Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[Esprit]

Well today was just a gorgeous sunny Autumn Sunday. Low to mid twenties, crisp in the morning and evening and cool enough through the day that you can enjoy it without sweating or burning too much! This is just the sort of day that I'm going to wish I had more of in about 6 weeks time when winter starts elbowing its way in.

So what did I do to take advantage of this beautiful gift from the weather gods?...... that's right, I sat in my bedroom the whole day studying technical documents on my new ECU and pondering exactly how to go about running everything. Was at it for pretty much 12 hours straight and now I think I've got it pretty much sussed out how everything's going to work.

Because I don't like to do an update without photos to show progress, here's a screencap of the ECU connection schedule I've generated for the Link G4 Xtreme:

I should be able to make this very tidy indeed in the car. As you'll have seen earlier in this thread I'm making up a loom adaptor so that I can plug in the new ECU without altering a single original wire on the car. The Link G4 Xtreme has two connectors on it, one for the "A" loom, and another for the "B" loom. This differs from the lower-spec "G4 Storm" ECU, which only has the "A".

I've managed to map the entire existing loom onto the "A" connector and fill up a good deal of the pins on that. This then means that I've got pretty much the entire "B" loom/connector free for additional items. These will be additional sensors etc that I wire into the car, all easily removable should I ever decide to revert to 100% factory standard for any reason.

This will also make it a lot easier to wire in additional items (sensors, switches etc) in the future. I'm including some initial extras in the installation (clutch switch for flatshift / launch, Wideband O2 control, knock-sensing, cooling fan status, cooling fan override etc.) but there will be plenty of extra channels in the ECU for extra expansion down the line if I find myself desiring further control. I also have the option to connect a displayLINK display to allow me to display certain parameters on the fly or even upgrade to a full smartdash if I decide to. These are both unlikely, but it's nice to know I've the option if I ever want to.

In other news, I've heard tell that my engine and gearbox is now assembled and fully dressed. I expect now that it'll be only another week or so before I can finally reunite the chassis and drivetrain.... that's going to be one helluva sweet update I can tell you!

[Esprit]

Right, well given that I've had the word now that the engine's ready to go back in, my attention's turned to engine mounts. The lower Eliseparts adjustable mount I POR'd when it came off the car, probably about two years ago. I've a new main top mount arriving in a day or two (necessary to stiffen the engine up and stop the longer 6-speed box hitting the chassis under heavy cornering loads). The remaining mount, the gearbox mount was replated and re-powdercoated along with the rest of the powdercoaty bits a year or more ago.

The rubber mount itself though I recently found in a box, rusting away. So tonight after work, a quick wire-brushing, a degrease and acid-etch followed by a quick POR15ing and it looks better than new:

Will hopefully get the full mount reassembled tomorrow. Also need to book a trailer for sometime between late this week and early next to get the car across Auckland. If anyone local knows of someone who doesn't mind lending their trailer for cash, then let me know. I'd much rather give someone some cash than a hire firm where I'll need to race across town in quick fashion with a trailer that's probably pretty beaten up and only semi-functional.

[Esprit]

Tonight's progress involved heading back into the work after the gym to start making up the new exhaust manifold heatshield.

An hour with the guillotine and the brake press and I had it roughed out pretty well. I've refrained from taking it any further as I'll do some test fitting with the engine in the car to make sure it fits well enough before riveting it together and drilling all the mounting holes.

Here's a few shots comparing old and new:

Also today my new engine mount arrived and is ready for the engine to go in.... another small step forward

[Esprit]

Well today I said goodbye to the chassis. After two years cluttering up my garage it's gone back into KW Historics to get the engine bolted back in.

My sincere thanks go to my good friend Mr Tim Blackwell-Chin from Marvel Honda Racing for lending me his time, tow-vehicle and trailer this morning to get the chassis transported, would have been a lot harder without him!

Hmm.... my garage is empty again:

Because my car's been loaded on here!:

And now resides here!:

Got it into KW where I saw the engine and gearbox mounted together for the first time (thanks to Matt for the pics!):

In a few days the engine will be bolted back in, peripherals like the clutch, handbrake etc will be connected up, as will the fuel and the engine loom.

Then next weekend I'll probably pick the car up and bring it home again. Then the work begins on fitting heat shields, plumbing the car up (coolant + oil cooler etc), followed by locating sensors etc. and then finally wiring. We'll hopefully be looking good for turning it over for the first time in June.

Rock on!

[Testament]

awesome work again!

Also tell the dude with the the gen 1 gonda racecar to join OS/post up a project thread/ I heart that stz was my first car etc.

[Esprit]

Just a mini-update, been out in the garage painting up a couple of small brackets to be dropped off over at KW tomorrow along with the fuel tank shear panel.

I'm told that the engine is now bolted in and most of the coolant lines are connected up (will need to disconnect some of these to fit the g/b oil cooler and remote stat. The good news is that tomorrow I'll get to see my baby with her heart in place again.. it's been so very very long!

[Esprit]

Few words are needed for this update. A picture speaks a thousand words, so grab a cuppa and enjoy the following 6000

[My name is Russell]

Interesting engine mount, how does that guy work?

[peteretep]

its just an uppy and a downy isnt it?

[My name is Russell]

wonder how firm it is against twisting forces.

[Esprit]

Mount is primarily to counter/damp up/down forces. It's a LOT stiffer in twist/shear than the OEM mount in this position.

That mount is a design that they use in Steve Gugelimi's Elise race car (although in that application it's mounting to a Audi Turbo engine, not a Rover K)... seems to deal with the ~600bhp that car kicks out okay

[EURON8]

MAybe this has been answered before/i may have missed something, but, Why didnt you put the engine in yourself? Engine cranes aren't expensive to buy/hire (esp in respects to the costs involved in this build).

