Couple of Minor Jobs - Part 2

I have finished off a load of small jobs that are not really worthy of a post all of their own.

The first was to add an earth strap between the engine and the chassis.  Just to be on the safe side I bought a 50mm2 earth cable (which should cope with 345 Amps), with a 10mm lug on each end from PCS Cables.  This was bolted into a convenient hole in the engine block at the nearside front.  I drilled and tapped a hole in the top of the chassis rail and ground off a bit of the powder coat to ensure a good contact.

Engine Earth Strap 

I also put the final hose finisher on the crankcase breather hose.  The hose finisher that I originally bought is still hiding in the garage somewhere, probably hanging out with a 10mm socket, and laughing at me.

Breather hoses completed!

I have given the front of the radiator a couple of coats of Eastwood Radiator paint in satin black.  The bare aluminium finish was not quite in keeping with the "stealth" look that I have in mind for the finished car.  I should have done this before I installed the radiator onto the chassis, but I managed to mask up most of the front with newspaper and a couple of old blankets to protect everything from any over-spray.

Radiator masked up prior to painting...

...and after painting and masking removed

I have also added oil to the rear differential and the gearbox as it is far easier to do this while access is good rather than leaving (or forgetting) until the body is on.

I bought 2 litres of Castrol Transmax oil which is specially formulated for limited slip differentials and used a funnel and a length of clear PVC tube to fill the differential with oil.  I managed to get almost all of the 2 litres into the differential before the oil started leaking back out of the filler oil.

Differential oil

Funnel and PVC pipe filling arrangement

For the gearbox, I bought 3 litres of Motul Dexron III oil which is the recommended fluid for the Tremec T56 transmission.  I used the same funnel/pipe setup to fill the transmission and again managed to get almost all of the 3 litres in before the oil started weeping out of the filler hole.

Transmission fluid

Filler hole for T56 transmission

I also have finally got around to welding up the various threaded bungs I have added to the chassis for the fuel tank, gearbox and exhaust mounts.  I treated myself to a day welding lesson at The Machine Shop to try and get the hang of TIG welding. I'm still not "stacking dimes" but at least I managed to master the art of getting a bit more heat and penetration into the welds.  As the body will sit on most of the locations of these bungs, I ground them down flush to the chassis rails and then treated them to a couple of coats of POR15 rust preventative paint.

Powdercoat ground off around area to be welded

A dodgy stack of dimes...

...after grinding welds down...

...and after two coats of POR15

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!!!

Engine & Gearbox Installation - Part 5 - Propshaft

The final major part of installing the engine and gearbox was to install the propshaft to connect the gearbox to the differential.

Most other builders have used Bailey Morris in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, to manufacture their custom units, and for once I decided to follow the herd.

I downloaded the order form from the Bailey Morris website, completed as many details as I could and emailed the form back with some photos to request a quote.  The guys at Bailey Morris had a couple of further questions for me and asked me to double-check the PCD measurement for the differential flange as clearly the original details I gave them were not something they were expecting (they were correct and when I measured it again I got a completely different answer - but one that did match the expectations of the experts!).

That done, they gave me a quote which I accepted, and all I had to do then was send my transmission yoke off to Bailey Morris so that they could attach it to one end of the propshaft.  I had a confirmation email that my yoke had arrived on Monday and I was amazed to have a new propshaft delivered to my door on the Friday of the same week!

Candidate for the world's shortest propshaft?

While I knew the propshaft was going to be short, when I unboxed it, it was even shorter than I imagined!  It looked like something that would be more at home between the Rover V8 and the Jag IRS of the Mighty Mouse Fiat 500 that was a regular at Santa Pod in the late 80s early 90s...

Of course installation of the propshaft, as with everything on this build, was anything but easy.

Before installation, I greased up the UJs with a lithium-based grease, as per Bailey Morris's instructions, until grease was squeezing out of all the seals on the UJ spiders.

I then slid the transmission yoke fully into the gearbox and tried to get the other end over the locating pin that was protruding from the centre of my differential input flange.  The guys at Bailey Morris did suggest I might have to just cut the end of this pin down slightly to get the prop in.  However, all seemed good, and I could get just get the flange on the propshaft over the end of the pin. But no further, unfortunately...

