Hurmeez

The next job was to get the diff mounts sorted. I found some suitable box section and carved it up into something resembling a diff mount. 

I copied the original Escort pads in pretty much every way to make sure they'd fit the standard springs nicely. Then I welded up the original holes in the shock plate/spring mount and redrilled them further apart to take the bigger Falcon U-bolts. 

I bought a new set of springs for it a while ago because I thought mine looked pretty shagged. They were making a W shape rather than a U when there was any weight in the back of the car. So I threw them in and it bolted up, set all my angles, and jacked from the centre section to see what ride height I'd get from the new springs. 

Just to prevent any confusion, that is the car sitting on bump stops. With no weight to speak of in it. With my new springs. Yayy.

So I had another look at my original springs. It turns out they'd been subjected to the ole' flipped leaf, hence their W shape. 

So I disassembled them and put them back together in the right order and swapped them back in to find that they gave me a ridiculous monster truck ride. So I swapped the centre leaf of the original spring for the two centre ones out of the new set and tried it again. That finally sorted it out. I didn't actually get any photos but I think it's something like a two-inch drop from stock. 

It did come with a whole new set of problems though. Measuring the angle on the gearbox output shaft gave me an angle of 8.5 degrees down. So I set the angle on the input shaft to 8.5 degrees up at ride height to make sure the drive angles were equal and I'd avoid any vibrations etc in the U joints. Then I measured the angle of the driveshaft itself and got 2.5 degrees. 

This means the U joint angles would come to a total of 6 degrees. Now everywhere I've looked online says that 10 degrees is the absolute maximum you want to run on a driveshaft U joint but anything less than 5 degrees is far more ideal. Now I wasn't completely happy but I was willing to just run it with the 6 and hope for the best but there was one other thing that meant I forced myself to do something about it. 

With the engine at its current angle, I was going to have a clearance issue between the front passenger side throttle linkage and the bonnet. I worked out that if I were to raise the gearbox cross-member by ~50mm, it'd put the driveshaft angle down to something closer to 4 degrees, as well as getting ~10mm of clearance for the throttle linkage at its closest point. The only other option would be to drop the engine down. But I've already go it as low as possible with the standard cross member and any more and I'd have to start modifying the steering rack mounts and suspension geometry and that's a huge can of worms that I have absolutely no intention of opening. 

So next job was to make a riser for the transmission tunnel. As per, I started with a CAD template, 

Then steel, 

Welded in my original boot mounting ring, 

Tacked it, 

And welded it. 

I reckon with a custom centre console and a standard looking vinyl shift boot, I can cover the whole thing and still have it looking fairly standard. 

Finally I made a new gear box cross member to lift it up into its new home. 

I'm much happier with this one. Here you can see just how far I've raised everything by the difference in cross members.  

Still no rear axles though so I can't fully and finally sort out the diff mounts and rear brakes yet. That's it for now. I'm planning on working on the throttle linkage and pedal setup next. 

I'm loving that Ramflo idea! I might look a bit further into that...

@fuel I did consider a cross ram style intake but as @yoeddynz said, the port spacing made it difficult to fit the runners between each other, especially with the 50mm tubing I had to work with. It is a shame cause they're a great packaging solution and look great too!

@Transom I didn't realise that about the vent tubes. You're exactly right about the pcv being directly under a runner on the other side. I was going to come up with a custom tight radius 90 degree bend to fit it but if I could just plug it and use the driver's side vent then that'd be a lot easier. 

I had no idea it had been a whole month since the last update. There hasn't been a lot of solid progress in any one place but there has been lots of small progress in different mini projects. 

Firstly, I got the intake situation all pinned down and finalised. I actually fairly radically changed the layout and turned the whole thing on its head. Literally. To start though, I cut what was left of the original manifold down even further, before making up some transition pieces out of the 50mm tubing I've been using, and tacked them into place. 

The welding on these more heavy materials isn't so difficult but once I moved on to tacking the donut sections I really started to struggle. That said, I persevered and got two manifolds fully tacked and bolted on.  

You'll notice a couple of things. Firstly, the throttle bodies are now the other way up to how I originally had them. Second, the right-hand bank has two sections of donut to make up a single bend. That was because when I decided to flip them all I realised I didn't have enough left of the donuts to do it out of one piece anymore, thus, two bits. 

