Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[Esprit]

Another busy weekend this weekend just chomping into the million and one little tasks I've got left to do on the car.

One of these that I tackled was to pull the oilstat off and the oil lines ready for their final fitment. This infolved a little fettling of the bracket I made to remove a sharp corner near where one of the lines ran and then sleeving the oil hoses where they run near the chassis (or anything else they can potentially rub on). I used the sleeving I pulled off the original lines.

Today's job was to finish off the manifold heatshield I'd started some months ago.

Here's the old, original heatshield that had self-disintegrated to a large extent:

And here's the completed new one I made up, all folded and riveted (with Bulbtites) together into shape:

I worked pretty hard to get the new one as close as possible to the shape of the old one as it's a very tight squeeze in there! In the end I had to re-make the two small alloy L-brackets at the bottom a little longer to give the shield a little clearance to the coolant rail (the old shield touched this)..... but in the end it fits like the proverbial glove! Very happy.

I wanted to fit the alternator/cambelt heatshield too but sometime during the rebuild process one of the brackets for this has gone missing and I think it's probably still at KW. I'll call by Ken this week and see if it's kicking around there... else I'll order another from Lotus or make my own if I have to.

Even small progress is good progress

[bubblegoose]

how much does that acl heat shield set you back? i heard it was rather spendy

[Esprit]

Think it was like $150? Chump change in the scheme of things here.... need to find bigger sheets of the stuff so I can re-do my rear heatshield which is massive.

[Dell'orto]

how much does that acl heat shield set you back? i heard it was rather spendy

Nah its not that bad, think I was doing them for $90 delivered.

[Esprit]

Well I FINALLY managed to get the gearbox cooler setup all finished (excluding wiring of course). It took way longer than I'd thought it would but the install has ended up really tidy, even better than most OEM cooler setups I've seen.

The photo below shows the pump mounted in the middle taking its feed from the gearbox takeoff and pumping oil to the Laminova cooler

From here, it then exits the cooler and feeds oil back into the top of the gearbox as seen in the photo below (copied from a previous blog entry):

Next task is to machine up the gearbox drain plug to take an oil temperature sensor, then fit the oil filter and fill the engine and box with oil! I'll probably try to actually manually pump some oil under pressure into the galleries first and also back-fill the oil pump under pressure to allow it to prime and begin picking oil from the sump. It'll then get cranked without plugs (or fuel obviously) to hopefully get oil circulating through the engine. This will then be cranked every week or so just to make sure that everything is well oiled by the time it comes to actually fire it up for the first time.

Now to think about the wiring!

[Esprit]

Well today I've been ordering lubricants.

I've got some Valvoline non-friction-modified run-in oil on order for the engine as well as some Motul FF-LSD Synthetic gear oil for the gearbox. The run-in oil will be used for the first few hundred miles of engine operation, before doing a second flush-through oil change (with some Castrol GTX before it moves to its final Motul 300V competition oil. It'll get run-in and basemapped on the run-in oil and will only be stressed on the dyno once it's got the good stuff inside.

As for the rest of the evening this evening, I've been downstairs on the lathe again, turning my gearbox drain plug into a thermo-probe adaptor:

Tomorrow if I can get some garage-time, I'll be looking into the plumbing for the engine oil pressure switch (OEM existing), engine temperature sensors (Sump and post-cooler) and the engine oil pressure sensor. I want to find a way of remotely mounting this pressure sensor so as to isolate it from the engine vibrations. I may have to get someone to make me up a short run of hose for this (think something similar to a brake flexi hose). We'll see

[Esprit]

Well it's a weekend again so more work to be done on the car.

Sitting in the office working right now and trying to figure out a way of fitting the engine oil pressure sender.... it's proving to be a bit of a head-scratcher right now but I'm sure I'll figure out a way at the end. Might machine up a tee-piece to allow me to fit the BSP thread of the oil pressure sender along with the NPT thread of the oil pressure switch for the stack.

More sensors will be going in this weekend (engine oil temp aftercooler, engine oil temp sump, gearbox oil temp). Will also have a go at fitting up the engine air filter.

