When Engine Cranes Attack

Posted on December 5, 2017 by mark

So, this went wrong – terribly, awfully wrong. There’s a video to show you just how wrong it went.

I was lifting my shiny new engine and shiny new gearbox into the chassis to start work on the engine mounts and I had a catastrophe. Normally when I lift it in, I take it in from the side and pivot it. This time, in order to make my life easier (ha!) I had it on an engine crane pivot mount because there was only me. The pivot mount has a cranking handle that lets one change the angle of the engine. However, what it doesn’t do is give one the same pivoting as a nylon strap.

Long story short, I toppled the crane over, into my tool chests, and smashed 5 drawers over two tool chests, and covered the floor in nuts and bolts.

Behold!

Thinking out loud for the resin load

Posted on April 6, 2017 by mark

Area	Cloth	Layers	Weight
4.5	600	4	10800
4.5	300	2	2700

		Sum	13.5
		Resin	5.4

So, I can expect to need 5.4kg of resin to infuse this part, assuming a load of 40% by the time you include pipework, mesh, etc. The actual part itself should only take a load of 30%, but I can measure the weight of the part afterwards to see what the actual load is.

Hard Point design for the tub

Posted on February 16, 2017 by mark

Here’s the design for my hard-point for harness mounting bolts. It’s 3mm thick steel, and the channels are 2x1mm cuts. What you’re looking at is the underside. The channels and holes are to allow resin to flow through and past the hard-point. The big hole in the middle is where the 7/16 insert will go and get welded. Each channel has been tapered down at the entry point so the resin can easily flow into the part.

I’m hunting around now for prices to get them CNC’d. I need 6 per side (six point harnesses) and I’m getting a couple of spare for welding practice.

When they actually go into the part, they will need a layer of glass-cloth either side to insulate them from the carbon to avoid any galvanic issues.

Aramid floor tray is in

Posted on June 26, 2016 by mark

Here’s the floor tray, all nicely bonded in.

Here’s the floor-tray all nicely bonded in. You can see on the right of the picture how the floor-tray now replaces the cross-member I removed. I put several extra layers in there as well to pass even more force forward (than the 6 layers of 300gsm that’s already in there).

There’s also extra reinforcement, like a lardy-blokes truss, to take engine mounts if I decide to do that.

So Mark – tell us how you did it

Here’s the part as it came out of the mould – all sharp edges and over-sized. Next job was to put it on the car – mark it up and trim it. That’s the boring bit and I don’t have any photos to document.

This is the chassis before the part is bonded to it. It had been blasted before powder coating, and I used the right high-temp non residue leaving breaker-tape to mask off the mating areas. The blasting heaves a fantastic key. I was worried originally that the tape wouldn’t make a brilliant barrier to rust after coating but it’s worked out fine. The reason being, the coating forms a seal against the tape so there’s nothing to get in – no air or moisture so no rust.

I marked the part up after clamping it down, and drilled for rivets. The rivets were just soft-ally headed ones to provide clamping force rather than to be anything structural.

Here I am as Clampy-McClamp-Face. I had every surface clamped before I drilled rivet-holes. If you drill-rivet as you go along the part, it starts to creep and your holes don’t line up. Clamping the entire thing before drilling keeps the accuracy.

Here’s a close-up of the rivet holes – I’m pretty pleased with how accurately the holes line up. Structurally it’s not really important, but attention to detail matters.

One post-trimming, bonded, riveted part in place. I used an epoxy two-part adhesive. It’s the slightly flexible stuff for parts under a lot of vibration.

Once the adhesive set (24 hours for full cure at 20C) it feels rock-solid.

First Pedal In

Posted on June 10, 2016 by mark

Here’s the first pedal in, with the box fully bolted down. This is the modified OBP pedal box I made a while ago. OBP were great about what I’d done, especially after I emailed them and jokingly asked if my warranty was still valid.

After I’d bolted everything down, it then dawned on me that I didn’t have clearance to get the clutch-pedal pivot bolt in, so it all had to come out.

I also greased the bolt shank as well (copper grease) just for good measure. The bolt half way up the pedal is for the clevis, so care needs to be taken not to over-tighten or else the pedal won’t move as smoothly as it should do. I’ll get the rest of the pedals in this weekend. Speaking of clevises, the clutch master cylinder is a 0.72 bore, which is

It’s a great feeling to take parts I modified a while ago, and be bolting them into the car for good. Having them fit is even better. The only mistake I made is not allowing for the extra 0.75mm either part has for powder-coating. However, whilst snug, it fits.

There is no try, only do or not do

Posted on June 10, 2016 by mark

So, there’s always a short cut, and a proper way to do something – what you can see here is the top diff-cradle bracket. My problem was the clearance between the bracket and the chassis wasn’t sufficient for a lock-nut and using two thin nuts jammed against eachother isn’t a good solution.
So, given that, I’ve cross-drilled it and used a split pin. I’m also pretty pleased that the bolt shank to thread transition happens just through the bracket on the right, which you can see here. According to Carrol Smith, this is exactly the transition point.