Saturday 31st - Welding & Fettling - Jason's Engine

I decided to tag along to Arch more to be there in case Jason had a problem than to enjoy the ride. It is a long old slog up some pretty boring straight roads - oh and it was hissing it down.
We were a little delayed leaving but arrived at around 10.30am and Neil set to work on the car, removing the inner side panel, cleaning up the area and then finally welding in a new boss. He gave the area a spray with some Hammerite paint and put it all back together. While we were there we got the answer to the airbox problem - the pedal box had been modified around the time of Jason's car and a quick measure shoed that the clutch cable was about 1/2" further away from the throttle compared to the new cars. We were on our way again, after fitting the new harnesses and the seat, by around noon. We stopped down the road and called to see if DVA was around and if we could drop in for a bit of a tweak.
Fortunately he was and we arrived about an hour later. Unfortunately, the car then refused to start again and we had to wait for it to cool down before it would start again. In the meantime we showed Dave the airbox and he was surprised that the pedal box was different.
When the car started again, Dave did some fine tuning tweaks to the mapping, most of which I can't remember now as my brain seems to function on a need to know basis and at the moment, with carbs, I don't need to know. Lets just say it ran a lot better by the time he was finished, starting happily with a strong stable idle. Thanks Dave!
When we got home, after a typically enthusiastic Jason drive home, I removed the airbox again so I could take it home and modify it.
Once home, I used a small cutting disc in my Dremel-a-like to carefully cut out half of the side of the cable recess. I then removed about 1/2" of material towards the outside edge. The first piece was then positioned in the gap and held in place with some tape. From the inside I placed about 3 layers of glass matting to bond it into place and also fill the gap left. I was now left with the recess side moved over 1/2" and a filled gap of glass. I used some ordinary body filler to bring the level up to match the rest of the airbox, filed it back and finally sanded it with some 1200 wet&dry using WD40 to lubricate it. The last job was to mask off the area and paint it black to match. Unfortunately I didn't have any gloss black paint so I had to use some satin stuff. Once dry I gave it a good polish and it came up a bit, but it doesn't match. The saving grace is the fact that it is facing down and you can't see it once it is on the car. For about 1.5hrs work I was pretty pleased with the end result, especially as it was my first real attempt at glass fiber work.

Tuesday 27th - The First Drive - Jason's Engine

The main job tonight was to fit the airbox. This turned out to be a complete pain in the arse as it would not comfortable fit over the clutch cable. We even resorted to calling Dave at around 9.30pm and he kindly spoke to me. From the sounds of it, it should have just fitted on no problems. Ours wouldn't as the cable was too far over relative to the groove. In the end, a bit of brute force got it to go over the cable. Unfortunately, to achieve this, the cable had to be wound all the way into the pedal box, with all the available adjustment taken back out out the bellhousing end. This just about worked, but it meant Jason had a very low pedal
We managed to next get the drivers seat back in, having come up with a work around the ripped out bush of looping the crutch strap around the back of the seat and through the right hand side of the seat. It was just long enough, and after several adjustments we got it in and it would work for getting to Arch.
This was it then, apart from the various problems left to sort out, we needed to test it out before committing to taking the car to Arch or DVA's. I think it was around 11pm when we started to get ready, big thick coat, gloves, etc... We fitted Steve's wideband lamba and then the engine wouldn't start. Doh. A quick scrabble by Jason got my spare battery connected and he jumped the car into life. It was still running pretty rich, but as the temps came up this got better. We made a few runs up and down a short section of the A4 nearby, much to the amusement of some workmen fixing overhead lamps.... just how mad have you got to be to be out testing an open top car, with no doors, a JPE screen, at 11.30pm at the end of January, oh and it was snowing - did I mention that?
We got too cold by 12.30am, and the snow was getting too heavy for us to continue to risk Jason's works laptop. We put the car away, checked for leaks, found none and considered it a fairly successful first test.

