The end is becoming near....... Well maybe!?

Now for a little further update on the past weeks work,

After successfully starting and running the engine in my last post, i am pleased to say that it wasn't a one off, the engine has run 7 or 8 times more since, mainly to check for leaks in the fuel and cooling system, which so far every thing has seemed to hold its fluids, but the most important thing is that there is still no sign of water appearing from around the head gasket (breaths a big sigh of relief) since running it a few more times the HLAs have gone a lot quieter after filling back up with oil. all thats left to do now with the engine is just check the timing when i can get my hands on a timing light.

Now after reading Complete kit car magazine this month there was an article on a guy that had taken his car for IVA and had failed on a few points, one of them was concerning some thing that effected me!

Now in my earlier posts right at the start of the build, i wrote about the fact that westfield has not welded the bracket to my chassis where the T piece for the brake light switch is fitted, now after speaking to 'Westfield Technical' they said that it would be fine to fir a riv nut into the chassis to attach this, so i did as they said.
But it turns out after reading the section in the mag, this was one of the points he had failed on with his car. So to get round this it needs to be properly bolted to chassis rail with visible threads passing through it. so this was promptly changed at the weekend, luckily it was spotted in the magazine other wise we would have become stuck on this point when we went for IVA. )Good spot dad!!)

As things are now starting to come together nicely, i am starting at the back of the car and working forward making sure every thing is finished, and getting all the little jobs sorted out.
So to finish off the back end, the crud catchers have been fitted into the rear wheels arches, the speed sensor has been located facing the drive shaft nuts on a small bracket and the wire run along the tunnel.

next job was to fit the new high level brake light to the roll bar, in the end i purchased a Hella Thinlite, this comes in at only 10mm thick and makes for a very unintrusive fit on the back of the bar, the wire for the light has been run through inside the bar and down underneath the rear boot cover, i had previously placed a wire from the main rear loom to power the high level brake light already.
Once this had been done it then meant that the rear boot cover and roll bar could be fitted for hopefully the final time! see picture above.

the IVA spec dash is now ready to be covered with vinyl and fitted to the car.

The issue with the wiper wiring has now been sorted out, this was down to some iffy instructions from westfield with regards how to wire up the motor.

there are some little bits left to do with the wiring, but that should be sorted out over the easter weekend, which i hope to spend it all working on the car with a big push to complete the final parts.

Steering wheel arrived today, after much debate over size and what to go for, i left the choice to my dad, to which i have to say he managed to make a great choice, and went for a 280mm MOMO wheel. pics to follow soon...

New wheels have also been ordered, i have stuck to tradition and gone for some Team Dynamic 1.2s but in a matt black finish, 15 inch running 195/50/15 Toyo T1R tyres, now it turns out that i think i need to thank westfield for a bit of a muck up on their part with the front mud guards, when i went to collect the chassis i asked for black fenders, but in true westfield tradition when i turned up it had red ones, and that they didnt have any black ones in stock, but after phone call i was told that they did have some black ones, but they were meant to be going on a race series car, but after a little chat they said i could have those, now it wasn't till last weekend when i was measuring up for the wheels did i notice the width of these fenders, they measure 240mm internal width and make the current 185 tyres look lost. meaning that i should have any issues running my 195 tyres and an ET35 offset with the new wheels.

Steering all fitted

Now in one of my earlier posts i wrote about westfield making my steering column to short, and not willing to send me a spline to sort the job out myself,

well i am now pleased to say that i have fully working steering column.

to get round the issue a spline was ordered from car builder solutions, and after a trip to work the UJ that wesfield fitted incorrectly was soon cut off and in its place was welded a standard spline section, which now fits into the lower shaft perfectly, also by doing this myself i was able to make sure every thing measured up perfectly.

once it has been all welded up i had the upper and lower shafte properly painted in black Kephos, and not that crap paint that just flaked off that westfield had done.

Todays big moment....

