Working on the "Other" engine....

My other project is progressing well, to wit, the rebuilding of a dirt cheap 2007 Focus engine I found in a local scrappy. This engine is going to be putting ot somewhere between 230-240bhp

Here's the spec:

13:1 Cosworth Pistons
250HP Cosworth Cams
Hi-port head gas-flowed
Farndon Con-rods
VP2C Main- and Big-end Bearings
Keyed crankshaft
ARP cylinder head studs
ARP main bearing cradle studs
Lightweight crankshaft pulley and trigger wheel
Raceline sump
Raceline cam cover
Raceline water-rail
Lightweight flywheel
AP Racing clutch
Omex 600 ECU
48mm Jenvey Throttle bodies Standard Birkin bell housing and concentric clutch
T9 Box with SPC gearset (tall 1st gear)


So far I have had the crank keyed and the crank sprocket has been spark eroded to fit.
The OMEX 600 harness has arrived
All the gearbox bits are here I must just assemble the gearbox when I get a free Saturday.
The head has been gas-flowed by Van Der Linde developments and the cams have been cut from fresh billets.
I had to design the trigger wheel myself on a CAD program to fit the Cosworth crank pulley and get it laser cut in Durban.

So far the block has been fitted with the crankshaft and its associated cradle and bearings, and the pistons have been fitted. All the main moving bits have been torqued up.

I just ordered the cylinder head gasket today so I can fit the cylinder head sometime next week.

I must still order the Raceline stuff. That is going to be a wallet bender!

Home Stretch

So now I have to buckle down and finish her off.

What are the outstanding jobs?

From back to front :-

Fit the roll bar and boot, but first I must check the fuel gauge sender, because it is reading way over full
Fit the centre console
Fit the carpets
Fit the interior side panels
Fit the seats
Bend the gear lever to a more user friendly angle
Fit the gear knob
Fit the gear lever shroud
Fit the ECU rev limiter light to the Carbon fibre Console, and fit that
Fit the scuttle
Make a hole for the GPS antenna cable in the scuttle
Connect the wiper mechanism
Connect the ECU harness
Connect up the windscreen washer tubing and tie the washer motor into the harness
Install the side indicators
Connect the radiator overflow hoses
Bleed the brakes and clutch
Wheel alignment (rough)
And finally fit the steering wheel

Now of those jobs I can scratch off the side panels, centre console and indicators, because I did that this last weekend.

The worst job I face is the bonnet, because the cut-out for the air filters does not match the position of the filters on the car. To avoid any cutting I am going to have to resort to sock filters and do away with the oval paper filters. Then I am going to fabricate an airscoop to cover the aperture.

Watch this space!








Fit

It is........ALIVE!!!!!

Yep, you read it right. She is going.

After 2 long years of anticipation she runs. Not only that she runs WELL.

Yesterday I nipped over to the sparkies and saw that the wiring was 99% done, and they said we could give her a try the next day.

Did not sleep a wink the whole night.

Anyway got up at 7am, grabbed a jerry can, some copper slip, moly assembly paste and headed out.

Having grabbed some 93 Octane, arrived at the sparkies and proceeded to check off the pre-start check list.

Water - needed topping up as the header tank was empty

Oil - plenty in the sump (too much, as it turned out)

Wiring - ECU connected to battery and ignition, all terminals solid, spark plugs seated correctly. Inertia switch set OK.

Petrol - 3/4 full

I removed the cam cover and proceeded to cover every bearing surface with copper slip and moly paste. This was to protect the cams for the first few seconds before the oil made it up to the head.

I refastened the cover and did one final lookover - Oops. She was in 1st gear.

The sparkie turned on the ignition and let it stay there for a minute to prime the pipes - you could hear the water and fuel pumps whirring.

Then he swung it, and it churned for about 20 seconds and he let go, tried again, and this time the engine half caught. Third time she started and away she went.

Oil pressure was in the green and responding to revs, alternator charging.

