Speed pulse ring.

As I mentioned during the proshaft install I thought I may have to remove the prop to fit the speed pulse ring which I had designed.

The theory was that a toothed ring would be fitted to the propshaft and an inductive sensor used to drive the speedometer. To this end I designed a suitable ring.

I then sourced an engineering firm and had it made.

Creative Water Jet were chosen and after many discussions with Richard Miles at Creative Water Jet about the design and how best to do it the parts were made and delivered.


I even got as far as starting to paint them. However a quick chat to Andy B and the plans have changed!

Andy was concerned that the prop would move around under load (something Richard also voiced but I in my wisdom decided to gloss over!) and that the the prop tube may not be totally round.

Andys preferred option is to stick magnets to the diff input flange and mount the sensor there, so thats what Im going to do.

So if any can think of a use of a very attractive aztec style sun let me know!!

Finishing off the shift mech.

As previously shown the shift mech just would not work as Getrag intended with its new location in a GD chassis. A few mods were needed.

1. Separate the gear shift.


2. Cut off the silly lump at the top.


Here's all the relevant bits before modification.



3. Get your engineering firm to weld on a flag for the gear lever, albeit the wrong way round. Slight mix up with the drawings and the flag is 90° out.

No pic of it on its own Im afraid, too keen to get on!

4. Clean and repaint mech carrier.

One with the shift lever in place.


5. Get engineers to extend extend shift rod by 93mm


6. Refit with the spacers, new rubber bushes and shiney new washers!

Now that sounds easy, but there was a small problem. In routing the fuel line in this area I managed to get on of teh clips right in the way. The shift mech spacer fouled on the clip and caused a hard touch, something I wanted to avoid to ensure if teh box moved I wouldnt get any problems.

The white paint marks where put on the clip to leave an impression of the spacer, with this done I then took the spacer back to PJO for a clearance area to be milled out.

Job done, no more hard touch.


Both spacers in, the threaded rod thread locked in place and the shift rod re-attached.

I left it overnight for the thread lock to harden and then finished the install.




I have to say Im a bit chuffed with the way its turned out.

Return Fuel line

I have for sometime been thinking that I may fit fuel injection in the future. So to make this as easy as possible I have decided to run a return fuel line in now, whilst I can easily get to hte chassis. Instead of another hard line Ive used Aeroquip push on hose as its more flexible and easier to route, it does however have a much bigger OD.

You can see from the previous post that it was roughly routed in when the prop went in, now its time to fix it.

To mount the hose I used clips, longer bolts and some section of 8mm tube. Job done.

Oh and Ive fitted the hard line adapter as well, so much easier with the right one! (engine bay end was a Veraflare not designed for metric pipe)

Propshaft

Somewhat unexpectedly a box was delivered last week containing my propshaft. I thought this was going to be one of the bits to be collected on my planned trip up to GD, more on that later.

So with it here it would be rude not to fit it! Now Ive heard all sorts of stories about it being a nightmare job due to the space restrictions and chassis tubes, in all honesty I didnt find it too bad. Now that may be because Im not using a tremec box. Just removed the brake union and jiggled it around till it went in!



Ive not tightened it up yet as it may have to come out again for the fitting of the speedo pulse ring, more on that later!

Coil Bracket

Yet another little job to be knocked off the list. I didnt want to mount the coil to the body of the car and the supplied bracket did not readily fit any of the mounting locations available on the engine. Now I have seen these things secured by just one bolt, but I didnt like that so I took a template from the front of the left hand cylinder head and designed a bracket.



Cleaned and sprayed with clear engine enamel it looks good, the coil is now securely held in place.

Oil Pressure switch

Whilst sorting out the oil plumbing I had originally intended to mount the oil pressure switch, for the idiot light, in one of the oil lines. It then occurred to me that I could save a few quid and mount it into the block, where it would normally be mounted!

So I returned the expensive fancy adapter for a refund and exchanged it for a much cheaper threaded fitting.

One small problem though, I could not tighten it in with the fuel pump in place, so guess what, I had to take the pump out. Luckily I had a spare gasket and was able to refit the pump the same day!


Thats another job sorted and a few quid saved.

Shift Mech extension.

Moving swiftly on to the next bit of metal work needed.

The shift mech. was removed to install the power train, a small problem was then encountered when attempting to fit it back in....it would not fit! The first of the tunnel cross members was bang on right where the shift leaver was supposed to be.

So as this could be a minor inconvenience, i.e no gears, I figured I had better sort it out.

After measuring things up I figured I needed to shift the mech. back around 90mm to clear the cross brace and give the bracket suitable strength to do the job. In the end I came up with a H shaped spacer that clears the cross member, flexed the old AutoCAD brain cells and made a wooden mock up.

After a few minutes juggling my mock up was in and I'm quite pleased. Ive only made on side as the other is identical.

You can see in the above picture how the gearshift would have fouled the chassis cross member, the attractive bit of 1960's banister rail has moved the mech back to a position where it will work.

