1 March 2008
Session 233 - Dash wiring complete
Connected by battery up with a make shift inline fuse. Idea with this is that is a sacrificial fuse which will blow before any damage if there are any shorts in the loom or connectionns, etc.
fuse didn't blow initially, good. So now to press each button in turn to see what happens. Pressed the side lights, damn, fuse blown. So I check all the wiring, disconnected all the lights and replaced the fuse and tried again, fuse blew even though no lights connected, now this is worrying. Unfortunately this took quite a while to work out, what was it, now this is stupid! As I have not got my number plate yet, nor a light, I had left the feed to this underneath the rear of the car and of course this is one of the few things on the loom with no connectors and it was resting on the ali fuel tank! Once I worked this out I insulated it and then re-connected all the lights up and tried again the lights worked. And on the sixth say there was light, it lives! All my buttons illuminate with the side lights, great no problems there.
I then proceeded to test every button. The hazards do not work and the indicators stay on permanently, erm. So I started at my hazard switch, as they are nine wires here I decided to check I had labelled them correctly and it was here that I discovered that I had labelled my wires wrong, I had mistakenly labelled LGN as LGK and vice-versa. Re-labelled the wires and swapped them over. The hazzards work and no surprise the indicators do also.
I didn't spend the next twenty minutes switching things on and off did I? Yes I did. My digital dash works as well but it tells me that my water is very cold and oil pressure is very high, oh that will be the lack of sensors then.
I started to get a little worried that I would be discharging the battery and the engine is not running yet and I do not have a decent battery charger so I bought a proper battery charger and conditioner, type used my motocyclists. It basically charges the battery a variable current and then switches itself off but monitors the battery and will automatically switch on and trikle charge as required. It also tests the battery condition. It came with a permanent connector with water proof connector as can be seen this photo. Bargin at less than £50.
Left it on life support over night.
2 March 2008
Session 234 - Crankshaft VR Sensor
Decided my garage needed a good clean today so got up at a reasonable time for Sunday and emptied and sorted my tools, equipment and threw out rubbish. I can work in there again!
You remember a while back that I was in touch with Chris from Trigger wheels to design a new VR sensor bracket for my timing cover and long crank nose variant. Well I received the final bracket about a week ago. So today's main job was to install it. Although this sounds like a five minute job, it's not.
Offered up the bracket to the timing cover and it was obvious that some material needs to be removed from the timing cover casted timing pointer to allow the bracket to seat flush to the cover, see photo below.
With the timing cover fettled now the bracket can be loosely bolted in place. The VR sensor needs to point at the crank, this is best done with the pulley off. Then slip the pulley back on and set the gap between the tip of the sensor and the trigger wheel about 0.5 to 1 mm. Then remove the pullley and make sure the VR sensor is still aligned. Also the VR sensor needs to be set in the bracket so that the trigger wheel is placed in the middle of the sensor. So the pulley wheel came off a few times. Then the bolts were done up a little tighter and I checked the sensor position again before torquing up the bolts to their recommended 16ft/lbs.
I had to split the trigger wheel from the crank as its missing tooth would be 40degrees before the sensor at TDC, it should be at 50degrees ideally. EDIS 8 static timing is set at 10BTDC at this. Having the trigger wheel set at 40degrees means that EDIS would effectively be firing at TDC, erm not ideal! I am using megasquirt and this provides an advance to the EDIS system and also make a configuration adjustment in the software but if megasquirt fails then no limp home mode. The trigger wheel is bolted to the crank pulley so has set positions, it can be rotated 30degrees at a time so I could advance the wheel to 70degrees which would means EDIS would fire at 30BTDC, not sure the limp home mode would work at this setting. Chris of trigger wheels had imparted some knowledge that the botls holes in the trigger wheel are such that you can flip the wheel over and that gives a 20degree adjustment, don't ask me to explain how that works, it just does okay. So flipping the wheel now gives me another two options, 30degrees and 60degrees. 30 degrees means limp mode would fire at 10ATDC! So that can be ruled out completely. This leaves 60degrees which means limp mode would fire at 20BTDC, that might be workable, its the best that can be achieved anyway.
