Engine in

The aim this weekend was to get the engine in. Before step 29, though, a few other steps needed doing. I didn't get the clutch hose in time, so I skipped that and moved on to the pedal box. Hopefully the clutch hose will go on with the gearbox in the car (this is not a given, but in the worst case I can probably remove an aluminium panel and put it on without too much extra hassle).

Andrew came down to assist with putting the engine in on Saturday, but unfortunately the pedal box turned out to be more fiddly than expected and took longer than it should have (more mistakes were made than strictly necessary). I suspect that if doing it again it would take less than an hour, but in the event it took all day. We started by cutting down some bolts to make them fit:

Andrew following all the relevant safety procedures. Loose clothing? Check. Face in path of high speed red hot shards of metal? Check. Wobbly bench held in place by foot? Check.

After that, it was a case of bolting in the pedal box (easy) and adjusting the master cylinders until the pedals had exactly the right amount of travel (fiddly).

On Sunday, Emily and I started faffing about with the engine. First, we put the chassis on wheels so we could roll it about more easily, and so there was no risk of it falling off its axle stands. Then we hoisted up the crane and started lowering the engine in. After a while it became clear that we'd need the arm of the crane fully extended, so we had to rest the engine down while we did that, and also raise the chassis slightly so the legs of the crane would go underneath, so we stuck the front wheels on some bits of wood. The engine slowly worked its way down into the engine bay, but with the gear lever the wrong side of a chassis rail. We backed out the engine, moved the gear lever and tried again. Then removed the gear lever and tried again. Finally, we were able to get the engine in place, hovering about an inch above its final destination, when Emily had to go rowing, leaving me on my own.

I had a bit of a poke around, and eventually concluded that the engine wasn't going to go in because a chassis rail was occupying a place where the engine needed to go:

The corner of the engine resting on top of the chassis rail. The engine needs to be lowered about 2" straight down... problem.

I gave Peter a call and sent him this photo, and we agreed that the chassis rail would have to move. Apparently the 328 was not one of the engines Peter measured when designing the Legend 6 chassis. Fortunately he was already planning to pick the chassis up to modify the rear of the car slightly, so this wasn't a big logistical issue, though it did leave me with an engine 90% in my car, i.e., not in. I suggested removing the offending rail, since Peter would have to adjust it anyway, which would enable me to finish off getting the engine in. So out comes the angle grinder again:

resulting in this:

Peter will remove the stubs and replace the rail at a more suitable angle when I get back from Peru. But, the engine is finally in, and it's starting to look a lot like a car. Also, I now have a lot more garage space, which is useful.

We celebrated by getting a seat out and sitting in the car making "brum brum" noises.

Plenty of rear camber

before and after

When they arrived on Thursday, the new driveshafts looked like this:

which I have to say was a little disheartening. However, they did fit, and the rust seemed to just be superficial, so I set about cleaning them up:

which finally resulted, after much wire-brushing and application of POR-15, in this:

Driveshaft undergoing inspection by the chief technician

Arguably this is all a complete waste of time for parts that will never be seen, and would not have been functionally affected by a bit of surface rust, but at least they are well protected against rust now. And my car won't have to start it's life with parts that look like they've been dredged up from the Titanic.

I considered removing the CV boots and repacking the joints with grease, but in the end decided against it. The boots are in good condition and well sealed, so I don't see the point of messing with bits that are probably perfectly fine. If problems arise, they are easily accessible in the future.

Unexpected good fortune

The next step was to sort out the rear driveshafts, uprights, hubs, etc, and so with this in mind I took the wheel bearings, hubs and uprights to a local garage to get them pressed in. Shortly after, I got a call from the garage telling me that the hubs didn't fit in the wheel bearings (they were 4mm too big so pressing a bit harder clearly wasn't going to work). After a quick chat with Peter, I realised that the owner of my 328 donor car had obviously blinged it up with some M3 wheels and brakes (hence the M3 markings I'd noticed on the rear brakes, and hence why the seller wanted to sell the wheels off separately). A bit annoying, but I bought some new 328-sized hubs and got those pressed in.

