wrapping the remaining two exhaust headers in heat wrap, so these are now ready for fitting, along with the rest of the exhaust system that I keep tripping over on the Garage floor.

And lastly I removed the existing engine bay floor.  The regs this year insist on flat floors and this one has returns underneath it to guide the airflow into a diffuser (which has also been banned).  Also it's in a bit of a mess and has obviously cracked\work hardened from where the previous engine installation had been sitting on it. 

Lastly and most importantly I needed to remove it to retrieve a spanner that had dropped underneath the sump pan and jammed there!

I'll use the old floor as a template  for the new one, and then rivet it in place.  The old one was only held in by half a dozen self-tappers and if I rivet it in place it should add to the structural integrity of the chassis.  Although it will obviously make access to the engine less easy.

Friday May 7th 2004

Today I had the worlds strangest shape parcel delivered.  It was from Think Automotive and contained some 10 mm ali tube for my extinguisher system and a number of red\blue high pressure oil fittings for my dry sump system.

The largest fittings are -12 size for connecting the scavenge stage of the dry sump to the oil tank and for connecting the tank to the high pressure stage input

The smaller straight fittings are -10 size for connecting the HP output from the Pace system to the HP input tube I fabricated last week.  The small blue T piece and fittings are NPTF to -3 braided hose fittings.

These I will use with some -3 braided hose I had left over from building the Blue Genesis to remote mount the oil pressure sender  for the Digidash. 

These fittings are monstrously expensive, even allowing for the 25% discount Think Automotive kindly gave me.  For example this 180 degree fitting costs 30+ GBP.

When I fabricated the oil feed pipe for the sump input connection, I had enough of the materials left over to make a similar connection for the HP output from the Pace pump.   So I spent most of this evening fabricating  a new connection rather than pay yet another 30+ GBP for a 90 deg hose connection.  With this new connection I can get away with a straight connector, which by comparison costs a measly 10 quid.  Here you can see the pipe fitted to the pump.   The picture was taken on Saturday

Saturday May 8th 2004

I spent some of this morning welding up an aluminium T piece so that Tim could mount his temp sensor on his racing Fury.  However I did also get the oil system on the EVO just about finalised. 

First I trial fitted the dry sumo tank and tried to find a suitable location that would allow the oil hoses to connect to each other, without causing the pipes to collapse or forcing them beyond the minimum bend radius.  It very quickly became apparent that the 180 deg connector I had bought wasn't going to be needed, so that can go back to Think on Monday.

However I need to replace it with a 90 deg one which costs about the same so no cash saving to made I'm afraid.  I then set about making up the -10 high pressure hose that joins the pump to the sump.  The joints are fairly easy to make,  you wrap the pipe with masking tape to prevent the wire braid from spreading out, and then cut the pipe squarely with a hacksaw.   The cut end of the pipe is then inserted into the union's threaded collar so that it touches the threads.

 The yellow tape is to mark the back edge of the pipe and collar so that you can check if the pipe is pushed out by the threading process.  (It shouldn't move)

You then basically wind the front section into the  threaded collar using a big spanner.  Initially you need to support the pipe to prevent it being pushed out,  you then keep tightening the male section until it mates with the collar and the gap between the two is <30 thou.

This makes it sound much much easier than it actually is to do, I had to go and buy the biggest adjustable spanner I could find and it took most of my strength to get the unions to tighten to the 30 thou limit.  Actually I made a mess of one of the -12 fittings before I realised that you had swamp the threads and hose with oil, and not just lubricate them sparingly if you want them to actually go together properly.  Ho hum another 10 quid goes west.

Eventually though I got 1 x -10 hose and 1x - 12 hose made up correctly and the dry sump installation is now looking pretty final. I do need to get some heat protective sleeving for the upper of the two hoses, and I'll make the third and last hose up when I get the 90 deg fitting from Think.

You can also see in these two pictures the remote mount and -3 oil feed line I made up for the oil pressure sensors.  The large unit is the actual oil pressure sensor for the Digidash, the smaller unit on the top of the T piece is the original bike low oil pressure warning switch.  I've heard that the trigger levels on these switches is set ludicrously low  (about 7PSI) so I may replace it with an adjustable unit from Think.  It was only after I made up the bracket and completed the installation that I realised I intended to replace the Ali panelling on which it is mounted.  The braided line connects to the NPTF fitting on the main oil gallery which the OEM switch was originally fitted into.  This was very difficult to reach with all the dry sump scavenge lines in place, so I'll have to look carefully for seeping oil once the engine starts to run.  Now that it's location is finalised I can start to run the cables for the sensor loom.

Hmmm ..... actually running the engine, that still seems a very long way off :-(. 

Still no calliper news from Hi-Spec  12 weeks now.  If I don't get them next week I'm going to cancel the order and go elsewhere.... enough is simply enough!

Monday May 10th 2004

I've been a bit tardy about updating the webpage this week mainly because I'm hugely frustrated with the car at the moment.   This is the classic kit car builder's "trough of disillusionment" where you get halfway through the build and everything seems to be taking forever so progress is very slow.   It's mainly caused by my own mistakes though....read on.

