Hurmeez

I'm sure the sweet backing track played a not insignificant part in the ET as well. Yeah allegedly Colt used to do regrinds, though that looks like another example of coming to the K engine party a decade or two late. I've since found a site called CatCams that offers off the shelf billet cams as well, though the way they've displayed their specs is somewhat confusing. Likely an issue in understanding on my end there but. A cousin that happened to build a K engine a year or two back reckons Kelford might have existing regrind profiles too which would be far more convenient, so I've sent them an enquiry in the meantime. Beyond that I suspect you're right, getting the car moving under its own steam should be the first priority and there's a good chance I'm happy with the performance as is.

Regarding needing cam position sensors, would it not be a good idea to do that anyway to allow sequential injection/ignition? Or is sequential more of a discrete position requirement per cycle rather than a continuous reading needed for position control?

Fair point. It's obvious in hindsight but of course the OEM would optimise the cam profile for the drive system's abilities and visa versa

So after doing myself a mischief on my bike a week before Christmas, I've been laid up for a few weeks unable to do any meaningful work. Instead, I've been reading old threads and day dreaming a bit. VVT is very alluring. When it comes to NA optimisation, it looks very valuable in terms of getting the most out of otherwise an otherwise limited platform. For better or worse, I decided years ago to put a Mazda V6 in my Escort. Based on Yoeddynz's Viva thread, and excellent exhaust sound videos on YouTube, it looked like a fantastic option. Of course in the seven years since then, the engines have become increasingly scarce at Zebra, and technologically even more dated. That, combined with limited aftermarket support, means if I want to get more out of it than stock, I'm going to have to do a lot of custom stuff, and ideally with low risk to the engine. I've only got one spare block and I haven't seen one at the wreckers in years. So far the plan is to follow the fairly standard formula of better intake (ITBs) and exhaust (custom headers), but beyond that I'm pretty limited. No one really makes cams, so if I want to keep it NA (which I do for now) that's pretty much it. I could skim the heads to try and bump compression a bit, but that would lead to timing troubles as well. Which after a bit of waffling brings me to the actual point. I'm wondering if it's worth looking into retro fitting VVT. As standard, the timing belt drives the intake cam, which in turn drives the exhaust via a fixed gear. So the options in order of effort would be as below: 1. Modify the intake pulley to fit a vernia cam gear. No one sells them so I'd have to make my own. 2. Modify the intake and crank drive pulleys to fit a VVT version from a different engine. I'm thinking JZ or 4AGE or something. 3. Modify intake and crank drive pulleys, as well as decoupling the exhaust cam and fitting a dedicated pulley for that side too. If I were to skim the head, I'd probably have to at least fit a vernia gear to the intake to correct for the shorter belt run. Options 1 and 2 of course would mean both cams are still tied together. I'm not sure what the performance implications of that would be. Option 3 comes with much greater effort, including but not limited to making an adapter to poke the exhaust cam drive out through the head, swapping to smaller cam pulleys to allow clearance, finding a longer drive belt, etc etc. Granted, this is all hypothetical and mostly a thought exercise, but I wonder how useful it actually would be. Given stock cams, would it actually make any noticeable difference? I'm probably still years away from turning the key, and for all I know it'll be plenty grunty for my driving abilities as standard without further modifications. Regardless, it'd be fun as an engineering exercise either way, but I'm interested in wider opinions. Of course the real answer is probably ditch the dated engine and fit a 1NZ like God intended, but I'm a firm believer in the sunk cost philosophy so let's pontificate based on the V6 for now.

My old man bought sheets of ABS and used that to replace all the buggered cards in one of his cars. Cheap, easy to cut, can be formed into relatively complex shapes if you heat it carefully, and won't swell and perish if it gets wet too.

