As I have said in the past, there are good days and bad days and it's about time I had one of the good one's and today was it.
Everything I had planned went mostly Ok with only one or two glitches.
I started out finishing off the hoses, only one left and this was the thermostatic control pickup, so just a couple of worm clips to tighten and then the pickup to fit. I also had a bit of wiring to complete so a trip to Halfords to pick up a roll of 8 amp and a pack of shrink fit tubes, first to connect was the starter motor and to plug in the oil pressure alarm and distributor plug. I can't find the wire to plug in the cooling water high temp alarm which may be on the old carb loom, I will check tomorrow and if it is I will have to run a new wire to the alarm light.
I had positioned the new oil pressure sender around to the other side of the engine and this was wired up next as having moved it meant that a new wire had to be run through the dash and onto the gauge.
The radiator was filled and a new pot of cooling flush was added then topped up with approx 7 Lt of water, then the fan belt was fitted.
The carb, throttle linkage and choke cable went on and all of the hoses plugged in.
I had made a mistake on the fuel pipes last time I fitted the engine so no mistakes this time. Filter to pump, out of the pump and into the pressure regulator, out of the reg and into the carb. The regulator return back to the tank, just ensure that everything goes in line with the arrows on the pump and regulator.
Not the best photo's but it worked
Once all of these were connected it was
time for a dry run before I fitted the plugs and leads, I needed to turn
on the starter motor for 2 main reasons, firstly this is how I found
the problems last time I tried it by seeing the water in the radiator
being pressurised and also to see if the oil pressure rises on the new
gauge.
Once I was happy that I had oil pressure it was time to fit the plugs and the leads, the Haynes manual gave the plug gap at 0.6mm so a quick check and re-sett.
Would you believe it the engine started first time, a little bit of choke was required and the first problem was found and it was a bit of a stupid mistake, when fitting the exhaust manifold I has misaligned one of the gaskets which caused an exhaust leak. Easy to fix just slacken off the bolts, removing one and slipping the gasket fully in place.
This video was shot after the engine had been run a number of times so the revving was just for the camera. It still needed a little choke to keep it running so an adjustment to the idle screw and set it up to tick over at 1000rpm and started up first time and ran great.
I'm not to sure about the thermo control for the fan so I set it around midway and it cut in nicely, will have to work that out.
So it is running very nicely, no tapperty sounds and all cylinders seem to be firing in the right order so the order is correct. I shall put the timing strobe on it tomorrow to get it at around 10 deg but it sounds great; which if I hadn't made the mistake of dropping a spring washer into the air intake would have been running around 2 months ago and I would be writing about the bodywork or some other part of the car.
When I was happy with it I followed the instructions in the Haynes manual and removed the rocker covers and checked the head torque only to find that 2 of the head bolts are pretty inaccessible because of the rocker arm tube restricting access. On checking the others I soon realised that they were fine so I will assume that the ones I can't check are Ok.
I had bought a new K&N filter to fit but as I mentioned a while ago I still had the emissions hose to find a place for, the guy selling the filter said that the hose could be left dangling which I was not happy with as I had also been told that this could be an MOT failure. After I mentioned my concerns I received a comment from Brian about the adapter he made to fit the hose into his filter. I had a look on the K&N site and they have them for sale at around £15 for a bit of molded plastic which I thought was a bit hefty so I made my own. They is also a small hose attached from the carb to the filter so I also made an adapter to fit this.
I dismantled the filter and fitted the base plate to the carb to get an idea of where the adapters should go then drilled the holes and fitted the adapters.
The filter is new but I was unsure if they come pre-oiled so as I have a oiling kit for my MX5 I gave it a good spraying and fitted the chrome top section.
Well that's that, I finally have a running engine, just the timing to check and I still have to track down a new fan belt as this one has no numbers on it but I do have the workshop manual which has some info in it and I shall track one down.
Still lots to do before this stage is finished and I move onto stage 3.
Well happy
see ya Paul
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