Today I finished up the dash and loaded all the gauges, switches and lamps into place to ensure that everything fits. Curiously, the razor knives that I was using to trim the leather blunt very quickly. I'm not sure if they were just cheap knives, or if they were being dulled by the strength of the leather. I'm reminded of one of the tools that old-style barbers used, which if I recall correctly is a long leather strap that they run their shaving razors over. By way of example, I cut the rectangular six switch holes in sequence, and I swapped blades every second switch and noticed a huge difference in cutting ability each time.
At the end of the day, I put all the gauges in place, pushed the little lamp holder in place, and put the switches and buttons in. I also did a trial fit of the center pod. This was a bit messy because the addition of the leather trim on the pod and on the dash made the front edge no longer fit. I ended up pulling out the Dremel, teasing the dash trim back on each of the two front corners, and grinding them back a couple of millimeters. After some messing around, I got this setup to work and look quite clean.
Overall, I'm really pleased with the final fit of the dash. Given that I am a complete novice at this, I'm ecstatic at how well it turned out. Here are four photos.
There are certainly a number of minor areas where I can show you where the job is slightly less than perfect, but overall, I'm really pleased with how this has turned out. My key recommendations are patience, patience, and patience. Additional recommendations are - do this in stages, protect all surfaces to avoid glue contamination, measure three times before cutting, and when you do cut, use the sharpest tools you can. I ran through a lot of blades on a razor sharp hobby knife. The leather really blunts the knives quickly. Also, the glue is so thick that it gums up brushes very quickly. Don't bother trying to clean the brush, just get a dozen really cheap brushes and throw them out on each stage of the gluing.
After the thickness of the leather is added in, the rear of the center pod no longer tucks under the dash. This is a shame since its a nice setup, but I don't think there is much that can be done about it. What I ended up doing was slightly lifting the dash material back on the two rear-most corners of the center pod hole and using the Dremel cut the dash back towards the rear of the car about 3 mm deep and about 15 mm wide. This gives the dash pod some room to sit lower down in the dash, and hence allows the rest of the instrument pod to sit correctly. The rear edge (facing the cockpit) now sits flush with the main dash. The third bolt that I added in the middle of the instrument pod works perfectly.
I spent today getting the center section ready to go onto the car for the final time. All the instruments, switches and lamps come out. The center pod comes off. I also manufactured a bracket for lifting the dry-sump scavenger return lines away from the driver side drive shaft - a potential problem that I identified a few weeks back when I put all the components into the engine bay. I also spent time doing cable, hose and wiring tidy up in the engine bay.
Today I safety-wired the steering bolts. No photos of this, unfortunately. The way I did this was to buy a nut that fitted the bolt and drill a tiny hole through the nut. Screw the nut onto each bolt, then drill through the hole, through the bolt, and through the other side. Remove the nut, and then wrap safety wire through the hole and around the bolt and twist it back on itself. Having done this, there is absolutely no way that my steering can come undone. (Many years ago when I was maybe a year into driving, and while driving the family station wagon, the steering wheel suddenly spun free in my hands. This is the scariest "loss of control" situation. A couple of times I've had a complete loss of brakes or a complete loss of engine power, but nothing compares in scariness to a complete loss of steering - hence my desire to safety wire the steering components).
In addition I wanted to make sure that the tachometer and speedometer settings were correct. These two gauges are configured by switch settings that are under the rubber seals. The switch settings are set correctly for the speedometer and tachometer as they come from the factory, as long as you are using a V8 with the wheels and tires as supplied by Ultima.
Finally, I cleaned up the wiring going to the tachometer. There are only four wires required, but the wiring harness has a number of extra plugs. These can all be trimmed off.
This is always a spectacular day in the US with food, food, food and fireworks. We had an awesome afternoon and evening at Gordon and Joan's. Gordon took me for a drive in his 1977 Corvette that he has restored literally piece by piece. Its a fantastic example of the all American muscle car. Awesome!
More tidy up of the car. I wired in the cables for the interior cabin lamps. I also realized that I don't have a way of turning off the cabin lamps when the doors are opened. I should anticipate situations when I will be showing the car and the doors are open, so I made a last minute modification to the wiring to put a switch in up under the dash that can switch the interior cabin lamps off. Modern cars have a delay mechanism, but I will get by with a simple switch.
I also discovered that the starter motor fouls with the dry sump oil pan by about 3mm. Although I was initially really annoyed at this, I realize that it really isn't anyone's fault. The 6-speed Getrag and dry sump setup is probably pretty rare, so I'm okay taking this as my job to work out how to fix this. My current thinking is that a minor modification to the oil pan is best.
Below are two photos of the engine bay. It still looks like a mess, but each day it gets tidier and tidier as I attach things in the right place.
I discovered that the belt I had bought ( a 33.5 inch Dayco belt) for the AC compressor was woefully under-sized. So here comes the lesson of the novice....
One would think that a fan-belt length would be determined by taking a piece of inelastic material (such as wire) and wrapping it around the pulleys, pulling it tight and then measuring the total length. Wrong! It turns out that most fan-belts are actually things called V-Belts which sit wedged in the sides of the pulley, with the inside of the belt maybe 5mm away from the actual inside radius of the pulley.
It turns out that a new belt will sit right at the top of the pulley wedge sides. Given this, the trick to measuring the belt dimension is put 1/2 inch cellotape (below) around the outside edges of the pulleys. This then becomes the "outside length" of the belt. Luckily, Dayco's website lists their belts by a number of different dimensions (including "outside diameter"), so I was able to determine that I needed a 15355 belt which is 35.5 inches long.
The Maxxima 12v LED dome lights arrived today. They are very small, but very bright. I attached the front to to either side of the heater mounting bracket as shown in the photos below, using rivets. The units come with a white wire and a black wire - and would you guess... the black wire is wired to +12 volt and the white wire is wired to chassis ground. Bizarre, but true. The photos below show the two dome lights installed on either side of the heater unit. The LEDs face down, so these two are best thought of as foot well lights. I plan to install two more behind the seats on the rear bulkhead as true interior dome lights.
