Testament's '74 Fiat 124 Coupe

[Testament]

Ok done a bunch of work on this over the last few days although it doesnt look like so much

 

cut the fuel pump lobe off the aux d/shaft so no worries about timing that up now

 

 

rookiedave and my mate matt port matched the head/supercharger manifold while I did some other stuff. I said just take the minimum off to get it to match. but no the casting inside the supercharger manifold was a little rought so they got all carried away with the carbide burr and machining butter (putting butter coated chips of alloy everywhere lol) and put a hole in one of the ports of the manifold #$%$#  oh well, nothing some weld/jb weld cant fix Im sure. still have to get injector bungs welded on anyway so will figure it out the.

 

 

 

bottom end all together - found it was a bit tight to turn but after pulling the seals off and loosening all the rod bolts diagnosed that I a) forgot to oil the crank seals before installation (so had to take them off again) and that the rear main seal is just really tight. so all gooped up with more moreys and backtogether

 

 

then got rookie to give me a hand again to put the valves and valvesprings in after rechecking the valve seats with engineers blue

 

 

and chucked some springs in some boat anchor thing of his while we were at it

 

 

then much stuffing about taking camboxes on and off and finding where all my spare heads were hidden to mix and match and pinch shims to get the valve clearances as close as I could.

 

 

Then last night while uterus, truenotch and rookie talked shit I boggled for quite a while before sussing out how to set the cam timing. Once I sussed it I set up the 130TC cams at 104 deg ICL and 114 deg ECL on advice from rawb. Interestingly they measured up 9.4mm lift @ running clearance (~0.45mm) with 217 deg duration @ 50 thou lift - no one really publishes fiat cam data with 50 thou lift for some reason i dont know.

 

markku hung around like a bad smell till pretty late and we got as far as getting all the ARP headstuds wound in but then I found (as I knew would be the case) that the late model reverse port 8v thema turbo headgasket has slightly different holes to an old 8v gasket so I'm going to need to punch out a couple of new hole and enlarge a couple of others  to get it to work

 

 

[Testament]

ah shit there is alot of work to do/sanding for paint sucks haha

 

 

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dave so happy to be painting

 

 

temporary p lab as sparky puts it

 

 

all wrapped up

 

 

that etch primer stuff that is supposedly rubbish or something?

anyway done this wet on wet bussiness way thing I dont know paint is still really confusing

 

 

first coast of base colour

 

 

psssss pssssss psssssss

 

 

and a jillion coats of hours later

 

 

 

probably going to make the rest of the car look rubbish now

[Testament]

didn't quite get as far as I planned (had hoped to have the motor sitting in the hole)

Got the cambelt on and cams dialled in to where I had timed them with the head off, and put a timing mark on the front pulley. Did have to make a spacer for the the cover that goes on the end of the cam due to the distributor drive on the end of the 130TC cam sticking out a bunch, just took a spare cover and cut the middle out to do that. Then fitted the oil pump, sump etc.  ended up using a regular 2L sump for the meantime - when I looked at the argenta winged one next to the crossmember it looked like the sump plug would be just about inaccessible as well as having to cut out the corners so with the time contstraints I have I decided it wasn't worth the extra work and only really being a road car the regular sump should do for the moment at least. I have a couple of spares so I can make a nice baffled one or something later and swap it on.

put the bearing in the end of the crank and put the flywheel on but didnt seem quite right as it didnt spigot on the bearing but continued on as dave who was helping me said his golf didnt either when he did a clutch on that recently. I thought this was a bit odd but as we had a couple of hold ups and were trying to "git 'r' dun"  continued on. then once we bolted the pressure plate on I remembered that because its got the volumex  i.e. FWD crank in it, the bearing/bushing size and depth of the crank recess is smaller than on a RWD crank. so I need to get a 1.5mm spacer ring machined up to go from the 32mm OD bearing that fits in the VX crank to a 35mm ID bore on the flywheel, and then measure the distances from the block/gearbox mounting face and cut the appropirate number of mm off the gearbox input shaft.

 

anyways much thanks for help from sparky and dave this weekend, even if I did almost ragequit at one point there haha
 

[Testament]

measured some stuff betterer and did some maths. dont need to chop anything off the input shaft at least (has about 3mm-3.5mm clearance) 
just need to get the spacer ring turned up tomorrow hopefully

 

 

edit: man I'm dumb. was lying in bed last night and rechecked calcs in my head, still have to cut about 6mm off haha. no biggie anyway.
 