So next I torqued up the crank pulley bolt to 200ft/lbs! Double checked the VR sensor alignment, the gap here is 0.55mm. First time I have used ny macro facility on my digital camera!
Job done (3 hours) so front end of the car built back up again.
8 March 2008
Today I bought an immobiliser and for obvious reasons I am not going to go into specific details here. I have reviewed a number of immobilisers ranging from £30 to £200. In the end I found that a £34 model had more features than a £145 one! The model I went for is not a brand I have heard of before but it is Thatcham category II and also it matches the westfield loom requirements perfectly. The immobilser is incased in steel and also all the wires are the same colour and once the wires were installed and shortend there are no distinguising marks to differeniate. Sometimes, the more expensive option is not the best!
Took me about an hour to install and test the operation of the immobilser and protected circuits.
The blinking LED was mounted inside a glass lens. This lens I doubt would pass the SVA outside of the steering wheel area and as I wanted to mount this in a visible region of the dash I decided to cut it off and solder in a new LED. Looks better in the middle of the dash and I also mounted flush.
15 March 2008
Session 236 - 4-point harness eyelets
Did a number of jobs today, spent only 4 hours in the garage, wanted to watch the F1 qualifier sessions. I completed the install of the speedo sensor which as I mentioned a while ago reads and allen bolts on the diff end of the drive shafts. This needs to have a gap of between 1 and 3mm I managed to get 1.2mm. There was no need to bend the bracket just simply use the washers as supplied by Westfield.
Next job. After messing about with the electrics at the rear of the car I noticed that the fuel tank if push with a little force coud be slid under the straps. You may recall the straps and the chassis have closed cell rubber installed. I guess this must have closed up! so I undone the straps and put a few more strips in and now it cannot be moved.
I also re-bent the battery strap to fit my battery to the tray properly. It feels tight but in trying to move the battery you can demonstrate that the tray flexes a bit but I belive this is okay, the battery isn't going anywhere.
Next Job I did which I have been procrastinating over for a while was drilling out the holes in the boot box to install the 4-point harness eyelets. Problem is that you cannot easily mark where to drill the boot box to line up with the chassis mount points. The solution to this is quite simple. here's a tip, get some 7/16" UNF bolts and screw this into the boses and leave about 20mm high. Now coat the bolt head with copper grease, replace the boot box and press down onto the bolts. When you remove the boot box you can see quite clearly the bolt heads. Now drill a small pilot hole in the middle of the copper grease, yes from the wrong side. Turn over the boot box and drill out the hole to 20mm using a step drill.
Photo showing the offside 4-point harness eyelets installed. Alos note the battery is strapped down now.
Photo showing nearside eyelets with a harness clipped in place. These buckles need to be covered in a rubber boot otherwise these fail the SVA; a common issue!
This photo showing the Westfield harness.
22-24 March 2008
Session 237 - Seat belts, seats, carpets, heat protection...
Easter bank holiday so I decided to do some of the many little jobs that needed doing. Total time of less than 5 hours though.
I have now attached heat reflective matting inside the transmission tunnel as my exahust enters the lower part of the tunnel and I have the loom running thorugh the top but also want to keep cabin temperature down a bit! This was tricky doing after the panels installed. If you go the underslung exhaust route I suggest this is done sooner in the build.
I also took the opportunity to re-adjust the handbrake as I had noticed that it was taking 5 clicks to the hold the car on my drive and I had initially set to 3 clicks.
I also tidied the wires up underneath the dash, this took me 1.5hrs! Loom tape, PVC adhesive tape and cable ties were used.
Here's a photo showing the worst part.