I bought the right V-belt today from the local Checker Auto Parts store which carries Dayco belts. Photo below shows the three belts correctly installed. The long vertical one is the main driveshaft-waterpump-alternator belt. The one to the right is the dry-sump oil pump belt which is a toothed belt about 2 inches wide. The one to the left is the AC-compressor belt that I just bought. Needless to say, I had to remove the other two belts to install the AC compressor belt.
I also took a few minutes to install the center-section cill access panels. I used #10-24 rivnuts and associated bolts to attach these cover panels. The photos below show the panels in place but with their protective white plastic still on.
On the driver side, behind the cill cover is a metal bracket that holds the fuse bank. This mounts using two bolts. One thing you need to do is make sure that the holes are shaped correctly such that the bolt heads sit flush against the body to avoid fouling with the cill cover panel. Also, the center hole in the fuse bracket needs to be enlarged to go over the rivnut in the lower center of the rectangular aperture. Its all pretty obvious when you assemble it.
I also bought the switch for the interior lights. The photo below shows how I installed it on the same bracket that the aux power outlet is installed on. When I sit in the car, none of this is visible. But, I can reach under the dash on the driver side and flick a switch and disable the interior dome lights in order to save the battery in case I am showing the car somewhere for a long period of time.
Tonight after work, I finished up the passenger side foot rest.
Originally I had looked around on the web for a foot rest plate, but wasn't able to find anything suitable. I decided that I would move ahead and make my own, and cover it with the rubber backed carpet that I used on the rear bulkhead. This is all done in anticipation that I should cover the front of the cockpit with carpet to avoid the inevitable numerous scuff marks on the aluminium floor panels.
The photos below show the foot plate with adhesive on the front of the foot plate.
The photo below shows the foot-plate with carpet installed. It looks good, but slightly out of place (since its the only fabric covered part of the under-dash area). When the rest of the carpet goes in, it should look better. And honestly, the space under the dash is so tight, I doubt whether anyone will ever notice.
The big day today... the center section went on permanently. Before we get to that though, I've noticed that sweat stains on the aluminium panels leave permanent marks that are very hard to get off. The only compound that I found that works is Mother's Aluminium Polish, and it has the ironically annoying property of making the aluminium panel shinier than it was before.
I've tried using latex gloves to avoid hand prints, but hands aren't really the problem. Right now its 95 degrees F in my garage in Minnesota and 80+% humidity, and the sweat literally pours out of the skin - all over. So unless I wrap myself in latex (not my style, although Ted seems to think I might look good in a latex body suit), I have no choice. Given the sensitivity of the aluminium panels to really minor scratches, body oils, sweat, etc, I've resigned myself to the fact that even after the car is built, I will be occasionally cleaning and polishing the interior panels. Maybe there is some type of acrylic layer that could be put down over the aluminium panels that gives them greater protection.
So, I cleaned up the side panels as much as possible, then vacuumed the interior very carefully and then Kerri and I put the center section back on the car for the final time. As before, to get this to sit correctly, I had to get under the dash and push the air-conditioning hoses to one side and also bump the heater hoses a few cm towards the front of the car. It also takes a lot of jostling of to get the center section in place. Don't rush it - check to make sure that all obstructions are moved out of the way, and run around the car checking that each of the locating bolts is correctly aligned. It is an incremental process. When in place, you can sit back and be very amazed that it fits so well!
After the center section is in place, I locked it down with Cleco pins through the locating holes that the factory had drilled already. The next step was to put the nuts back on the locating bolts. If you recall from way back in early winter when the car first arrived, these nuts were installed and we needed to remove them to get each body section off the car. This was... hmm... 9 months ago. I was glad that I had saved each of these nuts in envelopes that I put into a safe place so I would not loose them. At last I was able to open those envelopes up again.
I have to confess that this is a major turning point in the project. The mid section, when put in place locks out access to a lot of the car, so you'd better make sure that all the now hidden parts (electrical system, side-pods, heating, air-conditioning and cill covers) are all right because future modifications will be very difficult. It was a major turning point as well because today I was for the first time re-attaching pieces of the body that I had originally detached in the first few days when we took receipt of the 20 foot shipping container.
First up, I installed the nuts onto the front retaining bolts that go upwards from the side pods through to the side of the middle body section. There are two bolts on each side. Access to the nuts is from the front access panels, and the nuts are located in a lowered channel in the body work. As such, you have to wedge an open-ended spanner at a pretty steep angle and tighten the nut one sixth of a turn at a time. It takes forever, but watch as the body lines between the side pod and the center section get closer and tighter on each turn of the spanner. I had to nudge the center section a bit to keep the body lines aligned.
Next up, I put the rear bolts and nuts in place. The rear quarters of the mid section have two vertical bolts coming up from the side pods into the rear parts of the mid section, just like the front. Additionally, the angled rear edge of the mid section has two horizontal bolts (on each side) that go into a bracket melded into the side pods. These bolts face outwards. My approach was to attach the rear most nut and the lowest most bolt first. Then attach and tighten the front nut and top bolt (which are close together). I incrementally tightened and adjusted these bolts and nuts by pushing against the outside of the body panels to keep everything in correct alignment.
With the mid section pretty much in place, the next scary step was to put the steering wheel in. This is a huge issue because the hole drilled through the dash for the steering wheel can not be easily located. You can put the dash on the chassis, but the steering wheel only comes in from one side, so you can't locate it easily. What you need to do is measure, measure, measure and then be very lucky. Three months ago when I started working on the center section, I measured this location extensively since it determines the center-line for the instruments and thus the location of every single hole drilled into the dash.
