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Anglesey June '08
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Thursday 3rd July, 2008
Been a quiet week car-wise - I'd got everything pretty much sorted last weekend and had far less scurrying round to do before heading off the Cadwell for the weekend. The report of the Cadwell trip is here.
Saturday 5th July, 2008
Spent a bit of time this morning writing an RSS feed for the site as an alternative to the email updates. Seems to be working nicely. I'd left all the stuff in the car when I got back on Friday evening so after watching Lewis Hamilton mess up his final qualifying session I unpacked it all and put the tools etc. away.
I made a start on dismantling the car - slackened the rear wheel nuts and hub nuts before getting it up on stands. The offside hub nut was very tight and I sheared off a 4" extension bar with the 1/2" drive torque wrench. The electric impact driver loosened it though. I drained the petrol and removed the tank, undid the brake calipers and took off the discs and slid the hubs off, then undid the nuts holding the drive shafts onto the diff. All I need to do tomorrow is undo the prop bolts and disconnect the reverse mechanism then the diff can come out.
I had a look around on the web for diffs, there's nothing suitable on eBay at the moment. The advantage of going with a Sierra diff is that Andy Bates does an off the shelf kit for an electric reverse, along with the previously mentioned benefit of running the same as everyone else so having spares availability. That said, apart from Muppetts Muffetts no-one's had a diff fail so the odds on that turning into a worthwhile benefit are pretty slim. A disadvantage is that the 3.14 ratio I need is pretty rare although I suspect this just means you have to pay a bit more for one. They do come with a viscous LSD which Andy Bates reckons does the job OK. The alternative is a Freelander diff, like I had fitted to the Westfield. These come with a 3.21 ratio and I've found a brand new one online for less than £400, this would then need an LSD unit sticking in it, the obvious option being a Quaife Automatic Torque Biasing (ATB) unit at about £600. The Freelander unit's also a bit more compact and lighter than the Sierra. Of course I'll also need to have new drive shafts made and get the prop altered but I've decided to bite the bullet - this needs to be done. The chances of getting it done in time for Donington in a fortnight are pretty much zero which is a real pity as I was really looking forward to Donington. After that though there's a 4 week gap before Silverstone so as long as I can get it sorted within 6 weeks I'll only miss the one race (plus Cadwell this weekend of course).
Sunday 6th July, 2008
In the morning I undid the prop and reverse rod then got the diff studs out and lowered the diff out using my trusty luggage strap again. This actually took a while. After playing golf and watching Lewis splash his way to victory at Silverstone I went back out and removed the drive shafts and tidied everything up.
Tomorrow I need to do some ringing around. I'm currently leaning towards the Freelander option - I can start with a new bit of kit instead of something from a Sierra that's been to the moon and back, I think it will be easier to fit into the chassis and I don't think I should let lack of spares on race weekends influence the decision as (proper) diffs aren't generally a problem.
Monday 7th July, 2008
No activity in the garage but a lot of phoning and searching online. Had a couple of really useful chats with James Johnson (owns a garage and races a Hayabusa Fury with a Muffett diff) and Andy Bates (knows everything there is to know about bike engined anythings!). James reckons the Freelander diff isn't up to it and to go Sierra. He also reckons that once I get faster I'll need taller ratios and that a 3.14 is a minimum for a Busa engined car. Andy reckons the way to get sorted quickly is to find an XR4x4 7" diff. these are a 3.62 ratio but have the Ford viscous LSD which both of them reckon is better for a BEC than either a plate or ATB slipper. They are fairly easily available and I can then get bracketry, driveshafts and prop sorted out. Andy thinks he may have a 3.36 crownwheel and pinion I can fit and he can supply a reverse kit. So I'm currently chasing down diffs.
Sunday 13th July, 2008
Little to report unfortunately. Had I managed to source a diff, Chris at BGH Geartech (aka Fisher) was going to get me some drive shafts made up pronto and I'd been vaguely hopeful that if I had a diff by this weekend I could have had the car back together in time for Donington. I think I have sourced a diff, but someone's selling it on behalf of someone else and it seems the someone else is away on hols. So I've resigned myself to missing Donington - pretty gutted as having driven it once in the Evo and once with the Ron Haslam Race School on a CBR600RR I know it's an absolutely fab track. Still, it's 5 weeks to the race at Silverstone so I should have plenty of time to get the car sorted before then and hopefully get a test day in at Llandow.
