is this a lower rack crossmember i think it is if not you need one.if so when i was do it i grinded the top of the rack mount to get more clearance. you could even more the bolt down on that side there is room good luck
is this a lower rack crossmember i think it is if not you need one.if so when i was do it i grinded the top of the rack mount to get more clearance. you could even more the bolt down on that side there is room good luck
ive just spent the last three hours reading through this build carerfully and im amazed at the level of comitment to build it how you would like it to be with what seems to be very little compromise. fair play fella
your fabrication skills are very good and your abillity to get around problems are brilliant, im very impressed. good luck with the rest of the build and hope your back stops playing up so you can complete what is looking to be an exellent hillclimber
if it aint broke, break it!
Thanks for all the positive comments, it is good to keep everyone entertained.
The crossmember is not a lowered rack type but it is a special tubular one from JEMS Racing and all the suspension has been set up to suit it. There is plenty of clearance between the sump and the rack tube, the problem is that the oil scavenge pipe take offs stick out from the sump just where the rack clamps are. Your idea to move the bolt down is brilliant, don't know why I didn't think of it!
So I have slotted the hole and cut a bit off the clamp and mount.
Before
and after
I also slotted the crossmember mounting holes to allow it to be moved forward a bit.
Now I am getting somewhere
Plenty of clearance from the rack mount.
Exhaust manifold just clearing the chassis rail
Good amount of clearance for the steering column
Bit of a gap to the firewall
Even managed to get the air filter on. ( Once I had found out that you have to squash it down so that it is narrow enough to go in between the mounting plate and the wing)
May have to take a bit more off here
One very well built car, and the engine looks the nuts. Cracking car.
Old skool forever
Just don`t tell the wife
how much it really costs!
i done the conversion before
Thought so
Before getting on with the engine mounts I drilled the captive nuts in the chassis rails to put in some crossmember mounting tubes.
Needed some spacer plates to for the engines mounts to sit on.
Will drag the welder out tomorrow and weld it all in and then tackle mounting the engine.
Well I did drag the welder out ( haven't used it for months) and welded everything in place.
Started on the RH mount using a kit I had bought for a Pinto which I was originally going to use, luckily the Millington has the same mounting points.
First I cut a pencil so that it would sit at the centreline of the where I wanted the tube to be and used the tip of the pencil to mark the centre of the tube on the engine plate.
Then I drilled a 38mm hole in the plate with a holesaw.
The hole had to be made elliptical with a file to allow the tube to be at the correct angle.
All the bits sitting in place ready to be tacked in place.
Plenty of insulation, I promised Mr Millington that I would not get welding marks on the block
The hole allowed the tube to be welded on both sides of the plate.
And it fits
Your a clever man indeed...unlike me who killed your old motor today
1970 Mk1 Escort Tarmac Rally Car
Excellent work!
http://escort.accelerator.org
1968 MK1 Escort 1300GT
1969 'Big Wing' MK1 Escort
1972 MK3 Cortina 1600XL
1984 Sierra XR4i
And other junk I don't like to talk about!
I welded the LH mount this morning and a mate came over to check the brake pads on his BMW so he was roped in to help with trial fitting the motor.
After some jiggling all the bolts fitted.
Then we bolted the gearbox on ( much easier with the big tunnel).
I will need to made a plate to fill the gaps between the sump and the bellhousing.
Then we wanted to see if the exhaust manifold could be fitted in one piece.
And the answer is yes ( it might be different with the steering column in place).
Next on the agenda is to make some mounts for the gearbox.
On with the gearbox mount.
After a lot of I decided to cut up a spare 4 link bar to make a suitable crossmember. I needed to bend it so that the ends would be closer to the floor than if it was straight.
I couldn't be bothered to get it done properly so I put it in my press and gave it a bit of a bend on each end. This had the added advantage of flattening the section where the exhaust will lie which will give it more room.
I had to make some plates to weld to the body to have flat sections to attach the crossmember mounting brackets to.