Just had a thought regarding your fuel rails. We have had trouble in the past at work with intricate printed fluid paths holding trapped print powder that later dislodges and causes havoc downstream. It may be less of an issue for you with the relatively large diameter internal passages, but given it's directly before the injectors without filtration, it's probably worth putting them through some kind of flush before you use them. We've used a modified water blaster to get the flow velocity required through small diameter pathways in the past, but that's probably a bit overkill for you. We've also used a vibrating flush setup for larger stuff. I was thinking about making a similar sketchy setup to mount to an orbital sander and flush it with tap water for some potential printing you've inspired me to consider. I'm sure you've thought about this stuff before, but just figured it might be useful to share some of my experiences nonetheless.

Yeah you definitely have a point about the quality of the remanufactured panels. It's especially tricky for the Mk2 Estates being a bit of a bodge job of hybrid panels between the Mk1 and Mk2 shapes meaning no one actually offers the correct panels I would have needed. Having said that, both outer sills are from Palmside and they're honestly not too far off. Certainly faster to fettle than brand new panels. If seems like a bit of a lottery as to which panels turn up in decent nick or not. I've watched a lot of panel beating YouTube since first starting on the car nearly 10 years ago. That's all I can really credit with my improved abilities. Definitely recommend the following: Cornfield Customs, Carter Auto Restyling, Make it Kustom, Ressurected metal shaping, Wray Schelin's Proshaper Workshop, and of course Binky (like anyone hasn't heard of that at this stage). Jesus maybe I can see why it's taken so long to do the car when all the channels are listed in a row like that. Less watchy more doey is probably wise.

Getting that bracing out of the way meant I could get back onto the list of pre-quarter welding jobs. As a refresher, this is what I mean: - Pinch weld seam repairs IN PROGRESS - Repair Cert IN PROGRESS - Properly paint inaccessible areas NOT YET STARTED Getting the last little bit before the repair cert done was a doddle. Because I used a home-made spot weld drill to unpick the majority of the seam welds along the quarter panel, the resultant holes were a bit scruffy, and the second layer had been a bit munched in a few cases. To sort that, I opted to replace the outer edge of most of the affected panels. It's not a flawless metal-finished result, but it's well within a coat of high-build primer. In some cases it was easier to outright fabricate and install a replacement panel: With that though, all the pinch-weld seam repairs were complete. Nothing stopping me now but a close-out inspection by Rod, my repair certifier. I flicked off an email to organise a visit, and no sooner had I done that, that I thought "maybe it's worth just sorting out that little bit of rot in the windscreen post before he turns up." I figure given how cramped my workspace is, it's in Rod's interest to come and look at the car as few times as possible. I relayed this through to him and he encouraged me to sort that out first and get him around afterwards. So windscreen post rot then. This is the rust in question: Given the structural demands placed on this panel, and the inaccessibility to paint the inside of any repairs, I decided early on that I want to replace the whole thing à la the original factory design. That means cutting down into the previously replaced A pillar panel, as well as the cowl patch I put in way back in 2017. This is not actually the end of the world. I was very (let's say) naïve back then, so the A panel repairs (and indeed all the fabrication work) were pretty rip shit and bust and have been playing on my mind for a while. They could all do with ripping out and re-doing if I'm being honest. So let's embrace the scope creep again. First step was to cut out all the offending panels: I used a spot weld drill again where appropriate and a slitting disk as required. It was quite validating taking the A panel off seeing three