Engine & Gearbox Installation - Part 6 - Ancillaries

With the engine in the car, the last job to complete the installation was to attach the alternator and the power steering pump and fit the serpentine drive belt.

When I bought the engine, Kyle supplied a nice billet aluminium bracket set-up, which once I worked out which holes on the engine it was all supposed to bolt up to, went on quite easily.  There is a smaller bracket which supports the rear of the alternator which sits directly against the cylinder head, the larger front bracket is then set off from the engine block with a number of spacers.

Initial Fit of Ancillary Bracket

Somewhat oddly, despite it being listed as a part of the bracket kit, I didn't seem to have the lower idler pulley with my kit; it was all blister packed and there didn't seem to be a "missing" spot for it.  That created a short delay in proceedings as I had to order a new idler pulley from Summit Racing in the States (I did this to be sure I got the right one, which needed to be for a Z06 Corvette).  Once it arrived it just needed to be fitted with the 110mm M10 bolt supplied with the bracket kit through the pulley and a couple of spacers and screwed into a hole in the engine block.

"Replacement" Lower Idler Pulley

The alternator could then be fitted into place between the front and rear parts of the bracket and held in place with two M10x80 bolts.

The alternator is fixed in place

Then it was 'just' a matter of fixing the Power Steering Pump in place with the three M8x25 bolts supplied.  And with that, a five-minute job turned into a several weeks job...

The first problem was that the Power Steering pump that I had been supplied with the engine, which was a standard GM / AC Delco unit, did not have threaded mounting holes.  The fixings were meant to be much longer bolts that passed through the whole unit and were secured with nuts at the rear.  OK, so I could have bought some longer bolts, but the pump unit is a snug fit between the front and rear parts of the ancillary bracket which would have made it impossible to get any nuts on the bolts in any case.

Another AK builder, who had also got his engine from Kyle, and with who I had been in contact previously, had purchased a new pump from Summit and he had previously given me the details of this.  Figuring he might have encountered the same problems that I was having, I blindly went and ordered the same pump; a performance pump with AN fittings from Tuff Stuff.  This was a long-lead item from Summit and I had to wait several weeks for it to arrive.  Once it arrived, I was relieved to find out that it did have threaded mounting holes and managed to fix it in place on the bracket.

Tuff Stuff 6170ALB-2 Power Steering Pump...

...installed in place

At this point, I noticed my next problem.  The pump that I ordered has the outlet port on the bottom.  This is the high-pressure line and while I knew that I would need to get a new hose made up with an AN fitting to suit, it was pretty obvious that there was going to be insufficient room between the port and the bracket to accommodate an AN fitting and sufficient clearance to form a 90-degree bend (similar to the brake pipe in the picture above, you can not form a bend immediately behind the fittings; there will need to a certain straight length needed to allow the pipe bender to do its thing...).  This was confirmed in my discussions with Adam at Earls, who I had contacted to request a quote for a new high-pressure pipe.

I had two solutions.  Grind away part of the bracket to give clearance for the fitting or find another pump.  I went with the latter option but this time did a bit more research before pressing the order button. I thought a pump was a pump, but reading through the Tuff Stuff catalogue online, there are loads of configurations.  So this time I bought a pump with a top outlet and with threaded mounting holes and with AN fittings.  Summit was showing out of stock so I ordered via Ebay.com but that still took another 8 weeks to arrive!

Does what it says on the box...

...only this one has a top-facing outlet port!

The power steering pulley needs to be installed onto the pump using a special tool.  It's a press-fit but should not be attempted using a hydraulic press as that could damage the pump.  I bought a cheap tool from Amazon; this is basically a threaded bolt that screws into a thread at the end of the pump drive shaft with a nut/flange arrangement threaded onto the bolt.  The flange sits on the face of the pulley and then by holding the main bolt with one spanner and winding the nut down with another spanner, this presses the pulley onto the shaft.  The pulley is installed until the end of the shaft is flush with the front face of the pulley.