I have fitted the lower bolts of the 4 point harnesses. Torqued to 35ft/lbs. Finally the seats are torqued down 18ft/lbs now that harnesses are installed
Initially I thought the carpets I bought a while ago with the yellow piping would be too much thinking I would go for yellow piping on the seats but I bought these like new used seats which had no yellow piping. I decided to fit these carpets. I also re-cut the tranmission tunnel carpet as I was not completely happy with my first attempt. All carpets now velcro'd in place. Spent about 2 hours on the carpets! I forgot to say I installed the handbrake seal as well. All that is needed to finish off the interior now is some nice bezels to go around the handbrake and gear gators. Oh and fix that aero screen down.
After fitting the exhaust I noticed that I would not be able to get over the apex on my drive so my last job was to adjust the ride height. I decided to go up 10mm on the rear and 5mm on the fronts. The thread gauge on the dampers is around 2.5mm so 4 turns anti-clockwise on the rear and 2 on the front should sort it.
25 March 2008
Not content with the normal boot box fixing method that leaves visible allen head bolts on show I undertook a more discreet approach. I obtained some big head bolts which are studs with a plate of metal welded to the stud. These big head studs are used for bonding into plastics and GRP.
So I drilled two holes in the return flange on the tub and then inserted the boot box and marked where the studs are to be bonded on. I used some very strong glue that I got from a show, this stuff is super glue on steroids. The reason I glued the stud is to hold it in place whilst I lay fbre glass and resin over the plate of the big head. See photo below.
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Once the glue had set and this was minutes. I proceeded to lay one layer of fibre glass and resin as below.
I left the fibre glass go off for 20 minutes and then laid another layer down to finish off, as below. Another little Job done and not a bolt head in sight. I am going to use this method for my cycle wings also.
Boot box was installed the next day along with the roll bar and finisher strip.
28 March 2008
You wouldn't believe how long it took me to find some 5mm button allen head ali bolts anodised in black! I found some on ebay and these arrived today. So couldn't wait to fit my aero screen and bolt down my dash finally. Worth the hunt, see photos below.
29 March 2008
Session 240 - Inlet manifold
Only have time to do one job today (2 hrs) so decided I would tackle the inlet manifold. This is another job that I was not to keen on. Why, because I have heard a few horror stories where people have stripped the threads in the heads when torquing the inlet manifold down and yes even when using Range/Land rover torque specifications (38 ft/lbs). I am using ARP bolts like I have done elsewhere but this does not protect threads in the head. I decided that I would not use thread lubricant as this means the read torque is quite close to the actual. Torque values vary tremendously due to friction on the threads and using lubricant can make 20% difference. As Rover stated torque value does not suggest to use lubricant I decided I would not either. I also spent some time checking the threads were clear and good, which they were.
Here's a picture of the manifold fitted. The purple injectors are the next job.
30 March 2008
Those purple injectors that I imported from the states a while ago do not seem to be a direct fit. Refer to photo below.
Purple injector are the new ones. The green one is standard. The purple one is about 1/4" longer but despite this it is too short! This is because the port end of the injector, left on the photo, is a different shape. The purple one has a narrower on the end meaning it actually reaches further down into the inlet manifold which is probably a good thing, maybe. With the purple ones installed in the inlet manifold the o-ring is just outside of the fuel rail. When I bought these injectors I had no injectors to compare and I was told these would fit straight on. I am going to seek advice, to see what others have done, custom fuel rail, etc.
I was hoping to get the top half of the engine done today.
So instead I did some miscelleanous stuff like sticking down edging trim which I hate doing.
A short while ago I got a good offer on an ACT carbon fibre plenum chamber, just the bare chamber and not it was a little rough, the mould shut lines where left. So I sanded them down and here's a picture with it prepared for lacquer.
After four light coats of lacquer.
you cannot tell in the photo but its a little orange peely not due to heavy coats or spraying to far away but purely because of the ambient temperature. I am confident I will be able to polish it up quite nicely.
Go to April 2008