Getting a new power train for a Europa
by: James Rice, Redwood City,
California, USA
Contents:
The back story -
Getting
the old motor out -
Getting
the new motor in -
Pictures
of the motor on a bare chassis
Putting the new motor in
At last the time came put the new motor in.
If anything it was a bit of an anti-climax, since everything went very
smoothly. The Vauxhall motor has only two winch points one at the
front-left corner of the head, and the other at the right rear (of course,
two winch points is still better then having none like on old motor).
These winch points take 8mm bolts. The motor has to come into the engine
bay at a fairly steep angle. I found that using a load leveler on the
hoist helped to get the right angle of attack, but I still needed a strap
around the back of the gearbox in the end (see figure 18). Getting the
motor into place is made rather easier by the fact that there's no rear
hoop to get in the way at this point. I found that the whole thing just
slid in trivially, and the motor mounts lined up perfectly.
Once the motor mounts at the front were
finger tight, the rear hoop was installed, and then the gearbox mount
bolts held the rear hoop in place. The front motor mounts could then be
tightened up. At this point, the motor seemed to be solid enough that the
hoist could be removed. Because I'm paranoid I left a jack under the
gearbox until the rear hoop was tack welded into place.
Figure 18
Since the next major step would be to tack
weld the rear hoop into place, and then really to start putting things
together, I carefully worked around the motor making sure that everything
seemed to fit and that there was nothing obvious that might cause me to
have to take the motor out again. For example, I connected the shift
linkage and made sure that it seemed to work properly, and I put in the
crossbeam and made sure that it didn't foul the reverse gear switch on the
side of the gearbox. This can be seen in figure 19. I made extensive use
of blue masking tape both to hold things in place loosely and to label
pieces. Visible dangling in the middle of the frame is the new heater
cable. At the bottom of the picture is the shift linkage all in place.
Figure 19
Once the rear hoop was tack welded into
place, I got down to the serious process of putting things together.
In figure 20 we see a similar view looking
the other way into the engine bay. With the crossbeam in place and held in
finger tight with the front two bolts on each side, the crossbeam could be
squared to to the chassis to keep it clear of the reversing switch. Once
tightened up, the remaining two holes were drilled at the back on each
side of the crossbeam.
At the top of the picture can be seen the
plumbing that's to go to the swirl pot. At the bottom on the right is a
pile of wires for the ignition and fuel injection. The drive shafts have
not been installed. The left one can be seen dangling in the centre left
of the picture.
Figure 20
The next step was to put the rear
suspension together as is shown in figure 21. Since all of the drilling
had already been done, this was simply as matter of slipping the drive
shaft onto the splines and attaching the control arms. In my case, both
links were adjustable in length, and had been preset by Richard to have
pretty close to the right camber, so all I had to do was hook them up,
checking the bits of masking tape to see which bits were supposed to go on
which side. When I came to do the second side, I found it much harder to
get the holes for the links to line up. This was due to a very slight
difference in the shape of my chassis from the one that Richard used
(probably about 1/32"). I was able to adjust for this by adding a turn to
each of the right hand links.
With the rear suspension in place the rear
brakes and hubs could be put back together. To put the hubs back on I
cleaned the old Loctite off the splines with a sharp chisel. This left the
splines clean enough that the hub would just slide on firmly. Before
putting the hub on I bolted the home-made hub plate to the hub with the
lug nuts, and then put the hub on, applying blue Loctite to the splines
and to the thread of the stub axle. I then tightened up the hub nut with a
new tab washer to the requisite 150Ft lbs. Once the hub plate was removed
the tab washer could be bent up to secure the hub nut in place.
Putting the brakes back together took a
little thought, since I had failed to note which way round the springs go.
The best thing to do is to note carefully how they go on the shoes. It's
important to note that they will only go one way properly, and they go
behind the shoes. The spring with the wire gap in it goes at the top, and
the solid spring goes at the bottom.
I found that there was a little "H" shaped
piece of metal that sat in the hole at the top of one of the shoes. On
Richard's advice I took this out. As far as I could tell, all that it did
was to prevent the shoe from touching the slave cylinder and thereby
preventing the brakes from tightening up properly.
Putting the hub back on and adjusting the
brakes involved another little bit of surgery. On Richard's advice, I
measured the position of the toothed adjuster wheel on the slave cylinder
to see where it lined up on the drum. I then drilled a 1/2" hole through
the drum. This has to be done slowly by piloting once with (say) a 1/4"
bit and then going straight to the 1/2". Don't use any lubricant, just
drill slowly. Once you've got a hole in the face of the drum it is easy to
adjust the brakes. Slip the drum over the shoes and, using a screwdriver,
tighten up the brakes through the hole until the brakes begin to drag.
Then, take a leather-faced mallet and tap the drum all around firmly, but
not too hard. This will help to seat the shoes in the drum. You will then
find that the brakes are freed up, and that you can spin the drum again.
