Hurmeez

I wasn't completely happy with using bolts with each mounting flange being tapped to hold each throttle body on. Not least because all my untamed strength acting on the quarter inch ratchet managed to strip one of the alloy tapped holes on the first try. So I decided to swap the whole lot for steel studs pressed in from the back side of the flanges.  

So, two minutes of turning later... 

You get these delightful little fellows: 

And then pressed into place.  

Which gives me a much more professional looking nut rather than bolt with a neat little button head on the back.  

While I was in there I also added an extra throttle return spring. 

I'm much happier with the throttle now. I wasn't quite returning to its seat after lifting from light throttle but now it snaps shut far more satisfactorily. 

Next job is at the other end of the car...

So with the idle circuit sorted, I figured after working on getting a little bit of air into the engine, the next logical step is to figure out getting lots of air in as well. 

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before but I plan to use the original BMW linkage rods to actuate each TB. They are stainless from factory and hard as a coffin nail, so I'd really like to avoid machining or drilling them as much as I possibly can. Because I basically can't. So I won't. I actually considered this way back when I designed the intake flanges, spacing them out the same as they would have been on the V10 in the first place. This meant that all the cross drilled holes in the link rods already line up with the throttle bodies and I can use the factory linkages and everything is peachy. Also, being originally off a V10, the rods were too long for the banks of three per side that I'm using. This left me with a handy little overhang on which to mount a custom eccentric throttle wheel. So with the help of @yoeddynz once again, and a little bit of maths, I designed this:  

Using the standard Escort's pedal throw of ~46mm, it gives you a little over 1/3 (7/18ths) throttle opening at half total pedal throw and the remaining 2/3rds ish with the remaining travel. Hopefully this strikes a good balance between fine controllability and spongy pedal feel, like you get in so many modern fly by wire setups. Unfortunately I won't be able to know for sure for a very long time, but, such is life. 

Using that neat little drawing, I spun this up in the lathe with the four jaw chuck. 

Probably the most offset job I've ever done. Thought the bloody thing was gonna jump out at me any second when it hit its resonance. 

Here it is mounted on the link rod: 

With that done, the next thing was to make a bracket to hold the throttle cable. I'm using a standard Escort throttle cable shortened by about 150mm and with a late model style barrel end on it. This lets me use a standard pedal and clip and not have to worry about modifying anything on that end of the deal. 

Here is what I came up with for the bracket: 

It is made from 2mm sheet to match the original bracket. This means the clip system on the end of the throttle cable fits in snugly. As you can see it is mounted to the idle circuit tubing. 

And here it is in place: 

And full throttle: 

Finally, I had to connect each bank together. I ordered some rose joint rod ends from china with a left-hand female thread, and repurposed a right-handed example from my original twin carb setup for the Pinto from way back. Then I modified a pair of the factory linkages to be parallel at half throttle but with one above the rod and one below, while still picking up the original holes in the link rods. This should mean that each rod should rotate at the same rate but in opposite directions for the entire arc.  

Finally, each rose joint is connected by a stainless steel rod with opposite threads on each end to allow for fine adjustment of length and to balance each bank properly. I also made up a couple of lock nuts for each end. 

So finally, this is how it all looks in action from the driver's seat: 

With that all done, while I was in there, I installed the proper vacuum rated flexi hose for the idle circuit. 

Looks flash as now. 

Not sure what the next job will be but I'm sure it will end up on here at some point. Cheers. 

Moving to the Throttle bodies, I decided I'd start with the idle air control circuit. Originally I planned to drill and tap some brass fittings into each intake runner and join them all with push on vacuum line to a central ICV somewhere hidden away. That would then require me to plug the BMW injector ports (I'm going to use the standard Mazda V6 injectors) since they are on the vacuum side of the butterflies and would pose a significant vacuum leak. Then I had an idea. Well @d.p.n.s had an idea and it was pretty smart so I thought I'd take the credit. 

If the BMW injector ports are going to create a significant vacuum leak, then why not use it to control the idle? Dan got lucky with a set of throttle bodies that already had a ICV setup on them and all he had to do was cut and shut it to fit. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the V10 style of throttle bodies (Which I am using) don't have one built in. So I'd make my own using the unused ports. 