[Esprit]

MAybe this has been answered before/i may have missed something, but, Why didn't you put the engine in yourself? Engine cranes aren't expensive to buy/hire (esp in respects to the costs involved in this build).

Well I could have easily put it in by myself for sure, but it was mainly that Ken had taken the engine out in the first place (back when this project was going to be a lot less ambitious and we were only going to do a remove/inspect/reinstall and it was going to just be much less hassle for me since he took it to bits and so knew how everything went back.

Also there's the matter of time.... stuff happens a lot quicker when I'm paying someone to do it

[Esprit]

It's back!

Thanks once again to the wonderful Mr. Tim Blackwell-Chin and his race car trailer, this morning was spent getting the car back from KW Historics.

The engine's all in now and this means that the real work must now begin. I've got a rough list of things to do and will populate this further in the coming weeks. Then it's just a matter of going through that and crossing things off as I hit them.

I've still got tonnes to do and a bunch of things to pull off the engine to tidy up, so we've still a fair way to go. But at least now I can look at the car in the garage and feel satisfied that things are moving in the right direction!

My baby's home!

[Esprit]

Well, tonight's escapades centred around fitting my new injectors.

The stock Exige ones (Bosch 0 280 150 479) are rated to 243cc/min @ 3 bar and as such are a little borderline when it comes to 220+bhp. They would do, but would be nearing their limits. The new injectors were the Bosch "whites" (Bosch 0 280 155 811) and are rated to 373cc/min @ 3 bar and should provide a comfortable working overhead without being too large for light-load stuff.

The old injectors are the EV1 body style with the new ones being the more modern EV6 style. You can see a comparison between them below (new top, old bottom):

However, when I came to fit them, I found a small problem. While the injectors are the same size and are a direct swap, I uncovered an issue with the retainer clips that retain the injectors into the fuel rail.

The photo below shows the original injector with one of these retainer clips:

You'll see that on the cream-coloured end of the injector there are two slots. The retainer slides into the slot closest to the end and uses this to hold the injector back against the fuel rail. If you look back at the first image of the old injector versus the new, you'll notice that the new injector only has one slot, and is missing the one that this retainer slides into. This means that the retainer clip simply won't fit.

I then spent a couple of hours with my good friend Google to try and see if there was any alternative clip designs available that spanned this wider gap and picked up on the second slot instead of the first.... I've not been able to find conclusive evidence yet to suggest that such a clip exists. Even so, looking at it, there's bugger all clearance between the injector plug and this slot, which means the clip would have to be a bit of a funky design to enable everything to fit together.

This leaves me with two options:

1. I'll model up the existing clip in CAD and modify it so that it'll span the greater gap. I'll then send the design off to a springmaker and get the clips made up.... this won't be cheap.

2. Flag the clips altogether if they're not really necessary.

I don't mind doing option 1 if I have to, although it'll be a tricky bit of design to get the clip to fit in there without fouling the connector plug. However, looking around at plenty of aftermarket fuel rails, I can see that plenty of them don't even use retainer clips at all. The injectors are pretty firmly sandwiched between the fuel rail and manifold and from a mechanical engineer's point of view, I can't really see what purpose the retainer clips are actually serving.

The only uses I can see for them are:

- The clips mean that when you pull the fuel rail off, the injectors all pull out of the manifold, remaining attached to the fuel rail. This is useless on the Exige since you can't withdraw the fuel rail as the throttle linkage gets in the way, you have to insert the injectors one by one by angling the fuel rail. You can only insert the clips once all four injectors are in and seated.

- The clips would provide some extra resistance against the injectors spinning in their bores. Currently they're pretty snug when seated as the O-rings are compressed. I imagine this will stiffen even more under fuel pressure. Even still, the clips only provide a little extra resistance, they don't prevent this positively.

So yeah, a little bit of a dilemma really. Do I go through the hassle and expense of designing up a new retainer clip or do I just leave them as they are? Informed answers on the back of a postcard please!

In the meantime, here's a photo of the new injectors installed and ready to go:

[vvega]

george forget about the clips ... i know its british and you expect to be working on it all the time ... but seriously ... if you have to pull them out more than once in the next 10 years .... your doing it wrong .....

most stock cars dont have clips at all ..... so forget that shit ... and get wiring that puppy

[fuel]

yeah so long as that fuel rail is securely bolted in and the O rings don't leak, the injectors are going no where! Most OEM injectors you can actually spin in the bores by hand but they don't tend to spin by themselves over time.

[Esprit]

Well today I took my shiny new engine and stripped it (partially). I didn't get a chance to install the sump baffles during assembly as the engine was sitting on the bench, on the sump. So today I got the car up off its wheels on the axle stands and whipped off the exhaust manifold and got the sump off.

I made sure it was scrupulously clean then went about test fitting the DVAPower sump baffles.

Here you can see the sump as-is:

And then the sump with the baffle plates fitted:

My task for tomorrow will be to find someone who's expert in welding aluminium and get them to tack the plates in place. Once they're in, I'll be able to get the flanges cleaned up and the sump and manifold back on.

[vvega]

is it alloy or magnesium ??

if you want it sorted ... bring it down george i do that shit in my sleep

[Esprit]

is it alloy or magnesium ??

if you want it sorted ... bring it down george i do that shit in my sleep

Just alloy.... stock Rover part, can't imagine them using magnesium for a crappy budget Rover

If I can't find anyone to do it in a hurry locally, I might bring it down for a visit