I've been working on gathering parts for an anti-roll bar this week - Tim's been really helpful yet again and provided me with pics and specs of the one he made. I ordered some rod ends off EBay then tripped off to the steel stockholders on Friday afternoon. A 3m length of 12mm steel round bar set me back £12 and they found me a nice aluminium offcut 35mm wide x 25mm thick and about 18" long - apols for mixed units :-) - for another fiver. This morning I cut a pair of inch wide blocks to mount the bar onto the chassis and drilled a 12mm hole in one direction and an 8mm hole at 90°. Cutting through such a hefty chunk of aluminium took a bit of effort but I'm pleased with the end result. I just need to cut 2 more blocks to fix the ends of the ARB to the wishbones and make the little brackets to weld onto the wishbones next.
At Cadwell I borrowed a tyre pressure gauge off my friendly German neighbour. He had a lovely Longacre analogue gauge that was easy to use without leaking loads of air and had a nice release button to lower the pressure. It had made me realise how crap my Halfords digital gauge was so when I got back I ordered one for myself. That arrived during the week along with a replacement cap for my dry sump tank as mine had fallen off during my last session at Cadwell resulting in a nicely lubricated underside of bonnet and engine bay. I'm learning from these schoolboy errors each time I go to a circuit ...
Wednesday 16th July, 2008
I've spent a few hours in the garage working on the ARB and have this morning completed the aluminium blocks I need. In the pics below you can see the 2 larger blocks that will be used to mount the ARB to the chassis along with the 2 smaller ones I've made as drop links. The drop links will connect via the 5/8" rod ends you can see to brackets I'll make and weld onto the lower wishbone. Many thanks for Tim yet again for sending me pics and info from his own installation.
Just before leaving for work my diff was delivered - I ordered this on Monday from RS Cosworth Breakers. I still haven't heard back about the 3.14 diff so decided to get myself a diff to be getting on with. This one's allegedly from an N reg Escort Cosworth with 32k miles and to be honest it probably is. The Escort and Sierra Cosworths used the same running gear. This one looks nice and clean, it turns smoothly and still has the original Ford label on it stating 3.62. It also does have an LSD in it as I can't turn the flanges independently. I just might have found a 3.14 crown wheel and pinion set but in any case I can now get cracking getting some mountings for the diff in the chassis.
I've been exploring a couple of avenues to get a diff with a sensible ratio. I spoke to Raceline early last week as their website advertises replacement crownwheel/pinion sets. They do indeed offer them, at a not insignificant £500 + VAT, but said they do have a diff there already made up with 3.14 ratio and a Tran-X plate LSD. However they couldn't give me a price till today as they're selling for someone else. It turns out he wants £850 which seems a bit steep. I have however found an old forum message from last year from someone selling a 3.14 crownwheel and pinion set. I emailed him to find he's in the States and still has it unused. So I've been negotiating a price to get it shipped over here.
Friday 18th July, 2008
A day off and a chance to make a start. A quick trip to Machine Mart first to get some more cutting discs for the angle grinder, a set of pullers and a Torx bit set. In the first picture below you can see that my chassis has 2 upright tubes at the back, near the top of these are 2 tubes going forwards with the top mounts for the Muffett. These tubes need to go along with the longitudinal ones as the Sierra/Escort diff is a different shape/size to the Muffett.
I set to work with the angle grinder with one of Machine Mart's finest plasma cutting discs. No idea why they use the name 'plasma' but they're nice thin discs and cut steel well. There are a few brake and fuel lines in close proximity along with the main rear loom so care was needed but eventually the rear of the chassis looked like this:
It actually took ages and during the process I learned that when performing fairly major chassis surgery it's best to wear long sleeves. And a hat. :-) The rear end of the car is looking a real mess now, all the sparks that fly off with the angle grinder, whether using the cutting disc or the flapwheel, end up as little black/grey particles everywhere. I did use some bits of aluminium sheet to protect the fuel hose and loom but the whole rear end of the car as well as the garage floor is covered in grey dust. Basically I chopped the tubes off using the cutting disc and then sanded the stumps flat with the tube they're welded to with a 40 grit flapwheel on the angle grinder.
