Project Sabine

[daveyg]

Two steps forward and two steps back today. Started off the morning in high spirits hoping to get a lot of stuff done. Wanted to bleed the brakes first of all and as the front of the car was fairly high i thought i would put the front wheels on just incase anything went wrong while jacking the rear up. It was at this point i noted that the tracking was well out. If you imagine the wheels are the hands of a clock it looked like 10 past 10. It was awful. Once the back was up we bled the brakes.

Once this was done we turned our attention to why the tracking was so bad. We adjusted the track rod as far as it would go until it was only hanging on by a thread and it was still out. So we decided to take it off to compare it to another track rod i had. Unfortunately i used a bit too much loctite when fixing the track rod so out came the blowtorch for the second time in two days!

This did the trick and got it loose. Upon comparison with another track rod there was an inch difference. Using a different hub and disc means the distance is different however the other track rod i had, although a bit knackered appeared to be the correct fit so i will have to order some more of these.

Grand Prix...

After the disappointing race i headed back out with rear bushes in hand to fit. Not having done this before or reading up on prior to bleeding the brakes i realised that i would have to drop the rear beam out to fit these and therefore re-bleed the brakes too!! Amateur mistake. So to sum up didnt really get much done today except discover problems. Hopefully will get the rear beam dropped out this week and get it painted and bushes/rear coilovers on.

[daveyg]

Got a bit done today, ordered some new tie rods, also fitted a mushroom filter for the ISV. Changed the arrangement of the pipes on the top hose on the radiator so it is further away from the radiator fan too. This makes it look a bit tidier than before as there are fewer jubilee clips

After this we dropped the rear beam out. We soaked it in WD40 overnight and applied some heat to the nuts followed by the impact driver, they came off okay and we cut the brake lines as these will be replaced
Once the beam was dropped we had to apply more heat to get the rear bush brackets out

I then replaced the rear bushes for powerflex items

Will hopefully get the anti roll bar off tomorrow and get the inner and outer bushes replaced. I will hopefully get the rear coilovers on too

[daveyg]

Got a fair bit done yesterday, after getting the rear beam out i tried to get the rear anti roll bar off. The inners come off okay as they are bolted on however the outers gave up a very good fight. They had been left overnight soaking in wd40 and we tried hitting them off first of all but they were having none of it, they were almost fused to the clamps. So we tried heating these up with the blow torch but this didnt work either. In the end we welded a nut to the clip so we had something to hit against:

Once these were welded on we could hammer the clips off. Unfortunately once they were off one of them literally disintegrated away

So i have ordered a new set of stainless brackets and clips from crazy quiffs.
I also continued to tidy up the engine bay a bit more, fitted the HT lead guide to hold everything in its place. Have ordered some more hose to run the crankcase breather out the way of the BMC which is getting in the way of a few things but a few 90 degree bends should see to that

Also refitted the mounting brackets and bushes for the rear axle

After this i set to work with a wire brush under the car as the base of the petrol tank looks to have a bit of surface rust on it. Will look to paint that this week along with the rear axle too. Have spoken to an exhaust welder who is going to modify my 4 branch to miss the steering knuckle. Once the axle is back on we can sort some brake line and fit the rear coilies on too. After that the list is getting pretty small of things left to do

[daveyg]

Braved the cold and snow this morning to get a few more bits done.
Had some more silicone pipe delivered in the week so set about routing this so i could connect the crankcase breather. Had to avoid a belt and the air filter so was a bit of trial and error to get everything lined up and cut to length. Ended up being quite an easy job though



Once this was done i got underneath the car and gave the petrol tank a good lick of paint before i put the rear axle back on

Plan was after that to put on the new rear anti roll bar brackets. This didnt quite go to plan as with only one pair of hands couldnt put them under enough pressure with the tools i had to clamp them enough to put the clip on so this job will have to wait till later on

[Mr Funk]

Changing those bloody clips on the rear is one of the worst jobs I've ever done. Best thing we found was to use the vice to clamp the back of the actual clamp the. Slide the clip on. Words cannot express how much I hated doing that job. Good luck

[daveyg]

Got an early start on the car this morning, was bloody freezing but wanted to get on with the rear axle. Took mr funks advice and tried the vice on top of the clamps to squeeze it enough to start the clip then hammered this along the clamps. Was a pain to do but got there in the end




Once these were on i had to make up some brake lines for the rear, got some copper piping and flared the ends

Then connected these to the drums and to the rear flexi hoses


Got very cold after this so decided to call it a day!