I found some poly bushes that will allow some "give" for the mounts.
Brackets welded on and everything fits
Nice work!
http://escort.accelerator.org
1968 MK1 Escort 1300GT
1969 'Big Wing' MK1 Escort
1972 MK3 Cortina 1600XL
1984 Sierra XR4i
And other junk I don't like to talk about!
Yeh, I was quite pleased how it turned out considering I must have spent about 4 hours figuring out how to do it
Finally !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! after 4 months I now have a dry sump oil tank
I have been at it again
Cutting more holes in the shell that is.
Couldn't be bothered with the small hole I cut for the gearbox so I have made it bigger.
I need a bit more room behind the engine for something that I will reveal at a later date so I have had to hack into the firewall a bit more.
More welding and painting to follow
Time to make something to fill in the hole in the transmission tunnel.
I only had a small piece left from the steel sheet I bought when I started this project so I mocked up what I needed with some thin scrap sheet so I wouldn't make a mistake cutting the proper bit.
Then it was out with the clamps and wood to bend it into the right shape.
The piece of steel wasn't long enough so I had to weld a separate piece on one end.
The finished article ready to be welded in.
I have finished welding in the modifications to the firewall and the tunnel.
All primed and ready for paint.
Then I went back to the steering.
I have got a Works Bell 2 piece quick release boss so that the steering wheel can be removed to make access to the seat easier with the roll cage in place.
This boss has ball bearings rather than splines to locate the 2 sections which is supposed to be better as they don't wear like the splined ones do.
Adding the quick release causes a problem because when it is bolted to the normal boss the wheel is too far back with the power steering system I have.
So I cut the steel collapsable bits off the boss ( this is actually an Escort boss because I forgot to take a photo of the Opel one before I cut it but they are similar).
and then got my friendly machinist to clean it up and make a spacer to allow the fixed part of the Q/R boss to be bolted to the normal boss.
Now the whole assembly is about the same height as the normal boss.
Nice work, that boss assembly looks spot on!
http://escort.accelerator.org
1968 MK1 Escort 1300GT
1969 'Big Wing' MK1 Escort
1972 MK3 Cortina 1600XL
1984 Sierra XR4i
And other junk I don't like to talk about!
Shiney white again
Finally got around to fixing the problem with the LH anti roll bar mount. The problem was that the chassis rail is not square which meant that the mount is also not square when bolted on which makes the anti roll bar jam in the the bushes.
My solution was to make an aluminium wedge to go between the mount and the chassis rail to square everything up.
I did this by spending quite a long time shaving down a piece of 6mm flat bar into the right shape with a belt sander.
The wedge in place and now the bar turns freely.
The next item on the agenda is this:
My machinist made this plate to bolt onto the end of the throttle barrels. The reason why next time.
Throttle blipper?
Excuse my lack of knowledge, but what's a throttle blipper for? And how does it work?
Thanks for all the updates, I'm really enjoying it
67 TVR VIXEN V8
I have a paddle shift system to change gears in the sequential gearbox. The throttle blipper replaces "heel and toeing" on the downshifts just like on an F1 car
The blipper works on compressed air and is controlled by an electronic " black box".
There will be more on this later in the build but it will be towards the end as I want to get the car going before getting the paddle shift working because it is going to take quite a bit of
There might be a delay with more updates because my back is starting to complain again so I will probably need to take another break
Have you got round to mounting the shift actuator onto the gearbox itself?
If you drop me an email, I'll send you some pictures
Email sent.
My back has had it's rest so it is time to continue the build.
I wanted to mount the dry sump tank in the engine bay but there was no way it would fit. The next option was to mount it inside the cabin but the rules would require it to be enclosed in a sealed compartment.
I looked at this but decided it was too hard so like on another thread I have mounted it "under protest" in the boot.
I had to make a base to sit it on that raised it up so that the outlet hose will have a straight run to where it will go through the firewall.
