Boot Cover

Something I had been putting off since the build finished was fitting the boot cover. Having looked at a few others and how good a job they had done I figured I could not replicate it. That and the fact that the absence of the boot cover did not impact my driving it, I just never bothered.

Heading out for a drive last Sunday, before I had even got out of the driveway, the smell of raw fuel indicated something was amiss. Backing further out onto the road, the pool of fuel on the driveway and the trail leading to the car confirmed this. Jumping out and getting under I could see fuel coming out under slight pressure. Switch off, clean up and put away.

During the week I stripped out the boot to have a look at the cause, and once I started it could see the hose clamp on the return to the tank from the regulator had failed. 30 second fix to pop the clamp off and fit a new one and then test. Solved. I figured I would put the car back together and go out over the Easter weekend.

So waking up Friday to a wet Easter weekend, I headed out to the garage to put the car back together, but figured I should have a look at fitting the boot cover given I had so much of the car apart. It turned out to be fairly straight forward, only taking about 2 hours to fit, although I had a few issues with the press stud pins and had to source some longer ones. Glued the front flap to the cabin bulkhead while the seats and harnesses were out then refitted the interior. Looks OK although I am not keen to open it for fear of more press stud failures.

Cooling System Changes

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been having engine coolant temperature issues. Low speed running and traffic saw temps as high as the low 100's (Celsius) and on one run into the city for work, I saw 110 before the fan kicked in. 

I had added a blanking cap to the radiator filler in order to pressurise the expansion tank. This only served to blow out the overflow spigot on the neck as it wasn't designed for pressure. This left me with a choice: either change the filler neck, or change the expansion/overflow. It will sound silly but I opted for the latter. The benefits were that it simplified the plumbing, and then I ran a simple overflow recovery tank. When the water heats up its purged to the overflow tank, and when the system cools down it draws liquid back into itself.

A couple of test runs and it seemed OK, then I had one run where it would not drop below 98....and the radiator and pump inlet were cold. This means the thermostat wasn't opening, so potentially a big airlock.

In order to get a better understanding of the true temperatures, I purchased a bluetooth ODB-II adapter which plugs into the ODB-II adapter on the loom, and allows me to query the ECU with an app on the phone. I jacked the car up as high as I could at one end to elevate the filler, and then ran the engine for 15 mins with the cap off. At exactly 15 mins and 98 degrees...a huge surge of air bubbles came up out of the filler. I then switched on the fan and was able to cool it and see the thermostat open and close. I let it cool down and then refilled and seal it in the morning. After another 6 decent length runs I am now seeing temps consistently down between 88-91 degrees, and it rises to 95 while stopped in traffic with the fan going. Best of all the phone app is giving me the temperature directly out of the head rather  than a sensor I fitted in the outflow (which I still need to move). Problem solved and its much cooler under bonnet, and in the car, as well as being tidier (and not leaking).

The one other thing the ODB-II app has shown me is that intake air temperatures are running quite high....so that will be the next project.

1000km later....

So I have been on the road for about 6 weeks now. I have clocked up nearly 1000km of driving, mainly through the Royal National Park and down the south coast. I am usually getting out for an early morning run most Sundays with a few mates, but I will take it out on Saturdays or during the week at nights if I can find a reason (any reason will do).

I have had a few problems. The front brakes have frozen on a few times after about an hour of driving. I have been told this is potentially a problem with the push rod in the master cylinder fouling the cylinder just behind the piston. I will pull the master cylinder down when I bleed the brakes next and check. Its easily fixed on the road by releasing the push rod lock nut and rotating it slightly.

Also the water temperature fluctuation is bugging me so I am going to move the sensor block and the filler cap to better spots. I will also switch out the pressure cap for a non blocking cap on the filler which should stop the leaks. A front and rear shock are leaking, and they will have to come off and go back to the manufacturer for new seals.

I need to add clutch stop in the pedal box, and I have decided to fabricate a new throttle pedal mount to move the throttle more to the right, freeing up the foot well so I can get a better feel for the brakes. It makes a lot of noises that are unfamiliar but I am learning how it likes to be driven, and what the limits are.

So far I have added a set of 6 point harnesses for track days....the only real modification so far. I am contemplating an aero screen....but not just yet. I need a new muffler and cat first.

Other than those few issues, I love just running around in it. I have a smile constantly, and people at traffic lights always wind there windows down for a chat. You also get a lot of kids waving at you.

