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.

Pick up...

Not got a lot of time so its a quick update with the pictures doing the talking.

Picked the car up but still need to fit a few bits to it (rear camera fitting, mirror, exhaust changing!)...but here's some pics...or a lot

Been a bit quiet....

Been a bit quiet on the update front....well I delivered the car to the bodyshop this morning. So I should have an update in a couple of weeks of the work going on there.

I've been doing a couple of things around the car and generally making sure its ok. I found a small puddle of coolant after a month or so of being sat round so something needs nipping up when I get it back.

I've been looking into water / meth solutions. Although cooling wont be a problem as such heat soak may be so rather then take any risks a water / meth injection solution for boost about 8psi will provide some good protection from detonation. Maybe a slight power increase but I'm still not always convinced by this. As the argument can go on, colder air is more dense but then the water takes up volume in the first place. the most important part though is it will protect the engine.

Door locks and walk around

So I'm now looking into what are little niggles of mine with the car. First was the locks the doors were quite tough to open with the door rubbers, not impossible just felt to hard compared to an OEM car. So I took the plunge and ordered some new locks from CBS online and they were much easier and very similar in fit and style as well so it worked out really well.

Below photo shows the difference the main difference is the spring size i.e resistance. the original has a bigger spring, now on a door that shuts a normal way I don't think it would be an issue but with the added angle I think its making it tougher. as well as this the new ones have a better grip on the striker with less chance of rattling around.

I have to make a small alteration to them and then that piece of work will be complete.

In the meantime I've done a walk around of the car talking about parts as some people wanted to know what was going on with the car and how it currently looked...roll on the bodyshop!

Correcting IVA fail points

The way the test works is they will just test the parts that have failed...or if can make a difference to other areas those as well.

For instance if you had a rear light fail and you moved its position they would check its still within the allowed area.

So how did the test go...well and I came away happy, the tester (Andy) was helpful and thorough, but I did not feel he was there to make me fail. He was there to make sure it was safe and met the requirements. If it didn't he told me what I could do to meet the requirements, or if I wanted to do it another way id ask was it ok. Cant ask for more really!

So on to the fail points, I'm going to list all of them and what I did;

Brake reservoirs lower then highest master cylinder height
So to solve this one was simple in terms of what had to be done, the master cylinders couldnt be moved down as the pedal assembly is welded in position and also the holes for master cylinders drilled. so the reservoirs had to go up. So bracket extensions were made and the reservoirs were raised. they now stick out the bonnet from where I had to cut it. I actually quite like it! Looks a little different and not too over the top! (bodyshop would mesh it properly etc...) Reason this was a failure was because the reservoirs aren't pressurised so really on gravity to feed them when there's a leak

The reservoirs were then meshed for the test as there would be a radius check performed as well.

Steering system has tight spot during lock to lock operaton

This problem needed investigation first and then a fix after. What had happened is one of the unions had too tight of an angle around the 41 -42 degree mark. This was my fault for doing it too tight. So I had to extend one column length and shorten the other to change the angle, the angle is now about 29-30 degrees which is within its operating angle and is smooth to turn.

Fuel pipes in engine bay and breather pipe to be secured, breather pipe also to be fuel grade pipe
I placed rubber round the fuel pipes and cable tied them together so they were secure (the rubber is to protect the pipe from chaffing) and replaced the breather pipe with fuel pipe (marked) and added an additional strap to secure it

Nearside mirror does not meet the field of view requirement
- Also radius incorrect
This was because id left the stalk legs too long so when you looked from the drivers seat you couldnt see the top of the mirror, I removed 50mm off the bottom of the leg and tested it by sitting in the car..hands on steering wheel and looking into the mirror, Also part of the mirror stalk didn't have a 2.5mm radius...a quick mill of it to that radius and that was fixed.

Radius failures on, lower tunnel trim, both door inside rear edges by glass & gear lever surround
Again this was easy to solve, rubber trim was put on to all 3 pieces that failed to give the required radius. the dash lower edge I reheated and turned upwards as well and also placed rubber over it and covered it again.Not pretty but should do the job.

