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Page 19
| July 2004: (back to top) |
Dam has it really been a month since my last update. I can thank work for sending me out of town all the time. Lets get to the updates. Not allot to report.
I ran the lines for the fire system. The bottle is mounted under the passenger foot rest. The line comes out of the bottle and splits to the front and rear of the car. One line will terminate under the center of the dash and the nozzle will spray on both the drivers and passengers legs. The other line runs to the engine bay where it splits again putting a nozzle on both sides of the engine.
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I also started making the carbon interior firewall. It's made out of blue/black carbon.
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Now for the bracket that is on my sh!t list. I had to pull the motor and trans so my friend could finish welding the front gear linkage bracket. The upside is it will be easier to run some of the plumbing with the motor out. I also picked up a cv joint boot to fit in the hole that the gear linkage goes through. It's very flexible so it shouldn't effect the shifting at all.
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Next job was to mount the alternator. Because I am running an electric water pump I couldn't run the alt in the stock locations because it uses the water pump pulley to run the belts. Luckily the block has mounting holes for one of the accessories brackets in the perfect place. All it took was a spacer and a generic alternator bracket. I'll have to adjust the shims once the motor is in an running. The alt pulley and the crank pulley looked lined up but the real test will be when the engine is spinning
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The machine shop also got my stainless steel pieces cut for the front tow hook. The center hoop is 1/2 in thick, the vertical plates are 1/4 in and the 2 base plates are 1/4 inch. I purposely left the hoop piece a little long because until I get the front end on I really have no idea how far out it needs to go. If my guess was way off I'll cut the hoop short before welding it up. To mount the hoop I am going to run bolts through the top plate into the radiator support bars and then through the bottom plate. I designed the hook to allow air to travel under the hoop in an effort to block the least amount of air trying to get to the radiator.
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My lack of garage time ended this weekend, I actually got to spend all day saturday and sunday in the garage. On the list of things to do was start working on the fuel system. I have grown a great appreciating for steel braided lines. Not only are the fitting expensive but they are a total pain in the ass to work with. Each little length of tube takes for ever to make. Regardless of how much I hate them I did make some good progress. I started with the fuel tank balance line. This is a 10an line that connect the to tanks making them basically one large tank. I intend to fill both tanks from the drivers side because the passenger side fill will be removed to make room for the Intercooler. The curve in the middle was to avoid the crank pulley and more importantly the crank angle trigger wheel that resembles a buzz saw.
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With that line installed, it was time to put the engine back in and see if it's in the right place. Thankfully it was. Before I go any further a little explanation of my fuel set up may help.
With my set up I decided to run 1 low pressure pump drawling from the drivers side tank only. You will remember the factory set up runs 2 pumps with a switch to toggle power between them. I wired it so the toggle switch only flips the fuel level sender, but the power always feeds the drivers side regardless of the position of the switch. The fuel from the low pressure pump is filtered and feed into a surge tank. The surge tank supplies fuel the high pressure pump. This fuel is then filter again and splits to feed both fuel rails. The rails both return to a fuel pressure regulator which then feeds the excess fuel back into the surge tank. The surge tank overflow returns to the drivers side tank. The reason I went with a fuel surge tank is because,with a normal gas tank has the fuel level drops, under hard acceleration / braking or high g turns the fuel can slosh to one side leaving the fuel pickup uncovered. These brief periods can cause a drop in fuel pressure and possibly a very lean condition. So you can either keep the gas tank very close to full all the time or run a serge tank. The surge tank acts as a small secondary fuel tank that is pretty much constantly full of fuel. By drawling and return from one tank I insure that I never over flow the tanks. The large cross over line will keep the two tanks at the same level effectively making them one large tank.
Next up was to make a mounting bracket for the low pressure pump. I just cut out a little piece of aluminum and riveted it to the frame. Before I mounted it I painted it black of course.
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With the low pressure pump in place it was time to put the engine back in and mark the location of the surge tank. Once marked out came the engine and I started making up the steel braided lines. It was kind of like a strange puzzle, I had already purchased a bunch of fitting and it was just a matter of moving them around until I found a setup I though may work.
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With the surge tank mounted in went the engine and I started to lay out the fuel rail feed and return lines. That's about all the fuel line fun I could handle for one weekend.
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This weekend I spent some time finishing up the fuel system. Wasn't a whole lot left just the connections from the high pressure pump to the fuel rail. You will notice I changed the routing of these 2 lines. I think the new routing is better but it also was the only way I could do it with the fittings I had left.
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While I was working on the fuel system Brian and John where finishing up the alternator bracket. The bracket they added will help support the alt and keep it from braking the aluminum tabs off the block. They also decided to incorporate the crank trigger sensor mount into the alternator bracket.
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Last job of the weekend was running the coolant lines + mounting the air separator + overflow tank in the engine bay. When mounting the air separator tank you want to mount it has high as possible. For it to work correctly it needs to be the highest point in the cooling system. Just be sure you can still remove the cap. The spring loaded pressure cap goes on the air separator tank, the zero pressure cap goes on the overflow tank. With both tanks you need to mount the bracket first then rivet the tank to the bracket. The ss lines running from the rad to the air separator tank and from the AST to the over flow are -6 lines. It takes a little effort to expand the braiding, but they will fit. I need to do some clean up around the engine bay, but after that I think the engine + trans can go in permanently. (Fingers crossed)
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Not really an update, just something I forgot to mention. A nice cheap way to make the brake handle look a little better is to add a hand grip. Just so happens the hand grip from a 91 ford festiva fits perfectly.
I did a internet parts request on one of the junk yard sites and got a reply from "Total Automotive & Collision" 937-746-3551 crushit2001@yahoo.com I believe they specialize in fords. I really only wanted the hand grip but they sent the whole unit for 10 bucks, can't beat that. Getting the grip off was a pain, just takes allot of twisting and pulling.
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I wasn't to crazy about the factory pedals so I installed a set of pedal covers. For the clutch and brake it was just a matter of drilling and bolting on the new pedal. I am going to wait until I have the throttle body installed before I do the gas pedal.
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