24 Apr 10 ..... Front brakes, engine build, dash assembly and body

The last few weeks have been a pretty busy time on the car with the time spent equally on getting the VVC engine fettled in preparation for fitting, work on the interior and the front brakes.

When I last updated progress on the VVC it was to strip it down to the block and head, degrease and inspect for damage/wear. The VVC is the EU2 version and as it came from a low mileage 'S' I have decided to put it in and run it rather than stripping it right down and rebuilding with new internals. So mostly the jobs were to clean up and do a visual check for obvious problems and compiling a list of missing parts. Some of the bits can come off the original K16 that was in the project donor car like the oil filter carrier, dipstick assembly, crankshaft main pulley, rigid cooling pipes and thermostat housing and various bolts/fixings.  

One of the main items missing was the timing belt front and rear covers. I have spare K16 covers which I was able to adapt but will need to get a new front cover at least. They are still available and less than a tenner. The water and oil pumps were removed, cleaned and inspected. Both looked fine and were refitted with new gaskets. A new manual cambelt tensioner was fitted. The thermostat hosing was stripped, cleaned and the old stat removed and eliseparts blank stat and new 'o' rings fitted that came with the PRRT kit. The fuel injectors and fuel rail were cleaned and refitted together with the inlet manifold and VVC plenum, again with new gaskets. On the exhaust side, new studs were fitted and stud locked and the new Janspeed big bore 4-2-1 manifold trial fitted. The beauty of having the engine stand is that all the ancillaries can be fitted properly with good access. There are still a few things left to do before the engine can go back in like fitting the injector and main engine loom and making guarding for the alternator and oil filter from the large G3 nimbus sheet courtesy of Yvo at elise shop. Picked up a new 52mm throttle body and cambelt pulley off ebaywhich will be fitted during the next week when they arrived. I have ordered a sump baffle kit from eliseparts which will also be fitted in the coming week.

I also managed to get the new main engine mount fitted ready for the engine to go in. Similarly, the new mount and eliseparts tapered bush/bolt were fitted to the new PG-1 c/r gearbox, together with the refurbished clutch slave cylinder and mount and ready to be mated to the engine together with lightened flywheel and uprated clutch supplied by junks.


The interior has also received some attention. I was missing a handbrake assembly but that was sorted thanks again to ebay which provided a brand new unit and handbrake cable for a tenner!. So that went in together with the gearchange assembly. The electrical loom was in poor condition so much time was spent inspecting an re-taping it. The refurbished fuel tank complete with new pump courtesy of Gaz at spitfire was dropped to allow the refettled rear loom to be threaded through to the engine bay. Whilst the tank was dropped I took the opportunity to fit braided fuel hose to the quick release pump flow and returns and again thread them through into the engine bay. The tank then went back in with new fixings and the shear plate refitted having been cleaned up and new fixings used. 

I was missing  and a pax side lower dash extrusion that I had been hunting down for weeks from used parts suppliers in fear of the cost new from Lotus. I should have checked as they are only £30 or so new so B&C supplied me with a shiny new one. That meant that I could assemble the dash complete with controls panel that I had made up. The panel has 3 military style toggle switches with indicator lamps for ignition, fuel pump and extinguisher arming. A mechanical isolator in addition to a Cartek or Brise electronic isolator and a start pushbutton. 

Looks quite neat with it's carbon backing plate and fits snugly in the dash. It will have to be wired but I will deal with all that later. Next job was to fit the momo steering wheel adapter again courtesy of ebay for £15 ready for when a decent momo/omp/sparco suede race wheel comes my way.



The brakes have also come in for some attention. A trip to eliseparts resulted in a pair of new AP 290mm discs ad EP ally bells, caliper spacers and new bolt sets for the pair of older 280mm EP discs and bells that came with the project car and that are going on the rear. The Lotus AP calipers were cleaned up and treated to new pistons, seals, pad fixings, crossover pipes and bleed nipples. A new set of pagids from junks went in and the calipers fitted onto the car. Jobs a carrot!!    