It's probably obvious, but the pulley needs to be installed with the grooved flange to the front; this is to allow a puller to grip onto the pulley in the event that it needs to be removed.  If you install it the wrong way around, you will need to take it to your local helpful mechanic to get it removed while he laughs at you; ask me how I know this...

Holley Power Steering Pulley - note which way round it goes...

Pressing the pulley into place...

...until the face end of the shaft is flush with the front of the pulley

I could then install the pump back onto the ancillary bracket; it needed a bit of wriggling to get the pump with the pulley into place with the tubular bracing of the AK Gen III chassis.  I could then get the bolts into place and tighten them to 15ft-lbs / 20Nm.

Finally, the pump is in place!

(Actually, I did have to take the pump out again as I had forgotten to torque up the bracket mounting bolt that is cunningly obscured by the pulley once the pump is in place.  I torqued all the bracket bolts to 25ft-lbs / 34Nm.)

Finally, I could get the serpentine belt looped onto the alternator, power steering pump, water pump, idler and crank, and using a spanner to pull the belt tensioner forward, slipped the belt fully into place and released the tensioner.

The serpentine belt looped into place...

...and over belt tensioner.

With all the faffing around with power steering pumps, that little job only took the best part of five months!!!

Exhaust & Headers - Part 2 - It's a Wrap

I plan on having the side pipes ceramic coated in black before the final installation.  Rather than have the headers ceramic coated, I have wrapped them to try and keep heat levels under the Cobra hood down as low as possible.

I decided to use Lava Rock Titanium Exhaust Wrap from Funk Motorsport, made from pulverised lava rock.  Apparently insulating the heat from the exhaust also helps to improve the flow of gases in the system which helps increase engine power output...bargain!

Funk Motorsport Exhaust Wrap - made from real volcanoes!

I bought two 15m rolls of 50mm wide exhaust wrap.  Each pack comes with five stainless steel tie clips although I bought another 10 at the same time - just in case...

I followed the Funk Motorsports videos on YouTube which cover how to use the exhaust wrap.  There is a "right" edge of the wrap which should be the exposed edge when wrapping the exhaust; I did get one pipe wrong and had to undo it and rewrap it correctly.

I used nylon zip ties to help hold the wrap in place - note LH pipe wrapped with the wrong edge exposed

All pipes are wrapped...correctly!

I could then cut off the temporary zip ties at the manifold end and replace these with stainless steel zip ties.  I found it helpful to grip the spare end of the tie with a pair of pliers and push on the locking tab with a screwdriver to help get the ties really tight.  The spare end was then cut off with side cutters and the end folded under to avoid any loose sharp edges.

Finished offside header pipe, top...

...and bottom

In theory, I could remove the nylon zip ties as the wrap should stay tight (if I have done it correctly!).  For the moment I will leave them in place (I trimmed the spare ends) as I will wrap all four of the pipes and the extent of the side pipe in the engine bay when I assemble the exhaust properly.

I then installed the headers onto the engine, this time with the gaskets.  I secured them using some ARP 12-point header bolts.  These are torqued up in two stages, working from the centre bolts outwards; the first pass was to 11lb-ft / 14.9Nm and the final pass to 18lb-ft / 24.4Nm.

ARP 12-point Header Bolts

As I anticipated, I did have issues getting the front header bolts into place.  The location of the vertical bracing tube prevented me from getting the bolts in straight enough to be able to get the thread to engage.  I needed to make a "small" dimple in the side of the tube with a ball pein hammer to give a bit of wiggle room.  But having got the bolt started in the cylinder head, it was quite stiff to turn and the proximity of the bracing made it impossible to get a socket or a ring spanner onto the head of the bolt (this wouldn't have been an issue with a normal hex head bolt as I could have used an ordinary open spanner, but those don't work on 12-point heads...).

Tactical dent in the bracing gave enough room to get bolt started in hole

I then gave all the holes a chase through with an M8X1.25 tap to clean up the threads; I was pretty surprised how much crap came out of the holes but after doing that all the bolts could be nipped up tight by hand before being finally torqued down. 

Cleaning up the holes removed a surprising amount of debris...

Manifold installed and all bolts torqued to specification