Radius failure on the front bumper
Out came the sandpaper and was sanded to a raduis of 1.5mm. I'm sure ive done enough but if not can be sanded more on the day

Radius failure on top edge of the doors
Because the doors weren't flush with the glass, they needed to have a radius of 2.5mm...out with the sandpaper again.

Wire to prevent rear clam being tilted fully back
Part of the requirements is that when all doors, boots, tailgates etc... are open all lights and reflectors can be seen. It can just be reflectors if there is a warning. So I installed a wire stay to stop the rear clam shell being tilted to far back.

Front indicators not bright enough
Registration lamp not working properly

The front indicators were replace (will have to get some clear lenses I think for them!)

the registration plate lamp played up night before with 2 LED's failing!!! So its been replaced and a spare bought to take with me just in case

Horn symbol on steering wheel when pad does not operate horn

Sanded off and tape placed over it

Vehicle weight exceeded submitted weights

In the UK you submit design weights so they know the vehicle is safe and to work out required braking force, I went over the design weights by around 150kg, they add 75kg per person (so x2) and also includes full tank of fuel. I just need to get an email confirming the chassis / suspension will take this higher weight without any issues

Failed emissions

This was my biggest worry in the first place, first I checked the lamba sensor and couldn't really get it to feed back like required in the test (electronic test) so replaced it, re-performed test and it passed so the lamba may of been playing up.

The car had been idling at 1200rpm which was a bit high anyway.After much diagnosing I decided the ICV (idle Control Valve) was not doing anything at all....off with all the inlet again and testing it. it passed all tests and I could see it working. I then checking loom continuity so all was ok. so the ECU was not controlling it correctly. I decided this was a known issue on the car when I bought it. The give away was the idle screw was screwed in all the way, so I couldn't lower the rpm at idle any more.

To get around the above I set a 12v feed into the ICV and set the ground for it to be always closed, its there to help cold starts anyway (which I wont need), I now turned the idle screw out and got it to idle perfectly at 800RPM. Nice and steady! following this I set up the TPS (throttle position sensor) as it needs to be redone afterwards.

The most exciting bit of this is I have an emissions test on Saturday which I get to drive the car on the road for the first time as well.


That was all of the failures so not too bad really, I'm now waiting of the retest towards the end of the month, so there wont be an update next week and I'm now trying to work out what to do with my time!

Outer bodywork, Emissions and Noise, IVA prep and little jobs

So first of all I continued with the outer bodywork, making sure the exhaust fitted the rear hole but the bodywork was close enough to not require another test in terms of radius, I then refitted the fog light so it was vertical.

At this point I then retested the rear lights and one indicator didn't work...Took a few hours but I traced it back to a connector which was a bit loose within the car so tightened it all back up.

I also fitted the rear reflectors to meet the test requirements. They have been fitted high up to pass a requirement that they are always visible even when a door (in this case rear section) is open. I will use a stay to hold it open at a height which means the reflector and lights are still visible from the rear.

With the number plate light already fitted and the catches flush this means this area of the car should pass the IVA without any difficulties.

Next I did some more work on the wiper, although complete the motor mechanism was so strong in its movement it was actually moving / twisting the bracket made originally. This may be down to it being too thin, however I actually think a further brace would of been needed anyway to remove all movement. So I may a brace that covered both axis of movement, when testing this the good news was all movement was gone and the wiper motor was now stable.

With the exhaust now fully fitted including being welded it was time for two important tests. Emissions and Noise test. So I fired the car up got it warm and performed the noise test;

At Idle;

at 4000 RPM; (the manual states 2/3rd's of max power and max power on this engine is at 6000rpm

Although I expect its a bit louder then that more around 93Db, however that is with 2 backboxes and a Db Killer in the exhaust so the noise shouldn't be an issue.

Next was emissions, being an EFI engine I had strong hopes of being ok and being a 92 engine doesn't require a cat test. Which does mean a letter is required to prove engine age (don't use an im port engine like me, been a nightmare to get proof from Japan!)

So I bought a gunsons gastester off ebay and did the test....good news well under the required emissions so that shouldnt be an issue either.

Next was the wing mirrors, now these were never going to be pretty looking through cars that people have built that are similar or even the Ultima to some degree I knew they'd need to be out wide and up high...so I tried to get an idea of where.