You just repeat this process until the brakes don't free up when you tap
them. You can then back off the adjuster a couple of clicks and the brakes
are nice and tight. This approach is good because it will work even if
there's significant wear in the drum leaving a lip inside the drum.
Figure 21
Figure 22 shows the top view of the
suspension once everything is in place, other than the bolt connecting the
brace at the top of the shock tower. I had not yet drilled the necessary
hole when this picture was taken. The dark line snaking over the shift
linkage is the speedo cable, which has to be kept out of the way during
the welding of the rear hoop. The tack weld on the left-hand end of the
rear hoop is just visible on the far left.
Figure 22
Once the drive train was in place that left
three key subsystems incomplete; the coolant plumbing, the fuel system
plumbing, and the wiring.
The coolant system came nominally with all
of the plumbing already there ready to hook up. In principle, all I had to
do was mount the new swirl pot on the side of the engine bay and hook
things up. In practice, although things went pretty smoothly, getting the
plumbing hooked up was not simply a matter of drilling a couple of holes
and tightening up a couple of jubilee clips.
The first problem I had was that the
plumbing that came with the motor had been hooked up on a chassis with no
body work (I can hardly blame anyone for this). This is shown well here.
The way this was done had two problems, the first was that without any
bodywork there the dummied-up position of the swirl pot was a few inches
outboard of its final position. This can be seen fairly easily here. This
minor mislocation meant that although I had the right number of pipes,
they weren't all of the right length, nor were they necessarily facing the
right way.
The second problem I had was that had I
installed the swirl pot where the plumbing would have wanted it to go it
would have fouled the pizza tray (rear luggage tray). This is an
understandable mistake, since Richard is mostly focussed on building race
cars and/or cars that aren't used for commuting. I ended up having to
mount the swirl pot a fair bit further forwards and therefore had to
shorten the pipes considerably. This ended up putting the downwards pipe
from the swirl pot rather close to the exhaust. I ended up protecting it
with a roll of heat shield tape. The swirl pot assembly is shown in figure
23.
Figure 23
Another problem I had was that I couldn't
quite get the pipes to go around the rocking gate assembly correctly
without fouling it. I ended up going to the radiator shop next door and
grabbing a hose there with a bit more offset. It may be that this problem
was caused by my having cut the coolant pipes short to a significantly
different length from Richard. If I were to to it again, I think I'd get
Richard to measure the length of pipe proud of the chassis spine bulkhead
and draw me a template to aid in mating up the pipes.
On the other side of the motor I also had a
few problems mating up the plumbing with the water pump. In practice, I
found that the easiest thing was to take apart the plumbing that Richard
had shipped me and shorten and/or adjust it piecemeal until things fit. I
ended up getting a second hose from the radiator shop for this side too.
As I mentioned above, I now have a few
problems with squeaks caused by the coolant pipes. Before you put the
motor in I would suggest drilling the chassis to accommodate some sort of
pipe clamps to hold the plumbing in place inside the box section of the
chassis. These runs of pipes are fairly long, and not only do you not want
them banging against things and squeaking, but you also don't want to
stress them with excessive shaking around.
With the coolant plumbing in place, I
pressed on to installing the fuel pump. The fuel injection requires a high
pressure pump, and Richard shipped this along with a fancy looking high
pressure side fuel filter mounted on an aluminium plate. I mounted this
plate beside the right hand fuel tank on the inboard bodywork. I bolted it
on a bit higher than the fuel line couplings on the tank with the
electrical terminals facing upwards. Braided fuel hose then coupled the
output of the pump to the input of the high pressure fuel filter, and from
the filter up to the fuel rail above the throttle bodies. The fuel line
from the T joining the tanks went through a small low pressure fuel filter
and into the input of the fuel pump. Another section of braided fuel hose
then got connected to the output of the fuel pressure regulator on the
bottom, and this fed back to the T piece in the balance pipe for the fuel
return to the tanks.
The wiring was perhaps the most daunting
part of the process, though in fact things worked out pretty well.
Everything that came with the new motor was excellent, with all of the
wires colour coded and labeled with masking tape. The wiring that was in
the car was a different matter. I had to contend with a considerable
number of kludgey rewiring attempts by previous hands.
In practice, with all of the wiring already
supplied for the Engine Management/Control Unit, all I had to do was hook
things up. For reasons I still don't quite understand, the manufacturer of
the ECU doesn't make a mounting bracket for the ECU. On Richard's
prompting, I made an aluminium plate to which I stuck some self-adhesive
velcro. This I then bolted to the side of the engine bay behind the right
hand shock tower with a couple of spacers to make sure that I could zip
tie the ECU to the plate once it was velcroed into place. I also organised
things so that I could put another zip tie around the plug, thus making
sure that it won't shake out. This is shown in figure 24.
The coils just bolt to some convenient spot
on the right hand side of the engine bay. Before you mount them you should
think about what sort of air cleaner you're going to use. I ended up
having to move the coils because they fouled the air box (see figure 24).
