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Saturday, March 18, 2006

Not much!

Finishing off the bonnet now!

98 grams of alloy! Welded EWP manifold. Wheels on the wagon. Posted by David Powell at 3:03 PM 0 comments 
Beauty and the Beast! EWP Manifolds.

How to make a nifty simple in and outlet manifold for EWP use.

Two flared pipes 1 and 1/4" O/D..., a sheet of piece of high grade alloy 4.5mm alloy. Although looking flat the piece needed 30mins of planishing to remove a low spot...I stopped planishing just after the pic below, when the gasket areas were all polished flat leaving only the low area in the opening area for the water holes. Finger ache! Flared pipes cut down to the required length....The right samco 90bend pipe goes under the left....so they cross....hense one is shorter than the other! In location for welding. Top pipe has a small inclination -upwards. Don't think the water holes should be max sized, the pump needs something to fight against. The hole here is about the size of the original thermostat opening with the stat open....Edges smoothed on the holes, can always open it out?! Just needs welding 94grams for the alloy one (thought it would be more!)....400 for the gastly old thing! Beauty and the beast! Need to address the alternator mount next. Can get some made from Alloy on CNC ££££.

Posted by David Powell at 9:36 PM 0 comments Sunday, March 12, 2006

Wake me up.

Some random things.

Boring bodywork still.

Just about ready for primer I finished the tub today just the bonnet left, I prepped all the fiddly bits, like edges and complex bits, ground and killed any surface rust, there is no rust in the car anywhere...

Paintmen can only do so much in the time given, rarely getting to do a truely proper job of bits like this, you see all cheap respray cars falling apart at the seems as it were!. At £20 an hour I'd be looking at about £500 for this work...and cleaning and degreasing the whole thing properly.... I was hoping to get the entire thing done for £500! It needs very little, build coat, flat, build coat, flat, top coat basically....

Gonna leave the hardtop, will do that myself - I might make a decent mould from the hardtop and make an super lightweight one...Single skin at all points just enough to be a cover basically and thats all! Box of water system parts, also oil/crankcase breather tank....Nice light box, all alloy and plastic. EWP also plastic bodied.

Header tank needs another pipe adding at the top above the water so the swirl pot throws water into the air so purging bubbles finally into the header tank...The only way! Here's my super dooper close ratio box.

Early 1850 Dolomite 3 rail case
Late 1850 single rail gearset - with reworked input shaft, cut down and made to look like Mk3 Spitfire version
New old stock 1500 Spitfire mainshaft (I found a pair!)
1500 midget rear alloy housing - cut down and gear mech removed - was from a single rail non o/d box!
1500 rear output flange
Mk3 Spitfire selector mech and top
Later type alloy bellhousing, slighty heavier than thin web early type!

Been about 15000 miles so far, without any problems, had a good hammering. Rusty horrible steel bonnet tubes, will be remaking these from alloy tube...Bloke round the corner has a bench bender! Also need to find some cheapo rod ends to replace the pnes in there atm! 400grams for the quickly bodged together water outlet for the EWP setup... New alloy version should be 100-125grams I think, cause this is totally over-engineered! Pics soon... Basically the only prep needed is stripping all the seams and messy bits round the entire car, re-priming with acid primer and then seam sealing, then stone chipping, boring....snore! Here's one the carbs i'll using as I sold the set on there before. These are non-emission with airbleed screws, a rare find. Heres a swirl pot, used for purging air from the top hose after the engine, so not allowing air bubbles to be recycled through the cooling system....basically spins the water and the air comes from the small pipe at the top...I will get an adaptor welded on for a temp gauge fitting. Very much looking forward to getting it back together, there will be NO bodges anywhere now all the alloy items have been made, adjusted to fit, this is the final setup I think, I have worked for the last 2years reaching this point! Breaking things, improving things, different water system layouts etc...lightening, simplifying, improving, being as critical as possible, you could hopefully call this setup production car quality, if the engine is better than the last one it'll be a gem, a highish tuned car without any downsides in the running or torque, even in long periods of traffic.

Posted by David Powell at 6:10 PM 0 comments