We ran her at varying revs for 5 minutes, we could see two things happening, there was a lot of smoke coming off the exhaust header wrap which I expected, and there was water leaking from the water rail header filler, which I didn't. My worst fear was the nifty weld we had put there to clear the exhaust header was leaking but not so, it was the gasket between the filler cap header and the rail.

water temp was coming up nicely.

Then disaster, one sparkie shouts Stop! Stop! Stop! we shut her down and oil is pouring onto the floor from the intake side of the engine. Pete the sparkie says he saw oil gushing out of the TOP of makeshift oil dipstick tube that I had fitted long ago. I am a bit worried how could that happen? The oil is very greyish and my worst fear is there water in the oil. We check - thank heavens it is clean oil.

I dash off home to get the proper Raceline tube and dipstick, Pete goes about replacing the water rail gasket.

We remove the make shift tube and oil pours out into a pan we placed there and it is immediately apparent I have overfilled the engine with oil, so we drain a litre and then fit the new Raceline dipstick and tube. Oil has gone up in the tube and at some point crank case pressure forced it up and out. Sorta like a burp.

Pete removes the cam cover and behold all the cams are glistening with engine oil so no worries there the head is good and lubed. No sign of scoring on any of the cam lobes.

We restart the engine and this time we get her up to speed quickly, the gear shift light lights up at 6800rpm and the rev limiter  cuts in at 7200rpm. The radiator fan comes in at 90 and drops off at 80. Everything is looking good.

I try the gears - 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th they all work no clutch needed as she is up on stands. Could not find reverse, but I really did not try very hard

We shut her down as she is good and hot. What a great day!!

Some observations:

Idle is lumpy but stable.
She spins up with NO hesitation from idle. Response is instant.
She sounds good under revs, very healthy. NO unhealthy knocking noises.
No pinking or pre-detonation - 11:1 pistons and 93 Octane - Good!
There's a nice crackle on the overrun too, not too much.
The motor is remarkably vibration free.

A Newish HD Gearbox and Grille

The second hand gearbox arrived from Cape Town but it was missing some very vital bits. In fact it arrived not as a gearbox but literally as a box of bits:

The 5th gear locking plate, detent pin and spring, oil filler plug, and selector detent plug screw were all missing.

The input shaft was toast - no gear teeth!

No problem though as I have ordered a host of bits and pieces from Bearingkits.co.uk to replace bearings, gaskets and seals. also synchro rings, springs and HD inserts. Unfortunately the missing bits will have to be found.

One of the selector forks was also a bit dodgy so I ordered a new set of 1/2 and 3/4 selector forks from Autogear.co.uk.

I am also going to order a set of close ratio gears from SPC so I have a decent tall first gear. Basically it is a new I/P shaft and new laygear cluster, plus new 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th gears. All on an HD layshaft with a special bush on which the uprated laygear bearing rides. 

On the grille side my pal with a CNC machine cut me a very neat "7" out of 3mm ally plate.

The sparkies are actually doing something as well. Gerhard is trying for mid Feb but I don't think he is going to make that deadline.

Another good local find was a very good condition 2 litre Focus Duratec engine which I want to fettle up into a 250hp motor, funds permitting.

Sentenced to a Lifetime of Poverty.......!

Well Christmas has come and gone and I was completely blown away by a little present from my family. More specifically, my ever supportive wife Rita.

Yes, the cognoscenti amongst you will recognise this little gem as the Caterham Super 7 JPE (Jonathan Palmer Edition) which was powered by a 250HP Vauxhall motor and held the 0-60-0mph record for a good while.

Now I want to build a replica of that! The colour scheme is a love or hate affair - it's a bit....er....bright! No losing the cops with that colour!

For cosmetics I have gotten a talented work colleague to make me a grille logo to place on my rather plain Birkin grille. It is an exact copy of the Caterham logo and it will look stunning painted in Signal Red to match the paint job. With the template made it will be a simple matter to plasma cut one made of 3mm ally plate.

