Front Suspension

Today is the first "Official" day of my build. During the week I have been going through boxes of bits and sorting into logical groups. I found I have 2 rev counters, and no speedo. Cheryl has supplied me with a build sequence so I am confident I can do this. Unfortunately I don't have instructions for the IRS installation.

First thing to go on was the front suspension. This is fairly well covered in the Build Doctor.

I laid out the wishbones to familiarise myself with what goes where.

First I installed the lower wishbones, they went in with not too much fuss, I had to grind away at a bush to make room for a washer, and install an extra washer on one mount so that I would have something solid to torque down on to. The mounts are pretty well exposed so it is easy to tap in the washers using a flat blade screw driver and a hammer.

Next to go in was the steering rack, and it was here I saw the chassis differed from the Build Manual. But no problem either. The ally mounting clamps were a poor fit to the rack but placing the assembly on a hard surface and whacking them (hard) sorted that out. In they went.

Then the Upper Wishbones - no problem at all - just a minor grind on one of the bushes and we were in business.

Easiest of the lot was the anti-roll bar. 10 minutes.

Now all I need is the shocks and I can fit the uprights. The shocks are in Durban and only coming end of June.

Not too bad for a day's work!

Disassembly

This morning I sprung out of bed to see if we could get the chassis out of the car. Several cups of tea persuaded Rita to help me. I dragged the chassis out as far as I could....

It was then that I saw Rita couldn't hold the weight of the front end so we quickly set it on the ground (g-e-n-t-l-y!). Time for some ingenuity and lateral thinking.

I grabbed an old dog blanket, laid it in a wheelbarrow and I lifted the front end while Rita inserted the wheelbarrow underneath the nose. I picked up the rear and voila! we were in business, all Rita had to do is push the wheelbarrow which supported the weight, while I picked up the rear end. We steered the chassis into the prepared workspace and placed the chassis on the trestles and I got to work stripping the chassis yet further.

The chassis is pretty well comprehensive - the pedal box, loom, fuel lines, hydraulics and steering column are all in.

Delivery (Collection, actually)

A week ago Cheryl from Birkin phoned me to say my car was ready for collection. Today myself and Rita left Mokopane at 12:30am in my bakkie to collect the chassis and bits from the factory in Pinetown. 800km!!!!

Thankfully the road was quiet, apart from a huge shunt near Howick where a lorry tipped its load of Outspan oranges (export quality nogal) all over the road. By some cruel twist of fate this event coincided with the passing of a convoy of taxis full of Orlando Pirates supporters for the game in Durban later that day. Nett result was hundreds of vuvuzela brandishing scavengers gathering up oranges as fast as they could and blocking both sides of the highway. Eish!!

Anyway the cops arrived and restored order and we proceeded past Howick through Pietermaritzburg following a trail of orange peels all the way to Pinetown.

On arrival at the factory at 08h45 we were greeted by Dhersan the factory manager who helped us load up the chassis and the multitude of boxes. Here's how it looked at the factory.

And it was straight back to Mokopane. We were knackered when we got back at 5pm, but I unloaded as much as I could and left the chassis in the loadbed. We'll sort that out tomorrow.

The Engine (Teardown)

The engine has been collected during the week from Pretoria. It took 3 strong men to lift it onto the bakkie, there was no way I was going to get it off alone! So it stayed there the whole week and today I stripped as much as I could to lighten it to the point where I could manoever it onto an engine stand.

First off was the aircon, then in quick succession the power steering pump, EGR, thermostat, water pump, coilpack and water outlet, exhaust, alternator and the inlet manifold. This is where I got my first shock.

The Duratec, especially the early ones, had the nasty habit of swallowing the swirl plates and their mounting shafts. This was due to poor materials used in the mounting of the swirl plate shaft. Upshot was the swirl plates and sometimes the shaft would be sucked into the cylinder jamming the inlet valve, with terminal results. Mr Piston would meet Mr Valve and that, as they say, was that.

So it was with some dismay I saw that all of the swirl plates were gone, but the shaft was still intact. This meant I could have bent valves, a holed piston or a ruined bore. The list goes on and it is not a cheap one either!! Or there could be nothing wrong at all.

I removed the cam cover - junked because there was huge hole in the one end.
Took out the cams, loosened the head bolts. It should have come free but no dice, the head was being held in place by something in the front cover. (Turned out to be the tensioner arm retaining pin)
So that meant I had to crack the engine to inspect the piston crowns and the valves. That meant undoing the dreaded crankshaft nut....