Finally to round off a busy few weeks, the front and rear clams that had ben sat outside patiently over the winter waiting for their turn to get some attention were temporarily fiited on the chassis. Mostly this was to make me feel good that all of the hard work recently meant that I was getting closer to having a proper looking car again. It was also a chance to check alignmemt of clam fixings, clearances and to measure up for new aluminium panels that will be fabricated for the rear boot section that the electrics and new Emerald K6 ecu will be hung on. Did I mention that I had ordered a new K6 from Emerald........ more of that in the next installment.










12 Apr 10 .... Assembling the Suspension and Starting on the Engine

Taken a day off work to try and catch up with a few jobs as I am getting behind schedule.......


First task was preparing all the bits for assembling the front and rear suspension on the car. I had already POR15 treated the damper mounting brackets and finished them in POR15 silver. These were then mounted to the chassis with new fixings.

They looked pretty good when finished and should not corrode for a good while. Certainly better than the original galvanized finish. Rightly or wrongly, as they are POR15'd, I did not use any duralac where they face mount on the chassis. 

Next job was to get the bead blast cabinet out and clean up the four ally uprights. The glass beads and anout 70 psi of pressure bring them up quite nicely. Whilst I had the blast cabinet rigged up, I did the rear brake caliper mounting brackets and bolts, front balljoint plinths, rear upper balljoint carrier and all four hubs. I only needed to clean up the front balljoint plinths as the new Spitfire rear toe link kit comes with new ally carriers and cap head fixings. 

Due to the limitations of my little blast cabinet, the cleaning up of the steel items was ok but there were still a few areas where the heavy rust had not been removed. Generally though they cleaned up ok.     


It was then a case of fixing the rear caliper mounting brackets to the rear uprights using Duralac on the face where the steel bracket mates to the ally upright. Then it was off to see Gerald at GST Perfromance in Newmarket to ask him (nicely) if he would press the new bearings suppied by junks into the uprights and fit the hubs.

Splendid chap is Gerald at GST, he turned them around in an hour so that I could then get on with fitting the uprights and suspension to the car during the afternoon. 

This was all pretty straightforward really, taking care to use Duralac on any bolts that were going to be permanently in ally threads (as opposed to being frequently removed for maintenance in which case I didn't use Duralac). The whole thing will be geo'd when it's rolling so I didn't bother measuring anything, just set it up by eye. Whilst I was working on the rear I drilled and bolted up the toe link inner joint steel guards and losely fitted the stainless/teflon brake lines.

I am still waiting for the nitron springs from junks, when he finds them that is! 
   
 










Whilst I was putting the front suspension together, I took the opportunity to pop on the front discs and bells that came with the car which I had loosely assembled. Just to check clearance and to stand nack and imagine what it will look like with a few more bits on. I think I am suffering from too many liong winter days staring at a naked chassis!

Infofrom the SELOC massive suggested that the discs and bells were early Eliseparts versions. The latest versions from Geary have a hard anodised ally bell in black and a different supplier to Hi Force for the discs after some quality problems. I think there was some cracking around the cross drillings. The problem is now sorted so I will be putting these diocs and bells on the rear and ordering the latest discs and bell set for the front from Eliseparts. 


So there was just time in the day to assemble my new engine stand and get the VVC engine bolted on and the whole thing upright.

The original project car had a non-VVC rover K16 and standard gearbox fitted. I did a deal with junks for a VVC and new PGi close ratio box to match to it. The plan is to check over the VVC and fit it plus the new gearbox into the race engine and then over the next winter re-fettle and upgrade the original K16 engine and box as spares for next season (or this season in an emergency). 

I went for a cheap Sealey engine stand in the end and it seesm more than man enough for the job. Whilst I am not planning to do a huge amount to tye engine other than clean it up, check it over, check the timing and fit some new ancillaries, it is so much better working at a decent heignt and being able to rotate the engine.