Figure 24
With these larger lumps of wiring fixed to
the car, all that has to be done is hook up all of the remaining dangling
wires. To get everything in place you'll need a bunch of spade and bullet
connectors, and a few eye connectors as well. The first problem that came
up was that the plugs on the end of the old wiring loom going to the
alternator didn't mate up even remotely with the new alternator. After
another chat with Richard, I got it all fixed up. The tactic was to cut
open the old plugs. This reveals four spade connectors; two big ones, and
two small ones.
The big black wire has to end up with an
eye connector and gets to mount on the end of the alternator mounting stud
at the bottom. Be careful when you take the old spade connector off. At
least in my case, the wire didn't have much slack to spare. The big brown
and white wire goes on either one of the big terminals at the bottom of
the alternator. The thin brown and yellow wire is for the ignition warning
light, and goes to the small connector at the bottom next to the big wire.
The remaining wire (brown/white) is not used. You could just cut it off,
though I led it back along the loom and taped it in place - just in case I
screwed up totally. The wiring for the alternator is visible in figure 29.
You should check these details with Richard in case the alternator you get
is different in some way.
Two wires from the new loom have to go to
the fuel pump. These need eye connectors. It's important to get the
connections the right way around on the fuel pump, of course. The polarity
of the connections is marked on the pump next to the terminals, which are
sized differently. Unfortunately, the pump came with neither nuts and
washers nor with eye connectors. I found that the metric threads on the
terminals didn't mate very well with the imperial sized connectors I was
able to get at the local Radio Shack, and I ended up drilling out an
undersized connector in order to get a pair of connectors that would
ensure the polarity of the terminals. I would suggest preparing this stuff
on the bench before you install the fuel pump. You will need a 4mm nut and
a 5mm nut for the terminals.
Since my old tacho was shot, I had also got
a new Elliot tacho from Richard. the cost of rebuilding the original was
almost as much as a new one, and I wasn't concerned with an original look.
The new tacho is wired slightly differently, and you have to run a wire
for it from the engine bay especially. I ended up doing this by passing
the wire down through the bulkhead in the spine of the chassis, and then
up through the hole in the spine under the arm rest and from there along
the top of the spine to the dashboard under the console. Had I thought to
do this before I had the motor in place I might have tried to run the new
wire along where all the others run, but it seemed too hard by this time.
When the old tacho comes out, the two white bullet connectors that go into
the back of the old tacho just get mated together. The other wires are
hooked up as follows:
The green wire going to the old tacho goes
to the red wire on the new tacho.
The black wire on the new tacho goes to the
black on the old tacho (ground), and gets Siamesed with the black wire
from the pea bulb on the new tacho.
The green wire on the new tacho goes to the
newly-run wire from the engine bay, which connects to the white/brown wire
on the new wiring loom.
The red wire for the pea bulb on the new
tacho hooks up with the old wire for the pea bulb on the old tacho.
Connecting the starter back up was a little
tricky. Unfortunately, although Richard's advice was always great, it
turned out that my car was one of the Federal ones made towards the end of
1973. These cars had some sort of logic box that was, I think, supposed to
defeat the starter if you tried to start the car without wearing your seat
belt - and possibly a bunch of other conditions. By the time I bought the
car, the seat belt light and the switches on the seat belt latches had
long since been disabled. Whoever did all this still left the starter
defeat relay in the engine bay wired up. It took me a bit of poking around
with a meter to see what was going on.
Ultimately, I was able to find the right
festoons of wires to connect up to the starter. The terminals on the
starter were clearly not designed to accommodate the number of wires that
one gets on a Federal spec car piling up on the starter, so it was a
little tricky to get everything on there, but ultimately possible. A
similarly large bundle of wires connected to the earth point on the
chassis where the diagonal brace used to be.
With all these wires in place the only
connections I had yet to make were the main "-" terminal connection from
the battery, which I connected to the bell housing, the water temperature
sender wires, the remaining power connections for the ECU, the oil
pressure capillary connector, the throttle cable, the speedo cable, and
the clutch cable.
I found that there was a little trick to
getting the speedo cable in place. Not only was it necessary to pull on
the cable inner to make sure that there was enough sticking out, but I
found it invaluable to use a mirror to make it possible to see down into
the hole into which the cable goes. Unless you do this, you can be
deceived into thinking that the cable has mated properly when it hasn't.
The end of the cable outer is waisted, and you'd think that the plastic
pin that's supposed to hold in the speedo cable would fit into the waist
on the cable, but it doesn't, the cable has to go in far enough that the
pin goes on the sloped part after the waist. It's easy to get this wrong,
I found, since when the cable inner doesn't mate properly into the drive
on the gearbox, the waist on the cable lines up perfectly with the hole
for the pin, giving you the illusion that you've got it just right.