What is the smaller pot with the filter on for ?
Hexham and District Motorclub
That will be a breather tank for the dry sump system.
1970 Mk1 Escort Tarmac Rally Car
You beat me to it Glenn
I have mounted the LHS suspension, hubs and calipers and made up the hard brake lines.
When the suspension etc was on I was able to mount a wheel and tyre. I wanted to check the caliper clearance as I was unsure if a 13in wheel would fit ( it is supposed to but different brands of wheels vary).
Well the answer was yes there is clearance but not much! There is about 5mm on the inside face of the caliper and about 2mm on the outer face because the wheel is tapered towards the inside. I think I will put a 3mm wheel spacer on to give a bit more clearance.
Unfortunately there are 2 other problems, 1 minor and 1 major.
First the strut is sitting 25mm too high because the TCA is not level at ride height which is were it should be. This is because my strut tower extensions are too high. I will fix this by putting a 25mm in the tower to lower the strut top.
The 2nd problem is not so easily fixed. With no spring on the strut and the wheel on I jacked the wheel up into the wing to check the clearance. With the steering straight ahead there is no problem but on full lock both ways the tyre hits the arch.
After a LOT of the only way to fix this is with a wider arch. Also it will have to be mounted higher on the wing, I can mount it 40mm higher to where it hits the swage line.
So Gartrac have made me a pair of arches that are 1inch wider than the standard ones and I have just heard from them to say they are on their way
that setup looks so good like that it would be a shame to cover it with wheels
I can't speak for Minilites, but the Comp ML's certainly have very good caliper clearance, and you can get them (within reason) any offset you fancy. I've got 0, -5 and -8 here. They're all the same casting, just with varying amounts machined off the mounting face. Good to see the superlites fit though.
I have finally received the concentric clutch slave cylinder that I ordered 5 weeks ago so I have been able to prepare the gearbox for installation.
The Sadev gearbox has provision to mount a SAAB type slave cylinder directly onto the front face. I have used an AP Racing cylinder that has the same mount dimensions as a SAAB one but being AP it is not cheap but it does match the AP clutch I have.
After a lot of calculation I got my friendly machinist to make a spacer that brings the cylinder forward to within 4mm of the clutch cover. It is just as well I have got the cylinder now as he is having a knee replacement next week so will be out of action for quite a while.
The bellhousing I am using is out of my old car so it needed some modification.
First I had to block up the hole where the clutch lever protrudes. I have made a removable plate so that I can take it off to check out how the slave cylinder is working.
Then a plate over LHS hole to allow the cylinder hydraulic feed to be connected with a flexible pipe.
I spent ages about how to sort the bleed for the cylinder. At first I was going to run a flexile pipe up to the firewall with a bleed screw on the end but when I temporarily mounted the bellhousing I saw that there was enough room to do this:
A couple of hard lines in the bellhousing and it is ready to go.... hopefully.
Nice work
Hope the concentric slave isn't as troublesome as some of the ones used in kits over here!
http://escort.accelerator.org
1968 MK1 Escort 1300GT
1969 'Big Wing' MK1 Escort
1972 MK3 Cortina 1600XL
1984 Sierra XR4i
And other junk I don't like to talk about!
Well I did say hopefully....
Of course it didn't go to plan.
A mate came around to help put the gearbox in. He is borrowing my trailer so he can take his race car to the Australian Supersprint Championships so he owes me.
First we mounted the clutch
As soon as I torqued up all the nuts I could see there was going to be a problem as the clutch fingers moved towards the engine when under tension.
We put the gearbox in and sure enough instead of having a 4mm gap between the release bearing and the fingers it was 12mm. So I need an extra 8mm spacer or a new 26mm spacer.
My machinist has very kindly said he will make me a new 26mm one tomorrow He was having trouble resizing a photo on his computer(he is not very computer literate) which I was able to help him with so that helped.
So the gearbox came out along with the slave cylinder for which I will have to sort the plumbing out again.
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