Registered

During the week the car had its final inspection, the Blue Slip inspection which is a  safety inspection for unregistered cars. From here it was a simple matter of organising third party insurance, and then heading off to the RMS with all the paperwork.

An hour or so later I was handed the rego papers and the custom plates I had ordered (after handing over A LOT of money). I was finally registered!!!

I headed home and mounted the plates and stuck the label on the screen! I then headed out for my first little "fully legal" drive. It was nice not having to constantly watch for police. Even though I had previously been on the UVP stickers, driving without plates has a certain risk to it.

So now I am finished, properly! I have assembled, engineered and registered a car that is both drivable, safe and fairly quick. Its been almost a year since the first engine start, when I expected to have the car finished in 6 weeks after the engine was running.

So now I have summer to enjoy driving it, in fact I am about to head out for my first real drive down the coast with a few friends.


I need to thank my wife and kids for their patience and help with building the car and fulfilling a dream! I am very lucky. I also want to thank a few people who have helped with build tasks or advice -  thank you Steve, Dave, Maurice, Bryn, Andrew and Greg and Sonja from Redback Motorsports.  I also want to give a huge thank you to my engineer, Treeve from Kernow Engineering who did an amazing job with the certification.

I would say THE END, but I think this is just the beginning of a new chapter. I will post more about the driving and about the upgrades that are sure to follow.

VIN Number

Well after working through a number of little fixes and answering a bunch more questions, my engineer completed the engineering report and sent it and the application for a VIN number off to the NSW RMS. And they sent a VIN number back!

Here it is (obviously obscured!), stamped to a plate and fixed using rivets to the scuttle. This means all I have left this week is a Blue Slip inspection for an unregistered vehicle, and assuming I get that, front up to the local RMS office to get finalise rego and get my plates. 

Only a few sleeps now until its finally registered, and just in time for the long weekend and summer!

New Repeaters

The last remaining task from my engineering report was to replace the side indication repeaters. These have to be visible from an approach angle at the rear of the car from 5 to 55 degrees. Because of the height of the rear guards, I have extended these fairly high so they are completely visible from the rear. A quick bit of auto electrical work and these were spliced into the front lighting looms and successfully tested. 

So that's it....all tests passed......all engineering checks complete and all issues fixed.....it's FINISHED.

I now place my self in the hands of my engineer and the NSW RMS and await the final submission of my engineering documents, and the issuance of my VIN and plates (which I have ordered!)

Engineering fixes update

Through out the week I have worked on the car at night to close out the remaining tasks for the engineer. I have completed 7 of the tasks and only now need to add some new repeaters further forward to improve visibility from the back. These were fabricated and welded up yesterday and I just need to tidy them up, paint, fit and wire.

I got to have a really good drive this afternoon with some friends, and it was nice to enjoy the spring weather and not have to worry about noise or overheating or any of that other pre-test crap!

Noise Test and Engineering Checks

This weekend I took the car back up to see the engineer in Orange. It spent a day in the workshop on the hoist for all the engineering checks, and I now have a list of 7 things I need to fix or change....nothing to onerous.

Todays tests involved rerunning the noise tests I had previously failed. With a revised exhaust, new airbox and some more insulation, the car passed the tests, coming in under the 77db drive by tests and the 90db stationary test.

Getting very close now to a finished engineering report and hopefully a VIN and plates!

Heat shield

After fitting the new air intake, I noticed how quickly the intake piping was getting hot, caused by the proximity of the headers. Given that I don't want preheated air going into the engine, and I have silicon joiners on the air intake, I decided to fit some heat shielding. 

I fabricated up some support brackets to sit between the headers and the intake to hold the shield, then shaped a piece of heat shield to fit it in the gap. Its tight at the front, but has a good air gap for most of the length of the intake and it protects the joiners.

Today has been spent fitting a new quieter exhaust and heat shields....photos to follow. The car is almost ready for its next and hopefully final engineering checks prior to rego!

Air Intake

One of the main reasons I failed the first noise test was induction noise. I had a pod filter directly connected to the throttle body, with no air box or resonators. When you nudged the throttle, you could hear it take a breath and gulp air in. On sharp throttle inputs it made very impolite noises, and on wide open throttle it whistled like it had a turbo. To fix all of this I have plumbed in a factory airbox and resonator up in the nose cone, and the routed air piping back to the throttle body. This is the 2.75" aluminum and blue silicone joiners you can see in the photo.  Because of the height of the engine and the intakes on the passenger side, I have had to route this plumbing down the less ideal drivers side, directly above the exhaust headers. To deal with the heat, I have fabricated brackets to keep the plumbing off the headers, and also some additional brackets between the block and the chassis. These are to hold up a heat shield that will keep the headers and the plumbing separate.