Once I knew roughly where they'd need to go the mounting was put in....

Not pretty but they should do the job and give the visibility required. with the mirrors done on the test fit and the final settings to be done closer to the time. The outside of the car is finished (for now at least)

So I moved on to the interior, with a few jobs left to do inside before being ready for the test. The first rule is the radius of edges, Im taking no risks, anything they want to touch with that sphere is being covered.

However the amount of jobs now is beginning to drop and leaves me with only interior jobs and an extension of one area of wiring near the engine. I'm feeling pretty good about whats left and the possible time frame I have to do it. Hopefully the weather will be in my favour for the next couple of weeks.

Doors, rear shell, lights and windscreen

Following on from the other week I have fitted the door handles into position, as of yet i have not connected them to the lock itself although will work on that soon. the handles wont be seen easily when just looking at the car as they will be hidden underneath the shape of the door.

Next was to work on the rear shell's fixing points. The issue was the aero catches included were flush mount ones and the fibreglass was too thick for flush mount ones. So I bought normal aero catches and fitted them. 

I also then worked on the front lights installing the indicators so they would be above the required height and should meet the angles of visibility requirements.

I also worked on the layout to complete the rear with exhaust exit, there's alot more to be done, but cant be done till after the IVA test.Way to much block of white going on at the moment feels like a giant slab!

Whilst I had everything together as this point I took a photo from the side to get an idea of the profile of the car. There is a lot of work to be done on the bodywork but it gives an idea of the shape at least.

The final piece of work has been the windscreen so I had Chris from national windscreens come and fit the windscreen for me. this is the first one from the mould that was made.

Next will be to get the wheels off to be done and then ill fit them so I can put the front bumper on. (front bumper is the access to jack the car up). Also i'll continue working on the rear light wiring and other areas that need tidying up.

Shell fitting, Interior, Brackets and Video

So following on from all the previous work I fitted the main shell to the chassis permanently.(well I hope). It has a total of 9 bolts either side attaching it and 6 on the roof (where the door hinges are)

Uunlike most fibreglass shells and panels, you can lean on the front arches without even hearing a creak or crack and it does not move so that's good.

Once that was done I got on to completing the wiring to the front headlights now the RHD ones were fitted. This was simple enough just ensuring wires were secured a maximum of every 300mm. I also had to decide where to install the sidelights. I had two choices.

1. some small LED style lights

2. buy some Hella mainbeam headlights which also did sidelight function as well.

I went for the LED option as the hella's are £90 a light! And at this rate ill have more lights then ill know what to do with. So I drilled the hole for the sidelight which fitted perfectly and turned them on.

I'll be investing in some Philips white bulbs at some point to go with the white of the LED's!

Next was to fit some brackets for the rear, one was around the ECU which is a very busy area in terms of wiring and being from the MR2 and being in certain positions for over 20yrs I didn't want to bend and fiddle to much, so I moved them slightly and made the brackets to fit around the wires and secure them. The advantage of this bracket as well is that it can help keep water away from the electronics as it goes under the ECU as well.

The next bracket was again partly to meet a requirement and secondly to make the car look like effort has been made in terms of going beyond what's required, so the next bracket allows me to get cables up a height of 350mm whist still securing every 300mm (max) as well as this I used it to secure fuel lines as well when bridging a gap. this was they weren't left dangling.

Ive actually ran out of the required P clips so need to finish that!

Next was back to the leaking reservoirs, by this point I really was considering just ripping them out and swapping over! Tthe reservoirs are low pressure so the fact they are leaking makes it even worse! I managed to get a replacement reservoir as the 1st one I bought was too big and fowling on the wiper arm mechanism shown in the pic. So I managed to put it all back together and no leaks...good! However the caps were different, I was using a 2 prong wiring...new one 3 prong! so I had to take them apart to build a working fluid float with only 2 wire prong. (The UK IVA test requires brake fluid reservoirs have a fluid warning system)

The interior is turning into more of the thing I dislike then anything else, purely because its not to the quality I want. Simply put I don't have the tools and the skills. However I just have to remind myself it needs to look and be good enough to pass the test then I can do what I want and have it professionally covered at a later date. So I created the surround for the gear knob gator. It does look better in real life however still not to what I expect...this colour was sold as DARK GREY!! More like Purple brown...or something else brown.