20mm diameter locating pin on differential input flange

So, not for the last time, I removed the propshaft and proceeded to sand all the paint off the locating pin with some emery paper.  This allowed the pin to seat slightly further into the flange when I reassembled the unit, but I still couldn't get the flange to slide very far onto the pin.

I had to resort to some gentle fettling of the hole in the propshaft flange with a grinding stone in my die grinder to just try and open the hole up fractionally to allow the pin to slide fully home.  This took a few attempts as I didn't want to open it up too much and make the fit too loose, but finally, I managed to get the flange to fully seat onto the pin and the differential input flange.

Propshaft in place

Then it was just a simple matter of getting the fixing bolts in place...

No matter to what position I turned the flange, I could find no orientation at which I could get an M12x35mm bolt into any of the holes (and the bolts were too long to insert from the differential side).

So I removed the prop shaft again; this allowed me to get one bolt in place (with some wiggling) but due to the position of the UJ there was no way I could get bolts into the other two holes from the prop shaft side.

I decided to order some M12 cap head bolts, hoping that the smaller head dimensions would allow for wriggle room to allow me to get the bolts in.  I made the mistake of reinstalling the prop shaft so when the bolts arrived I discovered that I still couldn't get the bolts in with the prop shaft in situ.

So out it came again and with some gentle persuasion from a soft-faced mallet, I managed to get the bolts into all three holes on the flange.  Then hopefully, for the final time, I reinstalled the prop shaft, lining up the bolts with the holes on the differential flange.  For once I had thought ahead and realising that I wasn't going to be able to install a bolt longer than 35mm in length and that the length of exposed thread was going to be quite short, I had ordered some thin Nyloc nuts at the same time as the cap head bolts.  For extra security I used some high strength threadlock on these nuts as well and, as I was unable to get a torque wrench onto the bolt heads, I tightened them up until my face went purple.

Bolts finally installed...

I rotated the propshaft a couple of times to make sure that the bolt heads didn't foul any of the parts of the UJ; it was close but there was clear air, so all good!

Engine & Gearbox Installation - Part 4 - It's in! (Eventually)

Finally, the day arrived when I was ready to install the engine into the chassis.

Everything was perfect, the sun was shining, the engine was suspended from my new engine crane, I had protected the tubular bracing on the chassis with some foam padding, my son had got out of bed to help out, and I had even remembered to alter the orientation of the thermostat housing on the front of the engine prior to installation.

The thermostat housing pointing the wrong way...

...and now the right way!

Unfortunately, things did not all go quite as planned.

From reading other build blogs, I was aware that, due to the tubular bracing on the AK Gen III chassis, the engine installation is made easier by getting the rear of the chassis as high as possible relative to the front.

To achieve the necessary attitude, all we would have to do was remove the axle stands supporting the front of the chassis.  However, when we tried to manoeuvre the engine crane into position, the legs of the engine crane would not fit underneath the front wishbones.  There was a short interlude, while we jacked the front of the car back up and supported it on axle stands adjusted to keep the front as low as possible while allowing the engine crane legs to pass under the suspension.  We then repeated that operation to avoid the engine crane legs hitting the axle stands...

Once the path was clear for the crane, actually getting the engine into place was quite easy.  The task was made much easier by using a load-leveller to be able to tilt the gearbox downwards.  It was then a case of inching the crane forward and slowly lowering the engine while raising the gearbox to get it into the chassis between all the bracing.

Almost there...

This was definitely a two-person task, especially as the gearbox was a very tight fit between the brake and fuel lines running along the inner chassis rails; there are a lot of lumps and bumps on the T56 gearbox that kept wanting to get caught up on the lines and a second person guiding the gearbox out of harm's way was essential.

Once we had the front pulley over the top suspension cross-member, we could get the engine down and level and sat onto the four engine bobbins that I had placed onto the chassis engine mounts prior to installing (these were just installed loose at this time).

We then supported the end of the gearbox on a trolley jack, removed the engine crane and lifting chains and had a well-earned cup of tea.

...and it's in!

After the tea break, the day took a slight turn for the worse.

