Topping out!

After a visit to my local bolt suppliers, Wessex Fastners in Swindon, I was able to bolt a few more parts on.

First up the valve covers.

Thats looking better.

Next add 1 x carb.

But dont foget to seal up a few holes.

Finally finish off with a nice new air cleaner assembly.

Its all got to come off again to check various things but I couldnt resist mocking it up.

The next thing on the list is plumbing after I ordered most of the bits I needed from Think Automotive today (very helpful) and I also need a new ACG fan and belt to complete the front.

A bit more on the engine.

Not much done tonight as Im running out of things I can do before I get some more bits and more importantly bolts.

Ive now fitted the painted dipstick support tube. Looks alright I think.

And in a similar vein the ACG bracket and spacers.

This also gives some indication as to why the dipstick tube needed to be modified.

This posting interface is really having trouble!

Thats its for tonight, need bolts for the top ACG bracket support, the tension bar support and the valve covers to move on now.

More engine work.

Back from Japan now and finally getting this blog up to date.

With the chassis rolling I could move it out of the way and get the engine back up on the stand to finish it off.

First up was to sort out the dipstick tube and get that fitted. I trial fitted the ACG and found that the dipstick was trying to pass right through the center of the ACG, no good.

This is because the ACG is supposed to go low on the Ford 302, but due to the steering link bar location it has to go high.

So a fair bit of gentle bending was needed to get the dipstick tube to route another way. But its done and I managed to make a suitable spacer up from one of the ACG bracket spacer off cuts.

All that remains to do is paint it red to match the block and hide the marks on it where it slipped in the vice.

Ive also prepared the ACG bracket spacers for painting and will post up some pictures once they are on the engine.

Next up I figured it was time to set the valve train up so following Tom Monroes book I set the crank up at TDC with No.1 on the ignition stroke. (both valves closed piston at TDC).

In this position a number of the valves could be adjusted, this indexing method saves having to do each valve individually.

Then once the correct valves have been done you rotate the crank 180° and do some more valves and finally another 270° and adjust the final valves.

Here's No.5 inlet is being adjusted (I think it's the inlet!). Basically you tighten the nut down until the push rod just stops turning, then tighten 3/4 of a turn more and lock down the allen grub screw. The 3/4 of a turn puts the correct pre-load on the lifter.

With all valves adjusted the valve train looks like this.

Next job is to fit the ACG bracket and ACG, I cant fit the ACG March pulley as I need a new March fan. The Powermaster fan and pulley are of visibly poorer quality when compared to the March items, I had the March pulley as part of the kit so it felt bad leaving it off. Once I have the fan I can figure the belt length and order that. So more money needs to be spent!

Front Setup.

With the rear sorted I turned my attention to the front. First up the front camber.

I had followed GD's video and used a 1/4" spacer at the top wishbone mount. When measured this proved to give slight +ve camber.

So I removed the 1/4" spacer and changed for 2x2mm spacers giving 4mm. This gave me a slightly better result and I had negative camber.

Correct camber is 0 - 1° negative, so Im going to leave at this for now.

With camber sorted I figured caster should be next so again I used a tip from Simon's build and also used his caster template.

Here I figure I have about 4.5° caster, GD manual say about 4° so I will see how I go with 4.5°.

Happily the other side was the same.

With camber and caster sorted I moved on to set the front toe. Step one center the rack by following GD's rotation and count method. No problem there.

Then clamp a 1m length of angle to each disc.

Measure the distance at front of the angle and then at the rear, rear minus front equals toe in.

After a bit of rotation of the tie rods I managed to get the toe within the required range of 0 - 1.5mm overal. My actual measurement is 0.812mm.

I noticed whilst doing this that the toe was changing oddly as I rotated the tie rods, after a bit of head scratching and a call to Simon we settled on the rack moving. So to stop this I inserted the steering rod to the rack UJ and clamped it down. Problem solved.