I did inspect the diff a bit more - I took the back cover off and removed the input flange. The inside looks fine and in fact the oil in there was really clean and clear with no discoloration or debris etc. unlike the sort of emulsion I'd drained from the Muffett even before it was broken. Once the input flange was off I had a look down the nose to see the nut Andy B had told me about - it's bloody huge and isn't a normal hex nut, it's a sort of wavy profile and is staked with a punch like a clutch nut is. I decided this may not be easy to do myself and gave Andy a ring. He said he'd made a tool to fit but it was still a bit of a bugger. I think it might save me a lot of time and money to take the diff to a specialist to get the crownwheel and pinion swapped over. As ever Andy was really helpful on the phone - he's incredibly knowledgeable and despite being in demand he's always very patient and full of useful advice. I've come to realise why everyone speaks highly of him and his sponsorship of the RGB series.
Anyway, despite hacking the chunks out of the chassis I still wasn't out of the woods. I'd hoped I could just slide the diff into the chassis from behind but it turned out to be too tall. So I thought I'd get it in from below by turning it sideways so the drive flanges weren't in the way then rotate it. That didn't work either. So I restudied the pics I'd been sent by Paul who spanners Colin Duce's car. He'd sent me some really useful photos of the mountings he made for the Sierra diff he fitted when Colin's Muffett ate itself. From these I deduced that my chassis is quite different and in fact the horizontal tube across the top of the rear section is over an inch lower than on Colin's. I spent some time scratching my head over this and concluded that I need to chop the centre section of this tube out. Before I hear the howls of protest, I know that tube is critical to the stabilty of the rear suspension and the geometry so what I plan is to chop some out of it then later weld another piece on top overlapping at each end. Sadly I spent a lot of time headscratching and ran out of bottle and called it a day. Probably not a bad thing to reflect though before cutting even more of the chassis away.
Hopefully tomorrow I can get the diff into place and prop it solidly to sort out the bracketry. My negotiations have resulted in a 3.14 crownwheel and pinion set being shipped over from the States. Someone else's bad luck has been my good luck - he bought his gears from the UK but before fitting them blew up his Hayabusa engine and changed plans. He failed to sell them last year and this week I found his forum message and we've done a deal giving him some cash for redundant parts and me my diff ratio at a good price. According to the USPS website they're currently on a plane from JFK airport in New York :-)
Saturday 19th July, 2008
I'd emailed Paul about getting the diff in and he thought they'd got Colin's in from below so I gave it another go. By rotating the diff onto its side and lifting the nose right up I could amost get it in but the mounting lug on the back just prevented it no matter what I tried. One option was to chop this off and Andy Bates had said he didn't use it but I've decided I want to. I'm a bit worried that the other mounts are all up near the front of the diff and I think it'll be much more secure and stable with a couple of bolts at the back as well.
So eventually I bit the bullet and reached for the angle grinder again and chopped a section of tube out. Now getting the diff in was a doddle. All I needed to do now was to try to get it in the right position. Andy had advised me to make sure I got the drive shaft angles as minimal as possible so I looked at how to do this. Getting the fore/aft position was easy just by running a string line across the chassis from the top wishbone rose joint. Getting the vertical height I realised I had 3 options. 1 was to measure the upright and the wishbone mounts etc., 2 was to measure the distance from centre of a wheel to the ground then work backwards adding in my rear ride height and the height of the nearest chassis rail above the bottom of the chassis and the final one was to measure the position of the flanges on the Muffett. I tried the first and got the diff into position with my trolley jack with a luggage strap supporting the nose. Comparing with the pictures of Colin's car my diff looked about an inch higher in the chassis. So I then tried the other 2 methods. Reassuringly they all came up with the same answer so either there's something different about the configuration of Colin's chassis/suspension or Paul was keener to keep the diff low than minimise the angles. Or I've got it wrong ...
The input flange on the diff is quite a bit higher than the Muffett which isn't good for prop angles but I want to aim to get the diff level in the chassis and I'll probably need to significantly raise the mounting position of the prop bearing. Once I was happy with the position of the diff I made a start on making some brackets. Getting the whole thing straight and centred in the chassis is my main priority so I decided to make up the top left bracket and make a mirror image from it. After half an hour of cutting, drilling, filing and angle grinding I had a bracket I was happy with. I made a start on it's twin but ran out of time.