The oil pressure capillary is connected
using an adapter that I took off the old motor. The motor came with an old
electronic pressure sensor in its place. I suppose I could have reused
this had I been planning to switch to an electronic oil pressure gauge,
but I gather that the capillary driven ones are more accurate.
The clutch cable proved to be a slight
problem. The motor came with a bracket to fit the clutch cable, but the
cable wouldn't fit. Although the inner was (just) long enough to reach
from the left hand side of the motor (mine is a LHD car) around to the
right, the cable's outer was about 9" too short to be able to make it to
the bracket. Luckily, inside the cockpit, the clutch cable fits into a
little triangular bracket against the spine of the chassis. This bracket
is held in with two rivets and two bolts. It was an easy matter to drill
it out and move it back by the requisite distance. Getting it unbolted and
put into its new location, though, was a two man job, since there was no
good way to be under the car with a spanner whilst tightening from above.
The throttle cable proved to be a nightmare
to get in place. Unlike the simple and efficient connector that one
usually finds on Webers, the throttle cable mounts in a manner that's
practically impossible to install. Like Webers in a similar configuration,
the throttle cable mounts between the pairs of throttle bodies. That's as
far as the similarity goes. The cable is gripped by a very curious little
device that almost defies description. It's like a bolt only with no
thread on the shank. The shank is the part that swivels in the cable mount
on the throttle bodies, and it has a hole drilled crosswise, through which
the cable passes. The cable is clamped in place by a long allen-headed
grub screw along the axis of the shank, and up its centre. The remaining
shank of the grub screw sticking out of the end of the other shank then
takes a nylock nut and a washer.
The only way I could figure out how to fit
this was to screw the grub screw in tight with the assembly out of the
car, and then screw the nut over the grub screw until it was almost as far
on as it would be when tightened all the way up. I then undid the grub
screw taking the nut and washer with it. I then took off the bracket onto
which the throttle cable outer mounts and cut a slot in it to allow the
cable inner to pass through, but not the ferrule at the end of the cable
outer. This would give enough slack in the cable to be able to install it.
I then put the screw assembly into place using the nut on the end of the
grub screw to give enough purchase to get it in. This is very fiddly. It
was then possible to slip the throttle cable inner through the screw
assembly and tighten it up with a spanner on one end and a small allen key
on the other. Once the grub screw was tight on the cable inner, it was a
small matter to tighten up the couple of remaining turns on the nut,
leaving a little slack so that it could swivel, and then slip the cable
inner through the slot in the mounting bracket. I should note that this
was only possible at all because at the time I had no air filters in
place. With any sort of air box in place, this whole process would be
impossible.
Getting an air filter proved to be a lot
harder than I had expected. Richard had said that it would be easy to get
"sock" type air filters that I would zip tie on over the bell mouths. This
proved no to be the case. For whatever reason, such air filters proved to
be really hard to get in the US. I tried talking to the technical support
people at K&N, and they were pretty clueless, though they did end up
sending me a huge catalogue that arrived weeks too late for me to be able
to use it. After much phoning around, I managed to track down a dealer for
ITG filters (TWM Induction - 805-967-9478). The chap I talked to there
(Gary Pollard) was pretty clued up, and even knew the motor I was talking
about.
The reason why getting a filter assembly
such as K&Ns to fit it so difficult is that the bell mouthes are large
relative to the size of the normal kind of backing plate that one would
use. Even though the spacing and drilling of the throttle bodies is the
same as for 48mm Webers/Dellortos, the bell mouthes come so close together
and are sufficiently large that normal K&N backing plate assemblies and
filters won't fit. Anyway, the ITG filter is just fine, though expensive,
and they will cut a backing plate for you to the right dimensions. If you
do this, you should measure the separation of the centres of the two
middle throttle bodies, but it should be the same as mine, which was
102mm. You then need to ask them for an ITG JC50/100 filter and a 00-JC-50
backplate drilled to 102mm. Note that you need to specify that they should
not drill the extra breather holes that are normal for Webers. You will
also need a can of filter oil, which is different from K&N oil. In my case
they threw in the oil, since there was already a non-trivial upcharge for
the backplate drilling. I seem to recall that they carry backing plates at
101mm and 103mm, but if you want to do it right, you'll have to get the
non-standard drilling. The whole filter assembly came to $176.69, which is
pretty expensive for an air filter, but it turned out really nice, and I'm
very pleased with it. The filter is shown installed in figure 25.
There are two other places where you may
end up putting filters. You'll need to do something about the valve cover
breather holes, and you may want to plug the hold on the fuel pressure
regulator with a filter as I did. The valve cover actually has two
breather hole. One I plugged with a vacuum plug, the other I plugged with
a filter. The two filters I used are also shown in figure 25. I mounted
the filter for the fuel pressure regulator on a left-over piece of
L-section extrusion. The filters in question are:
K&N, 62-2480 crankcase breather cleaner.