At this stage with the shell fitted and everything moving on it was time to check the wiring to make sure everything was running fine...so fired her up....well would of but had run out of petrol! 4 trips later and we are at just under half a tank and £25 lighter as well.

So I got her running....it really is hard to get the temperature up high enough to get the fans to kick in, they should kick in at 87c, so safe to say cooling wont a problem on this car! I had to run the car at 3000rpm for about 4mins to get the temperature up.

Once this was all done, I test fitted the rear shell to get an idea of the work involved, the last time the shell was fitted was when the car arrived and then it was just placed in position since then I had changed the locating pieces for new ones etc...

The wheels are just 'rolling' wheels and the new ones although same size are much wider although will still require spacers at the back :(

Overall its not too bad, some work but not massive and there are ways to adjust and move the rear body around so shouldn't be too much of an issue. The biggest issue is that the top of the engine touches the top of the body work. Even after I lowered the mounting point of the throttle cable (the highest point).

However the rear is adjustable and I can bring the back up around 3cm, so I think I can get round the problem.

Finally I've done a walk around video with the car running. Unfortunately I had some plastic film over the ipad's microphone so the car's running noise is quite low!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFy3PhsTpWM

Completing the front Engine Bay

So after the body fit and bodywork, I wanted to complete the front engine bay properly so that I could leave the shell on, the jobs were;

* Fit battery tray
* Lower clutch reservoir due to fowling on bodywork
* Fit L brackets for wiring so can reach direct to headlights without joiners (will be under 300mm for IVA)
* Cover over final cables with conduit
* Put conduit on brake hose which before was cable tied directly.

So firstly the battery tray was easy enough, 3 holes drilled to fit it and then drilled two holes so that the battery can be clamped down on to the tray like it would be in any normal car. The battery can be fitted without the need for removing other parts which is good because I did think it would be close.

Next I fitted the L brackets for the headlight wiring and again this was easy enough. Then I lowered the clutch reservoir, I simply made a plastic template with 4 holes to move it lower. Once it was lowered I actually ignored it until I saw a lot of fluid leaking, I nipped up the clamp a little but made no difference...eventually it all leaked out, when I took the reservoir off it had a hole torn in it, maybe it was on too tight and when I moved it I disturbed it enough to cause it to break. Luckily I had a spare so fitted that to solve the problem.

The brake hose between the master cylinder and reservoir previously was just cable tied directly to stop it moving, I then realised this would fail IVA as it could chaff and cause a hole, so I placed some conduit around it and refitted it. At the same time I moved the two master cylinder hose connectors in opposite directions to give a larger gap between them. This is for the windscreen wiper to allow to have enough room and not foul on the pipes.

The only thing not completed in the front area and centre console area for that matter is the aircon system. Simply put its been near on impossible to find a mobile aircon expert to make the pipes I require. So this will be completed once I can drive the car to a place after the test and I'm on the road, it could be a hot summer for a while!

The picture below is the completed front engine bay with the relevant parts labelled.

The majority of the work recently had been on fitting trim seals so the bodywork to chassis was an airtight / good fit. However it went horribly wrong and the shell just would not fit. The issue is i'm afraid to say is the panels on the car are just very poor and not symetrical or even straight edges compared to the fibreglass.

When I look at the metal side panels where the fibreglass shell is placed on it one area has an air gap with light coming through, another is so tight with no light / gap and hence when fitting the rubber the shell could not attach to the chassis properly and drop low enough.

The advantage of the trim seal was it pinned my carpet up so I will need to come up with a new solution for the carpet and to stop the air gaps. You cant see these airgaps normally without looking for them....but I know they are there.

Bodywork and Interior

So continuing on from previous prep work, I moved on to the rear. The panels had what look to be gel coat patches. I'm not actually sure what they are called so I had to remove them with some wet and dry sandpaper as well.

Before

After

You can see clearly the difference; next in terms of the bodywork will be to use the gel coat repair that I've ordered to fill and smooth holes and missing bits just to give an overall clean finish. That way I hope the car will be good enough to wrap, if not a lot more work will be needed.