The net result is that there is now zero induction noise at idle, and no change in noise for any throttle position....problem solved!

p.s. Also noticed we passed 10,000 page views this week! Thanks to everyone who has followed this build and checked back in on the progress.

Engineering - Part 2 (Emissions)

Today was emissions testing. I had to pass the RTA's IM240 test certification which is the equivalent of Euro 2 emissions testing.  Given the engine has no mods and uses the factory ECU, tune and intakes and I have a Euro 3 spec CAT, it should be pretty easy to pass. And it was! It passed with virtually no emissions, with all the key numbers being so far below the max. The test did show up some interesting NOX levels on hard acceleration and a bit of fuel dumping on sudden overrun. Something to work on with the tuner, but its another major milestone passed!

Engineering - Part 1

Last Sunday was the first day of engineering tests. I needed to do some last minute modifications to the exhaust heat shield on Saturday to stop a resonant vibration. Steve "the welder" made short work of this problem. The engineering tests took place some 300km from home, so it was up early on Sunday to load up and head out. It rained all day Saturday, so I was not able to load the car the day before. This meant loading up at 3:30am in the dark and wet. The car got even more wet on the 4 hour trip but I got there on time. 

Upon arriving at the test location, the first challenge was to cross a muddy red clay field to get to the track. Luckily I was towing with a 4wd, but churning across the paddock got the Birkin pretty dirty as it was sitting directly in the path of the flying mud. After unloading the tests begun. There was a whole bunch of other cars being tested including one other Clubman, a scratch build running a Zetec. It was 6 degrees celsius where we were testing, so it was a pretty long day standing around in the cold waiting for my test. 

Once it was my turn to go I already had the car warmed up and the V-box Racelogic system was installed to do the measurements. The engineer was doing a range of tests including general driving, braking, lane change/stability and noise (stationary and moving). It was a pretty proud moment to see my little car drive down to the end of the test track then come flying back up the strip in anger and full voice. Here's a clip of it making its second pass in to the braking test, which requires 15 consecutive stops from certain speeds, where each time it must stop inside a specific distance under a certain pedal load.

It passed the braking tests easily which is fantastic given the brakes were brand new and haven't even been properly bedded in. It passed the lane change and stability tests, although it whacked a cone on the first run. Due to Greg Fraser's (Redback Motorpsorts) work, the tyres didn't even chirp as it was hurled through the lane changes at increasing speed. Alas it failed the noise test, but more so on the induction air box noise rather than the exhaust. It is making some fairly high frequency noise on intake so this is not surprising. Not to worry as I needed to go back for other checks anyway. All in all a long day with another 4 hour drive home in the rain and dark. I now have a very dirty little car!!!!

Next test is this Wednesday, which is IM240 emissions. Stay tuned!

Shakedown - Part 2

In Shakedown - Part 1, I had 3 things to fix after my first real drive.

• Broken headlight globe
• Stuck closed thermostat
• Broken exhaust mount

The headlight was easy to fix. The globe broke due to the vibration in the lens. I removed the whole light, replaced the globe, and then tightened the spring clips in the lens holder. Fixed.

The thermostat was harder. It involved a complete drain of the cooling system, removal of all the hose clamps, nose cone, fan belt and idler pulley. 3 bolts took 3 hours to remove! I tested the new thermostat before fitting, and the same 3 bolts took another 90 minutes to reinstall and torque. It was then just a case of replacing the other parts I had removed. Refilling with coolant took two nights of bleeding the air out of the system until the coolant level stabilised.

I used some fencing wire to hold the muffler on so I could test drive it and check the thermostat. Good news, the temperature stabilised at around 95 and held and the lower radiator pipe was also warm after 15km.

