I have a few days off and decided to get some progress made on the car. The last evenings effort with Dan had wound me up and I was keen to make some more progress, so this entry covers a number of days.
First thing that had bugged me was the steering rack track rod ends. The hub fastening nut was a castllated nut with a split pin hole in the shaft. Even though I had cleared up the thread the nuts were seizing after one or two turns. With the greased up bearing I wasn’t able to get purchase on the thread to wind the nut on with a spanner. I even knocked the track rod end, which has a tapered fit, into the hub. But it was breaking free when I put the spanner on the nut. Now the taper fit should have been secure but it kept breaking free. Further investigation revealed some excess paint from when I had painted the hubs had dripped into the tapered hole. I cleared the paint away and knocked the rod ends in. This time they lock fast and with the aid of some copper slip I worked the nuts onto the thread. This time everything was fast and solid.
I decided to mount the front anti-roll bar I had previously cleaned the brackets and links up and gave them a lick or three of paint and mounted the bar. It didn’t seem to fit quite right and after looking at the original photos, taken during donor disassembly, I realised the links were upside down. Quickly remedied, I then decided to lower the on to its wheels.
After lowering the car off the axle stands I cleared the area front and back of the car and moved the car back and forth to help clean the brakes up a bit. The disks are binding on the pads but a decent run would clean them up. My rolling the car back and forth wouldn’t do the job properly but it did become easier as the pads cleaned up the surface rust. There’s not much room in the garage but there was enough for one full rotation of the wheels.
I then decided to put some of the pipes and sensors back on the engine. I plan to start the wiring soon and putting all the sensors in place would make identifying the wiring routes easier. I had a number of the brackets that I need to clean up and paint. The temperature has dropped and I have now resorted to painting the brackets and parts in the kitchen and the living room because the paint is like treacle.
One of my biggest worries about this project is putting all the sensors back together correctly. A colleague at work had an STI and blew the turbo then after laying out a grand to have a new turbo fitted which after 100miles running in the turbo blew because it had been incorrectly plumbed in. I remember as I took them off that each on made sense and I labelled it as best I could. But as I was taking the Inlet manifold off I had one sensor that was totally free of any connection electrical or pipe. I now had absolutely no idea where this sensor connected. I had realised this when the engine went in that this sensor was lose and it had always been a worry at the back of my mind. Now the sensor can go back in place and I piped up one side to the inlet manifold but I couldn’t for the life of me find where the other side of the sensor pipes to. I looked everywhere including trying to mount the intercooler. The pipe isn’t that long so it has to be somewhere in that area.
It took me a while, but eventually, I found it there was a small pipe underneath the inlet manifold which is part of the fuel vent system.
I continued adding the sensors and equipment that had been mounted on the inner wings of the car. The bracketry would need to be cleaned and painted.
Now with all the pipes now connected bar one, the vacuum pipe for the brake servo unit. The end on the brake servo was not a problem and fitted straight on but the other end was short by an inch -1 bleeding inch! The metal pipe that runs across the bulkhead from the servo to the other side of the engine has 2 mountings and I guess the bulkhead on the doner car was designed not to be flat across. Mounting the pipe off the bulkhead would not look good so for the sake of 1 inch I need a metre of vacuum pipe.
With the exception of the intercooler and its piping, which will be one of the lasts things to go on, I can move on to the wiring. But first I fitted the pitch stop the bracket had a 8 mm hole but the kit has a 10mm bolt. So out with the step cutter to widen the hole. Then there was another problem the bracket was about 1 mm narrower than the actual pitch stop. A flat file soon trimmed the proud bush face on each side and it slipped in no problem.
I opened the red trunk I had stored the wiring harnesses in and heaved out the mass of wires and plugs. I went through each wiring loom identifying the sockets I would be reusing and taping up the bits of harness and plugs that wouldn’t be used e.g rear door switches and harnesses.
The biggest problem at the moment is actually the modifications/additions that have been made to the car. In my case the Speedo (Kmh to Mph)conversion, Auto Window closers and the Alarm/immobiliser system. The problem being that the installers chose the easiest points to make the connections. And why not – I can’t blame them. I managed to disconnect the window closers. I might still use them. Regarding the speedo conversion I need to think about the dial still reads KM/H for the IVA I need it to say MPH. The cheap answer would be to stick a dymo “MPH” label over the KM/H. Intermediate answer would be to find an MPH dial card and replace the old card (this should have been done when the convertor was installed but I figure it was a home job and the previous owner chickened out taking the dials to pieces. The full price job would be to replace the clocks with a UK set but this has its issues as apparently there are numerous clocks available and the wiring looms vary which could turn into a major headache. I might also think about swapping the indicator/wiper stalk unit for one that has the UK standard indicators on left wipers on right. This might have similar wiring issues. But these are issues for further down the line.
Once I was reasonably happy with the wiring I put the loom for the engine bay around the engine and immediately think I’ve got a problem. The bulkhead has three holes pre cut for the wiring looms to pass through I found myself thinking I would need a fourth – and not a small one.
So, where to start. From the photos of the orange demo car I took at the Shropshire show I saw that the fuse has been moved back a few inches on to the subframe. This looks as if it will work but I was a bracket short and the existing bracket needed cleaning and painting. I plugged the engine bay loom into the fuse board and laid it loosely round the engine bay to see how much cabling I had to play with. It looked like I could get the end with 4 connectors through one of the existing holes but it would mean going close to and above the turbo and exhaust down pipe which I felt was undesirable. But I continued to fit the other looms in the car. My first struggle was getting the main loom over the steering column until I realised that 5 bolts would remove the steering column from the equation and make life a lot easier.
Now it may sound strange but as I worked the looms through the holes into the engine bay and round to the back of the car it started feeling strangely familiar and everything was falling into place and making sense.
I had noted that the hazard warning lights switch was something a little peculiar in that it had 8 cables connected to it. I knew I needed a couple of relays for the heated windscreen so I popped down to a local auto electric shop and asked them. There was much sucking teeth and “well its not that straight forward”. Hmm to be fair they gave me an auto electric catalogue which will come in useful. I came back home and opened my Data file with all the wiring diagrams in and found the wiring for the hazard switch. There were basically three circuits into the switch unit, two triggered simultaneously on pressing the switch and the third was the back light illumination on the switch.
The first of the two circuits was a supply switchover and a left/right circuit short. The hazard circuit is fused separately to the normal indicator circuit (which is on the ignition circuit) so a standard changeover relay is required there (Durite part no. 0-728-12). The second switch circuit links the left and right indicator circuits together with the flasher circuit so both sides flash in unison. I thought about using two relays for this job. But going through the catalogue found a double make and break relay (Durite part no. 0-727-22) which according to the diagram was exactly what I was looking for. I rang the suppliers back and added the relays to my order. I can then use a fuse on the ancillary fuse board to trigger the relays from the new hazard pushbutton. This solution looks simpler than the description of a solution Ben described over the phone which if I’m honest he lost me when talking it through. But it seemed to involve running cables to each indicator.
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