And then I spoke to Gearex in Cape Town they are lining up an old T9 HD gearbox for me to refurbish with a spiffy tall ratio gearset from BGH. I have my order of bits from Quaife, Burton, BGH and Bearing Kits all lined up waiting for annual bonus.

Raceline came to the party with the long awaited oil tube and dipstick, plus the cam sensor blanking plug.

I have had no word (or questions) from the Sparkies, I am not sure if that is a good or a bad thing. Either they know what they are doing or they have not started yet! I think I will rattle their cage towards the middle of January.

Leave at Last!

I'm on leave! 

OK time to buckle down and knock a lot of pesky items off my to-do list!

First off was to take off all the connectors that came with the loom and replace them with better ones.  

Let me explain. As an example the rear lights terminate in tags, which is all OK, however there is no connector block to connect to the Hella rear light cluster, so I had to remove that connector and replace it with a more common (and available) connector, and place the proper on the loom. And I had to do it for all the connector blocks on the car - front indicators, headlights etc. It was a bit fiddly having to do all that because I had to remove the rear wheels to get in there. Plus the wiring colours on the loom did not match the wiring colours on the cluster so I had to start using a multimeter to sort that out.

 



 The sparkies are going to be tasked with fixing under the dashboard, supplying a speedo pick up and checking that she doesn't go up in flames when I turn the key. Oh and the electric water pump, cooling fan, ECU etc etc  

Next I replaced two top wishbone bolts with the stainless steel equivalent. Looks very zoosh but I am wondering if it was the right thing to do.....

This morning I fitted the windscreen to the scuttle. I drilled the holes as per the instructions and found that you actually have to fit the brackets to the windscreen (loosely) and then fit the whole lot to the scuttle, as there is a fair bit of angular misalignment. I eased that a bit by using foam tape between the brackets and the windscreen (helps to seal it too) and between the bracket and the scuttle (protects that paint finish). Good thing the bracket is not too rigid and it does twist a fair bit. The scuttle has gone from being a flibbery-flobbery bit of painted ally to a very rigid bit of bodywork. The mirrors were added after I took this photo.

 

Later today I will give her a good wash down. She has gotten extremely dirty over the past 7 months. You can see that in the top photo.

 What's left?

Wiring - that is being done right now.

Rear luggage compartment.

Roll cage - niggly problem - the bobbins in the chassis do not line up, I am going to have to drill out the threads

Side interior panels
Carpets and centre console
Seats
Scuttle fitting
Bleed the brakes and the clutch
Grease up the cams with non-seize paste
START UP and run in the cams for 10 minutes at 2500rpm
Wheel alignment
Roadworthy and shakedown cruise
REGISTER
Check her power on a Dyno, (although I should have a fair idea by then)

My next move after this project is to build a new gearbox that can take 250hp – I do not think the one I have fitted can even hack whatever power this current engine can put out, and secondly a new engine capable of 250hp.

I am already on the lookout for a breaker engine and gearbox, and the go faster bits come from the UK (@17:1 ouch!!!!)

 

Fiddling about

Things look to be moving slowly right now but what with the summer heat it is getting to be really rare to find a suitable day on the weekend where the weather is good AND I don't have something else to do that does not involve either the kids, the wife or shooting.

But enough excuses.

Last Saturday I buckled down and cut out a cover plate for the rear end of the selector tunnel. Normally the T-9 box has a metal cap or dust cover that blocks the oval end of the gear selectors. My box had no such part, the previous owner electing to use copious amounts of silicon sealer instead.

I did not have any ally plate I could use so I improvised with an old breadboard made of polyethylene. It was pretty thin and easy to cut. Simple enough to do and I sealed the edges with RTV silicone.
 

 

 

Being very happy with that my next move was to sort out the EMS wiring routing. The Alphamax system seems to have way too long leads terminated by extremely rare and spendy looking connectors, so I took the coward's way out and looped up the excess lead, bound those with lots of cable ties and hid them under the heater box. Of course there will be no heater.

 

Other leads were fastened in place with cable clips and Rivnuts

 

Now I must sort out transport to the wiring specialists.