9/16" flange - $7.55
K&N, 62-1090 crankcase breather with
mounting stud 3/8" O/d - $14.95
I got them from Cyberspace automotive, who
were very helpful and went the extra mile to try to get me the air filters
I wanted.
Figure 25
The power connections for the ECU come from
where the old coil used to be. The best thing to do to find the right wire
is to check with Richard, you don't want to get this one wrong.
There are two temperature senders on the
motor; one that goes to the dashboard and one that goes to the ECU. The
one for the dashboard ended up being the one from the old motor. Sadly,
although Richard had got pretty well everything in place, due to a last
minute screwup, he didn't ship the temperature sender for the ECU.
Unfortunately, I didn't know it was missing until I was right near the end
champing at the bit to get the motor running. Without the temperature
sender you can't put in the coolant, so you're stuck. Richard rapidly sent
me one, and it arrived in a few days, which gave me a little time to work
on the exhaust bracket, and other bits and pieces. Since the radiator was
in bits to re-core, I had the radiator shop move the fan mounting straps
and studs to accommodate the new fan, and replaced the mounting studs on
the bottom, which had disintegrated when I took the radiator out. All
told, the new arrangement is very nice, quiet, and cools really well. When
I had the radiator out, I discovered that about an inch on either side of
the cooling area of the radiator was not being used due to being blanked
off by bits of bodywork in the wheel well. By this point I was already
fearless about cutting holes in my car, so I decided to cut these back.
This seemed to be an easy way to pick up about an extra 13% of cooling
area.
The only problem I had with getting the new
cooling system to work was a little trouble with the wiring. It turns out
that the original fan is wired upstream of the switch, and the switch is
connected to ground on its downstream side. When the switch closes, the
fan comes on because it grounds through the switch. It turns out that the
new fan, although it has two wires, grounds itself, i.e. its ground wire
is redundant. If you wire it in like the original fan it will be on all
the time. You need to change the wiring slightly to move the switch to
upstream of the fan.
Figure 26 shows the re-cored radiator with
the new Mercedes fan in place. The wiring hasn't yet been fully cleaned
up, but the new fan switch can be seen just to the left of the air horns.
Figure 26
The only really serious piece of
fabrication necessary was the making of a bracket to support the tail end
of the exhaust. Richard said that he didn't make this piece because
differences in lineup are large enough from one car to another that he
can't sensibly do so.
Figure 27 was taken when the motor was in
place, and I was making the exhaust bracket. The bevel gauge I'm holding
was to mark off the angle of one of the pieces for the bracket. The smug
grin is because I'm looking forward to starting the car, which I did the
next day. Had I known that it was then going to puke oil all over the
place and require me to drop the gearbox out, I might not have looked so
happy.
Figure 27
Figure 28 shows this bracket just after I
installed it, but before putting the muffler on. The exhaust Richard
supplied does not poke out under the bottom of the car like the original
one, it comes right out through the back of the car to the right of the
number plate and to the left of the right hand tail lights. I found that
in my case it wasn't quite possible to get the muffler on to the rest of
the exhaust far enough that it would clear the back of the car and swivel
into place, so I had to shorten the L-shaped section of exhaust into which
the muffler fits. This was easy to slip off and cut. Once this was done,
the muffler fitted in fine, and swung down into what was intended to be
its final location. I centered the hole for the tail pipe in the back of
the car by wrapping a piece of heavy paper around the tail of the muffler
and tracing around it onto the inside of the back of the car. This step
solved the problem of figuring out where to cut the final hole in the back
of the car. A 4" hole ended up being exactly the size of a standard tub of
grease, so all I had to do was trace around it and cut the hole out with
the Sawzall. Fibreglass is fairly easy to sand smooth, so it doesn't
matter too much if you're not very accurate in cutting the hole. Once
you've got the hole cut you can slip the tail pipe onto the muffler and
see what the final result will look like. Although you shouldn't have
clamped the exhaust up at this point, it should be easy enough to support
to be able to hold it in place for you to make the muffler bracket.
Figure 28
I made my bracket by ripping a piece of
wood to 3/4" square. This would mimic 3/4" box section steel. Given these
bits of wood, a coping saw and a drill it was easy to make a template of
wooden bits that went from a couple of available mounting points on the
side of the gearbox up to the muffler. I used bent coat hangers to hold
the wood in place up against the muffler until I had the shape fixed in
place by screwing the wood to a scrap of plywood. I was then ready make
the steel version of the bracket. Foolishly, I thought it would look
really good to carry the stainless look of the exhaust through to its
bracketry, and decided to make it in stainless steel. The end result is
indeed very pretty, but it was a nightmare to make. Stainless steel is
very hard to cut if you don't have the right tools, and even if you do
it's hard to cut at the funny angles that are likely to be necessary. I
ended up getting a three-pack of carbide granule coated Sawzall blades
(about $13) and they did the trick, but it took a long time. Life would
have been much easier had I just done it in mild steel and power coated
the result. All in all it took about a man day to make the bracket, which
is way out of line with the significance of the piece.