Firstly I noticed that, despite our best endeavours, during installation one of the lugs on the gearbox had caught on and crushed one of the fuel lines; as a precaution, while raising and lowering the gearbox to install the gearbox mount, I removed the fuel and brake lines to avoid any further mishaps.  One piece of good luck was that the location of all my brake and fuel mounting clips all managed to miss clashing with the various sticky-out bits of the gearbox!

The next issue was that I could not get the tail shaft of the gearbox to sit centrally within the chassis due to one of the aforementioned lugs on the gearbox hitting part of the chassis bracing.  This needed me to break out the die grinder and a carbide bit and gently remove the offending lug.

Tailshaft not sitting centrally within chassis rails...

...due to this lug clashing with tubular bracing.

After some "light" fettling with the die grinder...

...offending lug is no more!

This now allowed me to get the gearbox aligned properly within the chassis and so the next task was to bolt the cross-member to the gearbox mount so that the holes in the chassis rail could be marked and drilled.

Except that the holes in my gearbox mount didn't match the holes in the cross-member.  When I ordered my chassis from AK my original plan had been to use a Tremec TKO600 gearbox and clearly that was what the cross-member I had was for.  For some reason, I had assumed the T56 cross-member would be the same, but on checking with AK, Jon advised that the mount was indeed different.  No problem, AK despatched me a new mount and I had that in my hands within the week.

New T56 cross-member (top) compared to TKO version (bottom)

Great - except that didn't fit either.  Firstly the holes still did not quite align with the holes in the gearbox mount.  Although they were only just out; so I reworked the holes slightly with a file to widen them out a bit until I could get the bolts into the gearbox mount.  But then I discovered that the cross-member was too wide!  Where it actually locates on the chassis is where the floorplans start to drop down below the level of the chassis rails and so the cross-member hit the floorplans and wouldn't sit tight up against the rails.  Also, I couldn't just cut down the new AK cross-member as the location of the cut would pass right through the holes for mounting to the chassis, so if I was to drill new holes there would not be much metal left between holes and the end of the cross-member.  

So I decided to order a length of 50mm wide steel bar stock and make my own cross-member.  I measured and drilled the holes for the mount first, these were 11mm in diameter to suit the bolts supplied with the gearbox mount.  I could then fix the bar to the gearbox and raise the gearbox until the bar was flat against the floor pans to mark where to cut it so that it would sit between the pans and against the chassis rails.  I also decided to only use a single 10mm bolt to fix each side of the cross-member but to install a threaded boss into the chassis rail (as per my fuel tank fixing) to provide a greater length of threaded connection.

Home fabricated mount (top) - spot the difference in length!

Threaded boss made from 20mm diameter bar

Cross-member installed and bolted into place

I will need to remove the mount again at some point in the future a) to powder coat or paint it and b) to facilitate reinstallation of the fuel lines.  But the engine and gearbox are finally in and this feels like a really big step forward in terms of progress on the build!

Engine & Gearbox Installation - Part 3 - Avoiding Disaster

Before bolting the gearbox up to the engine I had a couple of modifications to make to the GM hydraulic throwout bearing.  

The first was to replace the factory inlet fitting with one that would allow me to connect up a -4 flexible braided clutch line.  This was a simple task of drifting out the roll pin securing the fitting, removing the original fitting and replacing it with a new one from Summit Performance.  To complete the job, I secured the new fitting with a new 4mm roll pin.

GM Hydraulic Throwout Bearing with original fittings

New -4AN inlet fitting (top) vs original inlet fitting 

New fitting installed and secured in place

Next up was to replace the factory bleed fitting with a HEL flexible braided remote bleed line.  The original attachment was unbolted very easily and it was a simple matter of screwing in the new remote bleed line with a copper washer and tightening it down firmly.  Now I can bleed my clutch without a) any special tools and b) without having to faff around under the car; the end of the remote bleed line will be fixed somewhere suitable in the engine bay.

Remote bleed line installed

I ordered a braided clutch line from Merlin Motorsports which they made up to a length of 500mm and installed the fittings for me free of charge. I installed this onto the new -4AN inlet.

Braided -4 clutch line installed

The throwout bearing could then be bolted to the front of the gearbox, over the input shaft and with the two M6 securing bolts torqued to 35ft-lbs / 47.5Nm.