Sunday 20th July, 2008
I got the other bracket made then it was time to bolt the brackets to the diff and get it into position. I then realised I had a problem - I was planning on using a length of 12mm threaded bar right through the mounting lugs and realised that one of the suspension mounts was right in line with it meaning I wouldn't be able to slide the bar in/out once the brackets were welded in. I wondered if I could use shorter bolts with a nut inside the channel that ruuns across between the lugs but that wasn't going to work without grinding lots off them. I undid the bolt holding the rose joint into the suspension mount and found that I could just then get the bar in. I spent a while then making sure the whole lot was in position in the midline of the tunnel and straight. I couldn't clamp the brackets as my clamps wouldn't reach so propped it as best I could and tack welded each bracket in a couple of places then removed the diff to complete the welding. My welding skills are still somewhat lacking and it was actually quite difficult to do because of the fairly restricted access and lighting so the welding's pretty horrible. Once the brackets were on I cut a couple of triangular pieces to use as gussets and welded those in.
I then refitted the diff and bolted it into my new brackets. Now it was securely fixed by the top mount it was easy to use the jack under the rear of the diff to get the diff nice and level in the chassis. I then made a start on a bracket for the bottom mount. The hole in the lug on the diff is slightly below the top of the bottom chassis rail so I decided I'll weld the bracket underneath the rail - probably slightly weaker but making a bracket to go on top would be quite difficult and there are going to be 7 brackets in total holding this diff so I don't think it'll be going anywhere. Time for lunch watching the German Grand Prix start before heading off for golf.
Monday 21st July, 2008
I got the pair of brackets for the bottom mounts finished and after cleaning the paint off the chassis with the angle grinder and flap wheel I bolted them to the diff and clamped them in position. Once they were tacked on I removed the diff again and completed the welds. Next was to pop the diff back in and measure up for the brackets for the 2 mounts on the nose of the diff, these will be in the entrance to the tunnel and the mounts are threaded so I can just use 12mm bolts. The bolts needed to be shortened quite a lot as access there is restricted. Once these were done the diff mountings were essentially complete.
I'd nipped out at lunchtime to the metal suppliers and got a length of 1" square tube - they didn't have any exactly the same as mine and this is 3mm wall thickness instead of 1.5 so it's fairly heavy but I'm only using a short length. I'd had a mental picture of what I wanted to do and cut a piece to fit. I spent a little while making little end plates to fit inside the ends of the tubes to blank them off and welded them in then cleaned them up with the flap wheel. After checking that the diff was still going to fit through the gap the bridging piece was welded in place then cleaned up. The welding's definitely getting a bit tidier now, I think I've got a better match between current and wire speed and I'm holding the tip closer to the work which presumably means the argon shielding gas gets to do its job a bit better.
By the time all the welding was completed it was getting late in the afternoon and I'd spent all day in the garage. I tidied up the welds I could get at with the flap wheel and wire brushed the rest then spent some time clearing all the tools away then swept up all the debris and set about cleaning the chassis up. The rear end of the transmission tunnel had had a coating of diff oil which had helped all the debris from the cutting/grinding to stick quite nicely so I sloshed some paraffin on first to clean the worst of it off. After wiping it all down with a cloth I cleaned up all the bare metal parts with some brake cleaner then got to work with the Hammerite. The flash in the photos really makes it look much more messy in there than it actually is! Overall I'm pretty pleased - one of the bottom brackets had needed a bit of easing with a file but after that the diff just slides in quite easily. It's a tight fit between the 2 top brackets which isn't a bad thing but the threaded bars slide in easily and fitting/removing it is pretty easy. All that remains is to make a bracket for the rear diff mounts but that should be pretty easy and will just need to bolt onto the replacement chassis rail I made.
White van man arrived at 6pm with my parcel from the US. The crownwheel and pinion are indeed unused and are genuine Ford parts. The ones Raceline could supply are aftermarket ones specifically made for motorsport and are apparently a bit lighter. After my experience with the Muffett I'm a little wary of bespoke gears and am happier with good old agricultural OEM stuff! Being slightly paranoid I have counted the teeth and they do have the correct numbers - 15 on the pinion and 47 on the crownwheel. I actually make that ratio 3.1333 recurring so it's nearer 3.13 than 3.14 but hey ho.
So that's the tricky stuff and the majority of the work done. What I need to do now is find someone to swap the gears into the diff, get some new drive shafts fabricated and get the electric reverse from Andy Bates. When I spoke to Andy on Friday he was waiting for a new batch of sprockets to be made but was expecting them imminently. I suspect fitting the reverse could take some time but I'm hoping not as long as getting the diff mounts sorted - I guess it's taken me over 20 hours.
