4 April 2008
Session 242 - Plenum chamber flange, wing stays, gluing!
Over the course of this week I have glued most of my edging down. I really hate doing this as you have to use enough contact adhesive in the rubber channels to bond with the panel but not too much that it all squelces out when you press it down, messy, messy stuff. I have to limited myself to a strip per night!!
hopefully tomorrow all my bits turn up in which to start installing the cooling system so I thought I'd get a few miscellaneous jobs out the way. Bolted down the flange onto the trumpet base which is used to attach the plenum chamber to. I installed this with dome head allen bolts as I discoved that traditional or even socket caps fouled the inside of the plenum chamber meaning that it would not align with the bolt holes. I used flange sealant to ensure an air tight seal, well I hope.
and this accepts the plenum chamber like this.
I am not going to fit it yet as I want to polish it in and also I will need to attach the throttle body and probably drilled it for the MAP sensor take off. Regarding the fuel injectors I am going to go with the Mustang items as they seem a good match so I am going to modify the fuel rail so that it sits about 5mm lower to form a good seal with the injectors.Onto the subject of cycle wings. I do not ike the pop rivet look and I decided a while ago that I would attach with big head studs, like the boot box. So tonight I drilled the wing stays to take these.
5 April 2008
Session 243 - Radiator & ducting
Today my coolant system bits arrived from Westfield comprising of the high efficiency radiator for the ducted nose cone, all the hoses and fttings and the fan. Little did I know that justing installing the radiator was going to take 6 hours!
Photo of the hoses both rubber and metal. A little daunting.Luckily I managed to get hold of a schematic from the factory on a Saturday afternoon.
So whilsts the F1 was on I sat in my living room with my vernier caliper gauges and worked out the eventual location for each hose. There are three hoses that are out of stock so I am waiting for these.
Below is a photo of the alliminium radiator, it has a small foot print but the core is quite thick. Its very light only weights 3Kgs! In the photo I have attached the fan which is a breeze as this is a custom raditator there are studs built into the radiator ends. I didn't weight the fan but it feels heavier than the radiator!
The first problem I came up against was the ducting appears to have the holes for the radiator hoses on the wrong side. so I set about marking the left hand side for the top and bottom hoses. On the right I also marked small areas to be removed to provide clearance for the two bleed boses. Why two bleed boses, well there are two because for effective bleeding you have to use the topmost boss and depending which way you install, which granted in my application there's only one way.
So once the ducted is cut and shaped using my trusty dremel (get one) the radiator fits perfectly.
The radiator has to be sandwiched between two bits of ducting, the large one which is rearmost on the car and the front smaller piece which seals it against the front grill. So six 5.5mm holes are drilled, three at the top and three at the bottom. Once the radiator is sandwiched in the two pieces of ducting do not meet due to the radiator thickness. The construction manual does not point this out but I am going to get six collars that I can insert in the gap as whichout this the bolts are likely to come loose.
Photo showing the completed ducted and radiator insert into the nose cone.
As you can see the ducted makes a pretty good seal with the top vent on the nose cone, this is quite a good design as it means that air flows through the front of the grill and up out of the top vent. I suspect also that air flowing over the top of the nose cone would create a low pressure area at this vent which will in turn increase air flow through the ducting. I supose if I were being critical about this design I would say that heat coming out of this vent would be sucked into the bonnet vent for the air intake into the engine.
Photo of front of the nose cone showing air well the ducting seals in the radiator, which is important as you want to channel as much air as possible through the radiator not past the sides, bottom or top. I have to do a bit of fettling to get the ducting to sit right in the nose cone but this was due to the wire mesh I installed.
Instaling the nose on the car proved to be the most frustrating job that I had done on this build, well it seems like it. I spent 2 hours taking the cone on and off and adjusting and it still not quite right but I decided to call it a day. The problem is the oil cooler hoses fouling the rear of the ducting. After much adjustment of the hoses and the cooler, I decided that the only way it would fit would mean forming tighter bends in the oil cooler pipes which I am not happy about. Still the pipes would contact the ducting so I decided that I would cut some strategic holes into the rear of the ducting to allow clearance. More on this tommorow calling this a day before I break something in frustration.
7 April 2008
Session 244 - Radiator - yes still!
Spent another three hours on this again. Cut out to holes in the ducting in the vicinity of the oil cooler connections where most of the resistance to pusing the nose cone appears to be. The smaller hole at the top is for the connection to the electric fan.