Well after this weeks task of rebuilding and refitting the engine, today we decided to find out if it started...........

some fresh oil back into the engine, and the fuel tanks first batch of fuel placed inside it. it was time for some pre flight checks...

after ensuring all wires has been connected up on the engine block and bay area, my first concern was that i seemingly had no power going to the fuel pump, but it turns out there is no feed to the pump until the starter motor and fuel injection system kicks in.

first stage was to the the engine over manually by hand to get some of the oil pumped around the block and try to prime it up to the head so that when it was turned over on the starter motor there wasn't going to be a lack of oil up top. so the plugs were left out to do this.

once it has been turned over by hand, the engine was then turned over with the starter motor, at this point the fuel pump also kicks in and enabled the fuel system to be primed, the engine was turned over until fuel was being pumped into the chambers. once the fuel system was primed a good visual checks was made on all the fuel pipes and fittings to ensure no leaks were present.

the spark plugs were then fitted and the HT leads connected up and it was then time for the moment of truth..........................................

and on the first turn of the key................

It fired up into life!!!

as it was being run in the shed it wasn't taken much over tick over, but so far every thing seems to run all ok, idle currently seems a little low, but this could be down to now having a whole new air in take system not giving enough back pressure, so i will adjust this later along with checking the timing of the engine. in a few days it will be hopefully taken out to enable it to be run up to full temperature to check for leaks in the cooling system. after 6 months its alive again!!

Engine rebuilding and refitting

this weeks task has been to rebuild the engine after last weekends skimming of the engine block, this is now becoming a rather simple job after the amount of times it has now come apart and gone back together.

once every thing was refitted and rebuilt, it was a case of refitting the engine back into the chassis on friday night, this again went without a hitch and in no time it was bolted back up to the gearbox, all that was then left to do was attach all the wiring and pipe work and refill with water, fingers crossed no more water shows up..............

Switches

whislt the hunt for the water leak has been ongoing, in the mean time i have been working on the dash and electrics, now as i have a carbon dash this will not pass the IVA due to the radius being to small on the lower edge, so to get round this i have made myself a dash out of ally which i am going to foam pad and cover in vinyl to get me through,

Now as i am using a carbon / standard style dash i am not able to make use of the original mazda switch gear, which gives me the task of relocating all the switches with some thing else, now i had decided a while ago that i was going to use the savage stainless steel illuminated switches, so these have arrived and i have now set about sorting out the loom to make all of these work, currently they are all illuminated and this weekend i am setting about making them work,
now these switches are very small but reading in a few places it seems they are rated to 10amps, which means in theory i could wire all of the lights etc directly into the switches as the maximum draw the lights pull is about 9amps, but i have decided to be on the safe side and run relays for every thing for peace of mind.

again for the IVA i haven't used the savage switches for either the rear fog light, or the wipers, as the fog light switch has no real way of being able to distinguish when the fog is switched on, so for this i am using a plain switch with an led in to show when the fog light is switched on, and the wiper switch only has an on or off position, i would need to wire in some sort of toggle switch to be able to select the 2 speeds needed, so to save me doing this i bought a cheap wiper switch with 2 positions for 2 speeds.

The water continued to show....

In my previous post i had just reassembled the engine after having the head skimmed, to see if this cured the water leak... well unfortunately i have to say the water has still continued to seep around the sides of the head...... BUGGER!!

Now we are onto the serious business of looking for a warp in the block, so it was back off with the head again, ( i am starting to get very quick at doing this now ) after removing the the head i brought home a long parallel from work and set about checking the top of the block for distortion.
it then became clear that i also had issues with top of the block being warped, at the moment it looks like there is a .04mm deviation in the center and across to 2 corners, now reading online it appears the maximum tolerance for flatness on the mazda block is .015mm. so now it was time to take the engine back out and strip down, ready for a trip to work to be machined.

So yesterday the engine was taken into work, first job was to remove the 2 locating dowels in the block that position the head, i then made 2 new ones to replace them. the block was ten set up on the machine and clocked up, it then showed as expected slight distortion of about 0.038mm.

so a light fly cut was set up and the distortion was machined out, i am now really hoping that this has cured the problem, other wise i might be looking at a new engine if this doesn't work.

i shall find out this week!