Wednesday 23rd July, 2008
I was in Cardiff torturing medical students yesterday morning and called into BAR Propshafts in Neath on the way back. The guy there is really very helpful and knowledgeable, knows exactly which flanges to use for which diff etc. He's happy to modify my propshaft - it needs shortening a bit and a different flange sticking on it. I spoke to him about drive shafts and he thought he could probably fabricate some for me for a reasonable price so I'll bring the prop and the drive shafts over when I can.
He also suggested someone local to look at the diff so I called round there but it turns out the guy just supplies exchange items and doesn't actually do any work on the diffs themselves. I ended up ringing Road and Race Transmissions who are well used to doing it, trouble is it'll mean couriering the diff and gears over to them and there's the small matter of £250 + VAT to swap the gears, change the seals and bearings and blast/repaint the case. I could save money on the blasting/painting but they won't do the gears without swapping the bearings etc. which is fair enough I suppose.
This morning I measured up for drive shafts and the prop and took the prop off and at lunchtime nipped back to BAR. The prop's no problem but he was expecting a different fitting on the hub end of my shafts - I have a sealed unit with a sprung lobro in it. He reckons options are to switch to a Granada Scorpio hub that has a flange and he could fabricate shafts or get my existing shafts machined and splined for a lobro joint. He reckons the latter wouldn't be possible with Sierra shafts (thinner than mine and case hardened) but mine are custom made and are thicker and although he can't do the machining himself he knows someone who can. So I left them there as that seems the best option.
A thought came to me during the afternoon. Funny how these things bubble up in your head but I suddenly remembered Promax who did work on my Evo - they're very much Evo specialists but have been in rallying for donkeys years and I remember they looked after some guy's tuned road Sierra back then and I suspect there isn't much Dillwyn doesn't know about working on Fords. So I rang and spoke to Phil Morgan there who made it sound like swapping crownwheel and pinion sets was something they do every day! I'm really pleased about this as I have bucket loads of confidence in them to both know what they're doing and be reasonable on the pricing. I'll try to drop it over tomorrow.
Thursday 24th July, 2008
Dropped the diff over with Promax at lunchtime. Phil did offer to lend me the socket to do the job myself but I was always a bit worried about getting the preload and backlash wrong so I'm much happier letting them do it. He reckoned he should get it done for Monday :-)
Saturday 26th July, 2008
A bit of activity in the garage this morning. First off was a clear out - my old set of track wheels for the Evo went this week courtesy of eBay and I took an old mower to the tip. After that I took the bonnet off with a view to making a start fitting the anti-roll bar. The front of my chassis is quite different to Tim's but I've managed to get the brackets mounted in a reasonable spot. I initially cut the bar itself a bit long at each end the slid the brackets onto it and formed the bends at each end. Getting it in was then a bit of a pain but I got there in the end.I then stuck some masking tape on the wishbone and marked that. I stuck the bar in the vice and basically swung on it using a length of 3/4" copper tube I had lying around. I made sure I was happy that I had the right amount of bend and that both ends were the same then refitted it and marked it for length, took it off again and cut the ends off and attacked the powder coating on the wishbone with a file ready for welding. I made a couple of brackets out of my 3mm steel strip and eventually managed to clamp them in place for welding. Once they were welded on and cleaned up I set about fitting the drop links. It all works fine but some of the bolts need cutting down a bit. I took it apart again and gave the wishbone brackets a lick of Hammerite and cleared up for the day.
Sunday 27th July, 2008
Only a couple of hours in the garage this morning before golf. I got the ARB finished - cut the bolts to length and stuck it all together. I've no idea where to set it or if I'll need to stick softer springs on but I guess it looks OK.
The front loom for the lights and indicators is done with crimped bullet connectors. They're working fine but there are 5 on each side and I'll need to get them all connected back up correctly. In anticipation of having the bonnet off I ordered some nice connector blocks from Vehicle Wiring Products. So I snipped off the bullets on the loom spur and crimped/soldered the connectors for the block. The pics below are a before and after. I'll need to do the same for the connectors on the bonnet, I've got similar connectors for the rear loom and the indicator side repeaters.
Monday28th July, 2008
I can do a bit of ringing round today to see how we're getting on with prop/drive shafts and the diff. Before the diff goes back in I need to sort out the fuel lines and the brake line where they were unclipped and bent out of the way for the diff bracketry. I was toying with the idea of replacing the fuel lines but have decided there isn't really much point.
I did get out early this morning and soldered the connectors on the bonnet ends of the lighting loom. Once that was done I offered the bonnet back into position and checked I'd got the connectors right which fortunately I had. Only a small job but it'll make bonnet removal/refitting much easier in future.