First Start

The new fuel regulator arrived in the post yesterday. Fitted today....Result!!! The engine ran a little rough at first until I noticed that my temporary bung had fallen out of the servo pipe - a thumb over that and the engine ran as sweet as a nut!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQgKJUhNg7A

Starting to start!

Well, all was set for the big day! Oil changed, new filter and fuel pump temporarily set up in a plastic tub. I pinched the battery from my C1 and connected it to the loom and turned the key - nothing happened! A quick search showed a almost no fuses in the 'small' fusebox. A week passed and a trip to halfords produced a box of assorted fuses - replaced the lot just to be sure! Turned key - at least this time some of the dashboard lights lit up! Having consulted the Gurus of Locostbuilders (thanks everyone!) I began to go through the loom carefully. By consulting the ECU pinout diagram, I discovered that one of the ECU earths was not made. Once that was found, the starter relay clicked. No noise from the fuel pump though. A further search revealed another missing earth. Finally the engine turned, but no sparks. A check revealed 12v at the coil pack so I began to check the crank and cam sensors. Whilst doing this, I found a connector that was not quite 'clicked' together - HURRAY, sparks!!!!!!

For a while, I had been worried about the vacuum connections from the throttle body - there are 4 - 1 to the servo, 1 to the EGR. One had no attachment to it whilst the other had a red cloth pipe attached. A check on a friends car showed that this should go to the fuel pressure regulator - this already had a pipe from it though. The 2 could be pushed together with difficulty though. So, fuel in plastic pot, time to turn the engine. No joy, several times!!! Then the team of keen observers and cameraman (wife and son!!) spotted the puddle under the engine!!! Fuel was coming out of the pipe from the fuel regulator. Opinion was that the diaphragm could be split, thus sucking fuel through. A picture was posted on Locostbuilders to help. I was slightly concerned that I was actually looking at the regulator, especially as it had sytec fuel spec hose attached to it and it looked different to the photos. I removed the regulator to even more confusion as I could not see how it functioned! A google image search gave all the answers!!! What I have is an adaptor that allows the fitment of an external (variable pressure) regulator - hence the fuel spec hose, the 'extra' red cloth hose and the fuel being delivered into the inlet!!!!! Problem solved - all I need now is a fuel regulator and I should be in business!!!

Little by little...

Another report on a succession of little jobs!!! Work has been keeping me out of the country recently (!) so there have been no big sessions of work done, rather an hour here and there! I have now been able to determine what 'most' of the loom does! Once this was done, I looked at how it would fit in the car. My plan is to start the car with the entire loom in place and then carefully thin it out - experience from building an off-road buggy tells me that is the way to do it! I decided that the main relay/junction box could be installed on the left hand side of the engine bay. This allows part of the loom to go forward through the bulkhead to connect to the instruments and switches, and the engine loom to connect up easily. I will have to add in some extensions to the lighting, but that should be about it! I then looked were to mount the ECU and decided that it would sit nicely on the top of the chassis bar that mounts the left side of the engine, the added bonus being that it will be fairly easy to waterproof this! I added a small bulkhead along this mount to fix the ECU to, and also will mount the expansion tank on the other side. I have also cut short sections of aluminium tube to extend the cooling pipes, thus avoiding too many alterations to the cooling circuit. Finally, I have mounted the cooling fan onto the back of the radiator. Most of this work is not very photogenic, particularly as I had to leave in a hurry to go abroad again and didn't have time to tidy my workspace............
Back home in a couple of weeks so hopefully some photos will follow...!

Slowly coming together!

A combined report of the results of a couple of days off work. Well, weeks actually but that translated into a couple of days of garage time! First up was the handbrake. An Audi cable was sourced from fleabay which, after a little modification, fitted the VAG calipers a treat. In order to make the most of the space between the seats, I decided to mount the handbrake lever to the right of the driver. It was only after deciding this that I noticed exactly the same set up on the Ariel Atom! An MGF handbrake lever is being used. The final part is a short cable of indeterminate origin for the caliper on the drivers side. The balance bar caused a few headaches but in the end one was put together using 2 Rover balance bars. A picture paints a thousand words and will follow soon!. I then made some short tubes to guide the cables through the rear bulkhead using some unused poly bushes from the front suspension!

Next was the thorny issue of the brake/clutch fluid reservoir. This had already been mounted once but the pipes fouled on the steering column so it had to come off! After a lot of head scratching, I found another reservoir in my box of bits, probably from the original Rover. This has been combined with hoses from a Fiat Punto which clip neatly into the Mini master cylinder and can be adapted to fit the clutch cylinder.

Then came the radiator fan mount. This got partially finished with only the bottom mount being made, and this is not yet welded on. I then got diverted by the wiring loom as the position of items like the fuse box will have a bearing on other items in the engine compartment. BIG thanks here have to go to the www.madinventions.co.uk website. This charts the build of a Sylva Mojo powered by the same engine as I am using. On this site was a photo of the engine wiring loom with all of the items labelled. An absolute life saver as many of the masking tape labels that I applied when stripping the fiesta have gone crispy and fallen off! The result was that after an hour or so, all items on the engine loom were plugged in. That just left the car loom. This had very few labels left and so it was a case of laying it out and imagining where in the car each wire was. I then had to think what components were in those locations before referring to the appropriate diagram in the haynes manual. After a morning of solid octupuss wrestling, I now have 75% of the loom labelled.

The final step was a visit to a local scrappy. I knew that I was missing the inlet manifold when I got the car and also needed a new radiator fan (the terminal tree impact had cracked the old one!) and a few extra hoses. Much to my delight, after an hour of rummaging, East Road Salvage in Sleaford provided everything I needed!

Photos of all of this progress will follow shortly.....