When I drilled the dash hole for the steering wheel, I drilled it at the best location that I had, and 1/16 of an inch over the radius of the steering shaft, working on the assumption that any errors would be best fixed if the initial hole wasn't too large. So, how did I end up? Yiiihaaaa. It was absolutely perfect. I could not believe it - the hole was absolutely dead-center aligned such that when I put the steering shaft through the dash and into the two bushings under the dash, there was perfect alignment around the dash hole. Check out the photo below that shows this. I am overjoyed with how this ended up.
After all this excitement, I then moved on to install the release cables. The photos below show three of the release cables installed.
The above photos didn't turn out so well. But here are some hints. For the two front release cables, leave them at their full length. The driver side cable is obviously far too long, but it seems like the easiest thing to do is to loop the cable around in a gradual curve before appearing out the body shell. The driver-side rear cable I cut down to only about 25 cm of cable. I left the passenger side rear cable at full length. When you do need to cut the cable, use the Dremel with a cutoff abrasive disk at a 10,000 rpm setting.
In the final balmy heat of the day, I got all the front loom wiring through the front wall. This actually took a lot of time because the center loom hole had a huge number of wires running through it. Since I had added a couple of additional wiring lines to the battery, I had to cut the grommet down to being simply something that would prevent the wires from rubbing against the abrasive fiberglass. In the end, it all fitted (just).
This morning I awoke at 8:30 to a house temperature of 75 and an outside temperature of 82. During the day it rose progressively to about 95 outside, and around 100 in the garage which I had so brilliantly insulated for the winter! Jammed under the dash is no place to be when it is so hot. I had a water soaked towel in the fridge, and drank gallons of water during the day.
I managed to finish up the dash instruments and lamps. I also put in the other two air blower unit hoses (the ones that go to the top dash outlets). The photos below show the final outcome. Everything is tight, but it all looks good.
Tonight just a few hours in the garage. The heat wave continues, although a late evening weather change has lowered the temperature.
I started the process of trying to work out how to bolt down the center pod. That looks like it will be the most ridiculous exercise in human gymnastics since all five bolts are totally impossible to locate under the dash. However, I need some ratcheting closed end wrenches which I don't have yet.
I decided to focus on the body rivets. I have run out of the rivet washers as provided by the factory. I think what I did was use too many on the underside of the body, as well as using them a lot to tie down cables, etc. So I spent an hour driving around to various hardware stores looking for appropriate replacement washers. I didn't want to settle for anything but stainless steel or aluminium for corrosion reasons. I visited a number of different Menards and Home Depots before I found some stainless steel washers that would do the job. Not every Home Depot is the same - our local one has a pretty poor selection of fastening hardware, but one about 15km away has both sides of an entire aisle dedicated just to fasteners, and that is where I found the exact right washers.
Photo below shows the front driver side attachment of the mid section through to the driver side-pod, the front left splash guard and the chassis. I spaced the holes with 30 mm spacing. Some of these holes go through two layers of the fiberglass then a chassis member - for these, I'm guessing that I will use a much longer rivet. The others go through only two layers of fiberglass. I took note to mark which hole was of which type since once the holes are drilled it is probably difficult to determine the actual depth of the hole / number of layers.
Tonight I decided to try getting the center pod into place. If you have the heater or AC unit, there is no way that it can be installed, since there is no access under the dash.
However, I worked out a trick that works:
After I did this, I stood back and admired the final result. Photo shown below.
After congratulating myself on my own genius, I decided to do a quick re-test of the electrical system. Remember that I had spent a full weekend working a few weeks ago on just testing the wiring. I wired up the battery through a 20 amp fuse and started the test sequence...
I immediately put the genius status in my back pocket. For some bizarre reason, as soon as I put the battery +ve terminal on, the two door latch lamps glow in a dull way (suggesting a few volts, not a full 12 volt illumination). Nothing that I can do makes these lamps change. This is completely different from the checks that I ran when the center section was not on the car. Argh... I also checked the front and rear latch lamps - they always remain off. Something is clearly wrong, since I had tested the triggering of each door for the alarm. Also, the hi-beam indicator goes on at the wrong times - when the lamp switch is fully set on (wrong), and the re-use of the fog lamp has no effect, and the hi-beam flash has no effect.
The majority of functions works perfectly well - radio, fuel pumps, indicators, hazards, wiper, blower, back-lights, etc. Tomorrow I will be back to diagnosing electrical problems. This is another reason why I'd advise to treat this mid-section installation with great trepidation. If I can't diagnose and fix these problems quickly, all the instruments have to come out and the center body section has to come off to give me access. That could be two full days (at least) wasted.
I had only a short time in the garage last night and tonight. I dug into the two problems with the electrical system. I think I have them solved. My current hypothesis is that I have ground leakage problems through the ignition wiring circuit (when the ignition is off), and that I've wired up the hi-beam indicator incorrectly somehow since the circuits work, but the light goes on at the wrong time.
I had to take the dash pod off to re-gain access to the wiring to run tests... total waste of time, and its 90 degrees in the garage, even at 10 pm.
Tonight I wanted a break from the wiring problems, so I tackled the starter. I'd mentioned earlier that the starter doesn't fit against my dry-sump oil pan. Initially I thought that I had to indent the pan about 3mm along a line about 15cm long down the length of the starter. It turns out that the real problem was that the oil pan side is not flat, and the corner is quite raised from the rest of the oil pan wall. A few careful taps with a hammer against a piece of 3/4 inch metal stock put a 2mm deep dent in the front corner of the pan and the starter now fits.
The heat wave continues here in Minneapolis. We are apparently headed for a record temperature run.
I diagnosed the problems with the dash lamp wiring. The dash hi-beam lamp is connected to the wrong place. Again, probably my fault for monkeying around with the wiring and not testing completely. However, the fix was easy - I was able to swap two relay wires around and solve the problem. I think that my re-use of the fog-light switch is still okay - it gives me slightly better control over the lights than the original setup.