Once I had the pieces cut out for the
bracket, I had them welded up by Jon Zender, a fellow Europa owner, who is
also a high-tech welder. The cradle in which the muffer sits was made out
of a piece of stainless sheet bent to fit. It was then bent over at the
ends and drilled to accommodate a pair of 6" springs that I got at the
local hardware store. The way the springs locate on the bracket is shown
in figure 29.
While you've got the Sawzall out, you'll
probably want to cut off the top of the bulge in the bodywork that used to
accommodate the final bend in the old exhaust's tail pipe. This bulge
comes up pretty close to the new muffler unless you cut it down a bit. The
result is visible on the right of figure 29
Figure 29
After the bracket was welded up, I found it
didn't fit quite right, even after taking my template and a traced out
pattern of the bracket over for welding. It was simply too hard to get the
complicated angles lined up right. If you can't at least tack weld up the
bracket in situ on the car, I would suggest making enough of a template to
be able to hold the holes for the gearbox end mounts in their correct
position. I fixed the fit problems by judiciously adjusting things on my
mill.
The final bracket arrangement is shown from
below looking up at the muffler is shown in figure 30. The motor shipped
with a complete exhaust except for the clamps. Richard said that it would
be easier to get nice stainless steel clamps in the US than in the UK. I
actually found it to be pretty tricky, but eventually managed to track
some down. I ended up using Borla clamps. I called their head office and
got put onto their Bay Area distributor, which had a number in stock.
Figure 30
Once everything that had to be connected
was in fact connected, and everything looked good, I decided that the time
was right to weld up the rear hoop. Like the removal of the old rear hoop,
the welding of the new rear hoop into place is a fairly non-reversible
process, so it's better not to do it until you're absolutely sure. Once it
was welded in place I could paint it.
At this point, the car was ready to fill up
and to start. Filling up the coolant system took a five litre bottle of
antifreeze and about another five litres of water. The motor took somewhat
over five litres of oil (20/50 for the initial running in period and
synthetic 15/50 after that, e.g. Mobil One, or Valvoline Synpower). The
gearbox took a bit under three litres
of 75/90 synthetic gear oil. With these in place, I cranked the motor a
number of times for a few seconds to get some of the oil around into the
key places.
I was then ready actually to try to start
up. I got a gallon of petrol, put it in and tried things. When you turn on
the ignition, the fuel pump whirs for a couple of seconds and then shuts
off. I found that it took a few tries of actually trying to start the
motor for it to catch, so I suspect that it may be a good idea to turn the
ignition on and off a few times to make sure that the fuel is well pumped
through the system. I suspect that the fuel pump doesn't run continuously
until the motor is actually running (a good safety feature).
So, notwithstanding the fact that it took a
couple of tries for the fuel to get to the motor, it started effectively
first time. That was the good news, and things sounded fine. Eric was
standing by the engine bay looking for problems, and I was in the cockpit
cranking things. Everything looked good for a few seconds, and then oil
started to puke out of the motor onto the floor. Not a good sign. I
noticed that the oil pressure gauge seemed to peg itself too, which was a
little disconcerting. The oil seemed to be coming from the middle of the
motor between the clutch and gearbox. I decided that the best thing would
be to shut down and call Richard to see what oil pressure I was supposed
to expect, and see if he had any ideas.
He told me that I should expect about 60lbs
of oil pressure on the new motor with thick oil in it, maybe 50lbs after
running in. This was a null data point, since my oil pressure gauge only
read up to 60lbs, anyway. He suspected that the oil pressure relief valve
might have dried out in transit, which might be causing the oil pressure
to run open loop. This would result in the pressure being very high (maybe
as much as 150lbs). If this were so, there was a chance that the
crankshaft main seal might have blown out or turned inside out, thus
letting oil puke out. Richard said that the pressure relief valve sticking
is very rare, but is not unheard of. I would strongly suggest taking it
out and making sure it's unstuck before you put the motor in. It's well
worth the five minutes it would take with the motor out of the car, just
in case.
With great fear and trepidation, the next
day I took out the pressure relief valve to clean it. It's located at the
front left of the motor on the block just above the sump gasket line,
behind a hex-headed cover, which looks like a big bolt head. When you undo
the cover the spring pops out, and in my case, leaves behind the plunger
for the pressure regulator. With a little jiggling around with a pair of
circlip pliers I was able to get it out. It looked fine, but I polished it
up with some emery cloth and fiddled around in the hole with my finger to
see if I could find any obstructions. Everything seemed fine, so I put
everything back together with lots of oil. Reassembly was a nightmare,
since it's very difficult to get the right purchase on the head of the
cover to screw it in against the pressure of the spring. There's a
definite knack to it, but you won't have that knack the first time you do
it, so that's why I think it's a good idea to do this with the motor out
of the car.