Sunday 25th - Bolt Retrieval - Jason's Engine

A happy ending to what could have been a nightmare. I fished around for a good hour and was convincing myself, and Jason, that it would be ok to leave it there as it would stay at the bottom, out of the way. Jason was all for starting it up to see but I suggested slowly turning it over by hand to see if it revealed anything. I shut off the radio and waited for a plane to go for some peace and Jason turned the crank about 1/4 of a turn before a light tinkle was heard. He carried on as I looked in vain with the torch but no more noise came and the engine turned over freely. I decided to have another delve around and after only 10mins I felt something attach itself to the magnet. Normally this just meant it had snapped to the bloody flywheel again, but as I pulled it back out the bolt was on the end. Fantastic - I was saved.
I set about fitting the airbox again, this time stuffing a rag into the bellhousing gap first to block it off in case. I found the airbox was clashing on the lug of one of the trumpets so I removed this and filed down the area and the washer to give some clearance. I then applied some thread lock to the nylocs on all the trumpets to be sure they don't undo. The airbox is now ready to go on, but Jason was due at friends so we stopped and it gave me chance to get this month written up anyway.

Saturday 24th - Egor, It Lives!!! - Jason's Engine

The big day arrived (again) and Steve came over (in his 7 to rub it in) to lend a hand. He too suggested short bursts at cranking for pressure, but Jason had read that it can take a good 30secs for it to arrive. My spare battery (freshly conditioned) was hooked up, we poured a small amount of oil down the plug holes to help seal the rings initially and with the plugs still out Jason cranked the engine for around 25secs before Steve hailed the arrival of pressure on the gauge. Phew!
The plugs were put in the engine, leads attached, inertia switch reconnected and the coil lead fitted. It was time - there were no excuses not to. We rolled the car back a bit to put the exhaust outside with a mind on the need to bed the cams in (1500 - 2000rpm for 15mins). Jason did the honors again and the engine tried to catch. Then it didn't. Or the next time. It seemed like the plugs were being flooded, so we removed them and they were wet. Some of this could have been the oil so after a good clean they went back in. The same. This repeated for some time but the plugs were better. A check of the laptop live section showed that the batter voltage was now down to dead on 12v and under cranking was between 8.5 and 9.1v. We decided this was too low so we moved the car out further and connected up Jason's family car for some extra juice. This time it was much better and caught after a couple of attempts and whilst pretty lumpy, Jason seemed able to maintain roughly the required rpm for the cams. About 20mins later, after a short pause to check the water system, the primary's were glowing nicely and the cams should be done.
It was a bit rough, but at least it worked. Steve has a wideband Lambda complete with readout on his car and we decided to fit this to Jason's car to check the mixture more easily. When the car was started again it showed it was massively too lean - which would account for the large number of spits and the odd flame from the exhaust. We richened up the whole map quite a lot and it ran a lot better. Eventually with a smooth tickover at around 2500rpm. Steve backed this down on the TB' and we adjusted the fuel slightly to compensate. Stopped the engine and reset the throttle pot calibration and restarted. The problem was now that any application of throttle resulted in massively rich fueling. We checked with the original map and it was about the same for tickover, so we reverted back and it was pretty much spot on. Basically I had the TB's too open for tickover, so to get it right we had had to add a load of fuel to match the amount of air. This resulted in higher and higher rpm until we could back down the TB's and then it was way too rich again. We got their in the end and Jason is borrowing the sensor for a short while to hopefully conduct some local mapping sessions with laptop (and probably me) in the passenger seat. It certainly ran very nicely once set up with a smooth tickover, with no hunting, and good throttle response. Jason looked like a happy bunny as well - he might get the old carpet glue removed a bit quicker now as I could tell he was dying to try it out!
With the main event done, I decided to fit the airbox while Jason did some of that glue. Unfortunately, whilst trying to get the airbox to line up and fit the top left bolt, I dropped it and it fell down and dropped out of sight. It could be found no where and I had the sinking feeling that it had bounced into the bellhousing through a quite large opening. We both looked for ages to try and see it, poked around with a telescopic magnet and finally gave up. I felt terrible. The car was so close to being finished and I had dropped a clangor that could mean engine removal. We discussed the use of a large powerful magnet to try to drag it out to where we could see it via the clutch gaiter hole and I went home trying to think of what I had. I dismantled my old starter motor and tried to see if I could make a strong magnet with that. I couldn't see how, but I'd take it, and an old speaker, with me tomorrow to try.

