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.