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4/11/2000
Trip to Tiger to pick up the exhaust (all 8 bits of it)
which is finally ready (about 4 months after I ordered
it!), and to have another look round the car at various
things, including fitting of the petrol tanks, fitting of
the radiator and fan, and the routing of the loom up to
the dash, as the engine bay panels are totally different
to the Six/Cat.
Also picked up an inlet manifold, radiator hoses and a fanbelt. I asked Sue for the relays that should have been in my loom, but forgot to pick them up before I left...
5/11/2000
Drilled and fitted the top alternator bracket now that it
can be positioned next to the exhaust.
Trial fitting of the exhaust. It all seems to be roughly right apart from one of the four single pipes that has got a bend at the end that is totally wrong so that only 3 of the pipes will fit into the collector. It is too far out to be able to bend it to shape, so it seems like I have either got a pipe from a different exhaust set or it has just been made wrong. I'll have to speak to Jim about it and sort out what to do.
Started making a template for the exhausts through the right hand side engine bay panel.
Quick trial fit of the inlet manifold and carbs - there is some clearance above the chassis rail but not a huge amount, so the engine might need lifting a little bit. There is around 14mm clearance, and according to previous postings on the Tiger list, around 1/4 to 3/8's of an inch is alright, so it should be fine as it is.
9/11/2000
Ordered a service kit and set of replacement jets etc.
from Contact Developments.
Had a long chat on the phone with the other Storm builder, Paul, as Sue had given me his phone number so that we could catch up with how we were doing and sort out any common problems that we were having. He picked his kit (and bodywork) up in February this year, and is slightly ahead of me with more stuff fitted to the car, but still hasn't got his engine running yet. It seems like most of the problems I've had he had as well, thought he main difference was the steering column location points - I had a problem with the lower bracket being at a different angle to the top bracket, but his were both the same, so the steering column went straight in. He has also been having a bit of trouble fitting the exhaust.
The main thing I found out was that I'm missing a couple of brackets to hold the bottom of the fuel tanks - I had been puzzling over this one for a while as there are fairly obvious brackets on the chassis to mount the top of the fuel tanks to, but there wasn't anything for the lower tank bracket.
Turns out he was at Tiger on Saturday to pick up his exhaust as well, but he was there in the morning and I was there in the afternoon.
10/11/2000
Got the carb bits and the relays in the post.
11/11/2000
With the help of my dad and brother, we had another go
at fitting the exhaust. We managed to get the four
downpipes into the collector and then bolted onto the
engine. They are far from a perfect fit, so needed a
lot of 'persuading' to go together. The main problem
is that is seems the collector pipe isn't the right
shape - the rear end of it is in the wrong place to
connect to the pipe that goes over the rear wheel, as
its about 3 inches too far to the outside of the car.
Also, the downpipe from cylinder 1 is only in the
collector by about 1cm where all the others are at
least an inch. I phoned Jim up and found that he had
no problems fitting the recently modified exhaust to
the demo car, but as the chassis on that is very
different to mine I doubt the major location points
match up. As the exhaust definitely won't fit onto my
chassis, Jim suggested I cut and bend the collector
pipe so that it goes to the right shape, and then give
that back to him so that he can compare it with the
other exhausts he has got in stock, and if its
different get a correct one made. Unfortunately, this
will all add extra delays to being able to get the
engine running, but there really aren't any
alternatives. It also appears that I didn't get the
rubber chassis mounts for the silencer, so I'll have
to arrange getting them off Sue later on.
The gearbox bolt was finally fitted, as due to the positioning of the mount and the gearbox I wasn't able to fit it without someone pushing the mount rubber into the right place so that the bolt would fit past it and into the gearbox.
A new side pannel template was made, and I picked up a water pump pulley from a local scrapyard. He didn't want to sell a suitable alternator fan and pulley without the whole alternator as well, said that a crankshaft pulley would have to stay with the engine, and I couldn't remember what type of thermostat housing I needed so wasn't able to get one of those either, so I'll have to try and get those bits from somewhere else.
A start was made on servicing one of the carbs - the jets and gaskets on the top side were replaced with the new parts, and the internals were given a general clean. Found that the service kit is missing one of the main gaskets for the pump underneath, so I'll have to get back to Contact about that.
12/11/2000
Third fitting of the exhaust, this time to get the
collector pipe into the right shape and make final
measurements so that the replacement will hopefully be
almost exactly right. Also, we shortened two of the
downpipes and trimmed the end off one of the two that
don't go into the collector straight, so that all four of
them end up with a collector overlap of at least an inch.
This ended up makinig the end of the collector pipe around
3 inches to the outer side of the pipe it goes into, about
the same height, but about 3 to 4 inches too short. A
slice was then taken out of the collector pipe to allow it
to be bent into the correct shape. Its just a bit too
springy though, amd bends back into its original shape
instead of staying where its supposed to, so it was marked
up to show Jim how to get it into exactly the right
shape.
Also cut a hole in the tunnel ally plate to feed the loom through, and this was drilled to be put into place.