Friday 23rd - Gearbox Plug - Jason's Engine

Thursday night I had ground down the 10mm allen key. I had tried using a hacksaw and blunted the blade instantly. So, not to be defeated, I placed the short end against the bench grinder and ground away the width of the disc. The result was a small 10mm long piece, a nice stubby allen key and a very large pile of dust. The 10mm long piece would fit nicely in the plug and allow a ring spanner to be used. We had jacked the car up on Wednesday so when I arrived I climbed underneath and within about 5mins the job was done - oh it is so much easier with the right tool!
With some spare time I double checked the wiring colours on the oil pressure gauge and sender. They matched (I had half hoped that was the reason for our lack of pressure) and I lowered the car back down to the ground. I then fitted the second heater blanking plate that Brent had kindly cut and I had folded. This was pretty straightforward, just carefully measuring and double checking the hole positions. The final hole still required some fettling with a round file, but it doesn't show. When we are happy with it I will apply some silicone sealant around the edges and use some nice new machine screws to fix it down.

Wednesday 21st - Gearbox Filling - Jason's Engine

Tonight was a quick evening with the sole intension to fill the gearbox. It still didn't finish until around 10.30pm. I had bent the copper pipe already, but hadn't cut it down. This was done, and then refined (i.e. it didn't quite fit). After about half and hour the pipe fitted just right and with a 1lt squeezy bottle filled with the g'box oil I dribbled it down the pipe for what seemed like ages. After about 1.25lt had gone in I pulled the pipe out as it should have been enough. It was and a load came back out - luckily we have put down some paper to catch the smelly oil, yuck. After it finished dribbling out the fun and games started.
The filler plug had to go back in. This was even harder than removing it. Eventually a joint effort of Jason holding it in the hole from below the drivers side and me rotating it slowly with some long nose pliers from the passenger side got it to bite on the thread. I got around a rotation firther before it got too much for the pliers and we searched for a suitable tool. Alas none could be found that would fit between the plug and the chassis memeber next to it. We called a halt, defeated again, and I would make a suitable tool from a 10mm allen key.

Sunday 18th - Oil, Water and Nearly There! - Jason's Engine

Today was the day we hoped to start the car! We almost got there.
After Friday nights exploits fitting the alternator belt out the way, I moved on and fitted the Apollo tank. This was pretty easy, the biggest problem being access to the lower hose fitting to tighten it up. With that in place we could finally position the header tank on it's mounting lugs. With the Apollo fitted, Jason poured 7.5lts of Comma Syner Z into the engine, and remarkably, none came out the bottom - result. After such a success we dared to fill the water system and most of a 5lt can of Comma ColdStreme was poured in via the header tank, and the end of the heater bypass pipe. With the fluids done, we moved on and fitted the roughly fitted the Emerald ECU on top of the current MEMS unit. The cable would just about reach and the unit will eventually be held in place by either industrial Velcro or cable ties.
The final job seemed to be the fuel tank vent pipe modification. This was to remove the charcoal filter and save a bit of weight. The mod is basically a loop of fuel pipe wit ha vent valve positioned such that only air can escape. To fit this I removed the boot floor whilst Jason pre-made the loop/valve assembly. We decided to leave the old bit of plastic pipe as it would be a pain to remove at that stage and could be done anytime. From the top of the fuel filler cap I removed the old pipe and vent and in it's place Jason fitted the new assembly. This was cable tied to the tank restraining bolts and the boot floor was refitted.
By now it was around 4.30pm and the light was fading. I had brought my laptop over and after first trying Jason's USB to serial cable on his laptop, we used mine. I am pleased to say it talked straight away and we uploaded the map Dave had sent Jason that should suit his slightly ported head (5% added fueling). The first task was to get oil pressure and to do this we removed the plugs (to remove compression), disconnected the inertia switch (to cut off the fuel supply) and took the coil lead off so that we only had one spark to take care of instead of four. Jason did the honor and turned the key. Click. Nothing. Bugger. After a few minutes thinking it was the dreaded K-series starter problem, I got my spare battery from my car and we hooked that up via some jump leads. Again, Jason turned the key and away it spun, quite happily. I had suggested that we spin for around 10secs and then rest the battery for 10secs, and so on until we had a lift on the oil pressure gauge. After a good 6 or 7 goes, we still weren't seeing anything. We stopped to have a think and I had a quick check that connectors were secure, etc. Unfortunately I couldn't find any reason why it wasn't giving pressure. It was at this point that we both realised that we hadn't filled the gearbox with oil. Doh! We removed the plug (something else impossible to reach) and tried to feed a spare length of fuel hose down into the plug hole. This didn't work and it was now around 7pm and we called an end to it. Jason looked a little more than depressed that we hadn't got it started. Sorry Jason! I took away a length of 15mm copper pipe that I had taken over there in case we needed to fabricate something for the heater bypass circuit. I had a cunning plan to put a bend in it and then cut it down to that it could be placed into the filler hole and then filled. Read the next thrilling installment to find out if this worked.

