02/04/06 New rad and cooling

Been busy with work for a few weeks so sorry for lack of updates.

I collected the new radiator and other cooing components this week from Pace Products. Here are a couple of pics.

The new coolant swirl pot above left is a mirror image of the one on the right as it will now be fitted on the oposite side. They also swaged the end of the coolant pipes which I removed and modified from the left pod. All cooling will now run down the right pod.

The new fans have had flanges removed so they fit the new rad and have also been modified to fit stainless nyloc nuts in the top fixings. I have drilled the mounting plates on the new rad to fit it to the cars mounting points and trial fitted it as show in the pic below.

The engine has now been bored and honed to fit the pistons and the decks have also been machined as they were out by a few thou. The crank and other parts should be balanced this week. I should have the everything back within the next few weeks so I can get on with building the engine. The new crank vibration damper arrived this week but it required some machining which I did on the lathe at work. I dropped this of to be balanced with the other parts. Other parts in this week were a new 140 amp alternator and thermostat housing. Pics of them below.

11/04/06 Mellow Yellow

Spent some time cleaning and painting the transaxle this weekend. Here are a couple of pics.

All primed and ready for top coat. Thank God for a sunny day!

Mellow Yellow. Nice! Same colour as the Daffs in the backgound.

This week I shall be making the bulkhead panel and the starting the box to hold all the electronics.

17/04/06 Panel making

Not an easy job as the bulkhead panel is a very complex shape. I started by making a cardboard template as seen in the pic below.

After that I went on to start making the panel from 1.5mm NS4 aluminium sheet which is the same as the type used to skin the chassis. Parts of it were folded on my new sheet metal folder. The aluminium is quite hard and the folder was at its limits. It will be made from several parts. One main part then serveral pieces welded on. The main part has been made and can be seen in the pic below.

Before cutting the small pieces for the rest of the bulkhead panel I decide to make the electronics box. Now the metal folder was really tested as this panel is a full 900mm wide. The folder was almost bending as much as the ally. The panel required some extra force by me leaning on it on the bench to get the final required angles. The main part of the box is in one piece. There will be two mesh end panels one of which will have a small dc axial fan mounted on it to aid cooling. The lid will be a flat sheet of carbon fibre to keep the weight down. Here is a pic of the electronics box with the Holley ECU placed inside.

The panel will be fixed to the chassis tubes above and below the box. The wiring loom will pass through it and the bulkhead into the engine bay.

This weekend I purchased another dump valve (this is the third) and a K&N air filter. The filter is 254mm long, 191mm at the base and 127mm at the top. The inlet for the filter is 152mm diameter. I will be making a panel to hold the air filter into postion in the left hand carbon pod. Here is a pic of the filter and Turbosmart Supersonic dump valve.

The engine is still away although it has been bored and honed. The crank will be trial fitted and bearing sizes checked in case the crank needs honing before all the components are fully balanced. I'm still hopefull of it returning first week of May. I'll keep you posted. I'm ordering a few more parts from the States this week.

25/04/06 Good news

First the good news! I should have the engine block and the balanced parts back next week so the engine build can go ahead.

header porting

On examining the exhaust headers some time ago I noticed that the ports on the head and those on the headers did not match. The head exhaust ports are square and the header ports are D shaped. This will be the cause of two problems. Firstly poor exhaust flow which is more critical now that the car car will be supercharged and secondly the flanges will get hotter than they should due to the hot gasses hitting the inside of the flange, creating hot spots. 

I decided to remove some of the material from the exhaust flanges the match the two ports. Here is a pic of the exhaust port before modification.

You can see it the pic above the area of material that needs to be removed. That is the soot covered area. The outer line of that area shows the square shape of the exhaust port on the head. Good shot of by favorite shoes too!

In the pic below you can see the carbide burr used in the die grinder to remove the unwanted material.

I have to say that the carbide burr that I used is one of the best tools for the job I have ever used. It cut through the stainless steel like it was plastic.

The next pic is the final shape of the port.

Once I had used the burr to get the shape of the port I finished it off by using a small sanding drum in the Dremel.

I just had a hard time trying to remove a plug from the oxygen sensor port on one of the headers. I had to heat it to cherry red with the blow torch before it would let go. Took the best part of an hour to remove it.

The exhaust headers are going to be dropped off for ceramic coating tomorrow. This is in an effort to try and keep down the engine bay temperatures. They will be coated both inside and out. Black on the inside and a chrome ceramic finish on the outside.

windscreen surround

I took the windscreen surround to a grp specialist www.option1sportscars.co.uk  near Bromsgrove to be worked on and sprayed. This item only arrives part finished from the Ultima factory and to save time I decided to get a specialist to do the job.

Till next time.