With the pressure relief valve all back in
place I tried starting the motor again. Again it started first time, but
again oil puked out. That meant that the seal had either turned inside
out, or had blown out. So, once more I called Richard up and asked him to
send me a new main seal and probed him for any tips that might help me
pull the gearbox out.
A couple of days later the FedExed seal
arrived, so I started work at pulling the gearbox. This turned out to be
theoretically a simple process, but in practice was a major pain.
Superficially, all one has to do is remove half a dozen bolts and the
thing should separate from the rest of the motor, but that doesn't deal
with all of the other stuff that gets in the way of removing the gearbox.
In practice, I found that I had to remove all sorts of bits and pieces
starting with the muffler, the shift linkage and clutch cable, and moving
rapidly on to the speedo cable, reverse light wires, alternator,
suspension links, drive shafts and the chassis crossbeam. With all this
stuff out of the way, the gearbox seemed to be held in only by the bolts
connecting the bell housing to the adapter plate, and the two bolts fixing
it to the rear hoop. With a jack under the tail end of the motor, the
gearbox slipped off pretty easily. I loosened the front motor mounts a
little so that I could tip the motor a bit to get a bit more clearance.
This let me lift the gearbox up and out, tail end first. The gearbox and
bell housing together weigh around a hundred pounds, so it's reasonably
easy to do on your own, but you'll need to figure out how you're going to
get it out of the car if you're standing in the engine bay. In my car I
passed it to Eric.
The clutch is bolted to the flywheel and
comes off easily by loosening the bolts on its circumference evenly. This
lets the pressure plate and driven plate come off together, revealing the
flywheel. The thing to do next is to mark the flywheel's alignment onto
the crank with chalk so that you can get it back on in the same
orientation. The flywheel is held on by bolts which are easiest to take
off with an impact wrench, since they will have been Loctited into place,
but you could take them off by locking the crank either with a spanner at
the other end, or by wedging a screwdriver between the ring gear and the
adapter plate.
Once I had got the flywheel off I was faced
with the end of the crank. I had asked Richard how to get the old seal
out, and he had said that the thing to do was to drill a little hole in it
and use a self-tapping screw screwed into the hole to push it out.
However, once I got the flywheel off I discovered that there simply was no
seal. It had never been put in. This is an easy mistake to make, but
Richard was duly embarrassed by this omission. I tried to take it well,
but the day I did this work was 103 degrees outside and considerably
hotter in the garage, so I wasn't too delighted by the end of the day.
This is an unfortunate problem of shipping a motor without the motor
actually running in a car before it's shipped. It was wonderful that
Richard built everything for me in a chassis, but I suspect that if I were
to do it again I'd ask him to dyno the motor before shipping it. That
should expose any problems such as this. It's not cheap, but time is money
during the installation too.
Putting the flywheel on is just a matter of
aligning the marks you've made, and bolting it on, using blue Loctite on
the threads and torquing to about 55lbs.
The reassembly of the clutch takes a little
care. Richard told me that I could just use a universal alignment tool
that was bound to be lying around the garage, but this proved not to the
the case. All of the alignment tools were all for the specific flavours of
Jag or Aston Martin that Eric worked on. I went and bought a universal
alignment tool, which claimed to have the right (21mm) size to fit the
pilot bearing, but when I tried to use it, I found that the adaptor for
the pilot bearing had a lip on it that was intended to rest on the end of
the crank, but since the inside diameter of the splines on the driven
plate was only just over 21mm, the alignment tool wouldn't go through the
driven plate. I managed to grind it down so that it would fit on a bench
grinder, but life would have been much easier with the right alignment
tool.
The next job was to make sure that the
driven plate was the right way around - it's usually stamped on one side
saying "flywheel side", but you should note which way around it was
carefully when you take the clutch off. If you get it wrong, the cush
springs will scrape against the bolts on the end of the flywheel. I then
tightened up the pressure plate progressively and diagonally to about
15lbs. Before mounting the bell housing back onto the motor, it was
necessary to drift the dowels out of the bell housing where they had stuck
when the bell housing came off, and put them into the adapter plate. Doing
it this way around makes sure that the dowels don't push through into the
bell housing as you tighten the bolts up. It's important also to remember
to grease the splines on the gearbox main shaft with a suitable ultra-high
temperature grease such as Copperslip. Reassembly of everything else
proved to be a simple reverse of the disassembly process, with the only
major problem being the throttle cable, which was a nightmare as already
noted above.
When I installed the throttle cable, it was
a little longer than necessary, but I decided that it would go well if I
led it down the left-hand side of the motor, and then through a little eye
at the bottom of the gearbox. This forced me to remove the throttle cable
to take the gearbox out, and when it came to putting the cable back, I
found that I had to remove the injector stacks and the air box assembly to
get to the throttle cable adjuster.
Similarly, because I had put no thought to
disassembly when I put the motor in, I had led the heater control cable
through the bracket for the alternator. This seemed like a nice way to
support it and keep it neat, but was just another minor headache when it
came to taking the gearbox out. I would recommend against such undue
cleverness, and advise just using zip ties all over the place.