Throwout bearing installed on the gearbox

Just as I was preparing to fix the bellhousing to the engine, life decided to throw me another curveball.  In between the various tasks I had been keeping the engine hanging off the engine crane, but lowering it down to the floor in between jobs.  I didn't put the whole weight onto the floor, it was 'just' resting on some thick cardboard packing to protect the sump but most of the weight was still being taken by the crane.  In the event of any failure of the engine crane, I figured it was better to be closer to the ground than hanging in mid-air.

And then that failure occurred!

The engine crane I had borrowed was a mechanical rather than a hydraulic unit.  Raising or lowering the jib was achieved by hand turning a nut on the end of a long threaded rod which passed through a fixed threaded anchor block.

As I was merrily turning away at the nut with a ratchet to raise the engine up to install the bellhousing, I realised that while the nut was happily turning around, the thread in the anchor block was not moving at all.  In other words, I was perilously close to shearing the nut off the end of the threaded bar and dropping the engine fully onto the floor.

Coming close to disaster...

There then followed a short interlude while I endured the unexpected expense of buying a new 2T engine hoist from Halfords, waiting for delivery and then having to assemble said crane.  

With some help from my son, we managed to get some additional thick pieces of cardboard packing under the front and back of the engine, such that it was fully resting on the packing.  This gave enough slack to be able to unbolt the shackle holding the lifting chains to the original crane, whip it out of the way and swing the new crane quickly into place and attach engine chains to the new crane.  Hopefully, the only damage that I can see was caused when I rocked the engine slightly to one side to help hook it onto the new crane and dented the bottom of the oil filter.

With disaster averted I could now get on and install the aluminium bellhousing to the engine.  This needed tapping gently into place over the two locating pins on either side of the rear of the engine and then bolting up, tightening the bolts in an alternating sequence up to 35ft-lbs / 47.5Nm.  The fixing kit from Roadcraft came with M10 bolts for fixing the gearbox and bellhousing but also included two rogue M10 Cap Head bolts.  There are two positions on the bellhousing where the casting is such that clearance is very limited to get a 17mm socket over the end of a normal M10 Hex Head bolt so I assumed that was where the cap head bolts were to be used and these were tightened using an 8mm Allen-drive socket.

Bellhousing installed

Then it was just a simple (?!?!) of joining the gearbox to the engine...

As with most things on this build, this was not as simple as it should have been.  I placed the gearbox on a wheeled wooden dolly and adjusted the height of the engine so that the gearbox input shaft was level with the centre of the clutch alignment tool.  I pulled out the alignment tool and then moved the dolly forward to engage the input shaft into the clutch plates.  This took a bit of jiggling to get the splines on the input shaft to align with the clutch plates.  With a bit more jiggling I could then get the transmission to within about an inch of the bellhousing but couldn't get it to close up that last bit.

Almost there...

Over the course of the next 6 hours of wrestling with a 60kg lump of metal, I taught myself some new swear words as I repeatedly removed and tried re-engaging the gearbox into the clutch but still couldn't quite get it to fully join. I even persuaded my son to help out, but the gearbox continued to defy us!

Eventually, I decided that, because of the twin-plate clutch, the alignment needed to be absolutely spot on to allow the gearbox input shaft to engage in the pilot bushing.  So I pulled off the bellhousing, removed the clutch pressure plate and realigned the clutch plates.  This time I retightened the pressure plate bolts a couple of turns at a time in an alternating pattern to try and keep the clutch disks centred before torquing down to the final specification.  This did result in the alignment tool sliding in and out of the plates more freely than previously.

The next morning I renewed the battle, and after only a couple more rounds of wrestling, finally managed to get the gearbox to mate up with the engine!  I could then install the bolts to hold the transmission to the bellhousing and tightened them up to 35ft-lbs / 47.5Nm.  There was a small bracket on the gearbox breather hose, which I made sure to remember to secure with one of the transmission bolts.

Success at last!

Bracket holding breather hose

The rear transmission mount fixed in place

The last job before actually installing the engine and gearbox into the chassis was to reinstall the starter motor.  I had removed this to wrap it in some gold heat reflective tape from Funk Motorsport.  This should protect the starter motor from the heat from the exhaust headers and avoid any electrical issues due to heat soak

Starter wrapped in heat reflective tape