New Engine In...

So I've had the car off the road for a month, why to change the engine.

I've gone for the same basic 2litre turbo engine, but its a later revision of the engine with various sensors changing mainly from a MAF sensor to MAP and some other bits, what this also means is it required a new ECU and a repinning of existing wiring. However the main reason for the engine swap was this was a forged engine, it was built for someone else and had covered a few thousand miles which i preferred as I have the worst luck with newly built engines. The engine should be good for 550bhp with the right turbo, fuelling etc...



First I removed the old engine (quite a few bits off the engine) no engine crane at this point so I jacked the chassis up and slide it under and out.

With the engine out, I used this time to really clean the rear chassis again and touch up the paint work on it as the 3 years / 5500miles of driving had left some grim.

Gave the driveshafts a quick sand and bit of paint as well just to tidy them up as well

So next was to start the work of putting the new engine in, I had already prepped the engine. If anyone else ever build ones of these, bring the engine end into the chassis from underneath if you can as going in from above was much harder, although that may be because I was doing it all by myself so struggled to move the engine about and lower it in.

I filled the engine with oil and gave it that all important first turn over and it came straight to life! Perfect. I'm now in the middle of refitting the driveshafts and tightening all the suspension before the first test drive.

Dashbaord in and Car out

So I've managed to fit the dashboard now and I'm happy with how its turned out. For my first attempt at flocking its turned out well. I now have to remake all the panels that go on the dashboard as they dont fit perfectly because previously the dashboard was covered in material.

The dashboard now suits the look of the outside of the car as well. I also fitted one of the door cards that I have done to match the dashboard.

As well as this I took the car out for its first drive of the year, Its been 6 months since it was driven so the brakes needed a good few miles to become normal again and get rid of the surface rust! However there was no running issues and the car loved the cold crisp evening air.

Dashboard work continues

So I've filled the old holes for the old demisters and cut out some new ones, smoothed off as much as I can. It was now time for D-Day, time to flock it.

So I prepped as much as possible, I used a whole litre of wood glue, plus some water and dye to cover the whole dashboard, just! Then Flocked it.

First thing is i did this by myself if two of you were painting on the glue it would help and speed things up and give you more time to work with. However so far I'm happy with the results. So Messy though! going to have to spend a fair while cleaning the spare room.

I've now left it to dry and see how much of the flock holds. This will be the biggest object I've done and it was hard work to get right and done before the glue starts to go off to much. 

A couple of things to note, once my batteries came loose and that might mean I have a flatter area although i hope not! A good thing though is the glue hides scratches that are quite deep so you don't need to sand to a totally flat surface

And finally always switch it off when reloading and zapped myself twice, quite a hit for batteries! but at least I know it was working!