Today I finished the attachment of the center section. See photos below. Lots of rivets, and the use of p-clips to hold down brake cables and wiring.
To attach the wiper fluid tank and brake reservoir, I used rivnuts rather than the nuts provided. I also moved the location of these about 15 mm in towards the center of the car in order to make the wiper tank fit properly and not squash up against the chassis. Unfortunately as a result there are holes behind the tanks (you can't see them) which I blanked off with large rivets. I also could not get the wiper tank to mount in a robust manner since there is only one bolt holding the bracket to the body. It looks like it might swing from side to side, so I put some double sided tape behind the bracket and sandwiched it in place. The tank is very well attached now.
The brake tank lines go down to the front and rear master cylinders. These lines come as one section of hose. Just attach one, measure it to the brake tank, then cut and attach, then do the other side and you'll be fine.
So, everything forward of the front bulk head is now done. Its a pretty exciting feeling!
The heat is making working on the car almost unbearable. Its literally a case of working for 15 minutes, then ducking inside for 5 minutes, a drink of water, and going back out. The heat is supposed to alleviate tomorrow. Apparently its the longest heat wave here since 1986. The temperatures aren't that high (90 to 95 - although the radio claims its 100 or higher) but its the extremely high humidity as well that knocks you out.
I managed to get the alarm wiring fully finally fixed today. A lot of work under the dash again. It would have been better to get this right before the mid-section went on, but that said, its all correct now. The biggest mistake was not testing the wiring with absolutely all the lamps, gauges and switches in place. The most important thing to remember is that the ignition side of the wiring goes to a a very low resistance circuit when the car is switched off, because all the devices expecting power are connected to the negative rail. This badly upsets the alarm sensors - triggering them immediately.
I've included the final correct wiring diagram below. There are so many more diodes added in here that I thought I would explain what each is for (hence the numbers).
In addition, you'll notice that I changed the switch settings so that there are two NC push button switches on the front clip, and two on the rear clip. I did this based on looking at the recommended modifications in the build manual where they attach push button switches on little mounting brackets attached to each of the latch mechanisms. This looks like the best way of making sure that the body sections are correctly in place.
I also fixed the plug on the brake fluid test lamp. For some reason, the wiring harness comes with plugs that are diabolical to get onto the brake fluid switch. I cut these off, replaced them with plugs that match the switch, and put the switch in place. Now the switches are all in the dash, and you can see in the photo below that the brake fluid lamp is doing its job because, guess what, there is no fluid in the brake system!!
The reason why this is in a switch is that you can press the switch to test that the lamp isn't burnt out.
Having finished the front body and the extra things attached to it, and all the messing around under the dash and with the alarm system, I then moved to the rear of the mid-section and worked on drilling the holes in the body section, routing wires and cables, and mounting the items that attach to the rear of the mid-section. No real surprises here. One hint though is that to rivet into the rear body section necessitates drilling into the rear bulkhead carpet that I spent so much time working on. I was able to drill very carefully and drill through the fiberglass and into the sound-proofing material but stop short of the rubber matting and the carpet. That was enough to locate the rivets into the solid part of the fiberglass without marring the inside carpet.
Photo above shows the rear plumbing coming along. Enough for today... I need to get back inside to air conditioned heaven. (Future note: the location of the fuel filter is way too close to the centerline. It needs to be moved about 10cm to the left side of the car, and the one-way valves need to be moved down to be under the lower edge of the MSD unit, otherwise the dry-sump pulleys and the water pump pulley are very close to rubbing up against these fuel line elements)
Not much tonight. I did realize that I had made a mess of the mounting of the swirl tank because I left off the mounting bracket, given that the photos in the build manual are not very insightful. Excuses aside, this is very much a Homer Simpson moment, since I had already marked the brackets for what they are needed for, but had put them up on the parts shelf and somehow forgotten them. I'll put it down to the heat wave that finished yesterday when I made this mistake.
So, I un-riveted the swirl tank, dug out the rivet remains, taped up the area all around each hole, and filled in the four holes with fiberglass epoxy. I managed to do this without breaking through the rear bulkhead sound dampening material, foam and carpet. Tomorrow, I'll try to fill these holes with gel-coat and polish them off. This will be good practice for repairing scratches in the fiberglass body panels.
While the epoxy dried (first photo below, on the left side), I taped and measured the location of the AC drier unit (right photo below). Its not clear to me how this mounts yet, but this cross identifies the location as specified by the instructions - 60 mm in from the edge, 180 mm down from the inward curve of the rear bulkhead.
I did have one success - I attached the rear speakers, jumped into the car and tested the stereo in full. It sounds great (at least to me - not an audiophile), and there is no apparent rattle of body panels even at high power.
Just a few hours in the garage tonight. I unpacked the gel coat repair kit that the factory provides and made up a small test sample of the gel coat. It doesn't solidify very quickly, which might make fixing holes on a vertical surface a bit difficult. I went out and bought some polishing paste and polishing lambs wool covers. No more on this front.
I then worked on the AC drier mounting. The hose that goes through the side of the rear bulkhead and goes across the top of the AC radiator and down into the upwards facing connection on the AC radiator is the hose shown below. I'm assuming that the slightly angled section of the hose is at the radiator end, and that angled section is oriented to move the hose away from the radiator. I'll have more photos of this when its properly installed.
I decided that the simple metal bracket provided in the kit can be used for the drier unit, with the little right angle tab being placed at the bottom of the unit. The kit includes a nut and bolt.... I have no idea what that is for, except I did notice that the drier unit looks like it might be a newer version than the one documented in the build manual. I took the two large diameter hose clamps and squished them between the mounting bracket and the rear bulkhead with five rivets drilled through the bracket (see first photo below). If done right, the AC hose can go neatly through the body and screw onto the drier (second photo).
Before you do this, don't forget to insert the right O-ring...