[Testament]

 

but of course you cant find a suitable piece of pipe/bar stock to use when you want to make something.

 

but we found this

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

so flywheel fixed up to crank with a bit of crank

 

 

six puck solid centre clutch and double diaphragm 2200lb pressure plate

 

 

just need to sort out the supercharger and injection stuff now

 

 

using a spare gearbox I had instead of the one from the car as that was getting a little graunchy on the 2-3 synchros - It feels good but there was a heap of junk on the magnetic sump plug when I went to drain it so I decided to take a look inside. pleasantly surprised it was reasonably clean and looks good from what I can see.

 

 

then got dave to use his new weldor to weld some threaded bungs onto this stainless surge tank I got off 10-5  a million years ago

 

 

put a new guibo on the gearbox as the one I took out of the car had..uh....seen better days.....may have explained some of the driveline  clunk......

 

 

fitted up the new throwout bearing and the clutch fork and return spring etc. from the original gearbox after I cleaned them up - and then I noticed that out of the 6 bellhousing to gearbox studs only two had nuts????? wtf?  would have pinched some from the old gearbox but on closer inspection that has bolts in those places rather than studs and nuts. and they are M10 fine and i didnt have any spares floating around, only M10 coarse.  so will have to get some nuts and spring washers tomorrow, but I need to goto the engineering store to get a few more hose barbs and things for the fuel system anyways. but annoying anyways as I was hoping to get the engine and gearbox bolted together tonight.

 

[Testament]

Time to go home

 

 

 

 

 

and put to bed

 

[Testament]

It's a tight fit! 

 

 

just managed to find a super stumpy 3" tall K&N filter so hopefully that will turn up in a day or 2, got some of the exhaust pipe today but had to order in some 1.75" for the secondary pipes off the factory manifold and need to order a 2.5" oval straight through muffler from a different supplier tomorrow

[Testament]

Things taking longer than you expect take #674

 

 

 

 

decided to just modify/repair the factory downpipes as the pipe I had ordered to make a new one hadn't turned up and I figured it would save a bit or time anyway. So should finish this exhausting process tomorrow morning. The only thing I can see so far in my way now is setting up the throttle linkage to run the factory carb for the initial startup and running, the linkage is part of the cambox end plate but that end plate doesn't fit with the new motor so will need to figure something else. Anyway things going well there may be some video tomorrow evening........

[Testament]

Wow this has been a war, have been working on it till after 11pm every night and just fighting silly little things every step of the way. go to put the carby manifold and carb from the original motor on for initial run in and to take it for a warrant and the studs I had in the head for the inlet manifold are too short for that manifold, trying everything to ensure it actually had oil pressure (was very hard to tell off the starter), electronic ignition that worked great on the old motor doesnt want to play on the new one even though it appears to have voltages and signals and things where it should so end up swapping on a points distributor and coil finally get the bonnet on then break the bonnet release cable (fortunately it opened the mechanism as it broke).

just all those things that grind your gears. was this " "  close to quitting last night but thanks to dave being a good freind and helping out and taking me to get some dinner at that point we came back and had another go and got it running, drove round the block and woke up all the neighbours at 11pm (that 2.5" exhaust is a little louder than i was thinking it would be haha)

so sorry for pictureless/videoless update but its now at the warrant shop, so will a little luck and explanation of a couple of things I still have to sort out properly (band aided throttle cable as the old linkage doesnt fit with the cambox so close to the firewall) and brakes that need to be bled it might even have that elusive sticker come this afternoon.

[Testament]

great sucess!

[Testament]

Fuel system mostly done now

on the 131 a short oil filter would fit in just but on the 124 things are so tight even the regular type of remote filter block that screws into the oil filter location wouldnt even fit (let alot an oil filter) as the volumex bracket puts it right between the engine mount and crossemember to chassis rail mount on a 124 coupe and the chassis rail is even closer than on a 131. So I ended up drilling and tapping and plugging the oil filter housing and welding a threaded elbow to the filter outlet/threaded attachment so I could get some AN fittings on the supply and return sides. even so the elbow only has a couple of mm clearance to the crossmember mounting bolt!

 

mounting things back in the engine bay again only temporarily though to sort out the fuel rail and a couple of other things. theres going to be a quite specific order of installation just to be able to do things up

 

belt tension at minimum here, so I think I will be able to swoon dave #69873 when I crank that idler around to the other side.

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And it's gonna take a miracle

 

to drive a car this colour down lane 1 at meremere dragstrip on 14-12-13

 

:/

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