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.

 

I Got your Number!

This weekend I tackled the number plate and the illumination thereof. I bought these really neat little LED lamps and painted them red. Then lined up everything and drilled the holes, set the rivnuts and....



Then it was time to get adventurous with a small file and sort out the Lambda sensor which could not be installed without cutting away some of the exhaust guard. Very stressful handiwork!

My next problem lies in routing the sensor cable - I dont want to route it along the body to the exhaust header port, that will need putting small holes in the body for P clips. The other alternative is routing it along the exhaust pipe - neat but liable to melt the cable! Or straight up the body to the scuttle - ugly!!!

I am thinking of cutting a neat hole in the body with a chassis punch and putting in a weatherproof grommet, leaving the outside run to 3-4 inches at most. I found that DEI make a neat flexible heat shield tube for just such eventualities and I may just give them a call.

Zorsts.....NEARLY there

Today I fitted the headers and the pre-assemble muffler. The headers took a bit of manipulation but luckily I had done this once before so I knew the procedure front and back. First fit the two outer headers, then the siamese centre pipes. I sourced another manifold gasket because Lord alone knows what happened to the last one. I also had to work around the throttle cables.

Next was the collector pipe which is a cute 4 into 1. I was clever enough to just  loosen the manifold bolts enough to give me some wobble room. With the aid of a large wooden mallet that went on with minimum fuss. You'll see some springs there I had to buy because the OEM items are keeping the manifold gasket company somewhere.

Nothing daunted I proceeded to fit the muffler and connector pipe, these were a perfect fit and matched the body mount to the millimeter!!! Unfortunately one of the M8X1.0 Metric fine nuts that goes with the rubber vibration mount has gone astray with the gasket etc etc.

I then loosely fitted the red exhaust guards, and discovered that the front guard is going to need a bit of modification because the Lambda sensor that fits into it fouls the guard.

I think this is going to be a little cracker of a car when she is done!!!

 

Zorsts.......It's a Wrap!!!

Back again after a long gap, I've been busy sorting out the last maor component install, namely the exhaust system. When I left them, they had been painted heat resistant black, and I had decided to wrap the headers in some space age lava rock weave. I spent a bit of time waiting for the stuff, it is called DEI titanium exhaust wrap, and the local agent is Michael Moolman. At any rate he came through with the merch. I bought 2 off 2" *50ft rolls and it was just enough to wrap the exhausts.

Here are the contact details, or you can visit www.designengineering.com

Trinity Performance & Thermal Control

South Africa - Gauteng

Phone: 27(0)72 7669613

Unit 9 Pomona Park, Pomona Road, Pomona Kempton Park

Johannesburg, GT1620

Phone:27(0)72 7669613

If you want the definition of "cool"in the dictionary you will find that photo next to it.

The advantage of this new stuff over other wraps is you don't have to wet it first, and it doesn't need any silicon spray. The two outer headers were easily done, but the centre siamese twinned headers needed some dexterity!

Having done that, I pre-assembled the muffler and connector pipe and called it a night. I had a little hassle arranging the muffler guard brackets and was totally foxed as to how they fit the pipes until I saw they had been stamped "F" "M"and "R" (Front, Middle and Rear) Once I had sussed that the rest was easy.