Monday 7 May 2012

Belated Update - Body & Electrical

A very good friend of mine messaged me the day I had lapsed for 6 months from putting any updates on the blog for this car - thanks for the reminder Grant!

But the kids have demanded sooooo much time recently that progress has been necessarily slow - but not stopped.

Let's get right to it then. Updates are.........
  • I've found a designer to do the CAD drawing for the custom inlet manifold adaptors. These are required to adapt the oval intake ports on the heads to the throttle butterflies as well as for the coolant outlets & bolt mounting patten.
  • Oh yes - that means i'm going with 8 individual 55mm circular throttle bodies.
  • So i'm now not re-using the the 50mm "quad webber" throttle bodies (they just don't line up to the A460 inlet ports and would have been a major compromise). 
  • Picked up a pair of 750HP Bosch EFI fuel pumps (managed by the EMS of course).
  • Picked up a set of 8 custom EV14 injectors (750cc/min, 30degree spray pattern).
  • Completed the tedious/arduous task of swapping the wipers to RHD positions.
  • Setup the wiper motor to sit in the cavity between the upper & lower cowl panels.
  • Oh - and tested the wiper wiring so it all works on low/high speed and intermittent settings.
  • Tested the wipers and adjusted the various linkages so their travel fits the 66 Mustang window (as the motor/wipers are from a newer falcon that had a much wider "sweep").
  • Relocated the seat best mounting points (for lap/sash belts in front and rear seats).
  • Received a full set of new dash gauges (carefully measured to fit suite the car - to suit the look i'm after that is!).
  • Completed the small job of cutting out the whole dash so I can build the custom heater/vent system.
Now for the pictures.........

First a few shots of the wiper relocation for RHD.
This shows the lower cowel with the RHD wiper pivot points grafted in. I've simply left the old mounts in place and will use block-off plates to seal them.



Now a photo from inside the cabin showing the new wiper drive setup. The dash has obviously been removed at this stage. Mounting the wiper motor in the cowel cavity means i had to weld in wiper motor mounts in the cowel and locate a rubber seal in the lower cowel to enable the wiper motor drive shaft to pass thru. My advise is..... drill the drive-shaft hole first, then weld in the wiper motor mounts. This seal needs to work well to avoid drips into the cabin.
Ah - the reason i'm doing this?.....
To free up room under the dash (the rearward mounted engine has cramped things up a bit - up high under the dash) as well as lower the motor noise inside the cabin. Lastly, the wiper motor is now much easier to get to as the motor itself is easily accessible by just lifting the newly removable upper cowel panel.
Last point to make.... the lower windscreen opening (the lower edge that the actual screen sits on) will need some re-enforcemnet seeing the sandwitch of upper & lower cowel plus firewall panel is no longer all there as a welded unit.

And now a (pretty crappy) shot of the upper cowel with the wiper holes relocated and patches sitting in where the old wiper blade drives used to be. This panel is just at the stage where it's about to get it's thin smear of filler before priming.
And here is the reference photo I have of the wiper motor wiring I need to include in the loom to ensure the motor work correctly for low speed, high speed and intermittent. Took a few attempts to get this right as you need to have the wiper motor, wiper control mechanism (the steering column control) and power/earth all connected properly......

Now we have my "dummy engine management system" setup on the bench to make sure the gauges all work and the wiring is tested before I complete the loom and install it under the dash. The dizzy is setup with the 8 trigger points for TDC for each cylinder and it has a single hall-effect sensor in the normal location under the dizzy cap. You normally have only 4 pulses for the cylinder TDC points, but as i'm only using the dizzy (and not the crank as well, I need all 8 points to account for the dizzy normal running at half the rev's that the crank does.....

Just a photo of the gauges. 5" diameter for the tacho and speedo, 2 and 1/8" diameter for the remaining Volts, Temp, Oil Pressure and Fuel Level. All are LED "thru the dial" lighting and have the ability to raise warning signals if readings are high or low (if I decide to program such warnings in). The final dash will be "custom". More on that in later posts no doubt.


And now the new injectors. EV14, custom built, all flow tested to ensure they flow the same amount. About 120HP each at 80% duty cycle. Plenty for me, but the EV14's also allow for excellent low rev (short duration opening) spray pattern & atomisation characteristics.















I seem to have misplaced some extra photos of the Bosch pumps and other bits and pieces acquired. So a good excuse to create a new post soon.
As an added update, I think i've found my painter and will have to shell over to them soon. I have the rear end of the car back to bare metal right now, so that's a good sign this will happen soon (otherwise it will start surface rusting). We are talking days rather weeks for this as you can imagine.