I had planned to get the gear linkage working this week and after the linkage was sorted out I intended to refit the engine bay floor.  This is required because I need the floor in place to mount the drysump tank,  after that I can then finalise the last two oil hoses and fill the engine with oil.

I had ordered up a push pull cable from Cable-Tec to connect the gear shift lever with the gearbox selector arm.  A push pull cable was the obvious choice as the connection needs to go through several slight bends and the main firewall.  I used Cable-Tec  as they provide a very nice online ordering guide in PDF format, so in typical Adrian fashion I spent ages poring over the guide, measuring and re measuring the car and then when satisfied I'd got everything right I ordered the  cable.  Only after the cable arrived did I realise that it was very different from the others I had seen. My cable was basically a solid sleeve with a fixed rod coming out of the end.  This was not what I had wanted, the cable needs to deflect slightly at the end of the rod as it is pushing on the gear change selector, which itself moves through an arc Therefore if the sleeve is rigidly mounted the end of the rod does not simply move forwards and backwards but also some side-side deflection is needed.  Other cables I had seen had a swivel joint which allows this deflection, mine simply jams if any lateral load is applied.  This is not acceptable as the gear selector needs to move freely.  Hmmph  Adrian cocked it up again.  A quick chat with the supplier showed that this cable type uses an external swivel, so they shipped me a couple.  but as can be seen from this pic they are huge.   Most of Tuesday night was spent fruitlessly trying to fit this arrangement in the limited space under the dry sump, until I finally had to admit defeat, and order a different spec of cable.  Hopefully this time I've got it right :-(... time will tell.

Wednesday May 12th 2004

I think I need a lie down! 

Hi Spec have finally delivered some callipers and brackets. It's only taken 12 weeks, during which time I've been promised that I'll have them each and every weekend, if only their customer service was as good as their engineering.  When you consider that the only thing in this picture that isn't a standard stock item are the brackets, 12 weeks is a joke.

So we have 2 x Ultralight 4s for the front and 2 Ultralight 2s + brackets for the rear.  + 2 x 280mm x 9mm solid and grooved disks for the rear.  I deliberately haven't ordered brackets and disks for the front because I was forced to change the uprights after the order was placed and didn't want to add any more delays by requesting another set of custom brackets be made up.

However none of it fits! :-(

The hole in the centre of the disks is 1.5mm too small so the disks do not fit over the central boss on the hub.  However this is also my fault as I've checked my original drawings and they do say 62mm where as the boss is actually 63.25mm   Another Adrian cockup.

On the rear callipers the mounting bracket has two holes that pass through the bracket and line up with mounting holes in the uprights, these should have been tapped M10 so that they could be bolted to the uprights using M10 cap bolts inserted from behind..  Instead these holes were drilled M10 so that they can only be secured to the upright with a nut. Although it's difficult to see (particularly with the disk at a funny angle) there isn't enough clearance between the disk and the face of the bracket to allow this.  Hmmmmmm.

After much deliberation about possible solutions involving helicoils and loads of other ideas, I found a local machine shop who for a modest fee will machine some 8mm deep x 25mm OD recesses into the bracket to allow the nuts to be fitted.  They will also machine the disks to fit the bosses.  So hopefully next week I can actually bolt these things on the car.

At the front the storey is a little less complex.  The Hi-Spec callipers do (as I hoped they would)  simply bolt onto the new uprights,  but both the offset and the diameter are wrong.  So I need to make up some spacers from 1 1\4 x1 3\4 inch ali bar.  Basically the spacers need four holes drilled in them to bolt the calliper to the bracket, and then the bracket to the car.  This will give me the correct offset.  The diameter can then be adjusted by simply machining one face of the bracket to produce a spacer of the required thickness.  I'll be using the same disc at the front as the back so when the disks come back from being machined I can fit them to the front uprights and start the bracket making process.  And at least I now know a friendly local Engineering shop who can do the machining for me. 

Getting a small lathe and mill are high on my list of tools purchases.

Thursday May 13th 2004

The only other activity in this week of frustration and woe was to give the throttle bodies a damn good clean. 

Before I started they were covered in a thick layer of road grime, and the butterflies were fouled with a stick black tarry deposit around the spindles,  the butterfly movement could best be describes as "Gritty".  Now they are clean, although still marked with the white powdery deposit that aluminium castings seem to develop.  The butterflies now move smoothly with no indication of binding.

Still after after a week where I have been struggling under the burden of my own ineptitude it's a wonder I didn't drop a big hammer on them and bend the spindles.

They need another wipe down with cleaner and then they can be fitted to the car.

So this weekends planned work is.

1. Finish cleaning TBs, fit to engine and connect throttle cable
2. Sit in car making brrrmmmm noises:-)
3. Connect TBs to engine loom
4. Fit last two exhaust headers
5. Complete Oil Pressure sensor wiring for Digidash. + other sensors wires
6. Locate and mount Bike ECU
7. Plumb Bike loom into car loom and ECU

I wonder how many of those I'll not complete by Monday especially as I need to build a shed base this weekend.