Will also get some gearbox oil into the box as this arrived today:

$200 worth of sweet Motul FF-LSD gear oil. Will have to make up some kind of dip-stick because Quaife have advised that for high RPM applications it's beneficial to run the gearbox oil about 10mm lower than the level plug. Will have to get inventive and try to measure this somehow.

Also want to get working on finalising the ECU mount. The time is rapidly approaching when the car will leave me for another workshop... there it'll get the wiring and initial dyno/tuning work done....... shit should start to happen quite quickly from then on!

Should keep me out of mischief for the weekend anyway.

[Testament]

pinky finger through hole = dipstick? piece of wire bent strategically?

[Esprit]

Hehe yeah, I'm thinking a cable-tie through the hole with a bend in it will be sufficient

[CaMpylobacter]

why's it beneficial to run it at a lower level at higher rpm? blow it all out the breather if it's full to level?

[Testament]

tbh I'm surprised you didnt say vernier cable tie

[Esprit]

I think the oil aerates too much if it's filled to level if used at high RPM. I imagine the resultant would be oil out the breather, yes.... I'm just going on the advice from Quaife, and I guess they know their boxes better than I do

I'll have a look around and see if I can find a vernier cable tie

[CaMpylobacter]

makes sense. after all. imagine how much rage woudl be had if it decided to do wees all over itself when it's that clean. the whole engine bay would be a cunt of a mess!

[Esprit]

Today's work involved machining up this small manifold to allow me to mount the oil pressure switch (dash warning light) and the oil pressure gauge sender (SPADesign) remotely from the engine. This will avoid damage to the pressure sensor that would be caused by vibration if it was direct-mounted.

Here you can see the gauge pressure sensor (1/8"BSPP thread) on the left and the OEM pressure switch (1/8" NPT thread) on the right.

The port in the middle is a 1/8" NPT port that will have an NPT-AN/JIS adaptor screwed in. I'll then run a -3AN/JIS line from the existing oil pressure takeoff to wherever I end up mounting this setup.

The temperature probes will be direct mounted to the engine as these need to be in the oil flow and aren't susceptible to vibration.

[Esprit]

Well today I've been busy doing a few peripheral bits and pieces.

Thermo sensors are now on the filter housing and gearbox.

I've fitted the air filter backplate and airfilter. This will be removed again to be fitted inside the airbox but I need to get some foam tape to seal the seam as the new backplate doesn't have a gasket like the OEM item. Will put this on my errand list for tomorrow along with looking into getting a -3 line made up for the oil pressure sensors.

I've also got the throttle cable reconnected and operating, which is a nice little step to get finished

The other little job that's done is getting the Canton Racing oil filter fitted:

Didn't get the box filled up today as there's little point until the engine's filled and ready to crank. Another task for the week is to get some running-in oil sorted out.

What I get done next weekend will depend on whether my fittings arrive from the UK to get the oil pressure fittings plumbed.... then it's time to fill, prime and crank!

During the week I'll get the ECU mount sorted out as well, finish the design and get it out for manufacture, once these are bolted on the car's practically ready to go to wiring.

The time for wiring is at hand!.

[mixmasterlex]

Fuck, even that oil filter is awesome.

[bubblegoose]

will you have to bleed that oil pressure fandangletor you made?

ps make me one

[Esprit]

Heh yeah the oil filter is kinda cool.... was sick of variable quality from the parts market so bought in a proper engineered unit

As for the oil pressure setup, it'll need to be bled (will do that on priming) just to make it that more responsive and reduce any lag in the measuring.

[Esprit]

Well a productive day for a Tuesday

Goal today was to get the airbox back on the car. Now the ITG filter kitwas lacking a piece of foam on the backplate they provided. With the ITG the filter sandwiches the airbox flange to the trumpet backplate. There's a foam strip on the filter to seal between the filter and the airbox, but then there's nothing to seal between the airbox and the backplate, meaning unfiltered air could be drawn in if no gasket is used.

