Another fast update…

Oil Breather tank mounted

Ends of the intercooler cut off.

Throttle body fitted.

After one night, I’m still on schedule! Yeah!

First item to attack was to finish off the last bits of the cooling system.

I modified the header tank to also incorporate the overflow tank, painted it and fitted it.

Another view:

The top part of this tank will collect all of the air bubble that are produced in the coolant.  Hopefully these will be drastically reduced with the electric water pump – the normal mechanical pumps can cause cavitation the pump at high RPM, putting air bubbles into the system (bad for cooling) and also robbing horsepower.

The system catches small amounts of flow from all of the highest points in the water system and directs them towards the header tank.  At the bottom of the header tank, a pipe at the very bottom of the header tank connects to the inlet of the water pump, causing a continual flow from from these high points into the header tank.  This will drag the bubbles into the header tank, where they will stay.

These air bubbles will stay at the top of the header tank, where they will be forced down into the lower catch tank as the water expands when it heats up (there is a hose connecting these two tanks together).  As the motor cools down again, the water shrinks again and only water will be sucked back in – the hose connects to the lower catch tank at the very bottom.

I then got onto doing the fan.  I got a 16″ fan from SuperCheap during their 20% off everything sale – hopefully it’s capable of doing the job.  I welded spuds into the radiator to mount the fan.  I am not a fan of mounting them straight to the radiator fins as some people do (See what I did there….).

If this was my road car I would have made up a fan shroud for it, as it increases their efficiency when you are stationary.  When you are going at speed, the fan is not actually needed, so I want to keep the airflow at speed as good as I can make it, and hopefully just have it be enough to keep the car cool enough while stationary.

I then routed all of the coolant pipes and tied them up nicely, same with the vacuum hoses under the throttle body.  Added the MAP sensor and the boost controller, ready for the wiring tasks in a few days time.

 

I filled large portion of the system will coolant, then hooked up a battery to the water pump and turned it on.  It was very pleasing to see all of the flows, complete with stacks of bubbles/air, going into the header tank as the system was bleeding itself.  I kept topping up the header tank until the system was full, and the water pump was running silently.  Very pleased with how it works!

I have a wedding to go to today (Sat), so no progress will be made – see you Sunday.

 

 

There is something like 56 days left until the first event at Collie. Considering the work left to do, that’s not very long at all (especially cause it need to be finished at least week before that date to get tuned, wheel aligned and scrutineer’d!).

So in order to stop myself from slacking off, and to get me motivated (there is no motivation like the last minute after all), I put together a schedule of everything that I had to do to get it finished enough to race it. After printing out a calendar of every day between now and then, and putting jobs in for every single night after work, every weekend, every public holiday and any other days off that I have. Sadly, all the boxes are full….. Its going to be tight!

Let the fun begin!

Being sick for the last week has really hurt my progress, but was finally well enough to do a couple of hours last night.

The water systems in the car are now about 95% done.  I just have one mount to make and  a couple of tidy up bits to do.

The swirl pot is now all mounted and plumbed into the radiator.

In order to get a water hose that fitted right, I had to machine up an alloy adapter so that I could join two of the rubber hoses together.

The vent lines in the top of the pic above also need to be tied together nicely where they run across the front of the motor.

I’ve filled up the system with water, and tested the electric water out to make sure that was all working.  It really pumps a large volume of water around the motor!

I’ve also trial fitted the electric radiator fan, to see how that’s all going to work.  More on that soon.  Hopefully I can finish the water system off tonight, so that I can start on the intake piping on Friday night.  After that, I need to do the engine computer and fuel lines, then I can try and start it!

Last night I spent a lot of time making parts, but didn’t really make a lot of visible progress.  In the same time that I took to bolt in the engine, gearbox suspension and steering, I made a couple of parts…

Firstly, I made a new inlet pipe for the coolant to go into the motor.  The last one that I had made was coming out on a much larger angle, where as this one is much straighter, enabling me to move the water pump into a location where there is less stuff getting in the way.

(Its the black bit in the center of the pic with the hose connected to it)

I was then ready to fit the water pump, hopefully for the final time.  First I had to flush out the radiator with water, to make sure that is was clean of any metal shavings after I had cut it open and re-welded the outlets.

Then it was time to fit it all in.

  

I then made the outlet for the coolant, which is on the opposite side of the motor (the one above was the water in, this next one is the water out)

This weird looking thing is a combination of an S15 water outlet and an S13 water outlet that have been cut up and grafted back together in a completely different shape.  The paint it still wet in this photo, hence the shine, but you get the idea of what a strange shape it had to be.

  

Next on the list it to graft this old S13 water inlet, to become part of the coolant swirl tank. I can then make the mount for this tank and get the coolant system finished!