The Manhattan Project

[AndrewSlater]

Thanks for the comments John.
Shame you don't have a restoration blog then I would have a reference going forward, rather than having to keep making it up

I've now fitted the new exhaust, and after cleaning up my old straps with limited success decided on a new set of straps.


I've also routed a heavy duty spacer block to fit under the engine when I jack it back into the car. I thought this was a good time to make one whilst the engine was upside down on the engine stand.

With this fitted it is now time to flip the engine and start to populate the tinware, alternator and the fuel injection parts.
I'm beginning to wish I took more photos of the top of the engine before the strip down.

[Gary71]

Careful. I'm catching you up!

[AndrewSlater]

Careful. I'm catching you up!

I'm tempted to let you take the lead - at least I would know what I was doing then

So in the meantime I have repaired and tidied up the alternator loom.
The reverse light section of the loom has been cut on put on inline connectors which I'm pretty sure isn't standard.

The engine shroud has been repaired and tidied also, as well as the alternator shroud.
Once I got the alternator in the fan housing the right way around it all went smoothly.



The majority of the tinware is now fitted as is the alternator strap.



The next step is to complete the restoration of the airbox and fit to the inlets.

[Lightweight_911]

The engine looks great Andrew - not long now ...

[jamie]

Looking really sharp. Fantastic work!

[AndrewSlater]

Looking really sharp. Fantastic work!

Thanks Jamie - really glad you are finally on the road with your car!

Not too much progress lately but I did take advantage of the Blockley tyre offer as discussed elsewhere.



I went for the 185/70VR15s.
Blockley are a helpful bunch and they also arranged swift delivery - so highly recommended so far ( but yet to fit the tyres ).

In the meantime I had the tyres removed from my remaining Fuch wheels. The tyre fitter seemed quite excited and horrified that the tyres were all date coded 1980. I assured him nobody had driven on them since the mid eighties but he didn't seem to believe me!

I also had the spare space saver tyre removed as I want to get the space saver steel wheel refurbished. He thought the space saver was a 2013 dated tyre ( but I thought the datestamp was more 1983 than 2013 ). He felt that the space saver tyres could still be ordered - does anyone know if that is true?

So I'm trying to establish what to do with my Fuch wheels. They are in pretty good condition with only a few small scratches in the rims. The black satin paint has worn through in a few places where the wheels have been cleaned too often. I think they are all the original finish but I can't be 100% sure.



My plan is to give them a final clean up and then repaint one to see how it looks. I got around to cleaning and masking the first wheel and then the rain started

[AndrewSlater]

I have finally finished cleaning and repainting my wheels and have had the Blockley tyres fitted.
Have to say they look pretty good for the limited effort involved.
The hardest part was cleaning up the space saver rim and repainting. I have a few later 5.5J steel rims but wanted to keep the '74 date code original.



Thanks to everyone who gave advice in my separate technical thread.

In separate news I have also dropped my gearbox off with Mike Bainbridge - great chap.
He kindly stripped the box down whilst I waited on my whistle stop tour so that I could see the wear and tear first hand.
I forgot to take any photos of the strip down but Mike's comments were that he didn't think that the box had been stripped previously.
The synchro rings showed signs of corrosion from years of standing and would need to be replaced.
All the bearings looked good and tight apart from the differential bearings and they would be prudent to change.
Also the fourth gear pair showed signs of wear and although not essential to replace again it would be prudent.

Mike will have another more lengthy look at the box and check his stock of fourth gear pairs before we commit to the work.

Anyone got a new / good matching set of RP 4th gear sets?

[AndrewSlater]

I don't seem to have much progress in recent weeks partly due to a family bereavement.

On the gearbox front I have found a good set of fourth gears to replace my slightly worn ones, and have shipped them up to the glorious Lakes for Mike B to evaluate. I thought they looked in really excellent condition after a clean to my non-trained eyes and Mike thought them to be 'OK' so that will have to do for me.

My plan with the engine was to fit all the CIS to the engine but then test a lot of it in situ by plumbing the fuel pump and lines in.
I decided that I would try to do this safely and use some Petrol calibration fluid in the first instance. However after contacting a number of people who refurbish petrol injection equipment they all seem to use petrol (and vent chambers), and after contacting a number of suppliers I have drawn a blank on sourcing any.

If anyone knows where you can buy Petrol Calibration fluid within the UK then please drop me a line.

I then spotted another couple of issues with my build that have stopped my progress.

First I was readying to fit my fuel distribution unit that I had refurbished back in January, but I noticed the plunger no longer moved within the unit. Given that I had stripped and cleaned the unit previously and fitted all new O-rings I was a bit puzzled.
On opening it up again I found this.



Bugger - for some reason a number of the O-rings seem to have snapped!

I had originally considered buying the Salvox rebuild kit, but it is quite expensive and I didn't really need a new diaphragm. Solvax wouldn't sell the seals only so I painstakingly measured all the original and bought new ones in Viton 75 thinking these would be good.
Given that the seals haven't seen any petrol I can only think they may have had some contamination with either the solvent I cleaned the parts in or possibly the light oil and reassembly everything with.

I have spare orings left over but feel a little uneasy using them again. Maybe I should bite the bullet and buy the full Salvox kit.
Anyone got any experience of them?

Secondly I was cleaning up the workshop and throwing out some of the old parts that came off the engine when I spotted this.



Bugger - I fitted new sleeves but hadn't spotted they had O-rings. Given that all most of the CIS is fitted and that the sleeves were a real bugger to fit, I'm going to have to strip a lot back down to rectify this problem. Grrr!