Friday 16th - More TB's & Exhaust - Jason's Engine

This turned into a bit of a mammoth night, unintentionally.
After another typical start at around 8.30pm, I cracked on and fitted the exhaust primary's. This was a lot easier with the chassis member out of the way. While I did this Jason was busy fitting the water plumbing - nice and tricky as the TB's were in the way now - oops! With the primary's all bolted up I moved on to the TB's again. I fitted the airbox backplate and the trumpets (on the thread-locked studs). I was also able to fit the injectors and fuel rail, along with the fuel lines. While I was fitting these, Jason fitted the silencer to the primary's and to our great (and grateful) surprise it slipped straight on. He had put some WD40 on to help, and we were gob-smacked how easy it was after what a pain it was to get off. Jason then fitted the new throttle cable I had bought that evening from Halfords. With a bit of trial and error he got the right length and tightened the nuts up. Job done, and another one off the list.
While he was doing that I fitted the water rail and the plumbing. I then fitted the chassis rail back into place, finding that my freshly fitted hoses were in the way - aarrghh. It was easily removed and after some persuasion the chassis rail bolts were in place and tightened up and the water hose was refitted.
During this time, Jason had moved onto fitting the new alternator belt. Slight problem found. The belt didn't seem to be long enough. After some investigation I found that the adjusting bolt was the wrong side of the mounting arm, so after what seemed likes ages with my nose under the chassis rail it was adjusted out and to the correct place. However, the alternator still wouldn't adjust close enough to the engine block to allow the belt to be fitted. The problem is that the Apollo tank hoses actually pass through alongside the alternator and through the middle of the belt. These are quite large and the alternator hits then after moving all of about 2mm. There seemed to be only one thing for it - remove the oil filter housing and shift the hoses. This was a <insert very rude word here> of a job. The left and lower bolts came out no problem, but access to the top right bolt was impossibly tight and I only managed to undo it with a small socket on the end of a universal joint, on the end of a small extension bar with a racket on that. After lots of wiggling around the socket 'fell' into the right place on the bolt head and it could be undone. This was actually the easy bit. So, with the hoses out the way, the belt went on no problem and was very easy to adjust (I like that arrangement, even if it is hard to reach). All that was left was to refit the oil filter housing. Now, that three bolts we easy, but the last one was just literally impossible. Most of the problem was that it was so tight the hoses were stopping the housing from sitting flat/in place. Needless to say much swearing ensued and whilst I go the three easy bolts in place, I just couldn't get the third to go in happily. It felt wrong to me. I was getting very stressed (probably due to the time being around 2am) and so Jason had a go. He could get it to the same stage but decided to drive it in, backing it off after each half-turn or so. He says it went in ok, but got tight before the end, but he seems happy with it. It is something to keep an eye on, but it seems ok. 2.30am and I set off home to wake up the wife (she must really love me!) and get some sleep.
Despite the final problem, we really did achieve a lot and it as looking possible to start on Sunday, if things went well.