Once I had got the gearbox back in place, I
found the car started first time, again, and this time didn't puke oil. I
was ready actually to run the motor for more than a few seconds. Things
seemed to run well and, with the car still up on its jack stands, I tried
to find all of the gears. I found that I couldn't get to reverse without
the shift linkage fouling the gearbox adapter plate. Luckily, the shift
linkage has numerous points of adjustment, so it wasn't difficult to
remedy the situation. I also suggested to Richard that he change the
template slightly for the adaptor plate. I was fouling on a piece of the
plate that didn't need to be there anyway. With any luck, he will have
changed the design in future to reduce the possibility of this problem.
I was then able to drop the car down on its
wheels as shown in figure 31.
Figure 31
Figure 32 shows the car in the same state
just getting ready for a test drive. It's important to check all of the
vital fluids in the car. It probably won't have been very level on its
jack stands, and you will probably have air pockets in the coolant system.
Once the motor has warmed enough for the thermostat to open you may find a
significant drop in coolant level. If you run the motor with the radiator
cap off you should see water pumping fast through the swirl pot once the
thermostat opens. Be careful about adding more water with the motor hot,
since you might get steam blowing back a fountain of boiling coolant all
over you.
When I came to put the bonnet and boot back
on the car I decided to make a minor modification to the boot. I drifted
out the pins in the hinges (note they will only come out one way) and
replaced them with a couple of 3/4" x 3/8" clevis pins that I got from a
local boat chandler. These let me remove the boot lid in a few seconds,
but are rather more secure and less obvious than pit pins. This way I hope
that I won't suffer too many people breaking into the boot by noticing
that the hinges break apart.
Figure 32
Once I started to drive the car, I found
that it was not behaving as I expected, especially once it had warmed up.
The motor didn't seem to pull well, wouldn't rev freely, and back-fired
all over the place. I called Richard about this, and he said that this was
due to a tiny miscalibration of the throttle position sensor. If this
sensor is slightly off, it makes the ECU think that the motor is in a
completely different part of its performance map.
The fix for this was to borrow a laptop PC
from a chap at the office, download the ECU programming/telemetry
software, and plug the PC into the ECU with a standard female DB9 to male
DB9 serial cable. With lots of instructions from Richard I was able to
adjust things by loosening the two clamping bolts on the throttle position
sensor body on the back of the throttle body assembly and tweak the
setting whilst looking at the readouts on the screen. Once this was done,
the motor ran a thousand times better, and has been doing fine ever since.
With the car fully running, I was able to
concentrate on the remaining problems. The first to appear was that the
speedo drive ratio was way off. I got a suitably calibrated one from
Richard. I held off doing this until I got new tyres to make sure that I
calibrated for the right final drive ratio. Incidentally, Richard
recommended 185/60-13s all round, running at around 16-18lbs at the front
and 24-28lbs at the rear. I'm currently running at 16/25lbs with Yokohama
"AVS Intermediate" tyres. I picked them because they're the stickiest
tyres I could get that still had a full rain tread - remember that this is
my wet weather car.
Now that I have the new tyres in place I'll
be able to set up the suspension properly, though I haven't got around to
it yet. Richard recommends 1.25 degrees of negative camber on the rear
wheels and 3/32" of toe-in as measured between the front and back of the
rear wheel's rim. Apparently, it's really difficult to get enough toe-in,
and getting any at all is pretty good. It's apparently possible to get
more toe-in by moving the radius arm mounting pivot so that it bolts to
the inside of the chassis rather than the outside. It's also apparently
possible to shorten the tube at the end of the radius arm through which it
pivots simply by sawing it off. I'll look into this when I find out how
far out I am in the setup.
The one remaining problem I have is that
the alternator intrudes into the space that the pizza tray should occupy.
As we have already seen, I took some trouble to make sure that the swirl
pot wouldn't get in the way of the pizza tray. I haven't yet fully fixed
this problem, but I've got so far as to cut out the necessary hole in the
front of the pizza tray, and relocate the heat shield on the bottom so
that it more accurately matches where the new muffler goes. The tricky
part will be dealing with the curve where the bottom of the pizza tray
meets the front, and dealing with the fact that any box I make to cover
the alternator will have to mate up with one of the ribbed parts of the
front of the pizza tray.
Now that I've just put the first 500 miles
on I've just done the first oil change. This turned out to be a nightmare.
The car is now sufficiently low that I can't get the oil pan under the
sump without jacking it first. Rather too late, I discovered that the oil
pan I was using was too small to accomodate the extra oil held by the new
motor (about 50% more). Next time I do this I'll put it up on the lift. I
also had a problem finding the right oil filter, since the motor is
unknown in the US. As it happens, effectively all of the smaller GM four
and six-cylinder motors use the same filter, which in the US is one of: