August
It's now August, if you were waiting for updates then I am sorry but since the last update not too much has been completed mainly due to my mother having a fall at home and breaking her hip and never recovering from the operation. That was in April/May and I did not look at the car in that time, or for about 4/5 weeks after the funeral. We then went on vacation the beginning of July. Well I have finally got round to putting the car on its own wheels and with the help of a friend Andy, (actually he did most of the work!) the body is now final fitted.
I have also fitted the oil cooler and made up a bracket to hold it firmly in place. The fuel system is finished although the pump is a wee bit close to the water hose, but I think it should be ok. The MSD ignition module was fitted to the rear bulkhead.
I have fitted a floor to the engine bay, normally the Ultima is open at the back, but I wanted to protect the fuel lines, pump and oil cooler, I felt it was safer and also the floor protects the bay from the elements.
I am hoping to install the engine this Bank Holiday weekend providing the weather stays fine as I have to do this on the driveway.
More updates when I get the engine in.
Sunday August 27th
It's now looking like a car..................................
Sunday arrived and it started out nice and sunny and that's the way it stayed all day, just what I needed as I had to work outside to install the engine. As I have a gravel drive my strategy was to get the engine on the hoist and roll the car under it and drop it in place, well that's the theory anyway, and much to my surprise that's the way it went!
It wasn't all plain sailing, we had to tweak here and there to get the engine to drop on the chassis mount plates, but after an about an hour of lifting the engine up and down removing the mounts and, filing them a bit and the filing the chassis plates a bit, the engine finally came to rest where it should....YES!!!!
We then wheeled it back to the garage (these gravel stones play havoc with your knees.) to fit the starter motor to the adaptor plate there is restricted access between the adaptor plate and the sump, you have to installed the starter to the adaptor plate before mounting the plate to the engine. There is very little space between the starter live connections and the wing of the sump, I bought a rubber boot to protect the connection. The battery feed and loom cables have to be attached now as it's impossible to do it with the adaptor plate bolted to the engine. The starter motor installed, the adaptor plate could be bolted to the engine, ready for the flywheel to be fitted. This was a bit of a pain as there is a very narrow channel to get a socket in but after a quick file with the power file it just fitted. Next up was the clutch, with the help of a borrowed tool to align and centralise the plate with the flywheel, was fitted and bolts torqued up, but we didn't get 'round to fitting the box as we were running out of time.............
We will get to that in the week.............................. Oh and the 'we' in all this are these two suspicious looking characters!!!!!! my son Matthew (right) and his mate Peter, who incidentally help me with some of the electrics.
During the week I managed to get the gearbox in and connected the gear change rods, all seven gears present and correct, decided to bolt the exhausts on at this stage which was straight forward until I got to the securing plate between the silencers which needed quite a bit of work to get the silencers to fit, but fit they did in the end and the system is secure, the only movement is from the rubber mounts from the top chassis rail to the plate, secured two ninety degree brackets.
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Next job was to make a plate to carry the coil, which is box like instead of the conventional canister, took a bit of time to do this as I haven't got any decent alloy, so made one from what I had and covered it in good old heatmat!!
The pot in the foreground is the breather for the gearbox, which I will fix when I have installed the drive shafts (weekend job).
Last job for this week was to make up oil lines from the oil filter to the oil cooler, had to get the engine in first before I could get the correct measurements, this was time consuming as the chassis is triangulated around that area and one oil line goes under one rail and over another but it doesn't 'bend' that much just a gentle curve. I have included in one line a take off for the addition of an accusump, but I'm not fitting one at the moment I'm going to see if I really need one after it's been on the road. They really come into their own for track days as they keep the oil pressure at maximum if it drops on hard cornering or braking. After about two hours I finally finished the lines and they are the right length!!
