Engine Installation - The First Try

This afternoon I hurried home to do some of the work needed before the lift.

During the day Alastair went to Struck and Schulz and swopped out the two mounting bolts for M12 socket head cap screws.

First thing to do was drill the body and establish a hole so that the port mounting bolt could be inserted. This was done relatively quickly with my die grinder, and then I moved to the exhaust portal and made a minor cut so that this bolt could be inserted in a similar fashion.

Off came the propshaft, and the gearbox mount was reversed.

Good, now we were ready, Alastair manned the crane jack and eased the engine off the trolley while I guided the motor up into the well. We were a well oiled team - poetry in motion - synchronised swimming has nothing on us.

But......

Our first lift revealed a problem we hadn't seen in the dark last night - the body dimension between the chassis mounts is about 4mm too narrow for the engine plus its mounts. This means I must grind down the mating faces of the steel mounts that hold the polypropylene flexible bobbins.

Good thing I now have a disc grinder.

God, I love power tools.

Engine Installation - Initial Steps

We assembled the Chinese Torture Rack last night - I cannot understand why the Chinese have an aversion to washers. We got bolts, nuts, but no washers or spring washers! My engine stand was the same. Nevertheless we assembled the engine crane in record time despite the crappy instructions and it works! I bought a whole slew of washers to install on the crane as I cannot handle looking at a nut with no washer. It doth offend mine eye.

Today we lifted the chassis - using the crane of course - and slid the engine out again so we could prepare it. That involved removing the manifold studs, and mounting some bolts to use as sling points. One other point was to remove the engine mounts from the chassis and mount them instead on the engine. With this done it is now down to lining up 2 bolts instead of 6. Good thing we did this as bolting the starboard mount onto the engine was a mission. It did not line up 100% and I would have hated to complete this job with a swinging motor and cramped engine bay. Thank heavens for Copperslip grease.



Then we did a test lift using my home made slings and the engine came up neat and straight. This was done outside of the chassis to check how she carried herself in the slings. I was reasonably sure of where the CG was.

Next we lifted the chassis (again) and slid the engine and trolley under the chassis for what is hopefully the last time.

We re-attached the slings and did another test lift. The engine has the alternator and starter fitted and there seems to be plenty of room.

With some minor manoevering we were able to get the engine to line up "roughly", but we stopped at this point because I still have to drill an access hole on the left side of the body to allow insertion of the port-side bolt, and there is some minor relieving to be done on the exhaust portal to allow the starboard bolt to be inserted. It was getting too dark to see properly so we wrapped it up for the night.

As an added precaution I am going to undo the prop shaft from the diff. When we do this I want it to be a case of Alastair inserting the two bolts and then quickly under the car to attach the gearbox mount (which BTW must still be fitted right way round).

Preparation for the engine installation

So the preparations for preparing to install the engine in the chassis.....we're thinking about getting ready to start those.

We have the chassis up on the stand, and I am thinking that all along it has been really enjoyable working on the car at waist height, everything is accessable, I can get under the car easily....

So I am not going to drop the chassis onto the engine, I am going to lift the engine up into the chassis with the aid of a engine crane - a cheap and cheerful chinese foldup with 2 ton capacity is about R1600 - and work on the car while it is on the stand. When we have to drop the whole running car on the ground? I'll burn that bridge when it comes to crossing it!

When the engine is up inside, the trolley becomes a crawler.

We rolled the engine round to the workplace and slid it under the chassis - I had to lift the front while Al pushed it in.

 Here's another view from above:

I have identified a couple of potential hang up points like the manifold studs and the sharp eyed amongst you will have noticed that I have fitted the gearbox mounting plate arse about face.

Final Suspension Roundup

Alastair goes off on Monday morning to get the shocks shaved down, but gets told the fitter who does these things is on leave.

So I decide right there that I am going to do it myself - I head off to Midas that arvy and buy a Hitachi angle grinder and discs.

With Alastair holding down the shocks I run the grinder across the end of the shock and inside 30 seconds I have ground off enough metal. Quick test fit and in she goes! I do the second shock and that too fits beautifully. This means we have basically finished the suspension, and all that remains is the wheel alignment, fitting the rear brake discs, adjusting the handbrake and bleeding the brakes.

 

We fit the wheels and tyres and now (roll drums please) we have a rolling chassis.

Er......Not quite, it is still up on the stands and the studs holding the rear wheels on are too long (no disc acting as a spacer.........) so they foul the hub and impede rotation of the wheel.

