Dipped in green glass

[Nick Moore]

In the finest tradition of Cardboard Aided Design, I've been mocking up an inlet manifold. The head's inlet ports point upwards at about ten degrees, so I figure that if the runners curve over, the inlet charge will have a smooth flow, the runners can be slightly longer, and there'll be more clearance under the bonnet. The cardboard design shown here has about 30mm clearance between the bonnet and the fuel rail, and it looks as though there may be enough room for an overhead throttle linkage. The injector is pointing pretty much at the inlet port, and is halfway between the butterfly and head. Does this seem about right?

I was delighted the other day to finally finish the dashboard, screwing the centre panel into place and sitting back to admire the gauges and woodwork. Except, when I tested the various switches, I found that the indicators were no longer working. The fault turned out to be in the hazard switch, where one terminal had pulled off its brass rivet. Not a quality report part, obviously. So, out with the centre panel, speedo and tacho, right hand dash panel and finally the switch. I replaced the rivet with an M3 screw and nut, and it works perfectly again. That only took a day.

Lastly, gotta question. I've been pondering where to mount my oil cooler thermostat. Its bracket is a crappy piece of folded metal that only loosely holds onto the thermostat body, so I wondered if it might be possible to fit a sandwich-style thermostat between the spin-off adapter and spin-off filter. Has anyone tried this sort of adapter-on-adapter setup?

[GT6 M]

Nick, looks like ye have got the room, BUT be awre of the heat of the ex maini
wid point,n em doon wards,
I no frae my own set up, just how fast the air inlet temp can rise,
and if yer got yer setting dependant on inlet charge temp, then its gonna up set it alott.

Best tip I can give is that when ever ye come to stop / start running, or just stopped,
set the  engine fan going as soon as ye can, it pays big results
and ye got the vent to let it oot

Noo to oil cooler bit, IF one of then had been aboot when I did my one off
then I wud have bunged that on.

if ye cant weld it, tek it to a welder, and it,ll tek aboot 1/2 hour
imagine yours onto the cut of adaptor ye already have,
Which WILL be sitting at a jaunty angle, cos its no designed for the GT6

there was a version I once seen, that was angled oot an doon wards aboot 25 degs, so a filter would clear the chassis rails

BUTT, a reliant 3 wheeler filter will fit underneath making the housing sit verticle.
that is, if ye dont weld the 2 t,githa,
weld it tobe one, then ye fit a filter that sits outwards, see pic

rgds M


need to put thru holes in, so oil gets thru to outer bit,





BUTT, need to mod yer thru bolt, NOTE, angle the oil holes, so as they point in direction of the oil flow, and it flows that way, instead of just squrt,n side ways onto the walls.





M

[Nick Moore]

A couple of weeks ago Gerald and I visited a water jet profile cutter (ironically on the wettest day of the year), and dropped off a rough sketch for an inlet manifold flange, the original GT6 inlet manifold and a manifold gasket. The drawing below is the plan they sent back on Monday, and I'll pick up the finished product, cut from 10mm aluminium, next week. The bridges between the three inlet pairs will ensure that the pairs remain aligned during the welding and fitting. In theory the undersides of the bridge sections should clear the exhaust manifold flanges. In practice, any overlap can be easily removed with a file and won't be visible.

I had three made - one for me, one for a friend, and a spare in case my Mk1 manifold doesn't work. If anyone else wants one, the manufacturers can easily make more.

[Nick Moore]

The inlet flanges are home and fit perfectly. I had three sets made up - one for me and two for friends in Melbourne. This was the first time I'd had anything cut by waterjet, so I didn't know exactly what sort of finish to expect on the cut surfaces. Well, the jet contains abrasive material, which does the actual cutting. The result is a 'matt' finish rather than a smooth surface as you would expect from a lathe or mill. You wouldn't use it for a fine-tolerance component except if further machining was planned anyway. But for this sort of thing it's fine. I've spent a couple of hours last night sanding my flange's top surface - this is the part that'll be visible. I'll also smooth out the inlet ports slightly to avoid condensation on the rough surface.

If anyone wants the pdf of the flange design so that you can machine your own flanges, let me know.

[Spit131]

Impressive Nick , like everything you do . Thanks for sharing so much , so clearly with the rest of us . M

[Nick Moore]

About two years ago I had a professional windscreen fitter try and fit the GT6's windscreen - he failed. When we looked at the new 'screen, it was obvious that the two layers of glass were the same size, and because they curve, the inner layer stuck out further. That small amount was enough to prevent the windscreen staying in the hole. I put it aside and moved on to more fun jobs, like refitting the interior and building the engine.