I started by machining up some "false injectors" out of mild steel. I considered stainless for the bling factor but the extra pain in the butt I'd have with the machining made me reject that idea. As you can see, they use the standard O-rings and are shaped essentially identically other than the long injector nozzle. Here they are in place:

Then I crossdresseddrilled each one and ground them out to shape to fit a common balance tube. 

Which they were all then welded to. 

I put a cheeky little cap on the front of each one at a jaunty angle to make them look a bit faster.  

Next was a couple of little brackets to hold each new false fuel rail using two of the throttle body mounting bolts.   

So now I have two separate balanced banks of throttle bodies. Next I need to connect each side together to balance the whole lot together and hook the whole lot up to an idle air control valve of some description. 

Again, Dan's throttle bodies came with their original IACV but mine didn't. So I did a little research and found that there are an awful lot of BMW engines that use the same model of IACV, including a couple of six cylinders that were down at the local wreckers. So $30 later I was back with a nicely gummed up and seized valve. A bit of brake clean soon had it cleaned up and freed and I started looking at options for hooking it into the system. The first thing I did was try a random brand new filter I found in the empire of dirt. 

What do you know? It fits over the intake perfectly! Magic! Then I wrapped it in a strip of sound insulating sticky backed foam which you can see above. This is a little too thick for the final fit but I carved it up to fit for now. Then I found a random ignition coil mounting strap and again, it fits perfectly!

A study in serendipity this is turning out to be! 

With the mounting sorted, I continued by machining a few different fittings to assemble into this T-piece, among others. 

I intentionally made all these custom pieces the same dimensions as the output side of the valve to keep all the hose runs easy and not have to worry about diameter changes along the way. 

That then gets welded onto the passenger side false fuel rail. (I suppose balance tube is a better name actually) 

With everything bolted up, you can see the short run for a piece of vacuum rated tube to connect the valve to the balance tube. 

I also welded a fitting to the other balance tube to connect them up. I intentionally made this one the same length as the T-piece to give me the option of welding another tube on underneath for a brake booster vacuum source later on if I decide I want one. 

Finally, I connected everything up with a piece of hose I had lying around.   

I don't think it is vacuum rated at all, (it's pretty easy to squash by hand) but it looks good for now and I've got some proper silicone hose on order from the parts shop in town. 

I'm going to start on my eccentric throttle wheel next but I'm struggling to figure out the maths behind the radius, versus center offset and so on and so forth. At the moment my thinking is that a throttle butterfly only opens by 90 degrees or a quarter turn, give or take, from closed to full throttle. Therefore, if I find the full travel distance of my cable and multiply by 4, that should give me the circumference of the wheel. Then I was going to decide on how far to offset the centers by looking at pictures online, but of the ones I've been able to find, none of them seem to have the cable pulling the wheel through 90 degrees. Most look more like 120 degrees and I mean, @yoeddynz's one on the old Viva looks like it wants to pull through almost 180 degrees and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If anyone can help me out with any advice in this case then I'm all ears. 

Please share any ideas or advice here: 

Also I just realised, I never properly showcased the finished intake runners with their flash professional welds. Hopefully these photos do enough to show off how pretty they are.

I started thinking months ago about the diff in the car and whether or not it'd be able to stand up to the extra power. I'd read in many places that they're good to around 200 horsepower if you are gentle on them. However, I plan to have a little over 200 and I have very little intention at all on being gentle on it. So I started looking at different options for an upgrade. I looked down the Hilux route for a while but I was struggling to find one. I then read up on the BW78 as found in @Rhubarb77's turbo pinto Mk2. Coming standard in Falcons and Commo's for decades and being a popular swap over the ditch means that there's heaps of information available on them, as well as aftermarket LSDs options, and so on. 

So I went down the road to the Zebra and pulled a housing out of an AU station wagon. This was the best option, other than a ute, because it had the least useless brackets and linkages for me to cut off as compared to the four-link bars and Watt's links on the sedans. I also pulled a center section out of an AU XR6 for the LSD and 3.45 ratio. That's much better than the 3.23 that was in the station wagon diff and will put me right about 2500 rpm at 100kph. All up I think it cost somewhere on the thin edge of $200.