I also quickly undid the AC hose and smoothed down the edges of the hole and then painted the inside of the hole with the red gloss paint. This looks much cleaner than the photos above. Note that the hole in the body work needs to be large enough to get the hose end through, which is considerably wider than the piece of the hose swivel end as shown below.
All said, this was successful. Like I said - not quite sure if I mounted the unit using the right hardware, but it is both mounted in the right place, and mounted in a secure way.
Again, the heat wave returned today and it was 90 degrees and a good 70% humidity. So, miserable working on the car, but at least I was not under the dash.
First up, I located the hose going from the drier unit to the AC radiator unit. The drier end of the hose goes through the rear body as shown above. The radiator (I think this is called the condenser) end of this hose is the hose-end that has a slight angle to it. This attaches to the condenser/radiator upwards facing outlet. Remember to include the O-ring in the condenser end of the hose.
The next photo is the hose end from the front of the car attached to the other side of the AC drier unit (again, with an O-ring in place). The diagrams provided with the AC/heater unit show this arrangement quite clearly. I did end up with an extra 3 to 6 cm of hose in both the hoses that go into the drier unit. There is enough space inside the gap between the rear of the side-pod and in front of the fuel tank to add a graceful curve to these hoses that uses up the extra hose length.
Next up, I added the expansion tank, this time remembering to use the bracket provided. The photos are pretty self-explanatory. Three hints:
The photo below shows the expansion tank installed onto the bracket. I used the drill press to accurately drill the holes for the bolts going through each of the four tabs. I also hand polished the tank before installing it.
Tonight I also mixed up another small batch of gel coat (using less catalyst) and test-filled one of the holes that I have incorrectly drilled last night for the location of the swirl tank. More on that tomorrow.
The gel-coat cured nicely. I tried to polish it, but I don't have the right cutting paste. I only have finishing compound. So, I gave up on the idea of filling the holes and cut a plate to go over the holes from thin aluminium sheet. I polished it up, riveted the bracket through the plate and into the fiberglass body, and then bolted the swirl tank onto the bracket and attached the hoses.
The hose from the top of the radiator goes to the lower hose outlet on the swirl tank (I'm guessing). The top hose outlet on the swirl tank goes down to the inlet on the underside of the expansion tank. I put some heat insulation around the two hoses going across the rear of the lower panel, mainly to make sure that the hot coolant fluid doesn't heat up the fuel lines.
It looks like the approach is to work on connecting all the hoses, lines and wires from the outside in towards the center. There is just so much going on along the rear bulkhead - it takes some good planning to make sure each piece ends up in the right place, using shared locating clamps, and not twisted around some other pre-attached component.
One thing that I am worried about is the location of the fuel-line T-piece underneath the fuel filter (Future note: I changed this - see later). It is close to the whirling pulleys at the front of the engine. I already had to move the MSD unit to avoid the main pulley on the oil pump. It also seems like it is crossing over and sitting close to the warm heater hoses (probably a bad thing) for no good reason. I can take out the short braided hose, and maybe insulate the heater hose some more. The good news is that the aluminium brackets behind the swirl tank and expansion tank keep the main radiator hoses (which is where all the heat comes from) away from everything else.
First up, I realized that I had made a really dumb mistake - I had put the Dynamat acoustic/thermal insulation spare sheets on the parts shelves with the fiberglass/aluminium heat shield panels. Yesterday I jumped on the ladder, gone up to the parts shelves, and pulled down a sheet of Dynamat instead of a sheet of heat shield. Thankfully it only took 15 minutes to remove the Dynamat. I replaced that with heat shield and re-installed the hoses.
I also finished up the attachment of the heater hose (later, I realized that the hose below is wrong).
Last up, I test fitted the driver side fuel cap, fuel filler funnel, and the fuel filler hose. I cut off about 25 mm of hose to make it fit correctly (the build CD recommends 20 mm), and even then it was still slightly too long. But it looks like there is enough give, so I won't cut the hose shorter until I've done a full install.
We awoke this morning to the local tornado warning system going. This is a 6 million decibel alarm mounted on the top of a 20 meter tower. It is incredibly loud - it sits on a rotating platform and when it faces towards our house (maybe a half-mile away), it is as loud as a car alarm going off next to you. A major thunderstorm and huge winds came through, sky was dark, we grabbed all the cats and moved downstairs - but luckily no tornado touchdowns. Also, we didn't lose any trees (normally if the storm is bad enough that the siren goes on, at least a couple of trees on our property will be tumbled).
After the storm passed, back to the garage. I did the final fit on the driver side filler cap and hose filler. I decided that the right assembly order is to fit the filler cap first, then squish the hose into place. The reason for this is that once the hose is in place, you cannot get access to the end of the bolts coming down from the filler cap. I also discovered that a very convenient way of attaching these nuts is to take a short socket, put an extra nut at the bottom of the socket (as a filler), and then put the actual nut in the top of the socket. Wrap the socket with masking tape that extends over the edge of the socket by about 3mm, and then use that 3mm overhang to hold the washer in place. Plug this contraption onto a short shaft socket screwdriver and, holding it vertically all the time, go in and up under the fiberglass body, then use an Allen key to spin the bolt into the top nut. This sequence works really well.
The bolts at the front end of the car can actually be accessed by hand, so leave those to last. Once each nut and washer is in place, go around the bolts tightening them down in sequence. I also got fussy and rotated each bolt head so that the writing stamped into the top of each bolt head was facing outwards. (In the photo below, notice the yellow line at the bottom. This is a weird artifact that happens a lot with the flash).
The filler hose then goes on with two clamps. The bottom clamp is easily accessible. The top clamp, however, I found was tricky to get access to. In the end, its actually best if I put the clamp side at the front of the car, with the front end of the clamp facing towards the front at about a 45 degree angle. Since I am less beefy than Popeye, I can just get my forearm in between the gap between the hose and the body section with a socket in hand, and tighten up the top clamp. (Note that I used the new ratchet wrenches for this - there is no way that I could use a conventional wrench, or a ratchet socket - there just doesn't seem like there is enough space).