The wrapping wont take place till after the IVA test and the car is cleared to be on the road in case of any bodywork that needs to be changed to pass the test.

Following this I've continued work on the dashboard. Although covered I unfortunately did get wrinkles when fitting. This was never going to be my strong point and it was more about getting a good fit and base so it didn't look out of place. following the test and the fitting of additional bits ill then get it professionally upholstered to a nice finish. However as Dashs go in a kit car I'm pretty happy with it.

The colours is actually Grey but the lights in the garage make it look brown, hopefully some outside pics soon will shown that. The next stage is for the rear seat belt anchorages to be welded and once that's done the rear sound proofing can be fitted followed by the carpet on the rear firewall. Then the seats can be put in both sides and the top cover piece for the dashboard can be made to fit the final instruments too.

As well as the above i have started to go around all the suspension and axles tightening everything up and replacing nuts with Nyloc's. I hadn't done this to date simply to make taking bits on and off easier.

Engine Coolant system, Dials and more wiring!

So after the engine being started up before, it was time to put all the fluids in so that included the engine coolant and gearbox oil.

I already had the fan wired up and because the MR2 has two types of radiator temperature sensors (one for aircon cars and one for out) my fans were on constantly. First I ran it with the heaters off to try and circulate around the system but no such luck turned the heater system on and the air from that was cleared instantly and the heater was giving out warm air (IVA requirement is to be able to demist your windscreen). However I could not get the system to circulate...maybe an airlock, now I don't know if the temperature wasn't fully up to required temp to open the thermostat (82c) or it was broken...I had a spare so changed it and replaced the coolant.

Still was unable to tell, due to the exhaust being just a decat pipe its extremely loud so could not do this late at night and leave it constantly running, so I'm currently sourcing a temporary backbox to fix directly on so I can run it and its quiet! I however did have a small leak...which was quickly fixed!

On the Saturday my dials from america came, they are Dakota digital dial set for a ford mustang '70. I found out from Dakota before hand all dials used the same box its just the layout with the car sets is setup so they can be directly fitted. This means anything in their range could be chosen and fitted. I went for them for a few reasons one was the extremely easy setup from what id read of the PDf file on the internet.

And it was easy within 2 hours, id wired indicator lights, dim light, headlight, Tacho, Speedo, fuel sender, volt meter and coolant coolant sensor. I still have the oil sensor to go.

The coolant sensor required I used the one provided but with the adapters this fitted directly into the MR2 water inlet housing in replacement of the one the MR2 already had for the gauges. It was a little messy with coolant already in there!!

Everything can be setup on the dial system so easily. I haven't set the speedo yet although wired but what I like is it gives two custom methods to calibrate which are more accurate then any MPH / KMH conversion box (needed for an import MR2)

Most cars with ECU's nowadays give out a PPM (pulse per mile) which may be 8,000 for instance, however stick bigger wheels and tires on and this can make your speedo out. By calibrating with your bigger wheels and tyres on the car the Dials may register that its only 7850ppm. Bringing the accuracy back to your speed with the bigger wheels. The accuracy is important for the IVA tests.

You'll notice in the first photo of the dials a control box, this is where all wires go with a simple Cat cable to the dials...meaning less cables everywhere again! the control box fixed nicely above the fusebox and allowed me to tidy the wires easily as well.

The small fusebox to the top of the photo is the original MR2 power feed fusebox giving some additional protection in case of a serious pull of amps.

Following the tidying of the cables there, I now knew there were no more wires to be added down the length of the cabin that id done, or worst case 1 or 2 if id made a mistake it was time to strip out the load of unwanted cables and everything seemed to get tidier quiet quickly.

The above shows all the cable securing points via brackets screwed into the chassis and cable ties to secure them, maximum distance for the IVA is every 300mm.

In the photo below the 2 cables down on the left hand side will fit within the one conduit i just have not done so yet. The cuttings on the floor are for the seat mountings and the longer strips are where the runner clips will move along so by not having the deadening stops fowling.

Normally you get to see all the nice work afterwards and not the mayhem that is on going at the time...so just behind the passenger cabin the work continues and the wires need sorting.

I'm away for a stag do this weekend and then work, so not sure how much will get done this week and next so could be a couple of weeks before the next update!