Once I got them home, though, I realised that the driveshafts wouldn't fit in the new hubs, because clearly the M3 driveshafts were bigger than the 328 driveshafts, and apparently that's what I had. I then started inspecting the diff a bit more closely, and it turns out that I had indeed got lucky and received an M3 limited slip diff instead of a regular 328 open diff, which is what the seller thought he was selling. Given that I got a free diff upgrade, I'm not too fussed about having to buy new hubs and driveshafts. To celebrate, I cleaned up the diff and gave it a coat of POR-15:

Clean and shiny diff (compare with previous post)

Note: the way to tell on these diffs is that they have a big (two inch high) S stamped on the top and bottom (normally in white, green on mine), which had almost completely worn away, and the code on the tag attached to a bolt at the back of the diff starts with an S (again, illegible on mine). Alternatively, turn an output and if the other output turns the same way, it's an LSD; opposite way = open diff. Apparently new flanges will be needed to make it mate correctly with the new driveshafts; these are on their way.

I also painted the rear callipers and brackets, as I didn't think I could handle bright gold calliper brackets. The POR-15 didn't take too well as they're in new condition, so there's no rust for it to bind to, but it should look good enough.

Rich hard at work putting the brake disc on backwards

Spent the rest of the weekend, with Rich's help, attaching brakes, steering rack, rear uprights, etc. The front-end suspension is now done, modulo replacing a couple of bolts from the donor, which are in the post. For now I've loosely attached the callipers using the old bolts.

The only question here relates to toe adjustment; I've got the track rod ends on as far as they will go and the wheels seem pretty much dead-on parallel. I don't think I'm going to be able to get significant (any?) toe-in, so it's possible this will need some adjustment, possibly grinding a few mm off the end of the track rod end.

Wishbones and diff

Finally, got the diff in with the new diff mounting bracket (user error sadly wrote off the first mounting bracket). It's a bit odd as, whilst the rear two mounting points are centrally bolted on to the chassis, the diff is asymmetrical, so the bit where the prop shaft attaches is noticably over on the driver's side:

I'm told this is (a) normal and (b) taken care of by the universal joints on the prop shaft, so I'm not worried about this.

After lots of messing about with copper grease, and with some assistance from Rich, all eight wishbones and the track adjusters are in:

A few brackets needed some light adjustment with a hammer, nothing major. Unfortunately I used up the 7/16" washers on the 3/8" bolts, leaving me without enough big washers to do the last wishbones. I couldn't face taking off all the other wishbones and swapping the washers round, so we nipped off to Focus and bought some more.

I had a quick look at the pedal box as well, but there are a couple of minor issues that prevent me from getting very far with it. Mainly the instructions are insufficient, and, when it comes to which bolts to use, wrong. I'll speak to Peter before continuing with this bit.

The plan is to take the uprights, wheel bearings and hubs to a garage tomorrow and get them to press them in for me, as I lack the facilities for this. Then I can finish building up the corners (i.e., attach uprights, bearings & hubs, brake discs, callipers etc) and, pretty soon, start thinking about putting the engine in.

Drilling fail / customer service win

After offering up the diff, we started drilling through the bracket and the chassis where it's going to bolt together. Unfortunately, when we drilled, we didn't have the diff in it's correct position, which means that, when in it's correct position, the holes in the bracket and the chassis don't line up. Fail.

Fortunately, all was not lost. Peter was dropping some parts off today, and very kindly brought us a new bracket, and didn't laugh at our basic error. We should be able to drill holes in the new bracket such that the diff is properly mounted now without any difficulties.

Lesson: measure carefully before drilling.

Peter also spent some time helping us get the wishbones in. I was worried that they were a bit too tight and that the brackets were not right, but Peter demonstrated how they could be fine tuned using a large hammer. Personally I'm not totally comfortable hitting my shiny new chassis with a hammer, but fortunately I didn't have to do any hitting, and hopefully no further bashing will be necessary.

So we're now well on the way to getting the front suspension built up, and to having the diff properly in. Big thanks to Peter for his help - can't fault the customer service. He also gave us some tips on correct riveting technique, and seemed impressed by my (apparently) non-standard interpretation of how to fit one of the gearbox tunnel panels - apparently this might become the new standard way of fitting this panel.