Monthly Archives: October 2014

Preparation

All the small jobs

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I’ve been spending a few evenings attacking some of the smaller, less interesting jobs.  Some of these tasks have involved removing a few misguided ‘features’ that I tried out during the first build.

In preparation for removing the body I have had to dig out the expanded foam that I used to fill the sill voids. The idea was to save the sills members from rusting through by preventing road crud from attacking them. I now feel that the opposite would be true. The moisture would still find its way in but probably wouldn’t dry out so quickly which could hasten the corrosion process In any case its all got to come out so that the body can be removed. I won’t be repeating this experiment for the final build.

I did try to remove some of the body fixing screws and managed the grand total of just one, even using an impact driver! I will have to re-think this…

The bonnet now closes but the clearances are very tight on the back of the inlet manifold. I’m still deciding what to do about that. The engine is now resting correctly on its mountings too.

One thing that really will have to change is the sump. It’s far deeper on this engine than the old P6 V8. Ground clearance can only be 30mm, maybe less and that’s nowhere near enough for the Isle of Wight roads.

I picked up the Sierra differential, hubs and drive shafts for the IRS conversion. A lot of cleaning to do, but they seem to be in very good condition.

That’s all for now. Back with something more interesting next time.

Ian

Engine

Will it fit?

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With the engine in place it’s clear that there’s quite a bit of work to do before everything fits properly.  We installed the Thor V8  with most of its ancillaries in place. Now I am removing parts that prevent the bonnet from shutting.

  1. The throttle body mounting had to go. That required the removal of the  entire top end of the inlet manifold – the part that looks like a bunch of bananas. I will be replacing the original single 68mm throttle body with two 48mm Jenvey units.
  2. The coil packs were already partially removed. Those may have to be repositioned, or I could just relocate the cabin air intake.
  3. Mounting lugs on the top of the  manifold are too high, so it’s the hacksaw for them.

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There are now two more serious problems to fix. The inlet/outlet position on the aircon compressor is too high  and will only get higher with its pipes attached.  Perhaps there is a variant of the part that has a different pipe configuration?

Although I won’t be keeping the steering pump, I would prefer it not to be acting as an engine mount. When I can clear the engine steady bracket, I will gain another 10 mm of extra bonnet clearance.

Steering pump touches chassis

For some light relief while I had the inlet manifold off the car I  started trying to get a polished finish like the  show engine  that was shown a few posts ago.

More soon

Ian