[daveyg]

Havent updated this for far too long. Havent done a great deal since xmas due to illness but heres an update of what has happened.

The rear axle is now back on the car with all the brakes connected up. The handbrake caused me a lot of issues though. One of the handbrake cables threaded ends was bent and the cable was much shorter than it should have been. Although we managed to just about get the handbrake connected it was obvious that something wasnt right as the n/s wheel would lock on the first click and there was no adjustment to be had. We took it apart and found that in the past it had had a cable replaced and it was obvious it wasnt fitting into the groove under the handbrake lever properly causing it to bend on the threaded end when engaged. We resolved this by cutting away the outer of the cable and bent the threaded end back into place. It now operates correctly. (May have to revisit this though!)

I have also attached the front engine mount up so it is nearly ready to go back on the deck. I had to take an angle grinder to the front manifold which was a horrible thing to have to do. It was touching on the UJ so i took a small section out and have made up a stainless plate that needs to be welded on to take the exhaust away from the UJ. Also cut a hole in the exhaust centre section to put the LAMBDA sensor in. Hopefully the exhaust should be returned this week. Unfortunately im off snowboarding this weekend so wont be any more progress till after im back. The list is getting shorter though and it is mostly wiring work left to complete.

Also a big thanks to DT1 Colin who has helped me out finding some GTI headlight brackets so these will be going on the front replacing the E30 lights.

Unfortunately i dont have any pictures as my iphone broke and i couldnt recover any of the pictures which is annoying as its nice to have a photographic record of progress. Anyway hopefully more to come soon and back on the road for the end of Feb...(subject to change!)

[daveyg]

Exhaust came back from the welders today, they welded in the plate that i made up and also welded the lambda into place. Its not the prettiest job in the world but it solves my problem and is better than i could have done. Once it is in heatwrap and on the car it will be out of sight anyway



Lambda welded into place



Got some new nuts to attach the exhaust to the block as these were looking very tired and rounded, these along with two washers for the front engine mount came to £24 from the stealers, i nearly choked when he gave me the bill!
In a way a bit gutted im going away tomorrow as theres a lot of stuff i could be getting on with but this will have to wait for my return now!

[daveyg]

Got back from holiday last week and was looking to get some solid progress done over this weekend. Wrapped my exhaust in heatwrap last night in preperation for an early start this morning. Got the front engine mount attached radiator back in and all attached, went to offer the exhaust up and it wouldnt go? Turns out the clever chaps who welded the exhaust managed to distort the shape so it doesnt line up with the head anymore, not impreesed...However i wasnt going to let this get me down though so i bolted it up to the old manifold in an attempt to bend it back into shape. Typically it would always spring back to its previous form though. Will be revisiting this in the morning with a spaxer plate, i have a plan! To make sure i could try a full start and continued run today i removed a stud from the head and attached the exhaust one gasket short and one nut short. Attached the lambda and filled the header tank then ran the thing for over two minutes, was noisy as hell and wouldnt idle but i still have a lot of sensors to attach etc. Took a lot of pics and video of it running which i will upload tomorrow with further progress updates. Got pickpocketed of my iphone in france so its not as easy to uploads pics as it was once! Ive really got the bug back and am looking forward to finishing this as quickly as possible, another plus is the evenings are starting to give me another hour or so which will give me the urge to get in the garage after work. Looking forward to first light, this rocco WILL be back on the road and ready for its first meet soon!

[daveyg]

Lets start off with some pics!
Here's the rear beam back on with suspension setup and wheels on (although still sat in the air due to the exhaust which was the aim for today:

These wheels will be up for sale in around a month if anyone is interested?
Here is a part of the exhaust once heatwrapped. Only this section will be wrapped as its by the universal Joint and the other section isnt, plus i only had 5 metres of the stuff and thats all taken up apart from 30 cm on this one section!