Ducting and radiator now bolted into nose cone hopefully this will not be coming out again! So the large penny washers at the top.
Photo belowing showing the best looking bolts I could get, they match the aeroscreen and dash at least. I didn't initially want to have bolts but I feared that the raditor might fall off! So I thought I better stay with the recommended approach here, mind you if it managed to fall out with all the pushing and shoving I had to do to get the nose cone on the car I would be very very surprised anyway.
8 April 2008
Session 245 - Radiator, fan, cycle wing
Still not 100% happy with the clearance behind the ducting and concerned that the oil hoses bends are too tight so I decided to make the holes in the back of the ducting into one large one and this will serve to allow some air flow to the oil cooler as well. Really happy with this now.
Regarding the spacers between the two parts of the ducting I decided to use a load of washers as the gap was not consistent and I could just load up with the washers as required.
Interested to see how much air circulates from the fan I connected the fan up and pressed in my override button and the fan made a slight noise and then I heard a fuse go, interestingly the relay still activates, anyway several minutes later I discovred that there's a fuse next to the relay and Westfield had used the wrong fuse, they had but in a 7.5AMP and it should be a 15AMP, I was getting ready to pull out bits of loom! Anyway I happen to have a 15AMP fuse so I replaced it and hey presto fan works! Its very loud my wife could hear the fan in the living room! She was probably thinking he has he engine running, thats a quiet V8! The amount of air circulating through the nose cone and out of the air vent at the top is staggering and very little air seem to be going through my hole I had cut to clear the oil cooler so it appears the ducting is still pretty effective even with this hole in it. So anyone reading this and using the ducted nose should be able to save several hours of frustration!
Now onto cycle wings. My cycle wings are plastic not GRP and I am thinking GRP bonding the big head bolts to smooth flexible plastic is not going to be effective so I am experimenting with, wait for this, no more nails super strength, well it says it can bond anything so I am trying one cycle wing first. The plastic bags are to stop the no more nails from sticking the cycle wing down to the bracket.
I put the cycle wing on top of the brackets and left my socket set on the top to keep pressure on. A day later pulled it off and really had to pull and twist it quite a bit as the angle of the fixings means the holes need to be enlongated. I drilled the holes oversized for this reason thank goodness. Tried pulling the studs off and they don't move at all.
Before placing the cycle wings back I stuck some closed cell foam between the holes as there will be a little gap with the big heads bonded to the wing in this way.
10 April 2008
Session 246 - Number plate holder and lamp
Installed my rear number plate holder and lamp just need to solder the wires in the holder.
12 April 2008
Using the mustang type fuel injectors means I need to reduce the height as they come out a little shorter which is more down to the nozzle shape than any thing else. It only needs adjusting by 3mm! which actually would have been better if it was more as then I would cut off the feet and weld up a little higher but such a small amont makes this trickier. So I decided that I would simple bend the feet out a little more and cut slots for the mounting screws.
Here's a photo of the fuel rail with the feet sprayed out by a fraction and the holes slotted. Before I adjusted the rail I made a template of the feet so that I could bend each one out by 2mm to ensure that the fuel rail maintains it's level. Prior to cutting make sure all holes are masked! On the straight end I have installed an adaptor for the power boost valve. Power boost valve gives me the ability to adjust the fuel pressure, with the engine being in a better state of tune I have read about fuelling getting too lean in the higher revs.
Photo of the fuel rail in position. Injectors installed and clipped to the fuel rail.
17 April 2008
Session 248 - Throttle body fitment
Bought some 100mm x M8 bolts today to install throttle body to plenum chamber. Had to cut the bolts down to 95mm. Installed throttle body to chamber using lots of flange sealant. The flange on the carbon fibre carbon chamber is rough in a regular kind of way, hope it will be air tight. Standard torque for these bolts is 13 ft/lbs but I didn't want to go beyond 10 ft/lbs in fear of cracking the carbon fibre. I have used washers of course but also trusty nyloc nuts. See photo below.
By the way I used loctite 598 flange sealant. This is RTV sealant and quite flexible I have used for sump sealing, plenum base, etc. It has a wide temperature range from -59 to 330 celius, it's resistant to oil, fuel etc. Its flexible and you can use to fill gaps upto 1/4 " Do I sound geeky!
25 April 2008
Session 249 - cooling system plumbing
I have been trying to install the coolant hoses, tubes and senders over the course of this week and it has been rather frustrating, nothing has gone right.