I started by removing the inlet, belt covers and belts, old water pump and tensioner before plugging the exposed water and oil points before de-greasing. It was then a case of liberally spraying with POR15 marine degreaser, standing back for 20 mins whilst scrubbing the stubborn bits with a small wire brush. Followed this with a washing off with water and a dry with the air hose. came up really well with only a few oxidised areas which I won't worry about    

Engine after being degreased and garage looking just a bit busy with bits ........

So that was it for the day. Allthat was left to do was tidy up, put away the tools, stand back and admire my handywork and plan the jobs fro the erst of the week..........

05 Apr 10 .....Rear subframe and suspension wishbone fitting

 ........The first job of the day was to finish off the trimming of the heat resistant cloth that was glued to the bulkhead yesterday. I had left the most difficult job till last which was to trim around the fuel tank outlets. In the end it was not too difficult to trim with a scalpel and a single patch piece that was glued in place. Turned out ok.



Next job was to fit the fuel filler hose, breather and filler neck. The original car had no filler so I had to source a replacement from a breakers - good 'old Car Transplants. The used filler assembly came with a roll-over valve which was a bonus. A new set of hose clips were also fitted at the same time. Twin clips at each end of the large diamter filler hose and a single on the breather. I will line it all up and tighten the clips when the rear clam is trial fitted later. 








Progress was good today, so I made a start on fitting the rear sub-frame whilst I was on a roll. I had previously cleaned up the subframe with a wire brush and given it a coat of thinned down POR15 silver which gave it an original galvanized look. I put a coat of Duralac on the metal plates that go between the rear aluminium arms and the sub-frame to protect against electrolytic corrosion. 
It was a bit of a job to line up thye subframe but with a hand from my daughter Rhiannon, I managed to get the 4 lower bolts in and tightened up before realising that I had not fitted the tapping blocks that secure the roll bar stay to the subframe. So it was down to Rhiannon again to get her small arms down the longerons and hold the tapping block whilst i secured them with the 2 bolts. All that remained was to bolt the rear stay to the tapping block. Took a bit of time as the stays are 'sprung' slightly and needed to be pushed about 15mm to get the cap head bolt in the rear stay to start. It was then a case of pulling verything up equally and then torqueing up to the settings in the manual.    

    

Whilst I was on a roll, I fitted the front upper and lower wishbones, assembling them with a smear of copperslip on the new wishbone bolts from Eliseparts bought as a wishbone full car set complete with washers and new nylocs. I also fitted the rear upper wishbones. No disasters and all went together like a dream. 


A good day with lot's of progress.

03 Apr 10 ..... Engine bay bulkhead heatshield and PRRT/Laminova Installation

Jobs for today included fitting the aluminised heat resistant cloth to the engine bay bulkhead, the new low level rhs hose from Eliseparts and time permitting,  PRRT hoses and pipework and laminova water/oil cooler.

I had picked up a sheet of aluminium backed heat retardant cloth from ebay a few months ago and only now was I in a position to fit it. It took me ages to get the old glue off the grp and ally. In the end I had to resort to paint thinners as it was the only thing that would shift it!.

It was quite tricky getting the shape right. I started off at the top by shaping the top edge using a combination of scissors to get the rough shape and then trimming with a stanley knife. I wanted to make sure I had covered all of the bulkhead likely to be exposed to heat. It took me a couple of hours to get the cloth trimmed to the right shape before getting the spray glue out. The glue was a heavy duty contact adhesive that required a coating on both the bulkhead and the cloth. The tricky bit was positioning the cloth without touching the bulkhead until it was in the right position as it would tack on contact.

The beauty of using the cloth is that it can be shaped and smoothed to the pretty awful contours of the bulkhead. I did not think I would get away with just one main piece when I started but in the end I managed it. I need to cut out the cloth where the fuel tank filler connections pass through the bulkhead and fix a small piece in the recess, but that shouldn't take long and will still look like it's done in one piece. I was quite pleased with the result in the end.