As i said yesterday the exhaust was warped and out of shape, i used the original cast iron head to try and straighten it:

Unfortunately this didnt work so today i spent a good few hours with it in the vice, also ground it down, filed it, bent it until it finally resembled the correct shape, this meant we could finally attach it to the head with new gaskets as well.

We connected the lambda sensor to the ECU today as well and bodged the centre section of exhaust with some flexi just to guide the fumes, its still not joined airtight


Also improvised an accelerator cable from chocolate box connectors!

Once this was all done it was time to fire it up again and see if it ran quieter now the exhaust was pretty much connected up correctly, the first start there was a lot of steam coming from the wet heatwrap but once this had dried out we fired her up again
Here's a video of turning the key

After doing all of this we realised that the reason it wouldnt idle is that the ISV hadnt been connected to power. However after hunting for another connection and taking a few bits apart she wouldnt start again. It was getting dark so we called it a night and headed back in. However its beena really positive weekend, a lot of problems have been overcome and its starting to come together now.

[daveyg]

Turns out the reason it wouldnt start again was because we dislodged the immobiliser connection! With this sorted our attention turned to the fact it wouldnt idle. After a bit of research it seems that its quite common for the ISV to seize when left for a period of time. After removing it and getting some WD40 in to it the valve started to open and close and now....It runs on its own! This is a great bit of progress so now its a case of wiring, might get a brand new lambda as the one from the scrappy is a bit ropey. Need to also putty the exhaust joint until i get a stainless one made up from the front manifold back. Every day were getting closer, bring on the weekend!!

[daveyg]

Got cracking on the wiring today with the help of the old man. Made a plate up for the relays for Lambda, Injectors, OBD and immobiliser etc and this actually fits on top of the fuse board out of sight. The immobiliser box i have attached to the underside of the right hand side under dash tray, the OBD will probably be mounted here too. Took a good 8 hours to fully wire it but it has tidied up a lot of the mess that was in the engine bay. Now it means tomorrow we can strip out the unnecessary wires and wrap the parts of the loom that we need. Also made a template for the plate which the ECU will be mounted to in the scuttle. Tomorrow will get on the guilloteine and make this up. Started her up once we had rewired it more permanently to ensure we had got everything in the right place and she started on the button which was a relief as i dont want to ever have to revisit that many drawings of wiring diagrams again!

[daveyg]

Here's a pic of the immobiliser mounted

The wires will be tidied up further once we know everything is connected and working.

Today we carried on with the wiring and connected the heater for the lambda sensor and finished off connecting the sensors. So oil temp and pressure, coolant etc. These have been connected via chocolate box connector. Now we know where everything goes and what wires we dont need we can cut everything to length get some two way connectors and then wrap all the loom away.

The cambelt was a tad loose so we made a tool up to tighten, not a bad fix actually!


In order to get the air temp sensor working we had two choices of where to mount it, in the rubber inlet behind the filter or in the aluminium air feed infront of the filter. Decided on the latter as it was easier to mount. I cut the Mk3 air box apart and took the arch that the sensor plugs into. Then i used a heatgun to bend the arch to the same shape as the air feed. Then used a holesaw to cut the right size circle for the sensor housing to poke up through.

Might clean it up a tad but it does the job as it is. I have noticed the bay has got a lot dirtier while its been in the garage so everything will be tidied up once finished.

Needed to mount the ECU in the scuttle too so i have made a plate up which i need to paint . It holds the ECU under the rain tray and although it does touch on it, it will work with a bit of adjustment. Attached the brake servo today and the pedal is poor, im guessing as ive increased the size of brakes and havent done the master cylinder yet that this is the problem, may address this after MOT. I do have a 22mm lying around somewhere, do i need to change the servo too to 9" or does the late Scala (1991) already have the larger servo? All in all a productive weekend, was hoping to put her on the floor and take her outside today but didnt quite happen!

[Funky Diver]

Looking good matey... although I'd personally have the immobiliser in the least accessible place possible. I take it that it is screwed onto the underside of the passenger footwell tray?

[daveyg]

Yep, that is on the underside of the passenger footwell. This box is for the engine, however i do have another immobilser which is buried away. Nothing will work without this being disarmed first of all.