So with the engine rebuild halted whilst I have a rethink, I decided to try to get my head around the fuel lines within the car.
Now no matter how hard I try I cannot match the parts I have with a single year build on the PET guide. I strongly suspect my car is a mismatch of 1974 and 1975 PET diagrams. My dilemma is trying to work out which setup I should go for on grounds of originality and availability / balanced with safety of modern parts.

In particular my main tunnel fuel lines are made from a clear plastic tubing that is open ended with no fittings. A number of people have told me that this is not the original piping and that all CIS cars have black pipes. However I am pretty certain the car is mainly original and I am pretty confident mine are the original ones.

To prevent the restoration thread getting too lengthy I will post a technical question and put a link from here.

My new plan is to test the CIS system in full from petrol tank to injectors using petrol but off the engine (probably in the garden where I can't burn my workshop down ). I will then know that all the fuel fittings fit and can be made leak proof before refitting back to the car.

Oh well that's the plan - look out for the "where the hell do all my fuel lines go and where can I buy them" technical thread.

[Gary71]

Sorry to hear your bad news. On the car front it's always three steps forward and two back.

We use white spirit to simulate fuel in our crash test vehicles as it has a similar density and viscosity.

Maybe that's an alternative?

Best of luck getting it all back together, it makes Zeniths look easy now!

[AndrewSlater]

Best of luck getting it all back together, it makes Zeniths look easy now!

The number of people who have asked why haven't I considered putting it on carbs - I'm thinking that would definitely be the easy option ( and I may have to resort to that ! ).

I did wonder whether any chemists could suggest something to mimic the petrol - maybe white spirits would be a good starting point.

But in the meantime here is the start of my fuel line technical thread.
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=57790

My description started at the fuel tank and got as far as the fuel pump before I lost the will to live !!
I would probably be making better progress if I also hadn't bought a non runner 914 on a whim (life's too short and all that) the other week - but that's a different story!

[AndrewSlater]

This parcel of goodies turned up yesterday.

Many thanks to Lee and his team at Classic Car Automotive - they look great!

[AndrewSlater]

An epic milestone in the restoration, the car has finally got it's first paint back on - albeit primer.

[AndrewSlater]

Finally got around to stripping the fuel injection back off the engine so that I could fit the injector sleeve O-rings that I forgot the first time. Seems a bit of a backwards step as the engine has got smaller for a change!





I had to improvise a puller with a bolt and using a spanner as a spacer, but they came out all OK.
Comparing the original injector sleeve with the new shows that the newer ones have a much wider o-ring slot and take a much thicker o-ring. No wonder I missed the o-ring on the originals ( that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it ! ).

With the engine looking bare I decided to fit the coil and new ignition leads - at last a job that wasn't too taxing and was actually a little gratifying.

Now that the injection system is back off the engine my revised plan is to try to test it - that's my next challenge.

[AndrewSlater]

I've been putting off performing some preliminary checks on my CIS until I thought I had everything in place.

Dry day - to set up outside - check
Full can of petrol ( I bought Super Unleaded by mistake - oh well might as well test in style ) - check
CIS pressure testing kit - check
Fire extinguisher - check

If I can prove the fuel pump flow, the normal FD control pressure and then the cold and hot control pressures with the WUR in circuit then I will be happy enough to fit the CIS back to the engine and call the engine done ( for now until fitting ).

So the first obstacle was the 'cheap' pressure testing kit I bought off eBay. Firstly the screw fittings to connect in line with the fuel distributor and WUR would not seal. The screw fitting nuts were too deep to allow the inners to mate properly.
I took them around to Pirtek to see if they could suggest anything or fit some better ends. The suggestion was to take a hacksaw to them and shorten both ends - this seemed to work so first problem solved.

The first test was to check the flow rate from my fuel pump. My NOS pump seemed to work fine producing a flow of greater than the spec of 750ml/30 seconds - somewhere closer to 900ml/30 sec.



Once I spent an hour or so diagnosing all of the coupling leaks it all ran leak free.

Now this is where I ran into trouble and am starting to doubt my setup.

I was first hoping to measure the FD control pressure system with the WUR blocked and looking for a 5.2 bar figure.
However I measuring no fuel pressure (or very little ) from the output of the FD ( and started to doubt my pressure tester ).
The pump was running strongly and there was a strong flow on the return line to the fuel tank.

The first thing to point out was that I didn't have any injectors fitted to the injector lines, and once energised the lines slowly passed fuel ( one much more than the others ).

I'm wondering whether this test needs to be done with injectors fitted to help build pressure or whether open injector lines are sufficient.

At this point I started to doubt my pressure tester ( cheap Chinese tat ) so decided to give up testing for the day and take a few steps backwards to check things out.

I also started to doubt whether my FD was working correctly so I stripped it back down to look for any issue.

Can anyone tell me whether the test is valid with open fuel injector lines ( or do I have to fit the injectors )?

Can anyone spot anything wrong with my FD pressure piston setup that would cause very low control pressure?

I was hoping to be able to give this all a thumbs up so that I could fit to the engine and then mothball the engine until fitting.
But as usual another step backwards - oh well learning all the way!

[impmad2000]

i think you need to have the injectors fitted. especially if you have tested their opening pressure is equal in each case.
Without them, minor changes in the fuel distribution will mean relatively large differing fuel flow rates on the open pipes. at pressure , I would hope it would equalise out the flows.