As for the reason I wanted to flip them in the first place, doing it this way gives me twice as much room for air cleaners/trumpets on the passenger side bank,  

(forgive the paint stick rule) as well as clearing my original clutch reservoir position, 

while still clearing the valve cover vent on the driver's side too. 

It's going to be a little close between the throttle linkage on the passenger side and the bonnet but if that's the only issue then I'm a very happy camper indeed. 

One last beauty shot from above, 

Before I sent it away to get fully welded. While I'm sure with enough time and perseverance I could have gotten everything stuck together in a way that would hold water, the money I would have spent in replacing the donuts I rooted in the process would have quickly outpaced the cost of asking a professional nicely to do it. That and the fact that it's such a central piece of the visual puzzle under the bonnet, I'd rather pay for some stacked dimes then make my own bird shit. Hopefully it won't take too long. I'll be sure to show it off once it's back. 

How do you deal with the engine moving around on its mounts with a bonnet sealing box? Do you just use really thick cushy rubber to line the sealing edges?

Those trumpets look very smart! Are they just a slip fit onto an O-ring? What are your plans for filters?

How did you end up doing the remote booster setup? Did you use one booster for each circuit or is it just the front brakes that are boosted? I am planning on doing a similar setup in my car and I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about it. Cheers

1 minute ago, d.p.n.s said:

If you got the rails with it you could just use that and the injector holes and just use small tubes with o ring at each end instead of the injectors.

And use that as the IACV system.

That's a good idea actually. I'll have to look at it a bit more. 

I see. That's interesting, perhaps the V10s are slightly different to the I6s because I don't remember any other ports on the body. I'm planning on drilling and tapping some small barb fittings into the runners and plumbing them into a fabricated reservoir that sits on top of the injectors. It should look good and cover up the plastic tops of the injectors. I think I'll put a frost plug type bung in the standard injector port. 

Are you using the standard injector ports for your IACV and vacuum reservoir? Thats a good idea that I hadn't considered. How are you holding them in and stopping them from popping out in the event of a backfire? Looking really good so far! 

Keeping notes is always a good idea in my experience too. I've got a whole clear file full of receipts and details about which parts I've used and what wrecker car they've come off and so forth. Should be invaluable when the gearbox mount wears out or I need a rebuild kit for the brakes or what have you.

I actually found a neat little cardboard number wheel from BOC in the empire of dirt the other day that tells you what amps, filler, gas, travel speed, dip rate etc. etc. to use for a bunch of different material gauges and types. It's bloody handy but now I have to figure out where the safe place is that I saved it. 

See the thing I'm tossing up right now is that for the price of that helmet, or a foot pedal for the welder, I can get a mate to weld it up for me professionally. He's been doing it for a living for god knows how many years and is bloody good at what he does. It being such a central visual piece of the engine bay obviously makes me want it to look good but with my current equipment, I don't think I can make that happen. It kills me to not to do it myself but this will be pretty much the only ally welding I'll need to do on the car and I don't think I can justify the investment at the moment, especially since pretty much all work on the car is going to have to stop next year while I'm studying down south with nowhere nearby to store or work on the car. Somewhere down the track I'll definitely get more into it and upskill but for now, I think as much as it sucks, I'm gonna take the easy (and cheaper) way out and get someone else to do these particular welds.  

Thank you guys for all your tips and I think I'll keep trying and practicing and teaching myself on scrap but I think it's a big ole no bueno on the actual intake. 

I don't have a pedal or remote amp controller on the machine. Do you guys have any experience with trying to use a machine like that or am I making it all far more difficult than it has to be?

I'm really struggling to find the sweet spot between too hot and too cold. I'll either take ages to make a tack, or it'll just melt and piss off on me. I realise that as I keep welding it gets pre-heated and I shouldn't need as much heat in it to continue but it's just so much different to steel it's like learning to ride a bike again but the pedals turn sideways and the handlebars make the wheel turn the opposite. I've given up for tonight before I turn all my donuts into a puddle on the floor. 