Thursday 15th - Throttle Boddies On - Jason's Engine

After a night off for the L7C local meeting Thursday was another milestone was to get the TB's bolted to the engine. I don't remember any problems, it all bolted on fine, with the gasket just needing a bit of a trim to allow the throttle cable holder to be bolted in place. We tried to fit te throttle cable, but after Jason spent ages getting the cable through the drilled bolt, we found that it wasn't long enough to reach the pedal. Doh! It was decided that I'd get hold of a new cable from a bike store, with a suitable end fitting to fit the pedal, and plenty long enough. Being midweek, it was again a pretty short evening and we stopped at around 10.30pm. I remember feeling we didn't really achive much, so was a little frustrated.

Tuesday 13th - New Engine In - Jason's Engine

The big day had finally arrived. Although it had seemed at several moments that we were never going to get to this point the engine was at last going back in. Their isn't a lot to say really. The rope was again slug under the front of the sump and again around the front of the bellhousing and I did my usual over-kill of knots. A cross of the fingers and we tried lifting it and I added my weight to check - it seemed secure so we went of it. The engine was hoisted (thanks again Steve) as high as it could go and the car was moved forwards below the swinging engine. We lowered the engine and edged the car forward bit by bit, and after a few aligning pauses the engine was in place. The biggest problem was getting the propshaft to engage and also to get the gearbox over the mounting (we'd left that on as one of the bolts was impossible to get to to remove).
With the engine hanging in place, we fitted the engine mounts loosely and then loosely to the chassis and did them up in stages until it was nice and tight in place. At this point we called it a night and I had an early night at around 11pm.

Sunday 11th - Weights, TB's & Airbox

Mandy had managed to find some cheap kitchen scales at Argos, so I weighted everything in sight in the garage. The upshot is that I think I will be saving around 11kg from my car this year - which is about what I had estimated, but still good to confirm.

A complete list of the things I weighted is below (in grams):

I also finally fitted the heat plate for good after polishing the surrounding Ali on the scuttle. I ran a small bead of silicone around the outline and bolted it down with 4 Nylon bolts into the heater riv-nuts. A wet rag removed any excess silicone and should stop rattles and water getting in.
Jason's Engine
I then got to work on Jason's TB's. Whilst he had removed the necessary material to match them to his slightly ported Sport 135 head, he hadn't been able to get a good finished with a Demel-a-like. I had therefore taken them home with me for finishing off. I used 120 and then 240 grit wet & dry with a bit of WD-40 to help trap the dust. I got rid of most of the deep file marks, but a few remain where it would have required too much surrounding material removal. They are, however, finally ready to be bolted onto the engine.
Lastly, as mentioned on the 8th, the Airbox was back for modification. I had removed the silicone already (a possible problem had it been in contact with too much fuel) so I mixed up some GRP resin and applied that to the back of the clips. This doesn't quite describe the fiddly job of trying not to drip very runny resin all over the floor and get it to stay where required. But I got there in the end.

Saturday 10th - Autosport 2004 Show

A day off from fiddling with car - so we Jason, his brother Neil and I visited the Autosport show to look at more things to do to/with our cars - sad huh! All round it was a good day out, but you do come away feeling it isn't worth a trip every year, so we'll be back - in 2006!

