Erm, i'm in work in the morning cramming in some overtime
My way home will be via machine mart to get an engine stand and a few other bits for the rebuild, my boss said i can take the engine in to work and rebuild it there after hours which was good of him

I think im going to borrow works engine crane and drain the engine oil and whip the gearbox off tomorrow afternoon if it isnt raining, and may start removing all the other stuff from the engine bay so i can get it prepared for painting.

I'll come through to yours if you want to save yourself the hassle of coming to mine, though your welcome to come down if you want to, i should be back by 2pm tomorrow and in all day sunday.

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Goldie the track car.

Today i didnt get a great deal done on the car as the weather was crap, but i did nip into town and now own my own engine stand, angular torque gauge, parts cleaner fluid and a decent set of feeler gauges, preparing for the engine rebuild

I set up camp in the engine bay and removed the remains of the air-con pipes:
IMG_0523 by Steve Count, on Flickr
Whilst i was in there i took off the heater matrix pipes which were a doddle to do since there was so much room to move around, and the coolant system has been under so much pressure with the head gasket going

Once i had had enough in the engine bay i got the paint stripper gun out and the scraper i bought specifically for removing the sound deadening tar almost a year ago, i didnt get any photos but all the tar has been removed from the drivers side, it probably took an hour or two to get it all up.

Tomorrows progress really depends on the weather as i dont have anywhere indoors to work on the car or engine, i want to get the gearbox off and most ancillaries then give the engine a good clean before i take it into work.
Failing that i might strip the engine bay a bit more and try cleaning the engine bay up a bit with some TFR which cooper666 kindly gave me

If the weathers really crap then i think i'll just strip the tar from the passenger side then try and sort out all the crap which i dont want/need that i have stripped from the car and take it to the tip.

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Goldie the track car.

Sweet, thanks Matt.
Do you know what size cable it is so i can get the right size ends in?
I think i'm going to get one of those FIA kill switches that kill the ignition rather than just the battery.

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Goldie the track car.

I'm not sure what time i'll be back from work sat afternoon, could be 3pm onwards.
I could try and find my way to yours if you wanted, those roads near your house are like a maze

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Goldie the track car.

On sunday i got a bit more done to the car, it was quite windy but the rain held off for the most part, so i started stripping the engine.
It started as a full engine with gearbox attached and all ancillaries.
After a short while it looked a bit like this:
IMG_0612 by Steve Count, on Flickr
Then this:
IMG_0621 by Steve Count, on Flickr

By the time i had everything off the engine it was dark, so i packed up my tools, shifted all the crap from the passenger side into the drivers side and cracked on with the tar on the floor.

The 1500W heat gun soon warmed me and the car up, along with some furious scraping

Thats the majority of the tar up now, just need to go over it with some white spirit or something to get rid of the remains.

I'm just going to skip everything in the back that hasn't sold by the weekend and that i don't need for the rebuilding process.

I haven't decided on the radiator yet, i have the ordonez steel one which came on the car and had no signs of leaking, but i wouldn't mind getting a nissens one as its lighter and much better at cooling.

I'm also unsure on what i'm doing with regards to the aux belt when i rebuild it all, i'm thinking of relocating the PAS pump to where the A/C used to be, then getting one of these and fabricating something so that i use the alternator as the belt tensioner. This should cut out about 4 pullies by my reckoning, which should help reduce some rotational inertia and also save some more weight.
I weighed my alternator earlier and it came in at 5.34kg, i'm just not sure if 55A would be enough to cover the cars electrical needs and charge the battery back up. If anyone knows the answer to this and would like to chip in it would be appreciated.

I've been a bit of a busy bunny with my ordering too, got some parts from pugplus to replace my nasty old corroded through coolant pipes.
I have a seam welded subframe which will soon be on its way to me, and i also have a nice shiny new alloy crank pulley on its way to me courtesy of Rich_W

I think thats about it for this week.
Next weekend i aim to get the head off and maybe crank out, I'll be using one of Rich's uprated headgaskets and his uprated bearings too.

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Goldie the track car.

Ahh, yeah i had been planning on using one of them connectors, i was going to run them off the battery as seperate wires to the kill switch though.
I was going to use a nice battery like daveyboy has and mount that under the boot floor where the spare used to go, then have the anderson connector held somewhere near the rear tow eye so i could charge/jumpstart from that, and have the main live feed go off to the dash where my FIA kill switch will be before it gets to the various places it needs to be.

I hope my explanation above makes some sense

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Goldie the track car.

I've not updated this for a while as i havent actually been doing a great deal to the car, weathers been crap and i've been very busy with other stuff, but plenty of enquiring and ordering has been going on.

I've got the engine setup on the stand at work so i can now spend an hour or so a day stripping it down, i have 9 days leave left so i may use some and get a decent amount of time on it.