Thanks for the tip. I've just been tacking so far but it's not too bad. The biggest difference I find is how it doesn't "jump" the way steel does when you've got two puddles next to each other. You've really got to force them together with the filler which can be a pain when you run out of hands to hold things together. 

That's an interesting exhaust manifold setup they've got going on. The filters are cool too. I'm not sure what I'm going to do at that end yet. 

Also, check this out: 

I'm basically building a Porche. Please send all fan mail to hecticklswaps@yourejealous.com. 

I'll be honest. At this point, I had a bit of a crisis about what to do next. I felt like I'd done everything and I was struggling to figure out what else I had to do. That was until I remembered all the panel work I'd put off to instead make the engine fit. So that was the next logical step. Back to rust repairs. Oh goodie! 

Of course, since that was the next logical step, I went and did something else instead. You may remember me mentioning a while back how I was planning on modifying the radiator side supports to fit the massive new rad. Well, I made that my next mission. I started with a cardboard template of the panels I had already made all those months ago and placed them more or less in position. 

Then I cut it down to clear the rad. 

Then trimmed the premade panels to match, complete with a folded flange on both outside and inside edges.  

They're just sitting in place for the photos so they actually fit much better than they appear to. 

With that done, there really was nothing left to do other than start on some rust repairs. 

I noticed some bubbling around the bottom edge of the driver's door a long while ago but put off doing anything about it until now. I started by stripping the paint back over the bubbled area and quickly realised how much bog was all over the door. So I carried on and stripped the whole door, exposing a multitude of sins. 

First, the original issue was revealed to be an old rust hole that had been "fixed" by filling it with bog and calling it done. 

Then there's this hectic az mirror delete too: 

Just half ass weld a patch through the holes and punch the whole lot in with a hammer. Then it's easy as to bog up and no one will ever know! Easy two-step guide for any beginners out there.  

Probably at least 10mm over most of it. Nothing wrong with that. 

I initially thought that this skin was beyond my abilities to save (or my being bothered to save it) so I looked at a brand new skin. After seeing how much they want for one of them I quickly decided that perhaps I could fix this one after all. I decided to start with the rust hole on the bottom edge. 

Before I welded it in I sorted out the frame underneath it where the same rust repair technique had been used. 

Then it was the skin. 

I did it really slowly and ended up with fairly minimal warping 

Then witness paint makes it look far worse than it actually is. Because of the inner door structure, it's really difficult to get a dolly in behind it to do any meaningful panel beating but as it is I'll get away with a maximum of 1mm of filler to smooth the whole thing off. I'm much happier with it now, if only for the fact that there's some real steel behind the paint. 

I still have to sort that issue on the left hand side, as well as the meat hook abortion situation around the mirror. I'll get back to it in a little bit but I found something way cooler to work on right now. Stay tuned...

I agree, the silver top bodies would be a good fit. Unfortunately, I already went and bought some bimmer ones so I'll go ahead and make them work for now. It's funny you mention the cam covers. I think I can get away without modifying the passenger's side cover, however, I was originally thinking of relocating that breather vent on the driver's side because it looked like it would be in the way of the front-most body. Then I realised I'd be better to take the mountain to Muhummad so to speak and just shift all the driver's side bodies a little bit rearward to clear it. I already drew up the mounting flanges ready to be laser cut and I think it'll all turn out pretty good. 

If you do manage to figure out a way to make the driver's side cover look more like the passenger's with the badge and whatnot, I'd be pretty keen to buy one off you. It bugs me too not having them match.

I did consider lobsterbacking but I don't think I have the ally welding skills to attempt that sort of thing just yet. Also, it would end up being so much welding just for one, once you multiply it by all six runners I think I'd end up suicidal by the end of it. Not to mention the cost of the gas. I looked into ally donuts and I can get really tight radius bends for close to the same price I'd probably end up spending on gas just to do all the lobsterbacking, so I think that's the go on that route.

You know you're the second person to suggest the NOS idea. I think I'll go for a non-permanent bung in the BMW injector port for that very reason. As for the IACV, the one @Avenga used on his wagon looks like a really neat solution (if a little pricey). I think I'll have a look for a cheaper wrecker jobbie first but if all else fails then that's a good option.