Still alive and have not set fire to it....yet!

Been a while since my last update, but again things have still been moving forward.

Coolant re-route:- Things have been moved on with this, all parts have now been sourced and the last parts are arriving tomorrow, there parts are custom made silicone hoses that have been designed by some one else on the WSCC forum.
One of the biggest problems was the lack of cooling capacity from the standard supplied radiator, so to over come this problem i have manufactured my own 'all alloy' one, with a much more efficient rad core, this one has more rows and is 50mm thick as apposed to the 35mm of the polo rad. this should be more than enough to keep the engine cool, and will also be efficient enough for when the car is turbo charged later in its life.

Cooling fan not working - after a lot of head scratching and looking at wiring diagrams i was unable to come to a conclusion as to why this doesnt work, the fan is ECU controlled so unless there is a problem with the ECU i cannot work it out. so to get round this i am going to add an electric fan switch purchased from CBS and use this to override the mazda's fan control. this will be incorporated into the re-route pipe work. set to come on the standard temp of 97 degrees, i have used one of the relays i fitted under the dash to operate it.

Engine running very rich - now when i have previously run the engine, it has been running very rich kicking out large amounts of black soot and running bad on idle, after reading a few forums the issue pointed to a choice of 2 options - a faulty coolant temp sensor, or a vacuum leak.
now after trying to work out why the cooling fan wasn't working i knew that the coolant temp switch works fine. which lead to me believe that the problem lays with a vacuum leak.
Now after a lot of searching, and head scratching, a light bulb come on and i remembered that when i rebuilt the engine i wasn't very happy with how well the fuel injector seals were sealing to the inlet manifold. so a new set of these were ordered and fitted, so once the cooling is back together i shall see if this cures the running issue.

new wheels - these arrived on monday and were very promptly fitted to the car, and i think they look amazing in the matt black finish. one small issue is that the toyo's 'Rim protection' on the side wall of the front tyres is making contact with the front mud guard bracket, but this will be 'adjusted' out of the way.

Carpets in - all carpets have now been fully fitted apart from the central tunnel which is in need of a bit of sewing to attach the leather gaiter of the hand brake to it, but once that is secured this will also be fitted.

Seats and harnesses are also now ready to be finally installed once the tunnel carpet is in.

Stoneligh Kit car show on sunday, lets hope the weather stays nice and i am sure my wallet will not stay in my pocket for very long, ( already eyed up my next carbon fiber purchase ) but will also be purchasing a lot of 'finishing' parts, such a various trims etc....

The Good, The Bad, and The Not Working...

So things have moved on a little this week over the easter weekend, so far the temporary dash has been finished off, the vinyl has worked very well now all the dials and switches have been installed, and all for under £20, as long as it passes the IVA it will be well wort it.

Now for the bad...... after running the engine over the past few weekends i have been keeping a close eye on the cooling when its been running, and it certainly seems that the engine is not cooling very well at all. now after reading into a few other peoples build and blogs a lot of them have resorted to re-routing the coolant on the mazda engine, this involves moving the outlet of the coolant from the front of the head to back. now i will make a new section on how to do this once i have done it, i will make sure it covers in detail all the parts and how you go about doing this on a 1800cc engine,

and the not working, Now during the above and running the engine up to temperature it appears that the cooling fan is not cutting in when the temp gets high, now after many hours of wiring diagrams and tracing wires, it seems i cannot yet find a reason for this not to work, now my only concern is that during the removal of the air condition wiring, i might have removed a wire that i shouldn't have, now the air con use to over ride the cooling fan to be used in conjunction with the AC condenser fan when the AC is switched on, so i will be trying to get this to work which ever way i can.

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..............