The problem with the muffler was that it had been hard mounted to the chassis (not by me). This meant that there was no isolation from vibration, so something had to give. The chassis mount was welded direct to the muffler body, and this broke after 20km, and it also bent the mount pretty badly. To fix this I got a rubber mount, and Steve the welder fabricated up an S bracket. We bolted the rubber mount onto a thicker chassis mount, and then welded the S bracket to the muffler body. We also took the S bracket a lot further under the muffler body and shaped it around the muffler allowing it to be welded on 3 sides (tripling the amount of welded joint). I then cut an adjuster slot into the chassis mount and bolted it up to the car. The chassis mount acts as a cantilever, and the whole thing is a lot more secure than before, but it also now has a vibration damper. I look forward to another test drive and hopefully it will last a bit longer than 20km.

Workshop Fitout

On top of the lessons learnt, I thought I would share the additional tools I have used or added to the workshop during the build. This will give new builders an idea of what is needed beyond spanners.

• Engine crane - rated to 750kg with adjustable boom and castors. I used this to lift the car a lot as well when fitting the engine
• Engine stand - for dressing the engine before it goes in the car
• Trolley jack - spend as much as you can and get one with as much lift as possible
• Chassis stands - height adjustable with fine screw adjustment.
• Digital vernier calipers
• Hex head sockets - better than Allen keys!
• Torque wrenches - I have two, one with a smaller range and one with a much larger range for big jobs like flywheel bolts
• Sharp set of side cutters
• T-bar - with connectors for sockets or hex bits
• Stepper drill bits - for carefully enlarging holes out to as big as 22mm
• Quality soldering iron
• Electrical wiring crimper (good quality)
• Auto electrical specific multi-meter
• 1mm metal cutting wheel for the grinder
• Fine tip paint pen in a bright colour - for marking position or marking torqued nuts/bolts
• Good files for rough shaping of aluminum or steel brackets
• Dremel - used for everything! From cutting, finishing, sanding, grinding
• Rivnut gun - an expensive luxury best shared with a friend!

On top of this I had the usual set of ring and open ended spanners, sockets and screw drivers. I added quite a few larger spanners and sockets for jobs like fixing the upright ball joints, or tightening hub nuts. Most of these can be added as needed, but I can't emphasise enough the importance of using the right tool for the job. A vice and bench grinder is also handy.


One of the things I thought I would use a lot more was my compressor. I already had a rattle gun and I also got an air powered socket wrench. I guess the capacity and duty cycle was a little low on my compressor as it was more of a pain to use than being of any great benefit. I ended up using a cordless driver with socket attachments a lot more than anything else.

Lessons learnt

I have been meaning for a while to create a list of things I have learnt along the way. The aim of this is to warn new builders of some of the traps I fell into, and show some of the tricks I learnt along the way. Some of this is common sense, some of it is the result of hours of rework. I was never able to find a list like this, although many of these answers are scattered across countless forums and build diaries on the Internet. 

• Check every package and delivery the moment you receive it to make sure its all there, and its what you ordered.
• Understand the order of all tasks and the priorities they have to be done in.
• Never put a task off until later because it's to hard. Do it in the right order.
• Avoid putting all the body panels on as soon as you get it "just to see what it looks like"......huge waste of time (I never did this ;)
• Where possible test fit each part for alignment before fixing or tightening.
• Use copper grease on all splines
• Use Loctite on all bolts
• Check and replace spigot bearing ($5 bearing at the back of the motor that supports the gearbox input shaft)
• Don't use rubber hoses for hydraulics
• Don't activate master cylinder pistons with no fluid in them, the pistons will jam.
• Do the wiring as early as possible.
• Test every wire as soon as possible for continuity.
• Don't put the scuttle on until EVERYTHING underneath it is done
• Don't put the nose cone on until the cooling system has been tested
• Test fluid systems for leaks as early as possible when they are easy to fix.
• Don't leave fluids idle for long periods.
• Get everything you can on the motor before you fit it (alternator, starter, induction, belts) - make sure it will fit though
• Test thermostat or replace on older motors, before you fit the motor.
• Don't fit something if you don't understand how it functions first.
• Use the right clamps for the job (i.e specific fuel line clamps)
• Position clamp bolts where you can reach them after the car is finished.
• Make sure the steering rack is perfectly aligned when you fit the steering wheel.
• Use the best fluids.
• Always replace Nyloc nuts when you remove them.
• If something is subject to engineering, check and understand the requirements before you start it.
• Don't be afraid to ask or get help!
• If something is proving difficult or not working, walk away and come back later or the next day....I guarantee you will have solved it in your head and the fix will take 5 minutes to implement!

I am sure I will add to this list as I remember other aspects of the build that have been challenging.