Suspension and Brakes

Friday afternoon was spent getting ready for the weekend, I bought gearbox oil, motor oil and we fitted 4  X 195/50/R15 Fireforce FF70 Sport tyres to my TSW rims. It's a good looking tyre. Judge for yourself.
Saturday morning Alastair and Rita ducked to Polokwane so I was left to myself to fix the gearbox leak. I first had to remove the starter/bellhousing/gearbox combo from the engine which was fairly easy, but to remove the bellhousing from the gearbox was a real mission. This was (as I found out later) the thread used on the cap screws supplied by Birkin is not the same as the thread that is in the gearbox. When I first attached the bell housing to the box I used the impact wrench and did not feel any resistance. This time I started to unscrew it manually and quickly gave up. I had to use an impact wrench all the way out. There was something funny going on here....

I removed the clutch actuator, undid the bellhousing/gearbox cap screws and examined the bearing retainer/input shaft cover closely to see where the leak might be coming from. As it happens, when I replaced the input shaft bearing the new bearing sits a little too proud of the gearbox face and seating the shaft cover on it leaves about a half a mil of clearance which the gasket cannot seal off. The proper engineering solution is to mill the cover recess deeper to accept the larger bearing and its thicker retaining ring. In the end I adopted an easier solution and installed a thicker gasket, supplemented by copious amounts of silicon sealer.

I then filled the gearbox with the correct gear oil and let it sit while I went to the shops to search for the correct bolts for the gearbox/bellhousing joint. My reasoning was as follows that the car was built in metric with metric threads. Any "fine" thread should therefore be a metric fine. Right? (well I hoped so)

I arrived at Struck and Schulz with the offending capscrew and asked for a similar capscrew in metric fine. OK they sez we don't have it in a capscrew we have it in a bolt and not that length either. OK sez I the bolt can be about 10mm shorter and it doesn't HAVE to be a capscrew, a bolt is fine. We eventually settle on something that looks workable and off I go and try it out. The bolt glides into its thread in the box with no problems at all, so I am thinking Birkin supplied a UNF or some other funny thread, that was nearly metric fine but just not quite. Problem solved!

Actually after checking out the spec sheets there are TWO metric fine specs M12x1.25 and a M12x1.50. So Birkin must have supplied the wrong one.

As a bonus while I have been away at the shops the gearbox has decided to play ball and not leak. Yippee!

While the box is on the workbench I remove the selector fork and install the little brass saddle on the fork. I have to bend the tabs a bit to get it to stay on the fork. Install the quick shift Quaife gear lever, test the gears 1-5 and reverse, everything is looking good.

So the box goes back on the engine, on goes the starter and everything is back to where it was. 3 hours spent sorting out that little lot.

The family come back from Polokwane and with Alastair available to help we remove the radiator and start fastening up the front suspension dampers, and installing the brake hoses, remembering to install the mounting brackets at the hard line/hose connections. Incidentally we could not get braided hoses as was mentioned before. Too expensive!!!

The hose runs look very neat, running under the top wishbone. You can just see it peeking out in the top image, and running down to the calipers in the lower image. Some cable ties and we will be sorted.

We move to the rear and first thing I want to do is connect the brake hoses to the hard lines below the diff. The right hand side was pretty difficult but it was impossible to do the left hand side - we just could not get our fingers in, never mind the spanners.

In the end we undo 4 of the 6 diff bolts and lift her up (pivoting on the diff front mounting) and hold it in the elevated position with some rope and a steel bar. This gave us the necessary space to get in and attach the hard lines to the snouts of the brake hoses.

After we drop the diff and insert the bolts we move on to attaching the rear hubs and brake calipers to the suspension. The only missing element is the shocks as the bottom of the shock fouls the wishbone. The shocks will be off to the engineering works to get ground down.

I grease up the ball joints, splines and threads and with no problem the hubs are installed, the nuts torqued up and the R clips installed. Fitting the rear brake calipers presented no problem either. As a final touch the handbrake cables were also hooked up although they cannot be adjusted at this point.

The rear brake discs are still not available so the brake calipers will need to come off again. The reason I attached everything up is to seal off the hydraulic system from dust. The bleed nipple setup on the rear brake calipers looks a bit dodgy.

In short we accomplished:

Front suspension and brakes completed.
Gearbox leak, and the nagging bolt thread problem sorted
Rear suspension and brakes completed, apart from the shocks
Tyres mounted on rims and balanced.