Next up I tackled the final hose fittings for the air conditioning. The rear top-most air conditioning hose was a complete and utter mess. I spent a few hours fussing around with this, not sure whether I should be angry at myself for being so stupid, or angry at the factory for being so vague on the location of the condenser.
The issue is that the air-con hose fitting is very tight. Look in the photo below. Now, look at the right-angle hose at the very top of the photo roughly in the center (you can see one end of the right-angle at the top facing left, and the other end facing down, both are partially hidden by the red fiberglass).
This hose was a complete #@!%^! to install because the space is so tight. Truth is, the way I had mounted the AC condenser, the hose end could not be fitted. I had to trim a few mm off the end of the hose fitting, shape the hose end so that it was more rounded, and bend the 90 degree hose angle to about 115 or 120 degrees. It was incredibly frustrating and very annoying since if I had just placed the AC condenser about 7mm further forward, I could have attached this hose in 3 minutes. So, my suggestion is to clamp the condenser in place, then make sure that you can easily get the rear-most hose on and off easily.
Two photos below with the plumbing and wiring pretty much correctly in place (Future note - except the fuel filter!)
I also spent some time attaching the rest of the lines, wiring and hydraulic lines going down the left side of the engine bay.
The photo below shows everything ready for the installation of the major engine bay components. I spent an hour cleaning up the garage as well since it was incredibly messy. More clean-up is still required.
I installed the passenger side fuel filler and petrol cap this morning. No real news on this, except I forgot to clean out the hose after cutting the required 2cm off one end, so I had to remove it and clean it out with compressed air and a damp rag. I also attached the swirl tank overflow to the expansion tank lower hose (the one in the bottom of the expansion tank), and ran a hose from the expansion tank overfill down to the bottom of the chassis.
Next up, I did the whole brake bleeding exercise. I'd never done this before, so it was fun working out how to best do it. I purchased a "one-man bleeding kit" which includes a bleeding tank that has a pickup that makes sure that the flow back into the caliper contains no air, supposedly allowing you to take your foot off the pedal before re-tightening the bleed valve.
I did it in the order suggested, working from the farthest brake to the closest brake. All went well. A few leaks due to things not being quite as tight as they should be. After a few hours, the brakes feel rock solid. Given my novice level on all this, I'm not convinced that its perfect yet, but I can tell that it is at least close as I can now no longer press the brake pedal all the way to the end of its travel.
One problem I did have is with one of the copper crush washers for the filler tank hose ends that go into the brake master cylinders leaks. I think it is off-center, and got crushed to one side, possibly providing a small gap, and hence leaking slowly. I replaced it with a better fitting copper washer, but I need to monitor this as even later tonight I went back and thought that I could detect a slight sheen of brake fluid around one of these connections. Good news is that the high pressure side of the circuit is not leaking at all, its just ironically the low pressure side - the gravity feed from the fluid tank to the master cylinder.
I then installed the clutch on the flywheel. Again, a complete novice at all this stuff, but I spent some time on line and figured out how the whole setup works. The abrasive clutch plate is squashed in between the flywheel on the engine, and the clutch housing plate. If you look carefully, you'll see that the clutch housing plate is attached to the clutch housing by two pieces of spring-steel (located around the edge) that jam the plate in the clutch housing forward. This makes logical sense. In a static sense, the lack of clutch pressure means that all the engine power is expected to be transferred to the central abrasive plate. If you look in the photo below, the abrasive disk is being held in place by this friction - the same friction that will transfer 700+ HP to the transaxle.
This then lends itself to the most important part of the installation of the clutch. Follow me logically... if the free floating abrasive disk (sandwiched between the engine side flywheel and the clutch housing plate) can handle 700+ HP, then after you've tightened down the clutch housing, what sort of chance do you think you have for aligning the clutch abrasive disk so that it can mate with the transaxle... I'd suggest absolutely none!
The transaxle input shaft has to go into the splined receiver in the middle of the free floating abrasive disk. If that is off center, it simply won't mate. As you put the transaxle up to the engine, the input shaft will bind against the abrasive disk, which is now jammed and held in place by the two clutch plate sides. I've heard that this is terrible trouble if the alignment is off.
Racing car buddy Gordon already warned me about this process, and kept asking me if I had a thing called a "clutch alignment tool". This is something that you can use to center the abrasive disk against the crankshaft. Essentially it looks like the last 6 inches of the transaxle input shaft. In the photo above, this is the blue plastic thing sticking out of the center. Use it to hold the abrasive clutch disk in place while you attach and tighten down the outer housing of the clutch body. When finished, the idea is that you pull the alignment tool out, and the clutch disk is in the perfect place to receive the transaxle input shaft.
Note that I did have to modify the clutch alignment tool because the crank shaft end did not fit, it was too wide. I'll put the full procedure in later once I've proven to myself that it works.
Back to the engine, I ended up tonight not being able to get the engine mount bolts through the engine mounts and chassis. I retired at about 10 pm with a very sore back and a terrible sense of anxiety about the engine mounts. I sent a message out to www.pistonheads.com and got some useful suggestions saying that it was okay to modify the engine mounts (enlarge the holes, loosen the bolts going into the engine block and tighten up after installation, shave off parts of the mounting brackets / chassis, etc). Photo below shows the engine resting on the engine mounts, with a hydraulic lift on the rear adapter plate. I had to leave it this way for the evening.
After work today, I decided to experiment just a bit more with the engine mounts before trying some of the modifications suggested to me yesterday. I eventually discovered that if I tilt the rear of the engine down enough, the rear hole of the engine mounts align with the chassis mounting holes. I then tapped the long engine mount bolts through (from the back of the car) with a hammer.
With the rear of the two engine mount holes located with the engine mount bolts, I then lifted the rear of the engine in very small increments, checking both sides of the engine mounts after each lift. Eventually the front hole of the engine mounts aligned enough with the chassis that I could gently tap the bolts home.