Finally got round to checking the fit of the front wheels with the 10mm spacers on. There is plenty of clearance to the top wishbone now, but I will need wheel studs that are coincidentally around 10 mm longer...
13/11/2000
Finished servicing the first carb. The pump body was a bit
difficult to get off as it was stuck to the gasket. Some
white deposits left in the bottom of it, which are
apparently due to water in the petrol, were scraped out
and it was put back together when it was all nice and
clean.
14/11/2000
Called Contact to check about the missing gasket -
apparently a common problem they have is that both of them
are stuck together so it seems like there is only one in
the kit. I'll have to check tonight, but unfortunately as
I've already put the gasket(s) into the first carb, I'll
have to take the pump body off it to check...
Phoned up Sue to confirm getting the modified exhaust collector pipe picked up, which won't be happening until next monday for various reasons. Hopefully I'll get the correctly made exhaust back fairly soon after that. I also mentioned about getting the (extended) brackets for the fuel tanks, the missing exhaust rubber mounts for the silencer, and some slightly bigger handbrake cable clamps that they have recently got hold of, as the older ones were far too small.
It turns out that the gaskets were actually stuck together, so there was nothing missing from the service kit. Made a start on cleaning the internals of the second carb.
16/11/2000
Finished the top half of the second carb.
18/11/2000
Tidied up the fit of the loom through the tunnel top
pannel. Fitted the water pump and cleaned the water
pump pulley. Chopped the corner off the alternator
bracket, as it was in the way of the small hose
connection to the water pump.
19/11/2000
Cut a hole for the exhaust in the rhs engine bay
pannel. Cleaned coil, ESC black box, and made a start
on cleaning the distributor. Painted the water pump
pulley.
22/11/2000
Finished servicing the second carb.
25/11/2000
Finished cleaning the distributor.
26/11/2000
Fitted the grp trailing arm covers. They aren't a
perfect fit due to the angles on the chassis in the
rear corner, but plenty of silicone and a couple of
bits of ally offcuts should be enough to keep the
water out.
Filed the exhaust manifolds to match the ports in the head. I traced round the gaskets onto bits of paper, and then cut holes in them the same size as the exhaust ports. I then put these onto the exhaust manifolds to check how they lined up, which wasn't very well. All four of the (hand cut) manifolds are bigger than the exhaust ports, but aren't in the right places - they are all too high relative to the port, and even though they are bigger three of them had the lower edge above the bottom of the port by a couple of mm. So, I filed away these edges so that they matched up better with the ports. Two of them had clearance between the pipe and the bit to be filed away so I could file those flat, but the other one was already flush with the pipe so I could only file an angle onto this. Hopefully this should improve the flow of exhaust gas.
27/11/2000
Spoke to Jim on the phone today to find out what was
happening about the exhaust, and he thinks that I was
trying to put it on the wrong way round - the
collector pipe should have been rotated 90 degrees
anticlockwise looking from the rear of the car. I'm
fairly sure that I tried it on all four different ways
and the position it was cut seemed to be the closest
fit for it. Apparently it looks like it should fit to
the demo car when its turned round, so the only things
that it could be are that the four downpipes and the
rear section are different on Jim's car (as they are
the templates for the ones I've got), or his chassis
is slightly different to mine so it doesn't all line
up the same.
As far as the length goes, the rear section could be moved closer to the front of the car, but without the bodywork I can't tell how close it will get as the clearance to the bit over the rear wheel seems to be fairly close. As I've got my engine as far back as I could, which is limited by the gearbox rubber mount position, I don't think the engine is the problem. Also, I don't really want any less than one inch of the downpipes into the collector, and I don't think that the rear section could be moved far enough forward to give a decent overlap for the collector pipe into it, so I'm fairly sure that it will need extending.
A side exit pipe would solve so many of these problems...
29/11/2000
Had another chat with the other Storm builder to see
how he had got on with fitting his exhaust. His has
all gone together, but he had to reshape the end of
the number 3 downpipe to get it to fit into the
collector properly, and also ground a bit off the
bottom of the manifold ends on all of them to lower
the pipes and give a bit more verical clearance under
the top engine bay chassis rail. One thing he wasn't
sure of was how far onto the downpipes the collector
was, as if it was only a small way on it might end up
not being long enough to get a decent overlap with the
rear section over the wheel, but it still doesn't seem
like he has a collector that is as short as mine (and
I have the engine as far back as it will go, so I
don't think engine position is the problem here). His
rear section was the same length as mine, but it looks
like it might have been a slightly different shape as
mine angles up quite a lot at the collector end, but
his doesn't. One thing was certain though - he had the
collector on the same way that I did, so I doubt
turning it round would solve the alignment problem.
30/11/2000
Trial fitting of the carbs onto the manifold. The
linkages didn't quite fit together properly (the end
of the link that the cable goes into was only just on
the edge of the spring pin on the other side), but a
few gentle taps with a hammer on a block of wood to
make them the right shape and they fitted together
properly. The long arm on the cable side also didn't
go against the idle adjust screw either, so that
needed a bit of reshaping as well.
Total hours this month -
37.5
Total build hours -
296.5
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