See the pressure sensor in the photo below.
This is the pressure sensor that is to be used with my digital dash:
There is no way that's going to fit there. I saught help from the usual WSCC forum and I was advised that an adaptor is required. Why this was not supplied to me I do not know. It did occur to me to check if I could use the original pressure sender so I connected the sensor to the loom and switched the engine on, erm it says 31 bar in standard atmposhere! that will be a no then!
The water temperature sender again supplied for use with the digital dash as seen below, erm, looks like the hole is 1/4"NPT and the sender is 1/8" NPT.
Done some digging on this sender as well, it would seem that one variant of the inlet manifold known as hotwire has the sender in a different place! I have the flapper manifold. Again I checked the standard sender with my dash and it recorded a temperature of -12 with an ambient temperature of 10degrees, again that'll be a no then. I am going to see if I can get an adapter here but there's not a lot of space between here and the rear of the alaternator as you can see.
The fan switch does not have the same connections as the loom as soon below:
No big deal to change the loom connector but why should these be different when both items supplied from one place.
Bottom coolant hose and tube installed, this is not going to work. the metal tube fouls with a chasis lug used to hold the brake lining to hose connection to the brakes. The metal tube ends up at the wrong angle to the pump outlet and at the wrong angle. As you can see the result is a rather kinked rubber hose.
And finally the last item, top hose to thermostat housing. The hose is no where near the installed metal tube seen underneath the alternator below.
I bought this coolant plumbing and sensors as a kit fit for purpose and I was expecting this to be the most straight forward route for the timing being and a later stage I would use these as a template to get some silicon hoses made up. I have decided that I have to take all this lot back and go the silicon hose route.
This weekend I am going to be driving around getting all the bits I need.
26 April 2008
Session 250 - cooling system plumbing continues..
What a gorgeous day it was today, 20degrees, perfect blatting weather. What did I do? drove about 250miles between suppliers! Bought lots of silicon hoses, sender adapters, pipes etc. Watch this space, will update this weekend.
Spent a good few hours on Sunday installing these few hoses, senders etc.
See photos below showing silicone hoses stainless steel clips. The hose joiner on the top hose has an inbuilt thermostatic switch for switching on the fan! This switch is also adjustable between 70 and 120 degrees. I went on to relocate this switch as I decided there was too much going on in this position once I installed the nose cone, i.e. loom, brake lines, etc. Also it would be pretty impossible to adjust the thermostat with a screw driver in this position.
This is the top hose to with electronic thermostat installed. The front thermostat housing on the manifold is not oriented in the right direction. I am going to get a 180 bend to join, not ideal. Some people get the thermostat cover cut and re-welded but this is quite difficult to do with a cast part, many leak!
In this photo you can see the top hose and underneath that the bottom hose. Its all very tight in this space. I found that the bottom hose is touching the brake line union which screws through the chassis bracket I have tee wrapped a piece of rubber tubing over the union. A little bit of a bodge and I am mixed minds about it but the only option I have is to re-locate the brake line and as this is the fixed line to flex hose junction you need it to be fixed so I would have to move the chassis lug, i.e. cut and weld! If I had known this right back in the beginnning I would have done this.
Also note in the photo the oil pressure sender is installed, whoah! Westfield managed to get my an extension which apparently is the same as used for the megabusa. I beleive the thread in the engine is 1/2UNF" However this extension was not without drama! I could not screw it in the block as it has a tee which was too long. Luckily this tee which was female, had enough thread for the blank that I could angle grind the required 4mm of it. Incidentally for all my senders and oil hose unions I have used ARP thread sealer which is a teflon non setting mastic and is rated up to 10,000PSI! I don't want any leaks.
By the way to cut silcone hose just clamp on a jubilee clip tight and then use a stanley kinife or jsut hte blade make sure that you angle the blade down a little to the clip so that you maintain a steady, straight line. The blade has to be sharp and then its like a hot kinife through butter.
Well thats the difficult part of the pipework done, difficult because access is very tight. I am not using a heater matrix so all I have to do now is plumb in the header/expansion tank. I will also need to plumb in the manifold outlets into the system, there are two, one that originally is the feed to the heater matrix and the other a feed to the throttle body to stop it icing up, both surplus to my requirements.
Before you ask yes you can get these hoses in yellow but places were quoting 5 weeks lead time.
Go to May 2008