I was ecstatic that I had solved this problem with no modification of the supplied parts. It suggested to me, once again, that the Ultima supplied components are incredibly precise. Its just a case of working out how to work with them.
Below is a photo of the engine after the mount alignment is complete. Note that the hydraulic lifter arm is still required to lift the rear of the engine since the engine is weighted towards the rear.
Below is a blurred photo of the engine mount bolt in place and torqued up.
With the engine roughly in place, I then moved to install the transaxle. I swapped the hydraulic lifting arm with the rolling hydraulic jack in order to hold the rear of the engine up, and free the lifting arm for moving the transaxle around.
Because I've already done this once before, getting the transaxle through the chassis was no problem. I did have to re-attach the straps a couple of times as I did the lift-point shuffle, and got past each of the upper chassis rail arms. Hint - I covered the lower chassis rails with cardboard to avoid scratches where the transaxle rests, and the under side of the upper chassis rails with duct tape to avoid protruding bolts, vanes, etc, from scratching the powder coat.
Based on the earlier test-assembly, both the drain plug and filler plug on the transaxle are completely inaccessible when the transaxle is in place. This is because the plugs just happen to align with the chassis frame.
While the transaxle is about 6 inches from the engine, I started the process of filling it up with the synthetic gear oil. The aperture is so small that it takes forever to get the fluid to drain in - maybe 15 minutes for each liter. The stuff absolutely stinks, too. Its got a really nasty metallic smell to it. If you get it on your hands, it stays for a few days. Yuck!
I got two liters of fluid in (out of 3.5 liters), then made sure that everything was sitting on solid supports (don't ever leave load on a hydraulic arm or a hydraulic lift because they may leak slowly and then there could be a loud bang in the night when something falls over). I called it a night.
Tonight I put the last 1.5 liters in. I used a kitchen scale to split the last container of fluid into two equal portions (using an empty fluid container as the other receptacle). I then loosely attached the top hose to the transaxle (that goes into the breather tank). The top hose has to be attached because when the transaxle is in place, the banjo bolt sits directly under the upper chassis cross-beam, and it cannot be put in at that point.
I next started the process of mating the transaxle to the engine.
Oh, boy, what a challenge that was. I could get the transaxle onto the two bolts that are pre-pressed into the adapter plate, but getting it to move over the clutch was completely impossible. I spent an hour buggering around trying to get the transaxle to move forward. I had taken so much care with the alignment tool that I worried that there was something fundamentally wrong, since the transaxle seemed to bind around the center-line of the car. I tried using clamps to bring the transaxle forward, but was very concerned about a related warning in the build manual that says "don't be tempted to use nuts on the adapter plate bolts to bring the transaxle to the engine". So, I was dainty with the use of clamps, but even then it seemed like I was hitting a hard barrier. It is impossible to see into the clutch housing to see what the actual problem is because the bell housing wraps around everything.
I finally decided that I would pull the transaxle back, spin the transaxle input shaft a bit (its in neutral, so you can do this by just grabbing the splined shaft and turning), and try again. I also removed the clutch slave cylinder, which I noticed has a mild spring in it that keeps it pushed outward.
I was ecstatic - this time, the transaxle slipped in like a glove first try. I could literally bump the back of the transaxle and it would slide forward. Absolutely beautiful. I had the transaxle lifted up slightly by my hydraulic lifting arm, but I picked up the back of the transaxle and pushed forward, and the whole unit slid into place. So, this showed me that it really is a clean fit once everything is aligned properly. No idea if it was the clutch slave cylinder or the slight turn of the input shaft that was the magic trick (after easily re-installing the slave cylinder later, I figured that it was the slight turn of the input shaft).
The transaxle slides cleanly in to about the last 1.5 cm. At this point, the ends of the two bolts pre-fitted to the adapter plate show through to the other side, so you can attach the nuts to them. This last 1.5 cm is where you need to put all the nuts and bolts into the adapter plate and tighten down. This final compression stage will push the input shaft solidly home into the clutch plate splined receiver.
I was then able to put the three retaining bolts into the rear bracket, and remove all supports from the rear of the engine and the transaxle. In other words, I now have the engine and transaxle installed properly and finally into the car. Its a great feeling. See the photo below.
I did notice that the final resting place of the engine still puts the water-pump pulley damn close to the fuel filter (Future note: the fuel pump was later moved), and the extended crank shaft pulley for the dry-sump pump is very close to the fuel line, even though I moved it a few days ago. I think it is safe, but I will monitor this very carefully. It mainly has to do with how far the engine will rotate in its mount during acceleration. If its too much, I may have to move the fuel line components again.
Great day today - I figured out the whole transaxle installation. Admittedly it took quite a while due to my novice experience.
First up, I started filling up the clutch line and bleeding this out. I worked at this for a good hour, and although I had bled the clutch through to the point where I was getting consistently bubble-free fluid flowing through to the bleeding tank, I knew that there was something wrong. The clutch just seemed to be far too spongy.
I finally realized that because the transaxle is installed "upside down", the clutch slave cylinder is also "upside down", so that the position of the bleed valve is now at the bottom of the cylinder instead of at the top. See the photo below.
The bleed valve is the lower right black-capped outlet. Clearly, clutch fluid comes in through the clutch line (the braided hose), settles at the base of the piston chamber, and runs out the bleed line, leaving an air pocket at the top of the cylinder. It took me a while to realize this, but it is clear that this "upside down" transaxle situation results in an air pocket at the top of the cylinder, essentially making the slave cylinder inoperative.