Anyone who knows the Duratec knows that the crankshaft and timing gear are joined together purely by friction. The friction comes from a dirty great bolt torqued up to a gazillion Newton meters, and 2 teeny weeny diamond encrusted friction washers. To remove it takes a 2 foot breaker bar, with a 3 foot tube extension, and some serious jamming of the flywheel/crankshaft at the other end.

Much sweating and cursing it came loose and I continued to strip off the engine down to the bare block. Off came the front cover, sump and the head.

I found the lightest of indentations from the inlet valve on number 3 piston, and that was it. The crank, bearings, pistons, rings, and bores all seemed in fine shape.

I was keen to put it all back together as though nothing needed to be replaced when I figgered that now I had gone to all this trouble, rather do a decent job of it. I did not want to face that crankshaft bolt a second time....

I scrubbed the block with aluminium cleaner and it looks pretty clean, almost new in fact.

From the local Ford dealer I ordered inlet and exhaust valve seals, crank seals front and back, gaskets for oil pump, oil filter housing and head. Then a new timing chain, tensioner and tensioner arms.

The following parts were ordered from Burton Power and Raceline:

Water Rail
Thermostat housing
210HP cams, uprated valve springs and retainers
11:1 Cosworth pistons and rings
Lightweight starter
Crank bearings
Conrod bearings
Cam Cover
Lightweight flywheel
AP Clutch
Conrod bolts

And a set of 45mm throttle bodies from Webcon.

So basically a complete overhaul is on the cards. I lapped the valves which showed the lightest of pitting, and the bores were honed.

The old sump was discarded in favour of a second hand Raceline low profile wet sump and the upright oil filter housing in favour of a secondhand horizontal unit. Both items were sourced from Clive Wilmot, he has a website http://www.racekit.co.za/ . Clive makes and distributes all manner of bits and pieces for Lotus 7 type cars. He races them too.

Tools

When I was a laaitie my Dad worked for Ingersoll-Rand in Alrode. He was manager of the Air Tool and Hoist division. He used to come home with all sorts of really good quality drills, impact wrenches, angle ratchets and die grinders. He also had a compressor. Also as part of his work he used to market Snap-on tools - these were the last word in hand tools. I can still remember using them to fix my motorbikes. Really sexy bits of kit they were. I inherited the compressor and some of the tools but most of them were American AF/Imperial sizes.

So I decided that if I was going to do this job I was going to use good quality gear. I indulged myself and bought an all new socket set, an impact wrench, air drill, angle ratchet and a set of normal spanners and a set of ratchet spanners. A bit OTT, but there it is.

The Beginning

I haven't seen any other South African Blogs about this so this may be a first. This is my first stab at it so please be patient!

Ok so I better begin. I've always been keen to build a kit car, ever since I saw the Top Gear crew build the Caterham in that race with the Stig, I thought, well if they can do it....

I looked at the Cobra, but that needs some specialist bits in terms of suspension and I was NOT keen to hunt around scrapyards looking for a Jag suspension, so it fell to a Lotus 7 variant. The Birkin is just about the best replica going, apart from the Caterham, and it is local, so I guess it really was a one horse race.

So I rang them up, and placed an order for a CKD Birkin S3, with Independent Rear Suspension (IRS). I was told 4-5 weeks it would be ready for collection or freighting. When I heard the cost of freighting I opted to collect it FOB Pinetown.

During the intervening month from Order to Collection, I started looking for the bits and pieces that I would have to source to complete the project - the engine, gearbox and differential.

For the engine I had 3 choices - Toyota 20V AGE, Ford Zetec and Ford Duratec. I had heard a lot about the Duratec and it certainly looked like this engine was the "next best thing" being light, good horsepower delivery, parts readily available etc etc. So the Duratec 2.0 was my choice. There is a multitude of "go faster" bits available for this engine, mostly available from the UK. Some phoning around and I found one at Forma motor spares in Pretoria - it was an import made in Mexico and I think it came off a 2002 Mondeo because it came with an aircon and power steering units bolted on.

The next thing was the gearbox and really there is only one choice and that is the venerable Ford 5-speed Type 9 from the 80's that was fitted to millions of Sierras and Sapphires. I don't know what happened to all these vehicles but there are a few of them knocking around in Mokopane and every time I see one I silently wish the driver would wrap it round a tree so I can get the bits. Having said that the box would probably be knackered so I am thinking I will have to get a reconditioned unit.

Lastly the differential also comes from a Sierra or Sapphire. These boxes are built like a brick s**t-house so I am not expecting problems there.