Slightly wishing I had painted the gear box now, though its only aesthetics for these pictures!

I think the shift position is roughly around the position that the Tremec is so I'm quite please with that.

The drawing goes to PJO today and hopefully I may have the finished articles this week!

Next is to get the shift rod lengthened by the final figure of 93mm that the mech. has been displaced., then cut down the gear shift itself and modify to allow fitting of a new lever.

Once that's done its time to buy some stuff from GD!

Clutch Bracket arrives!

1 week after the gearbox mount was collected I was able to go back and get the clutch bracket. Everything looked good again.

After forgetting to allow for the weld fillet in my design I had to grind a fair bit of material away on both the bracket and the slave retaining clamp. Of more serious concern was the fact that the slave didn't fit! So A little light hacksaw and Dremel work was required to modify the lower edge of the bracket.

With that done I trial fitted and it all lined up nicely.

A quick clean with the powered wire brush (bloomin hurts when it hits your finger!) sander and degreaser saw it ready and painted.


Final trial fitting is now done, all I need to do now is sort out a suitable return spring to make sure the release bearing keeps off of the diaphragm fingers during normal driving.





The only thing that I cant verify is the slave angle, to do that I need the body and master cylinder so I can operate the clutch. If the fork drags the pushrod through a steep angle I will need to pack either the front or back of the slave cylinder out from he bracket to compensate. Hopefully it will be OK as it is though.

Well chuffed, another job crossed off the list.

Bracket arrives!

Hoorah! The brackets have arrived...


They look exactly like what I wanted and even better, they fit!

So I cleaned them up (not so well it turns out) sprayed them in VHT engine enamel red and baked them in the oven (not so popular at home now!).


With some nice new stainless hardware they are bolted in and the gearbox is supported!



Clutch bracket ready tomorrow apparently, so watch this space....

Brackets drawing closer....

Confirmed last week that the gearbox brackets should be ready on Friday, once thats done the clutch bracket goes for manufacture (if the mount brackets are good) and I can sort out the gearshift extension.

Had a good chat with Andy at GD on Friday to sort out a few options and I think I have decided now to fit the anti roll bar now instead of waiting unti lthe car is finished! Just need to work out if it will fit over the water pump pully.

Progress...?

Well the engineering firm has found my drawings and promised to start next week..... Watch this space!

Hmmm, one month on and no sign of my metal work yet. May need to find another engineering firm....

Gear box mount spacer

One thing I neglected to do was level the gearbox! So with jack under the box (not in the box....ah well Ill get my coat!)

I realised I need a 22 mm spacer between the mount and the gear box. This will also solve the issue of clearnace between the mount and the gearbox itself.

Again some AutoCAD work and the drawing was ready, its with PJO as well!

Gear box mount.

A few bits of wood are all very nice but I cant see them being a permanent solution!

One of the issues I have is that the mount location on the Getrag is around 50mm forward in car line to the foremost mounting hole welded to the chassis.

So a bespoke plate is going to be needed to make up the gap and fix to the bottom of the Energy Suspension mount.

Luckily the mount exactly matches the getrag bolt spacing so thats a bit of luck!


With the mount in place I fixed a card template to the chassis and started the mock up process. In the end I took various measurements from the chassis holes and used the chassis cross member behind the mounting wings as a datum.


Knowing the mount holes centres I then entered the whole thing into AutoCAD, played around a bit, printed it out 1:1 and made V1 MDF template.


With this fitted I noted that I could not get a socket on to the mount bolts, this is required as there is a bit of jiggling about require to get all the bolt holes lined up before all the bolts can be located and tightened due to the slots in the mount.

So I modified the template to give access.


With the mount all fitted and OK I returned to the computer and made the final changes, spent ages working out how to apply dimensions, made a drawing block template and voila finished drawing.

I also added the 8mm threaded hole for the exhaust mount and a strengthening rib under the plate as the gearbox mounts outside of the chassis bolt locations.

I should at this point offer major thanks to Simon for his help with drawing standards and advice. - Cheers mate!

The bracket is now out with PJO Engineering in Swindon for Manufacture.

Clutch fork mods.

Now the engine was in I could start to look at some of the little jobs that need doing. the first of which was to check that the clutch fork would clear the chassis.

I has already removed the 2 points from the end of the fork to give greater clearance, but looking at it in situ I decided that the return spring hole had to go as well.


So out with the trusty dremel and about half an hour later the fork was modified, this is as far as I can go without the slave to move the clutch and check clearance.

Next step on the clutch is finalise the slave bracket design and get it built!

Engine update....

IT FITS!!!!!!

Well stone me, it went it in without too many protestations. We had a little bit of mucking about with the engine mounts but eventually she was in. To top it off the gearbox appears to fit OK as well!



Many thanks to Andy J and "its not a cravat!" Malcom T.

Well chuffed!