Once that was done I could then fit the new low level hose from Eliseparts to the o/s cooling pipe. This is quite a tricky job as access is not great and requires getting your hand and arm down the inside of the RH chassis leg. This really is a 2 person job, one to hold the other end of the pipe at the front to stop it being pushed through and one to fit the hose and clip. So it was the long suffering gf emma to the rescue whilst I eased the new hose onto the pipe. These silicone hoses are great as they are pretty supple and elastic making it dead easy to fit them over the pipe. Once this was done I could offer up the PRRT pipework, again from Eliseparts, consisting of a straight section of alloy pipe, silicone tee piece and (grey) PRRT.

I couldn't resist also fitting the laminova oil/water cooler just to see what it would look like and to see where the top hose would line up relative to the engine outlet. 

I ran out of time to fit the by-pass hose, again to see where the hose finishes relative to the engine bypass outlet pipe. That will have to be done tomorrow....

After a final tidying up at the end of the day, all that was left to do was to stand back and admire the progress and take a last photo.  
  


02 Apr 10 .... New Radiator Installed

Lots of small preparatory jobs completed since the last blog ready to put thye new radiator and fan in. Picked up a hardtop from Dave Carr at Elise-Spares during the week. It's a single grp skin motorsport version in black which seemed a good fit when it was offered up. Need to work out how to fix it in place. Concensus seems to be sikalex to the roll bar cover at the rear and either sikaflex along the windscreen surround at the front. May try a removeable fixing so that the roof can be removed.


It was good to see a piece of the body fitted to the car after so many months staring at a bare chassis. The roof was only trial fitted but it did look a little more like a car for an evening. 


The major job for the week was to get the new uprated cooling fan fixed to the Pro-alloy rad and the rad into the car. There were 2 issues to resolve, firstly the new Spal fan didn't come with mounting feet. Why they would sell a fan without it's mounting feet is beyond me. Onto the net and soon got hold of 4 new bits of plastic at 85p each from Spal. Second problem was that one of the fan mounting brackets was missing from the old rad. After a few phonecalls to junks and some scrappies with no success, I resorted to fabricating a new one from 1.5mm steel plate. Didn't take to long and looks just as good as the original. See pic below.   

The other 3 brackets were in need of TLC, so they were treated to an emery cloth de-rust followed by a POR15 treatment and gloss balck paint finish. After a 24hr cure, the brackets were riveted to the pre-drilled hole in the rad, plastic feet clipped onto the fan and a new set of stainless bolts finished the job off. The pic below shows the fan fitted to the new rad sat on the bench ready to go into the car. 


The next job was to fit the rad to the rad housing, fit the housing onto the crashbox and the new Eliseparts red silicone hoses fitted and clamped up. New bolts, washers and nylocs wree fitted all round and stainless hose jubilee clips fitted on both hoses. The new hoses are not cheap, mostly due to the n/s hose having a bleed screw, but they do look good. I was going to fit double clips at each end of the hose, buit the fit was so good and the silicone so supple, I only fitted one stainless clip in the end.  

Here is a view of the n/s hose fitted to thge radiator 

  This is the o/s hose fitted

Other jobs completed during the past week were to finish the install of the safety devices cage. Previously the A frame had been loose fitted whilst I was waiting for the petty bar and footwell bracket to come back from Steve Williams. Picked them up from Steve at Brands the previous weekend. Had to use a tension strap in order to get all the A frame fixings to line up. Then offered up the footwell bracket and petty bar in order to mark the holes to be drilled in the ally floor and footwell side panel. Then it was out with the bracket and petty whilst I climbed into the footwell to drill the 8mm holes for the fixings. Then it was back in with the corner bracket and petty and the 8mm bolts fitted and loosely tightened. Fitting the top bracket on the A frame was a real pig requiring the tension straps again. Finally it went on then had to use a combination of the straps and clamps to line up the bolt that fixes the top clamp. Eventually it all went in and all the fixings were torqued up. Still have to drill an access hole in the bottom side of the n/s sill in order to get to the petty bar footwell bracket fixings.