mattj

Yeah you know I reckon it might have been a different story if I had proof of where it had been done and they were known by the certifier, as it happened I didn't really have anything like that. And the key there is 'if its done properly' I can see it from the certifiers point of view anyway, I wouldn't want to put my name to something when there is no proof that it has been done right. The 3D printing is something that I have wanted to do for ages but this is the first real application that I have found. It is very cool though.

Ok more progress from today, I got my calliper mounts back last week, this is how they ended up There was a bit of mucking around getting the step machined as I had a couple of goes to get it right, didn't want to take too much off, then I got some 5/16" threaded rod and cut it up to make some studs for mounting the brackets to the diff, the mount holes in the diff are tapped so the threaded rod is screwed through then I have nuts on one side to hold the calliper mounts and on the other side for the axle retaining flanges. Once that was done it was a simple job to fit up all the lines etc I just want to make up a couple of tags to hold the bundy tube, I will do that this week then the diff can go back in. Then next job was to get the crossmember all mounted up, I used urethane bushes in the end but now I am wondering if they are going to be a bit hard, there isn't much movement in the mounts so it is probably going to be a shakey ride when the car is sitting at idle pulsing away, ahh well I guess I can change to rubber mounts if it is too bad, or more likely just not even worry about it, anyway here are some pics of the crossmember in position. From the bottom and from the top don't look too closely at the paint job, it is pretty rough.... So once I get the diff in I will start on the wheel alighnment and checking the bump steer, Fletch had suggested using a cheap laser pointer to set it up and measure the bump steer and the more I thought about this the more I liked it so I bought 2 and will build a little rig this week that will allow me to set both the alignment and the bump steer. And just to finish off here is another shot of my prototype steering arms, they are pretty cool, 3D printing is awesome.

Yeah the fact that they didn't have a load rating or brand or anything that could be used to identify them was the problem. There were other issues with the hubs and axles that related to the different stud pattern Basically getting the new rims in the 4 x 108 stud pattern meant I could sort the other issues

I haven't updated this for a few weeks but there has been quite a bit happening in the background, my rear calliper mounts have been made, they are getting a small bit of machining done but I should have them back this week, my 3D printed steering arms have also been done and are due to arrive in the next couple of days but this is a picture of them I have a plan for checking the amount of toe change which I will work through once they arrive. I have also made new engine mounts and a new crossmember that sits a bit higher And how it will sit I have test fitted it and it is all looking good so I will get some paint on it then get it all mounted up and finally I had some new wheels arrive old one on the left, new one on the right they are Koya BN-Teks, pretty much look identical to the ones I had but without all the bolts. So these ones have a load rating on them so are good for cert. Bit of a shame that I can't use the old ones but there were some other issues around those anyway which these fix as well.

Loving your work man, hey where are you getting those little cutting wheels for your dremel? I have been using the ones that came with my Ozito rotary tool (couldn't afford a dremel) but they are so fragile they come to bits if you look at them wrong. Really handy but some stronger ones would be the go

Stupid work, always getting in the way.....

2" blocks in the rear and compressed springs in the front (I think, I don't think they had been cut) nothing too fancy anyway....

That's some nice repairs you have done there, impressive stuff!!!

Hey Rusty, yeah I did model the Milton ones and they weren't right with the geometry I have. I am going to assume that their ones are designed to work with the shorter tca's that they sell as I agree that you would expect them to be right. And yes can't wait to get it going, it has been far to long in the garage (actually 5 different garages since I started) but it seems like I am actually getting close now

Hey Phil, sweet as will message you and we can sort something out

Got the mounts onto the diff housing for the shocks and brake lines over the weekend, would have had the diff assembled and back in the car but ripped the gasket for the diff head so will order another one and try and have it in by the end of the week. Also got most of the bits for the new crossmember made, just a few more things to do on that and I will weld it up I also got the last couple of dimensions that I needed for the steering arms so I have finished off the design of them And I have a guy at work who will 3D print them for me so I can get them mocked up in the car and check the bump steer before I get them machined. Not sure how long that will be, I am hoping to have them this week. Then I can see if I do understand this whole steering geometry thing.....

Ha ha, that's easy Step 1. Sell Mk2 struts Step 2. Use money to adapt discs to Anglia struts

Ha ha, its all good yep a bend would sort it but seeing as the rest of it will be machined then I should be able to just start with a thicker piece of steel and machine it to suit. Gotta grab another couple of dimensions then will finish up the design on Monday

Using the anglia tie rods it looks like about 12mm, I need to measure up the zephyr ones now and see if they are the same

running 2015, I think I got the geometry all sorted today, TCA's and tie rods need to be the same length and run parallel to each other so once that is defined it is just a matter of adjusting the steering arms to suit.

Yeah the issue will be that because the arms follow the arc of the TCA the line wont be vertical, but I guess if I can get a reference first (maybe with the steering arms disconnected) then just adjust things until there is no toe change then that could work. It would be a quick way to check anyway Its a good idea about mocking something up before machining them, actually there is a guy here at work with a 3d printer, that might be a possibility.... Cheers