During my lunchbreak, I went out to a company called Nexus Foams out in East Tamaki with my old OEM backplate to see if they could match the foam strip that had stuck to it. These guys were fantastically helpful and managed to get me just what I needed. Over this project, plenty of NZ companies have been able to supply items to me, but it's all "we'll have to order some in, it'll take about 6 week and there's a minimum order quantity of 100 pieces".... which is fucking useless if you need only two.... tomorrow. Not only did these guys at Nexus go out of their way to get me what I was after, they gave me the foam strip for free! Awesome service!

Anyway, back in the garage tonight I managed to trim it up and stick it on:

There was then a bit of faffing around cleaning all the accumulated gunk out of the inside of the airbox (you'd be amazed at the grit that gets past the OEM filter, there was certainly some gritty, sludgy stuff in there... enough to blacken your fingertip if you rubbed it across the airbox. Hopefully the new ITG filter works a little better!

I also had to get some 5mm longer bolts to secure it all together as with the new foam, I couldn't get all of the standard-length (20mm) bolts to grab the filter rivnuts.

I got the box on and gave it a bit of a wipe-down to clean all the dust and crap off it and voilà! All of a sudden my engine bay is starting to look a lot more complete!

Also got my ECU mount ordered today so that should arrive later this week and will be anodised early next week.

Task for the rest of the week is to get the -3JIC line made up for the oil pressure sensors.

[Esprit]

Well, a weekend of trials, tribulations and utter despair this weekend

On Friday I picked up the knock sensor I'm going to use on the engine.

I had planned to use this on one of the existing block tappings. It needed an M8 tapped hole, of which there are a couple, the best of which are on the crank cradle. It would have been better to have it in the cylinder block itself, close to the combustion chamber, but this would have been okay.

Having read the datasheet that came with the knock sensor though, it turns out the bosses the M8 holes were in weren't suitable as they were too small (in terms of surface area). Wanting to do a proper job or no job at all, I decided to do it properly.

There's a blank boss on the block that's machined and also the perfect size. It's also right next to the combustion chamber in the middle of the engine so a prime candidate for mounting a knock sensor. The only thing is it's not tapped.

So, off comes the inlet manifold, coolant pipes and original thermostat housing:

The boss can be seen in the bright area of the above image.

Knowing the length of the bolt required to securely take the required torque, I knew it'd be touch and go whether the wall thickness would be large enough. However, there's a boss on number 1 cylinder at the same height off the block tapped to M6, and that's fine. I used this hole to make a depth mark for the drillbits, and even made them slightly shallower to allow for variations in the casting thickness.

With caution and trepidation I drilled in..... As I neared the required depth my heart utterly SANK when I felt the drill break through into the coolant gallery next to #3 cylinder...... FUCK!..... that's basically written the cylinder block off. The block casting must be thinner around this area on #3 than #1 cylinder.

After spending a good half hour freaking out and swearing at myself, I weighed up my options..... rebuild the engine around a new block, or just fit the knock sensor as intended, and use some thread sealant on the bolt..... obviously I've decided the latter, and I'll just hope it's okay. After all, I've done nothing more than created a drain plug in the block to drain the head... right?

Anyway, so I pressed on, drilled and tapped the hole, taking great care to back the drill and tap out as often as possible to prevent swarf entering the coolant gallery:

And the knock sensor was then fitted, the bolt being torqued to the correct torque for the sensor. Permabond A131 anaerobic thread sealant was used on the threads which should do just fine to prevent leakage of coolant down the threads:

Still pretty pissed off / freaked out about the whole business, but I guess it's done now and it's not the end of the world.... and the knock sensor is still in the ideal position so it's still better being there than anywhere else on the engine.

Tomorrow's mission is to go into Land Rover in Newmarket and pick up a new inlet manifold gasket. Tomorrow night will be spent carefully fettling and fitting this in place and bolting the inlet manifold and coolant circuit back together. Fingers crossed by midnight tomorrow, I'll have the car back to where it was this morning.... only now with an extra drain plug/knock sensor in the block.

Now I'm off to have a scotch!