Cat exhaust and IVA

When i first ordered my kit, and having a bit of a discussion with the guys up at westfield, i was told that a CAT would not be need to be fitted to the car, Simon pointed out a loop hole in the regulations, that would mean if i was to get a letter from Mazda saying that the engine was manufactured before a ceretain date, i could pass the emissions test with no problems without a CAT. Well after a bit more digging into the IVA manual it turns out that you are no longer able to do this, and that all cars manufactured after 1992, if they were originally fitted with a CAT then it would need one regardless of the year of manufacture, this means that i have had to order a CAT exhaust from westfield.

Completion kit collection

so on the morning of the 9th october, it was back off to the Westfield Factory to pick up my completion kit. every thing that was collected fitted nicely into the back of the Golf with the back seats folded flat, which i was rather chuffed with. every thing that i needed for the kit was all present and correct, apart from having to order a Cat exhaust system.

Wishbone / uprights fitting

Next stage was to fit the wishbones to the chassis, the bushes were fitted with no reletive problems, just needed to remove the paint from the bores with the aid of some trusty air tools and flap wheels, once they were clean with the aid of a vice the bushes were pressed into place,

then fitting these up was easy, they fitted into the chassis mounts with no real issues, bolts were put in ensuring the correct orientation of the heads of the blots, and making sure lots of copper slip was applied to the bolts.

after the wishbones were loosely bolted up, it was time to put the uprights on. these have had a good lick of fresh paint, along with the brake calipers, the top ball joints were fitted to the front upper wishbones, and i had to buy replacement boots for my lower ball joints as these were splitting when they were slavaged from the MX5 along with the bolts the secured the lower ball joint to the wishbone.

the front hubs fitted with no problems what so ever, along with the rears, it was just rembering the reduction bushes that push into the lower mouting hole on the rear up rights, also whilst fitting the rear hubs, the drive shafts were connected back up to the diff.

diff fitting issues continued

so in the last post i was having some issues with the diff and the drive shaft boots not fitting correctly, the problem was that once every thing was bolted up, the boots were in contact with the chassis leg, and the prop shaft coupling was sitting far to close to the chassis rail, meaning that when the prop was fitted it would have been in contact with this rail, so to get round the first problem i had to make up some 4mm thick spacers that go between the diff bushes and the diff mounts, this will push the diff down slightly giving the needed clearance with the boots.

the second issue with the prop coupling being to close to the chassis rail is caused due to the distorsion when welding up the brackets, when i went to pick up my completion kit, i spoke to Ian to ask if i could have a look at another set to see if this distorsion was as bad, it turns out it was, so i came back with the same set, and have had to space out with washers when bolting up to the suspension mounts to try and pull the diff around, this seems to have done the trick.
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The story continues.......

over the past few weeks we have still been very busy carrying on with the build, but have not found time to get many updates onto here, the picture attched shows how thw car currently stands as of the end of the week, 13th november.

I have got to the stage where the body work has been placed onto the chassis, and today i started to trim in the scuttle panel to fit round the dash hoop and steering column,

Lots have pictures have been taken, so i will be getting some detailed information up to follow,

Diff fitting issues

Have got the diff into the chassis, but on initial fitment it appears that there are a few fitment issues. i have since discovered that the diff i have is a Torsen LSD diff, this means the diff and casing are bigger and wider than that of say a standard 1600cc diff.

first initail problem that became apparent on installing was that that the drive shaft inner boots are in contact with the chassis rail, this is even before the diff has been fully tightend meaning that the diff needs to move up still about another 10-12mm.

second issue is that the diff mounts have distorted badly during welding, this in turn is also throwing the diff off to one side, giving me no more than 2mm clearance on the transmission tunnel to the prop shaft, i am hoping that during collection of the completion kit i am going to swap the brackets for a set that are not as distorted.

Rear Wiring loom

The rear wiring loom was next on the agenda, splitting it from the main front loom via 2 connectors the tedious task of removing all the plastic trunking and loom tape is the longest task.

Once all of this has been removed, the task is to the identify to which are the wires to keep and what wires are to scrap. luckily all wires are individualy color coded and the build manual gives you the wires and colors of these which you need to keep. also during the removal of the loom from the doner car every connector was marked up, which made this process a lot easier.

starting from the 2 blocks, all the wires needed were i dentified at this end then traced back to the ends, a lot of un-tangling and cutting of wires that are no longer needed. at this i also cut out all earth wires from the loom, as new ones will be added later.

it is then just a case of running the wires from the front panel along the trans tunnel and to the correct parts of the chassis, and then cutting the wires to length, from here lengths of earth lead have been added leaving plenty of extra lenght on these.

once all run ans formed into shape the loom is then covered in electrical tape, but further to this and needed by the IVA the loom will also be covered in plastic trunking.