Thursday 8th - Clutch & Gearbox Fitting - Jason's Engine

After a saga regarding the now infamous clutch cover bolts (that I won't got into here) Jason finally got a set from a Rover dealer near his works. Hurray!
First job then, fit the clutch. This is a lot easier with the correct size bolts and the only hassle was lining it up. I've tried using an alignment tool before and given up - they are not worth the money IMHO. Instead I used a 3/8" extension bar placed in the end of the crank as a general guide. From there, after a few 'that's too high', 'now it's too low!' comments, I progressed to just lining up the outer edge of the plate with a similar diameter on part of the clutch cover. This seemed to work and the bolts were then torqued up, as per the Haynes manual figure.
Next job was to fit the new BGH gearbox to the bellhousing. Now I know I'm known for being obsessive when it comes to cleaning things, but Jason's bellhousing was a state. We decided to give it a 'quick' clean in soapy water. Half an hour later, and with a ruined scrubbing brush, I gave up as it was just redistributing the oil/grease/dirt/clutch dust. I had a bit of a brainwave and decided to try some WD-40 (known to cure every possible problem) and with a rag it removed the grime quite easily, if slowly. We got a system going of Jason squirting on the WD when I ran out of puff, and I think it came up pretty well, far better than putting it back on in the grubby state it was in. With that done, we bolted it to the gearbox. This was slightly delayed whilst we tried to find the bolts, having passed over them once. A new gasket was fitted between the two and the bolts were torqued up - always fun as it is a sod to hold still.
Finally, an evening where things seemed to go right for once, but I had a horrible feeling that was about to change.
With all the hassle over the differences between the 1.6 and 1.8 - needing the sleeve and different length input shaft - this was a bit I was concerned about. As it turned out, not only did it fit together fine, it did so very easily. None of the usual fighting to get the gearbox perpendicular and the splines lined up. The dowels were a bit sticky, but these pulled together when the bolts were fitted (10 minutes to sort out which ones as we seemed to have too many). The bolts were torqued up and I was definitely relieved.
That was the main job of the night out of the way, and as we were on a roll, I thought we might as well get a few more of the little ones out of the way. The starter motor was first, and again our thanks to Brent as it fitted perfectly past his precision grinding. Jason had a new clutch cable as his spare, so we swapped over and I connected that to the release arm. Lastly we fitted the alternator to the bracket I had fitted a while ago. Again this was straightforward once I had found the stand-off for the adjuster bracket. It was decided that a new belt would probably be a good idea, so Jason is going to pick one of those up when he gets chance.
With that done, we called it a night as the next job is to remove the charcoal canister and then fit the engine. It was also about 1am and I knew I had a busy day at work ahead of me.
When I got home I removed the silicone from the airbox ready for some GRP resin. Jason had been told about problems with silicone near the inlet side. I had then quizzed Dave who said that it can be affected by fuel and probably best to remove it - live and learn. Thanks to both Neil and Dave on that one..

Friday 2nd - Cam Cover Plate & TB Matching - Jason's Engine

Happy New Year!
The replacement M8 clutch bolts were meant to arrive at our local Rover dealer today. Needless to say they didn't arrive. We managed to occupy ourselves for most of the day though.
I had made a little Ali plate to fill in the cam cover hole, left by the removal of the unused transverse engine mount. The removal saved a good 1kg - 1.5kg as it is a chunky lump of Ali. Whilst we were at Dave's Jason had copied a template. I used this to do most of the work before trying it on the new engine. It didn't quite fit, so a bit of fettling and it was a good snug fit against the foam lower edge. I marked out and drilled 3 holes and then replicated these on the plastic of the cam cover - I stuffed a large rag into the void to catch any of the swaff. Three rivets are holding it in place, with a dog leg at the lower edge to keep it tucked in. I also ran a bead of silicone where to fits to the upper cover - as it will come off with that when the cover is removed.
The next job we tackled was to match the TB's to the slightly ported Elise 135 head. To do this I put some cardboard onto two ports, hanging off the TB bolts. I then cut through into the port with a Stanley knife in a cross shape. I could then trace around the profile of the port a bit at a time until it matched the shape. Two were done at a time and the cardboard could be placed, upside down, onto the TB and then the outline replicated with a scribe. Jason then used a file to open out as required - well they are his TB's, I didn't want to ruin them. By around 3.30pm we were flagging and I got a call from Mandy to say her car wouldn't start at home. It was decided that I'd leave Jason finishing the 2nd TB and see what the problem was (a broken wire on the starter motor - new one required).
Update: 11th Jan, a couple of hours were spent finishing off the TB's using 120 and then 240 grit wet & dry. They are finally ready to bolt on.