I also found a set of axles from an Aussie assembled R31 Skyline. They have the same splines and bearings but are four stud and shorter than the Falcon axles so better for shortening. Both the Falcon and the Skylines have different length axles side for side to put the input flange of the diff in the center of the car. This is another thing that makes it easy to shorten them. By putting the short Skyline axle on the longer side of the Falcon housing and shortening it to fit, then shortening the long Skyline axle by 125mm and the housing by the same, I could get away with only modifying one axle to save time and more importantly money.  

I ended up with something like this: 

I got it done by Lee at Diffs R Us. He also tightened the LSD up to the best a standard cone type can possibly be while he was there. I was over the moon with the result and would recommend him to anyone. 

This is a comparison shot to show the difference between the Escort and Skyline axles: 

I shouldn't have to worry about snapping one of these puppies. Especially considering the fact that I'll be lucky to get a maximum of a 205 profile tire under the back. 

Next thing I wanted to sort out was the rear brakes. While we were in the wreckers to up the diff, we noticed a Mk2 Mondeo. It had 4x108 stud pattern, vented rear disks, sliding single pot calipers, cable handbrake, and it all fit under 13 inch rims. They looked perfect. So $60ish later I got them home and started working on making them fit. The first thing I found was the central hole in the disk was too small to fit over the spigot on the end of the axles. Initially, I considered embiggening the disk to fit the axle. Then I realised the disk would be a consumable part, albeit very rarely needing to be replaced. With that in mind, I opted to spin the spigot on the axle down to keep the consumable parts as standard as possible to save headaches down the road. With that done and the disk fitting snugly, I started figuring out a caliper mount design. It came down to something I have to give full credit to the old man for. 

The one issue with the Mondeo caliper is the mounting bosses are well offset from the actual disk itself. This made them difficult to pick up effectively with a bracket. So we thought outside the box. 

It's made up of two plates. One that picks up the axle retaining plate bolts, just as the standard Falcon caliper mount did. Then a series of spigotted spacers support another plate which the caliper then bolts too. The cardboard above represents each plate and the spacers are currently imaginary. I ran the design past the certifier and he said he was more than happy with it so it was full steam ahead. 

I cut the plates out of 6mm steel with the gas then started putting holes where there needed to be less steel. I turned up a wooden spigot to hold each plate true to each other while I drilled them to absolutely ensure the holes would match.  

Next, some temporary wooden spacers were made to prove the concept.   

That was where I ran into a wall. The next job is to make the spacers for real. To do that I need the axles in place with bearings to confirm the disk location. The problem is, I don't have the axles at the moment. 

Even though the axles are four stud, they are 4x114.3 rather than the 4x108 that I need for the Escort wheels. To remedy that, I welded up the flanges (legal in New Zealand I was glad to find) and sent them away to get restudded. I made sure I preheated each axle and welded them up as hot as the poor little welder would suffer, before leaving them in the gloven to slowly cool off again and prevent any unwanted hardening.

When I refaced each axle, the welds weren't much different in hardness than the rest of the axle so I was more than happy with that. 

So now, as I mentioned, I'm waiting on the axles before I finalise the brake mounts. Still plenty to do though...

In the meantime, I've been working on the repairs to the driver's door. You may remember this mess:  

While I'm all for the sleek look of no mirrors, perhaps this wasn't the best way to go about it. 

I started with a rough cut out from a paper template. 

Using a series of small folds in the brake, I formed it to match the shape on my dad's untouched MkI before trimming to fit.  

I got it tacked in place with minimal warping.  

Then very slowly I fully welded it.  

I'm no panel beater but I gave it a tickle up as best I could and I'm fairly happy with where I've got it. It's quite clearly miles better than where it was. 

There's still one or two patches that I want to make up but I'm happy with the progress. I'm working on something totally different at the moment but I'll wait until I get a bit more done before I show anything. Cheers.