So, I unbolted the slave cylinder, flipped it over, then held it in place with a clamp against the chassis such that the bleed valve (and hose to the bleed tank) was the highest point. After a few presses of the clutch pedal, I blew all the remaining air out of the clutch slave cylinder. I then removed the bleed-tank, tightened up the bleed valve, and re-bolted the slave cylinder back into the transaxle. The clutch now has real weight. When pressing down on the clutch pedal, it feels like I am walking up stairs. The pressure is also very consistent during the full travel of the clutch. My examination of the clutch suggests that the slave cylinder is pushing against a simple spring mechanism. So, if Hooke's law holds, it makes sense that the clutch has uniform pressure over the full travel of the pedal. That's my logic, anyway.
I then put the white plastic bracket onto the gear shifter that holds the shifter in neutral, and attached the shift cables to the transaxle, per the build CD.
I finished up the day with the coolant hosing, as shown in the two photos below. Once you work out the right place for each hose, the connections, clamps and clearances are pretty clear. The first photo below is the output line from the top of the inlet manifold to the top of the swirl-tank, and the input line into the heater. The second photo is the lower input line going into the water pump, and the return line from the heater core (the dark narrow rubber hose just at the top of the photo).
Tonight I fixed the leak in the gravity-feed going into one of the brake master cylinders. It was a very slow leak, but something was wrong. I took the entire fitting off, and I think that maybe the hose wasn't sitting down on the barbed fitting correctly. I re-attached the hose, cleaned everything up, replaced the copper crush washer and tried again. I'll see tomorrow morning what the scoop is.
I then started the process of attaching all the oil lines for the dry sump system. First photo below is (from left to right) the two scavenger output lines that go to the dry-sump tank, and the high pressure line that goes up to the oil cooler.
Because the rear oil lines go over the top of the rear driver (left side) drive-shaft, I thought it best to put this drive shaft in at this point. The drive shaft CV joints have some lateral movement in the mechanism, so if it looks like it won't fit, push or pull on the ends and it will change length slightly. I found it easiest to put a couple of bolts in at the top, then rotate the axle 1/6 of a turn so that I'm always putting the bolts in at the top. This gives easy access to the bolts, and the rubber CV boot is always angled down and away from the socket wrench, giving enough room to work.
I remembered that the left side driver-shaft is where the speedometer disk and sensor go. The sensor bracket goes onto two bolts that hold the transaxle together. Remove these, and put the sensor bracket on. As I was assembling everything, I noticed that the metal tabs on the speedometer disk do not align well with the sensor, so I bent the bracket slightly inwards to align the disk of 6 metal tabs approximately with the center line of the sensor. I set the sensor so that it sits about 2mm back from the metal tab. I spun the axle to check that it cleared, and it looks fine.
The six inboard bolts are torqued up to 60 ft-lbs. Remember to use the friction washers provided. This torque is enough to turn the transaxle over, so I used a piece of wood sitting in the lug-nuts and resting on the garage floor to stop the drive shaft moving. You could probably put the handbrake on as an alternative.
Today I kept going on the installation of parts in the engine bay. Below is the rather complex oil hosing. The output from the cooler goes into the one-way check-valve (the bronze thing). The arm of the T after this goes to the Accusump unit. This is a very long line, but I am only using the Accusump as a pre-oiler, so I figure that this is acceptable. This long line wasn't by design - I simply could not find any other place to mount the Accusump given that the dry-sump tank was more important to locate close to the engine.
Below is a set of photos of the Accusump being installed. In the first photo below, the tank is not rotated to the right final position yet. The other photos show the final installation.
Photo below shows the Accusump in its final location.
With all the oil lines in place, the natural position for some of the lines has them hanging below the bottom of the car. This is certainly not a good situation. I also read an incident on PistonHeads that someone had gone over a construction lip in the road by accident and ripped out the lower chassis rail. A number of folks have recommended installing a skid plate under the engine bay. I think I might do this, and use that to hold the hoses in place.
Photo below is the extra bracket I created to lift the scavenger return lines away from the driveshaft.
This is a photo of the oil pressure sender. Note the orientation of the wires. One is for the oil pressure gauge, the other is for the oil warning light. These are marked in the wiring diagrams supplied by the factory. The "W" and "K" markings are hard to read on the back of the oil pressure sender, but they are there - lightly stamped into the metal surface.
Next photo shows the oil pressure warning light working when I turn the ignition on, and there's clearly no oil pressure at this point.
This is a photo of the outlet hose that goes under the drive shaft and up to the breather tank. When I first looked at this setup, I was worried that the breather outlet being half way up the tank, and a dip under the drive shaft would create a sort of S-bend effect. But it turns out that inside the dry sump tank, there is a pipe that takes the breather all the way up to be flush with the top of the tank.
I installed the other drive shaft, and torqued up all the drive-shaft bolts to the correct torque. I did this carefully and in triangular sequence to make sure all the drive shaft ends are seated uniformly. I used the 1 meter (3 foot) section of 1 inch by 1 inch wood as a lever to spin the drive shafts around so that the bolts are most accessible, and as a stop resting against the garage floor to prevent the transaxle spinning. The inner bolts are accessed best at the top, the outer bolts best accessed at the bottom, or at least off to one side.
I also installed the exhaust headers. On my engine, the header bolt holes were too short at the front and rear most bolt holes. I have no idea why this was the case, but it was consistent. Essentially the bolts bottomed out in the heads on the front and bottom bolts. So, I had to cut about 4mm off the end of these four bolts, clean up the threads with a tap, and then re-attach. Unfortunately I have no photos of this as I left the camera in Kerri's car and she was out for most of the day.
When installing the exhaust headers, put the front and rear bolt in loosely first, then you can drop the FelPro gaskets in between the two, and the end "hooks" will sit on the two bolts installed. Then put the rest of the four bolts in. I have no idea if the gaskets were designed with this installation approach in mind, but it makes for very easy single-person installation.
I ended up the day installing the AC compressor hoses (remember the O-rings!). Here is the photo of that - the top hose is the one that bends upwards directly towards the camera, and the lower (narrower) hose bends around in the 180 degree bend back towards the rear-most connection on the AC condenser (radiator).
That's it for today!