So thats the toe correct but which way are my wheels pointing. So to find out I clamped the laser level to the front disc and aimed it at the angle which was clamped over the rear axle with the chassis centerline marks aligned.

I could then mark off the front wheel alignment on each side and measure the distance between the two laser marks. The center of these two laser marks was plotted on the bar and the distance from this new centerline to the chassis center line was measured giving the aligment "error".

I then decided the best way for me to bring the alignment true was to divide the error by 2 and one one side add this distance to my plotted point and on the other side deduct it from the plotted point. Hnce giving me two Target points for the laser marks.

On the picture below S is the firts plotted point and T2 is my target for the alignment to be correct. (T is the first attempt were I went a bit wrong!!)

So all I did was wind the two tie rods until my laser lined up on the T2 points.

I rechecked the front toe and it was spot on so, all wheels pointing the correct way with front and rear toe in correct.

The final thing to set was the bump steer. Again GD's method was followed and a 1m bar placed on the floor under the one on the disc.

Here we are at "ride height" the floor bar corrected to be level with the disc bar.

Going through the full range I noticed a slight bump steer effect in full bump.

Measuring the actual range that this effect started to take place shows it to be over the last 1/2 to 1" of travel. I attempted to resolve the bump steer by moving the rack but I could not eliminate it as my rack was already at its maximum adjustment position. If this becomes a problem on the road Ill reset the steering with the rack in the mid position to give some adjustment.

So Im happy thats all sorted. I fitted the final two wheels and rolled it out into the sun for the first time!(Blogspot posting system is really screwed today, each picture I insert adds about 5 carriage returns to each line of the post!)

Rear wheels on the wagon.

With the axle finally sorted I could bolt on the shocks, no major problems here apart from not being able to use the new washers I purchased as they fouled the shock adjusters!

So I used a couple of suitable washers instead.

For the top it is clear that washers are required to space the shock in the mount.

So suitable washers purchased and fitted.

For the rear most mount I have left the bolt lose as this will be replaced with a longer bolt when the roll bars are obtained, I must say it would be significantly more helpful if GD supplied the roll bar bracket with the chassis. After all Ive had the mounts fitted to the chassis so why not supply the brackets to fit now?

Simply repeat on the other side, fit the road wheel and lower to the floor for the first time. Wahey!

Another job done!

Formats a bit naff on this post as blogger appear to be having issues, I cant sort it out.

Axle finally in place.

Again a long time since the last update and again this one will be a work in progress as all my pictures are about 6000 miles away. Its 3 a.m and Ive nothing better to do as I cant sleep on my first night in Japan, I'm here on business for 4 days.

One thing that's struck me already is how well organised everything is, its clean, tidy and the trains run bang on time.

Back to what this site is really about.

Well we left off with the axle built up finally and ready to fit the chassis back on, happy to say that fitting the chassis 2nd time round was much easier once I knew the order to fit it in. I also found that by setting the front of the chassis at the right height enabled the diff carrier bolts to line up much better than last time. With all bolts in I set up the measurement from scratch again and found that the N/S now toed out!

Most annoying! So I measured again to make sure ans sure enough something must have changed when putting it bacl together. So there was only one thing for it, I'd have to adjust the shims with the axle in place.

With the chassis jacked up I was able to withdraw the lower pivot shaft to the rear of the car and following Simons advice I used an old bolt wrapped in masking tape to stop any washers shifting out of place.

With pivot shaft removed I could easily cu the lock wire away.

Undo the bolts and adjust the shimming, I removed teh N/S front shim and did the bolts back up. Put it all back together and remeasured to toe. Horrah! it was within the required vales and gave me a final setting of N/S toe in 0.26mm, O/S toe in 0.54mm giving total toe 0.79mm with a thrust of 0.7mm to the N/S.

So I jacked it up and removed the pivot shaft again so I could lock wire the pivot bracket bolts.

And put it all back to gether properly. Crossed fingers and remeasured, no change!

Job done!