The last week or so has been a bit quiet as I have been waiting on bits to arrive, the rear caliper mounts are being gascut and I have been gathering bits to make up the new crossmember. I thought I would put up some pics of what I have been working on though. SO I have been told that because my front suspension is a jumble of Anglia, Mk2 Cortina and custom made parts that I will need to do a bumpsteer test as part of the cert process which is fine but there was one thing that made me nervous and that is the steering arms that I bought out of the UK, now these are supposed to correct the steering geometry with the Mk2 stuff so I thought to be on the safe side I would model up the Anglia suspension and check to make sure that it is all good. So I took a bunch of measurements and put it into Solidworks so I could move the suspension and see how it reacted and actually get some proper measurements relating to bumpsteer. This is what I came up with straight away It was looking like there was going to be a problem with all this, I was getting something like 3 degrees of toe change over 100mm of suspension travel, which is quite a bit, anyway there is no way that it was going to pass with that so the steering arms got put on hold until I get to the bottom of this. I had a read through of the technical bulletins from LVVTA relating to the bumpsteer test and found some really useful info in there pointing to the fact that the tie rods might be too low. One thing though, it did get me doubting whether I had my model correct, I was thinking that maybe if I had taken some measurements incorrectly then this could be throwing off the whole thing. So as a check I then modeled up the standard Anglia suspension to see how that compared and it was all good, basically no toe change over the same 100mm of travel. So it now looks like I might be correct that the tie rods will end up sitting too low here are some pics to show what I mean Standard Anglia My setup In the top pic the dashed lines representing the TCA's and Tie rods (the ones that angle down towards the bottom of the strut) are basically parallel, in the bottom pic they are not and I am pretty sure this is the problem. Now I am no expert my any means so if anyone out there has a different interpretation then I would be keen to hear it. Something that I noticed that I think may be giving this problem is that the Anglia steering arm is a lot thinner than the custom ones I have so the connection point for the tie rod sits much higher, also these custom ones have the tie rod connection coming off about halfway down the body which also isn't helping, and finally the fact that they need to be 16mm thick is also a problem. What I need to do is move the whole arrangement up and there are a couple of ways that I can do that with the most obvious being to make them out of thicker plate and machine a step between the strut mount face and the top of the tie rod connection point. Anyway I haven't got it sorted yet but at least I know what I have to do (I think...)

Nah the problem is that the axles are cast and they don't like you welding to a casting, they didn't even like the locator that was welded on the old ones to locate the rotor even though if the weld was to fail it wouldn't be a major, they reckoned that the heat introduced to the casting could cause other problems. There are a few things that I disagree with but at least we can modify our cars so it could be worse, I just have to suck it up a bit

Yeah getting pretty sick of re-doing stuff though, I don't mind if it makes the car better but some things are a bit stupid....

Also here is how the front hubs were done I don't know why they weren't pitched halfway between the old ones, the shop that did them specialize in this sort of thing so I just assumed that they would be ok. The other thing I did was re-do the driveshaft loop, the one I did to suit the type 9 was for a much smaller tunnel so I just grabbed one of those universal (yeah right!) kits then chopped it up to make it fit. I have fitted it to the car so that's another job done.

Some progress on the rear brakes here are the old axles that I had redrilled The problem is the big holes on the flange that are so you can undo the axle retainer bolts, because of the position of these I can't redrill the Anglia axles to 4 x 114.3, I have been told that there isn't enough metal between the old stud holes and the new ones, you can also see how close the new suds get to the edge of the flange which is also not going to pass, made worse because I had the od of the flange turned down to suit the discs. So this was kind of a major, basically the wheels that I have are not going to work, I have looked at all the different possible ways to solve this, adaptors and different offset wheels, custom axles etc. and what I came up with is that I am going to have to keep the 4 x 108 stud pattern. So that sucks but it is what it is so I just have to deal with it. Anyway Koya offer custom drilling and offsets on their wheels so it looks like that is the way I will go. The other thing was that the wheels don't have any load ratings on them (this is probably the one thing that I really have issues with) apparently LVVTA are clamping down on wheels as there have been a couple of cases where rims have come apart on the road recently. So factoring in that as well changing wheels just makes sense, shame though, I really liked those wheels. The next issue is that I welded the caliper mounts onto the end of the diff housing and they reckon that it is a cast item (plus it was MIG welded) here is the mount. The solution is to have bolt on caliper mounts that pick up on the axle retaining bolts. Here is how I had done it. the mount sits about 20mm back from where the studs go through and where the new bolt on bracket will need to attach, I went through a bunch of disc brake catalogues to find a rotor that had 4 x 108 holes and the shortest distance between the rotor face and the mounting face to try and minimize this and keep the bracket as flat as possible and the best I could do was a fiesta disc out of the UK, it gets the offset back to about 8mm with the S13 Silvia calipers that I have. Anyway thanks to the fact that I am a parts hoarder I had a spare set of axles so these were turned down to suit the new discs Then I went to cut the old welded mounts off the diff and the more I cut the more I thought it was a bad idea, I figured I could grind them back but it was going to take ages as there was hardly any room for the grinder and the chance of going to far and wrecking the housing was quite high, so I grabbed another housing and I will use that one and just add the brackets for the shocks etc. Here is the disc and caliper on the diff and this is the offset between the caliper mount and the face where the bracket will sit Interestingly (well I found it interesting), this housing has bolts retaining the axles and the other one had studs pressed in, I am guessing the stud type is earlier as I think that diff housing was out of a 1960 model and the blue one is from a 67. So this week I will try and get this mount bracket sorted, I need to figure out if I should go with a bent bit of plate or machine down a thicker plate to get the offset.

Hey man, it's looking good! hey who did the bead blasting on that manifold? was it someone local?

Yeah what Pete said, to me changing the engine mounts to move the motor would be a pretty easy solution And yeah I could be persuaded to sell those wheels

Ha ha, if I bought another anglia my missus would kill me

There is another big advantage with the escort swap as you keep the whole front end the same as in the escort so there are no geometry changes. While the mk2 stuff goes in fine it is still a mix of bits and that means there are some compromises. I actually have an escort front end which I might put into that other shell (once this one is finished that is) It is something I wanted to do after seeing your build