It was pretty simple to make, a bit of 20x3mm flat, one cut to approx 100mm long with a hole each end, another approx 280mm long with a hole at one end, and another hole approx 80mm in.
I just used an M6 bolt to hold the two together, all holes were drilled 6.8mm dia as it was the first stub drill i found lying around
I different M6 bolts to the ones already on the pulley as they originals werent really long enough and i didnt want to put un-necessary strain on them bolts or the pulley hub.
This tool worked nicely to help just loosen the pulley securing bolt.

I went a bit ebay mad last night and ordered loads of stainless cap screws for the cam covers, coil packs, coil pack cover etc.
Also got an FIA killswitch with resistor etc for the billy bargain price of £15.15 delivered from ebay

I ordered some heat reflective mat which i am going to attach to the original exhaust manifold heatshield, the original has started to fall apart, i'm also bidding on some heat wrap which will hopefully go cheap, i can then heat wrap the rest of the exhaust manifold.

I've fitted my new alloy crank pulley to help with the timing, i didnt want to risk the old rubber pulley. Thanks to Rich for this

I've also got an uprated headgasket and head bolts, engine gasket kit, and a few other bits on order from Rich, they should be with me some time next week all being well.

Once i have the head off i have been quoted ~£210 to have the head skimmed, valves re seated, pressure tested and all cleaned etc, the company has been recommended to me by many people, all in-the-know so i'm going to go with that, all i've heard is good reports about them.


I'm wanting to get rid of the ABS to save weight and tidy up the engine bay a bit, after a couple of PM's to Rikky who has been very helpful i now have a simple schematic of how i intend to run my brake lines.

As far as i know the master cylinder and brake callipers are 10x1mm thread. The wilwood brake bias valve is 1/8" NPT.
I will be running the solid lines under the car, then come up through the floor with the braided lines to the bias valve then back down underneath with braided lines connecting to the solid lines to the rear callipers.

Thanks Rikky for your help


Last weekend i made a start on removing the dash, just to get rid of all un-necessary wiring and anything else that can be removed really.
I'm going to keep the heater matrix for now, i'm on a bit of a budget financially and time wise as i want the car back on the road for FCS, and hopefully my annual trip to the 'ring a couple of weeks after FCS

Matt (Cooper666) has been very helpful with my progress so far so a big from me, cheers mate.

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Goldie the track car.

Weekend update time.

This weekend i cleaned up the engine bay a bit, i attacked it with jizer and some traffic film remover that cooper gave me, its come up pretty clean now as i'm intending on respraying it before the new engine goes in.
A trip to halfords after work on saturday meant i'm a fair few quid lighter but a few cans of spray better off, I cant remember the colour i chose for the bay but its something along the lines of Peugeot steel silver. I wanted something dark but clean looking rather than bright or matte.

I also cleaned up the sump from the old engine, just so storing it isnt such an issue really as it wont get grease and muck everywhere, also cleaned the gearbox too as i want to paint it silver, but its a ball ache getting into all the corners on the casting webbs .

I managed to get all the sound deadening foam out from behind the dash too, which is a fair chunk of weight saved (it was soaking wet from a leaking arial so even heavier than normal). The arial has now been removed and replaced by a grommet and some duct tape
I need to find a more attractive solution to the removal, but until then this will do.

The final thing i did was to fit my seam welded subframe. This was much quicker and easier than i had imagined, so i will remove it again when i'm spraying the engine bay.

I have also ordered a VDO oil pressure sender (0-5 bar, hopefully this will be ok, i wasnt sure on the max pressure as i read somewhere that its something like 4 bar at 3k rpm) and i'm going to order one of daveyboy's top engine repair plates.
Just need to knock up a thread adaptor for the pressure sender, i think the sender is m10x1.0 thread and the block is m16x1.5. Should be easy enough to do out of some brass hex

Beer o clock now though

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Goldie the track car.

I think i'll still use it though, i only really wanted one to see if the pressure was too low at any point, and i guess it will be ok if its maxxed out on a 0-5 bar gauge. Unless you spot any major flaws in my plan?

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Goldie the track car.

I'm down in southampton in a couple of weeks, i'll PM you

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Goldie the track car.

nice thread u should take look at ( disco_stu ) thread on track car u mite get few ideas

Plenty of bits and nothing to bolt them to

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- Bespoke rollcages/additions/adjustments. Half cages right up to complete custom spaceframes - MSA/FIA spec, CDS, ROPT, T45, etc - PM me
Email me!
Custom-made polybushes available - need an odd size or fitment? - anything from batch work to one-off pieces.

Once funds allow it birk, little bit overdrawn at the moment
I'm concentrating on bits that i need to get it back on the road now, once its up and running i can afford to buy more shiny bits

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Goldie the track car.