Last week, however, I took the windscreen back to the factory, which is only thirty kilometres from home. They ground down the edges by 2-3mm, and didn't charge me anything. So, a big Thank You to PGI Windscreens! A mobile fitter is coming around this week to have another try at fitting it. I've pulled out the dash top pad, which the original fitter complained about, so with luck it will fit properly this time. We'll see how they get on with the stainless steel trim strips!

In preparation for the fitter, I rolled the car out of the garage today and gave it a wash. Afterwards, I found that the tailgate has holes at the top, but not the bottom. When I opened it, water poured out! Now I know why the previous tailgate was rusted out 🙁   So, what have other GT6 owners done? I'm thinking of drilling a couple of small drain holes at the bottom, leaving it in the sun to dry completely and then filling it with fisholene or similar.

[Phwoar]

Don't suppose suggesting you block the holes in the top would be all that helpful?

[Royboy66]

Nick,   What about some grommets to go in top holes ?

My tailgate has extra holes on the inside wide face,  from previous Ziebart treatment I think ?

Roy 🙂

[GT6 M]

heres what I did,  took the thingy oot, and filled it up wid Phoshoric acid.
let it penetrate thru, cos all that water ye got in, WILL ev got between the 2 aifs and it will rust in there.
so gotta kill it in there, then after a good rinse, I filled it with  a wax oil solution,
efter fill,n all the other holes up so it could nae come oot,  I filled it thru the hatch lock.
and left it for a week or so,in the sun to let it doo its stuff, if it gets cold, its no as penetrative, or { seekataive }       [ thats another Markus,s own word }

nevr had a rust bit coming thru yet.

TiP-Top-TiP for ye Nick, the bolts that od the tail gate on. ditch em.
and fit studs, this way ye can re fit the thing alott easier, and by yer self,
as the studs od it in spot,whilst put,n a nut on.

[Nick Moore]

Thanks guys. It's already had some water in there, so I'll drill some holes in the bottom, leave it in the sun to dry thoroughly - Aussie's summer sun will dry anything - and put grommets in the top holes.

Best I find out now how to avoid water and rust traps!

And thanks for the stud tip Marcus, it's a good one.

[byakk0]

Studs...not a bad idea, but then they won't be flush. Guess you could cap with an acorn nut.

I've got to drill one or two out of my frame as it is...

[Nick Moore]

The tailgate now has a couple of 1/2" drain holes in the lowest point. The bare metal has been painted, but I could see through the holes that the interior of the door is unpainted, covered in surface rust and damp in spots.   Why didn't Triumph drill some drain holes, for heaven's sake? Still, better to catch it now than find rust bubbling through the panel later. I left the back of the car toasting in 30C sunshine this afternoon to try and dry out, and when I'm satisfied that the moisture is gone, I'll pump in some Fisholene or similar.

A mobile windscreen fitter came around yesterday, but couldn't fit the stainless trim to the rubber seal. He took it back to the depot to get help and better tools. He'd promised to fit it today, but rang back sheepishly to say that it was a 'difficult' job and he probably won't have it fitted until next week. Actually he didn't use the word difficult, he used a technical term

[WIMPUS]

Just looking at your last picture, i could see you have twin washer jets installed.
I bought (i think) the same ones for my spit a few weeks ago and test fitted them last week..
The hole in the body was to small, so put back the old one as it started to rain. 🙂

[Phwoar]

Quoted from Nick Moore

I left the back of the car toasting in 30C sunshine this afternoon to try and dry out, and when I'm satisfied that the moisture is gone,*

Actually he didn't use the word difficult, he used a technical term **

* What was the humidity?

** "fiddlesticks"?

[Nick Moore]

I finally got around to a job I'd been dreading - dropping the diff (again). Gave the cat a helluva surprise.

The spring mounting plate on the Subaru diff is large and makes it tricky to fit the diff. If you simply jack it into place, it hits and crushes the delicate handbrake cable guides. Guess how I figured that out... So today I dropped the diff, repaired the cable guides and slotted the diff back in...carefully. Actually the whole job wasn't as bad as I'd feared, and took about four hours (including head-scratching). The diff took less than an hour to refit. Maybe I'm actually getting better at it, or more likely the mounting slots in the chassis have been widened by past diff-fitting struggles. Anyway, the handbrake cable now moves freely, and we finally have a functioning handbrake.