or four plug welds had not penetrated at all. I was right to redo this work if even just for that. Next step was to start fabricating the replacement panels. First up, the inner A panel: This came from a paper pattern off the old panel and extensive use of various hammers, dollies, and a cheap bead roller I picked up a while ago. Next was the windscreen post itself along with a small internal brace. These were produced in the same fashion as above; paper pattern, cut out a steel blank, then a tipping wheel and various hammers and dollies. I also was recently gifted some clecos by a very generous workmate. Can you tell? On the home stretch now. Last big panel to cover is the outer A post. Same deal again: Paper-steel-tipping wheel-hammers-swearing-hammers-etc. This one was bloody tricky I don't mind saying. The big shrink on the top left corner took a lot of beating and perseverance to get to come round. Got there in the end though. I threw the door and guard back on to make sure I had the lines close enough to correct. Pretty close. There is a section that I assume is part of the factory roof panel that overlaps the top of the windscreen post and is leaded from factory. I made a small section to replace it that I'll weld on near the end. The windscreen post panel and outer A post were (as far as I can tell at least) all part of a single piece that included part or all of the sill from factory. I intend to emulate that as best as possible which means joining my new A panel to the previously built windscreen post panel. Pro-tip: an orbital sander makes any weld look excellent and makes you look like a great panel beater if you lack actual talent. I've also made the doubler panel that goes on the inside of the A panel and mounts the door hinges out of 2mm sheet but I didn't get around to taking any photos. Rest assured, it's there. The final panel I'll need to close this section out is a patch panel for the cowl. Given the slightly medieval methods I resorted to to remove the old one, it's harder to make a paper pattern off the existing panel. The existing one was already a hand made patch as well (see my posts from 2017 on page 2), so it's hard to trust it in the first place. Knowing that, I opted for a wire form buck in this case as a starting point. It's made to match the profile of the back of the bonnet, guard, and door skin. I took the shape of the dished section from a series of flipped profiles from the driver's side, granted with some eyeball smoothing involved. Using the form, I was able to start with the paper pattern and continue in the normal fashion. I was actually pretty shagged at this point so I left the roughing in to the sprog this time. After a day of fine tuning and planishing, I got it looking pretty close. You can see how much I've been struggling with flash rust in this damp wee garage in that last photo. Well that and how long it took me to make all these panels. I keep meaning to spray over stuff with some Zinc-it but I never get around to pulling the panels off the car and getting the wire brush in there to sort it out. I'll get there before it turns into an actual hole. A closing thought here: If you have the means, I definitely don't recommend doing it all this way. The replacement panels for these sections would be a few hundred dollars shipped from Palmside. When you tally up all my hours to hand make them, and translate that to an equivalent hourly rate, it makes absolutely no sense to do it the way I did. I would have been better off doing a few hours of overtime and welding them all on over a weekend. However, I spent essentially $0 (if you excuse the material cost of the steel which I had already) which keeps the bookkeeper happy, and now have the job satisfaction of knowing I made every panel in this assembly. That can't be worth nothing. With that cowl panel done (or near enough. I'll do the final trimming and fitting once the structural panels are back on) I'm finally read for Rod to come and do his inspections. It's a very exciting feeling knowing I could be just a few licks of paint away from getting this side of the car totally ready for close out. Then I just have to do it all again on the other side. Thanks for reading.

