Rolling Chassis!

Some more good progress this weekend. We got the wheels on and the whole thing dropped down onto the ground from the tressles, thanks to some extra help from a few friends! The car has increased in weight by quite a lot already! The car seems very low to the ground, but I guess thats mostly because all the things that sit higher such as the bonnet, seats, dash etc are all not there yet...

The main task we wanted to achieve was to test fit the engine within the engine bay to establish how our rather large saab engine might actually fit! I spent quite a bit of time removing all the inlets, exhausts etc from the main block to allow us to see how it would fit in with the gearbox. As you can see from the picture below, the engine is looking fairly sparse without all the supporting parts!

After much effort, we go the engine actually into the engine bay and sitting fairly nicely close to the position we would expect to install the engine.

The saab engine mated with the omega gearbox seems to be fairly short, as there is a significant amount of space in front of the engine, which could be useful for positioning parts we have to move to fit it all in. The engine being positioned more centrally helps the weight distribution too! Our main concern was the height of the engine, but it seems to be not too bad compared to the height of the bonnet:

We have planned the two side engine mounts and it looks like we can convieniently reuse the gearbox mount from the omega box to fit nicely into the mounting point. So we will try and get them all made up soon to allow the engine to be fitted into the car, saving us valuable garage space and allowing work to begin on all the supporting parts for the engine. The alternator will need a new mount fashioning, the water pump will need to be modified a bit to fit. The exhaust and turbo piping will need to be almost from scratch. While the inlet side will be using the manifold from a saab 9000, which is a better shape, but will still need to be modified a bit.

Lots still to do, but feels like we are making some good progress.

Wishbones and diff

Some good work this week, working a few week nights and the weekend. The aim now is to get suspension, steering and diff in to see what space issues we're going to have with the Saab and engine and Vauxhall gearbox.. We'll have to remove front suspension to get side panels on.

1st job, tidy up the rough edges of the insert tubes, redrill the insides (I think) with a 10mm drill bit. Clamped in a vice with a couple of pieces of wood to protect the tubes.

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We then tried to get them into the wishbone bushes but the hole was way too tight. So, a 14mm drill bit run through the middle of the bushes did the trick. Tubes were still a tight fit but lightly copper-greased went in ok.

After that, wishbones were attached to the chassis with the supplies hi-tensile bolts washers and nuts. Then the shocks were fitted.

Next up, Diff was fitted. We lifted the diff upwards roughly in its fitted position to allow the middle of the bolts to be fitted into the slots. This allowed us to look through the badly pre-drilled chassis holes and mark on with a Tip-Ex pen where to Dremel out to see the diff holes. Several hours later and the front and upper mounting holes were done.

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Note the washers used to centralise the diff. We did this by lining it up roughly central between the front 2 mountings which looked pretty square to the chassis, then selecting the correct number of washers to fill the gaps between diff and chassis brackets.

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The rear mount was to far away from the rear mount plate so we'll have to get 10mm longer ones to reach.
On checking the diff flange, it isn't quite at 90deg to the chassis rails. I wanted to fix this but Mike reckons the prop joints will be fine with it..! We'll see.

Driveshafts next, we had some 'issues' getting everything lines up as the hub bolt pattern is not square but only by a small amount making it difficult to keep everything the right orientation. The 4 spacer plates each side need the holes redrilling for 11mm to get it all to fit. Marker pen lines to help us remember!

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Brake back plates, these are handed and should go with cylinder at front, handbrake entry from the top. No bolts with the kit so needed to buy M10x40 8.8 grade bolts and nyloc nuts to bolt everything up.

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Front hubs next, the bores for the wing-stay/ball joint adaptor had a quick sand to remove surface rust and the same to the wing-stay to reduce the thickness of powder coating slightly. Then with the aid of a chisel to spread the clamp the stays dropped in.

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Aligned as shown.

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Then bolted to the balljoints (not fully).

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Sierra master cylinder and steering column dropped in place, and steering rack loosely bolted in. Annoyingly GBS give you balljonts, a new rack, but no track rod ends... back to ebay for those.

All bolts so far have come with the kit, been bought from Screwfix or B&Q, and specialist ones like the bolts that appear to be 3/8" that pinch the hub up are from places like www.Namrick.co.uk

Now ready to put drum, discs and wheels on so we can see how engine, brake/fuel lines and loom can fit in.

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Detling Kit Car Show

Mike and I went to Detling today for the European Kit Car Show. Calling it 'European' is over-selling it a bit, it's a small show but 1st of the season so always popular.

Some Pics:

From Detling Kit Car Show 2010

Nice Lights

Love the indicator stalks, a very neat dash setup.

Would look awesome in the Californian sun rather than the Kent clouds of misery!

Bonnet bulge

Awesome

This kit had a handy perspex cover allowing us to see how he'd done cable and pipe routing. Also note washers for diff spacers.

How cool is this little caravan! Only about 6' long.

Nice layout, very tidy

I want one!
Mev Atomic
Nice stance, excellent colour

Garage and Bushes

Made some good progress today, wrapping up a lot of little but important things.

Finished off a workbench strong enough to park a small house on, and got electrics sorted and most importantly additional lighting. 5ft tubes are cheap in Homebase, rest of it came from Screwfix and QVS.

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From Zero 030410

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Air filter/regulator can be seen in the photo, bargain-tastic at Aldi :-) £80 for a 2.5hp compressor.

Mike did some more parts prep, after Hammerite Rust Remover Gel, wire brush by hand, wire brush in drill, Cilit Bang Power Degreaser (!), then Black Hammerite Smooth.

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From Zero 030410

As can be seen, finish isn't the smoothest! But the priority is performance on this car not perfect finish and Mike didn't want the extra cost and time of stripping, then a Vinegar Bath or Electrolysis to remove the thick rust coating.

Also finished fitting the bushes into the wishbones and pedals. Not too many problems, Mike had used a Dremel with sanding drum to clean up inside tubes as advised by GBS, and used a vice to press the bushes in (hopefully) nice and square. Tip: sand a small angle (chamfer) on the edge of the tube to help guide the bushes in. Pedal was ridiculously tight so some of the bush got shaved off (oo-er) on the way in.

Note: never been sure weather you can use grease or not to help assembly and prevent corrosion inside wishbone tubes, so we assembled dry. Hard work but went ok.

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From Zero 030410