Tomorrow's job is to raise the diff's nose a few mm so that it is parallel to the engine. I have a special tool to measure the angles...

[BiTurbo228]

Quick question. Are you planning to dyno the car once it's finished, and what's been done to the engine modification-wise?

I'm planning to dyno my car when it's finished, and that'll be a 2.5l Lucas MFI with stock compression, stock cam but 6-3-1 headers, a nicely ported head with big valves and some lovely little inlet trumpets.

[MadMitch82]

This is probably a daft question, but what is the hose on the back of the diff?

PS Nice kitty 🙂

[Nick Moore]

The fine-tuning will definitely be done on a rolling road. I think I know enough to set up the Megasquirt for the running-in period, but not for the clever stuff. It's 2.6L, 10.8 compression and has a long overlap camshaft, and will have proper 6-3-1 headers and ITB injection. No idea what the horsepower will be - for a road car, my goal is a nice fat mid-range torque curve.

Mitch, the hose is a breather. Triumph diffs have a split pin in a hole to release any pressure buildup, but the Subaru diff's breather is in the alloy case that gets thrown away during the conversion. I'll have a little expansion bottle in the boot, so that any oil pumped up can run back into the diff when it cools. It also makes it easy to top up the oil!

[BiTurbo228]

Quoted from Nick Moore

The fine-tuning will definitely be done on a rolling road. I think I know enough to set up the Megasquirt for the running-in period, but not for the clever stuff. It's 2.6L, 10.8 compression and has a long overlap camshaft, and will have proper 6-3-1 headers and ITB injection. No idea what the horsepower will be - for a road car, my goal is a nice fat mid-range torque curve.

Sounds like yours will be a bit more of a monster than mine :S i wonder what EFI does to the octane requirement. The main reason I left mine at 8:1 is so I could use 95 octane fuel, although I think I may have made a mistake there as stock it might need high-octane anyway...

[Nick Moore]

Not sure if EFI per se affects octane tolerance in high compression engines, but accurate ignition timing does. In a lot of cases, pinking can be reduced by retarding the ignition, at the expense of power and fuel economy. For example, my Herald has 9.5 compression and runs happily on 95 Octane. I plan to play with the 123 ignition and see if I can develop an advance curve that lets it run on 91. As for the GT6, we can get 98 Octane here if necessary, so it should be OK.

Today was spent raising the nose of the diff to try and get it on the same angle as the engine. The reason for this is that a driveshaft's centre section doesn't rotate at a constant velocity, thanks to the UJs. However, if the engine/gearbox and rear axle assemblies are parallel, the effect cancels out and both driveshaft flanges turn at a constant velocity. If they aren't parallel though, the output flange's speed will fluctuate.

My cunning tool for measuring the angle of the engine and diff was an iPhone! Also useful for levelling pictures and squaring up doorframes The diff and engine were about 4 degrees from parallel, meaning that the front of the diff had to go up, or the back of the gearbox drop down, or the front of the engine move up. (The engine doesn't really sit in the car at 83.5 degrees, by the way - my garage floor is on a slope, as the garage is dug into the hill under the house. No, I wouldn't have built it that way either 🤔

I trimmed the bushes at the front of the diff and was able to raise it about a centimetre. That was as far as it could go, as the nose is almost touching the handbrake mechanism. It's still about 1.5 degrees from being parallel with the engine, which isn't ideal. i'll have to see if there's any vibration when it's on the road. If there is, it may be possible to raise the engine a few millimetres. There is definitely no room to drop the gearbox any lower.

[tintapper]

in my mustang I run 9.8:1 compression and 17 psi boost with 94 octane after a proper dyno tune. I also have a methanol injection kit that start pumping at 6psi. the car is also intercooled. you will have no problem running a 8:1 engine on even 87 octane.

[aar0sc]

Your tool is not as impressive as I had imagined.

[Mark Hammond]

Quoted from aar0sc

Your tool is not as impressive as I had imagined.

Ooooer missus!    

M.

[Nick Moore]

Quoted from aar0sc

Your tool is not as impressive as I had imagined.

As if I haven't heard that before As always, cunning beats excess.

[Sheepy]

It's not what you got Nick, it's how you use it!  

As for your idea on the diff expansion bottle, if you are having oil pushing up through the breather I think you may have a problem, it's the same as vehicles with solid axles, it is only there for expansion and contraction of the air inside.
That's why if your axle/diff leaks, it's best to first check if the breather is blocked! 🙂
Cheers
Shaun