It may depend on the specific alloy used. I can't say for sure what we use at work but we do heaps of welding of printed parts with no trouble. The main thing I'd say is it seems to be less ductile and more prone to stress riser cracking than billet parts. If you account for that in your design though you can avoid it pretty easily. For an exhaust collector (at the risk of stating the obvious) you'd want to avoid a sharp point in the octopuses gooch where all the tubes come together. Either weld in a brace or put a substantial fillet radius in there. We make lots of something akin to a collector and ours has a brace welded in ~100mm from the gooch. I'd also make the actual weld locations oversized in the printed blank and machine them to final size/squareness with your dad's cnc if you can. Makes for a much nicer weld.

Shortly after completing the above, I got sent to the states for a couple of weeks for work which killed all progress for obvious reasons. Still, I got to see a space shuttle and shit, so that was still pretty sweet. Once I got back, it was a matter of ticking off house jobs for a few weekends and various other stuff, all of which meant it was a month or two between finishing the thermostat housing and getting stuck back into the car. For reasons I've grown to despise, you'll recall I cut the rear quarter panel off the car over three years ago now. Given it is still not welded back on, this is still the main focus of the work. So far the list of jobs I wanted to do while the quarter was off has included: - Wheel tub outer repair DONE - Rear jacking point rebuild DONE - Inner sill brace section DONE - Inner sill/Floor outer repair DONE - Seat mount re-engineering DONE - Outer sill replacement DONE That leaves a very short list to complete before the quarter is ready to go back on. Namely: - Pinch weld seam repairs IN PROGRESS - Repair Cert IN PROGRESS - Properly paint inaccessible areas NOT YET STARTED That is unless I embrace a bit more scope creep... As one does, I was excitedly showing off my progress to my partner one day (who is lovely but doesn't pay too much attention to how I burn away my spare hours) when she noticed that there are no rear seat belts. "Of course my love, it's a 50 year old car" was my almost truthful reply. It was at this point that I was informed in no uncertain terms that under no circumstances would my small daughter be riding in a death trap like that. Which sucks, cause I have many fond memories of drives with my dad in old death traps, and I'd hate for my kids to miss out on the same. So we came to a deal. I'd put lap belts in the back. Diagonals were technically an option back in the day, but at the cost of a big ugly vertical bar the mounted the top hanger in the middle of the rear windows. While looking at how I could do that nicely, it occurred to me just how little effort had been put into any kind of side impact protection back in the day. It makes sense of course. There's a reason these old cars are so light compared to new ones. But it still isn't great. Given my track record with RWD cars (stacking only the second one I've ever owned on the first day of ownership at 18), and the likelihood of catching a rouge mum in a Q8 blowing through a roundabout in Dorkland, I figured it would be prudent to at least have a go at improving it a little bit. To begin with, I wanted to improve the door structure. Any improvements in the door itself would be largely pointless if the impact was able to tear it off the latch, so that was the first point of modification. When we wrecked the Capella for its V6 waaaay back in the day, we saved as much of the interior mechanicals as was practical. Because of that, I have a perfectly good burst-proof latch assembly that just needed to be grafted in. Initially, I just roughly mocked it up to give me a good idea of where the male part would need to mount. Once I had a good idea of where things would need to end up, it was simple enough to make a quick cardboard template to mock up the latch mounting arrangement. Note how it all tucks nicely behind the window track. Like it was meant to be there. Transferred it to steel, and added a 3mm doubler behind it to give the whole area a lot more strength. While I was in this corner I also took two seconds to fill in a speaker hole that I'm not planning to use. Before I got too far ahead of myself, I took the time to sort out the linkages to make sure I could use all the standard Escort parts still. I had to make my own key by taking the barrel out and reverse engineering it from each wafer, but it worked out fine in the end. Oh and splash out on a 3D printer. Been looking for an excuse to get one for a while anyway. Once I knew that would work, I got stuck into the brace itself. Each end is gusseted with 2mm sheet braces. The hinge/front end of the door already has a big 2mm spreader plate from factory, which the brace is welded directly onto, and the rear end is welded to the 3mm doubler I installed before. I opted to go for 25x50x3mm box, just cause I felt like moving the bare door around the garage was too easy and I could do with the extra weight training. Because I'm also a weak scrawny little runt though, I did cut a bit of gravity out of the inside face before installing it. The window and latch mechanisms all clear, and it looks pretty good on the car. So that's the door pretty much sorted. Next is to beef up the B pillar. It's all well and good having a strong door, but if the B pillar just folds in and drops the fence post in your lap anyway, it's all kind of moot. For this, I used a similar design. 3mm doubler welded to the wheel tub, 2mm gussets to the main member, a 25x50x3mm box section, and another 3mm doubler behind the door catch to transfer the load from it into the vehicle structure. And that's it. I've taken to thinking of these braces as "open casket bars". God knows they're probably not going to save anyone's life, but at least they might help give my ugly mug an open casket funeral. I'm also mentally justifying the extra weight and time spent with saying they'll stiffen the chassis up a bit. Probably just going to make the car slower in the end, but ah well, I'm a great believer in the sunk cost philosophy anyway. I've again got more stuff photographed and ready for writing about, but Imgur's hellishly poor usability totally killed my motivation to make updates recently. I've switched image hosts now, so I'll have a crack at writing a bit more in the near future to bring it all a bit more up to date. Cheers

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