We are getting closer and closer to dropping the chassis onto its wheels, the only holdback is the rear shocks.

And now a big one...

Last night was a major leap forward - myself, Alastair and Simon Buyers (a workmate) lifted the engine of the stand and set it down on the trolley. Using a cable sling and some pipe Simon and I took up the weight while Alastair undid the securing bolts with an impact wrench. Very quickly the engine was free and we lowered it on to the trolley.

Nothing daunted we immediately bolted the gearbox to the engine and slapped on the starter. However, all this must be undone because this morning I discovered a minor leak from the gearbox coming from the bellhousing/gearbox joint.

 I also fitted the exhaust headers (loosely) as I wanted to check the extent of the interference between the water rail and the headers.

This afternoon we tackled the front shocks and uprights, those went on with no problems. Encouraged, we tried the rear shocks but it seems there is an issue with the Avon shocks - no clearance between the shock lower knuckle and the lower wishbone. Out with the die grinder this weekend.....

Tiny Steps....

I've been offline the past while for various reasons, not the least of which I have just about run out of things I can do on the car without having to take stuff off again.

This is all about to change.

Yesterday Alastair collected my shocks and rear uprights from Birkin, and he is bringing them up with him. Unfortunately Dhersan has not been able to source the rear discs - those will have to be fitted later. Alastair will be here on leave for two weeks, and in that time we have the following tasks to complete:

Fit the shocks and uprights.
Fit tyres to wheels, and get some wheel studs and nuts.
Put engine and gearbox together
Install in the chassis.
Do a (very) rough wheel alignment
Plumb the cooling system.
Fit the exhaust headers and sort out any problems of interference with the water rail.
Fit the ECU, or at least plan the cable runs.

Tyre choices - I have 15" Tiger Wheel rims (Drifters) and it seems the popular choice is a 190/55/R15. Bridgestones and Pirellis are available at R690/tyre. I think I am going with the Bridgestones, they definitely looks more "grippy".

Upgrading the brake hoses - I have a pal here in town who runs a hydraulic hose business, he has offered to replace all my rubber brake and clutch hoses with teflon lined stainless steel braided hoses with stainless steel fittings for a good price. I think they will look very cool.

The small jobs I have been doing in the meantime are the pedal box cover and installing the engine mounts. Unfortunately the layout of the mounts means they have to be installed on the chassis first and the engine lifted into position and fastened to those (6 M10 cap screws - 3 a side), instead of mounting them on the engine first, and then lining them up on the chassis (2 bolts). The battery tray is also installed.

I am not going to install a heater at this time - I don't think it is necessary.

I have a Quaife quick shift gear lever on order as well as a brass shift selector knuckle.

I fitted the radiator temporarily to check for hose runs and interference - thankfully none - and that will have to come off again when we drop the chassis onto the engine - it is way too fragile for that operation. The cooler fan is attached to that but I don't seem to have a fan switch in my "Stuff-That-I-Know-I-Have-To-Use-But-I-Am-Buggered-If-I-Know-Where-It-Fits" box.

Torquing sense....

I spoke previously of borrowing or making a tool to hold the crank pulley while I torqued down the crankshaft bolt. So I visited my friendly Ford workshop and spoke to Reg McCarthy the head mechanic.

He explained they don't use that tool, what they do is screw a 10mm bolt into the engine block where one of the bellhousing bolts would go, then prop an Allen key between it and the flywheel starter gear so that when you torque the crank, the allen key jams between the bolt and flywheel teeth.

I had my doubts but I tried it out - that flywheel gear looks awfully fragile...

But.....

Strewth, it works!!!! I gave the bolt plenty of torque (100Nm) and then a quarter turn on a reinforced breaker bar. Problem solved and it did not cost me a cent!

I have noticed that the mount at the rear of the starter motor, and the engine mount share a bolt hole in the block. This means a bit of misalignment for the engine mount so I have to shave a millimeter off the engine mount so it can accommodate the starter mount. Also the Birkin supplied cap screws for the engine mount are a tad short. They will do the job but only a 10mm bite into the block? The bolts can be at least another 5mm longer.

Another little task looming is modifying the water rail to accommodate the Birkin exhaust headers. From what I can see the #1 exhaust fouls the bottom of the water rail right underneath the water outlet, and I have to machine off a chunk of the casting and re-weld a plate so that it clears. I cannot do that right now as I cannot fit the headers to the engine even for a trial fit as the engine stand is in the way of fitting the 4-1 header set in place.......Good motivation to get that engine off its stand ASAP.