HMS Broadside progress thread aka 'how to give yourself a headache'

[Pedro]

Been quite warm and sunny up here in York!

This weekend, I are'll be mostly thrashin' moi Carlton!!!!!

 

[Johnny A]

DONE!

[Pedro]

Looks good, dude!

About time, like......................

 

[Johnny A]

screw you hippy! lol

[Pedro]

Hahaha!

Never trust a hipy, mate - especially within a hundred yards of your stash...........

[Johnny A]

Wallet rape today! Ordered 99% of everything I need to complete the car, FMIC pipes, samco pipes, clamps, Mocal oil cooler, cooler pipes and unions, more heat wrap and clips etc... came to £285 with discount.

No.2 involved a trip down the road to a cnc machining shop, they are making up the brackets to fit the dizzy onto the exhaust camshaft, TIG welding a hole in the FMIC and also skimming the turbo downpipe. No price on that yet, but I bet it won't be cheap!

No.3 is the deaded insurance, after declaring the new engine and the 300bhp it went from £299 to £504, still fooking cheap! Anyways doing a 6 monthly installments thingy, still had to fork out £168 for the down payment!

On the bright side the only things I can think that I have to buy to get the carlton on the road are some new front discs and pads (about £50), followed by MOT and 6 months Tax. So in all about £200 left.

Getting very close to being ready now, getting excited to say the least

[Johnny A]

BTW, the oil cooler is going in the O/S front bumper air vent, LC style! The N/S vent will be feeding the airbox directly and the cente being for the FMIC.

[Johnny A]

Right the CNC machining, skimming and FMIC welding his been finished over at the local machining shop. Unfortunately they arn't open saturday or sunday so they are delivering the bits monday to my work, which is a shame because I wanted to fit it all this weekend! None of my FMIC pipework or oil cooler setup has arrived either! So this weekend I think I will clean things up a bit in the bay, add the new bottom arms and finish off the wiring harness for the car.

John.

[mrchaz]

Where did you go for that insurance quote?

[Johnny A]

HIC

[Johnny A]

I invented a new game today, called RUST HUNTER. Its not a very good game, and I am running out of places to play this game on my Carlton!

Had two rust holes on the front inner wings, both mirror each other (between the bulkhead and front turrets). Welded them up with no much trouble (hate welding upside down). After that I found a big ass tin of waxoil and went mad!
N/S arch:

Went half way down the sill and floorpan too, no rust at all which I was very happy with.

O/S arch:


After doing the arch I went under to the sill and floorpan as with the N/S but all was not well 

Most of the sill is totally fine, but there is a dented section at the front with a rust hole about 1 inch across.
At the end of the sill some of it had come away and the inner panel that runs inside of the rear door felt a bit flexy. So I yanked it and found exactly what I did on the O/S all those months ago.... lots of fibreglass!

I had a feeling this was always the case, its not too much of a problem... just means an extra day's work. At least I found it and can sort it to a professional standard rather than a totally bodged (and IMO dangerous) standard. Won't do that tomorrow because it looks a bit too extensive to just get a few plates of sheet metal and weld them in... its a repair panel I think, luckely my work has a trade account with BCP (Bucks car panels) so I will order up a panel on monday

John.

[ian]

.
At the end of the sill some of it had come away and the inner panel that runs inside of the rear door felt a bit flexy. So I yanked it and found exactly what /quote]
ah the reason why i never weld a car with a kit on!
must admit i never saw the reason why to fibre glass it when it takes just as long as repairing it properly and cost more in the future

[Johnny A]

because its a quick fix bodge. The previous owner had the old PSG kit fitted and sprayed at some pikie B/shop, they obviously did the arches at the same time.

John.

[Johnny A]

Got plenty done today, even tho I have a steaming headache!

Welder was out straight away and I spent the mid-morning patching up three fairly big holes in the O/S sill (one at the front and two near the back), I also cut back the old paint and any surface rust till shiny metal (how I found two of the holes), the welded plates were seam sealed and the whole sill painted. After the sill's first layer of paint I decided to fill in the gap between the first and second layers by finishing off the subframe mods, the bottom of the subframe needed welding and cutting back a tidy bit to clear the sump drain plug better. That didn't take long as the subframe is meaty thick, so cranking the welder up I gave it one big blast and it was all done! I then put the second layer of paint on the O/S sill which finished that off.

Whilst painting the rear of the sill I noticed a section of the floorpan next to the sill was dented upwards (like someone had put a jack on it and tried to jack the car up), on further inspection I found another hole


Welded a plate from the inside at it was easier, then seam sealed it.

Also did a little tidying in the bay with the help of zipties lol!


and just take make you cringe, here is a picture of the very last area of rust on the car.... its the big one!


Going to order the repair panel tomorrow 

[Johnny A]

Also after months of badgering a chap in the workshop he finally gave up the Irmscher tailpipes he got off a tailbox!

Should I fit them like this (standard setup):


or reversed like this?:

[customcarlton]

fit them the standard way jonny looks loads better imho, and  that cars gonna last forever when ur finished wish mine would keep up the good work

[Johnny A]

Got my kit back from the CNC machining shop. I must say the quality of the gear is top notch... but it came at a price! Two CNC machined parts (pics below), two sections of TIG welding on the intercooler and all three surfaces on the downpipe machined flat = £167!!!

Reversed ignition design:
To overcome the ignition distributor fouling due to the engine orientation I didn't have many options on my limited budget.
1) Use DIS and run custom management (too expensive)
2) Repostition or use a different dizzy.

I was forced to choose the latter. There were two methods here, one is the use a 1.8 8v Carlton/manta dizzy which runs off a seperate belt driven by the exhaust cam like in this pic:

The dizzy runs parrallel to the camcover.

That idea would work, however the dizzy would fould the turbo intake pipe and a few others would be damn close!

The idea I had was to retain the original dizzy but have it running off the exhaust camshaft (running in reverse), then reverse the spark lead numbers from TDC. The Hall sensor is phased at the top and bottom so it won't know any different running in reverse (it will read 'on, off, on, off' the same).

Here are the parts I needed to be made:


You have the large spacer bracket which bolts to the cambelt cover and the dizzy.

Peeps who have worked with these engines a lot might recognise the smaller part:


Its a machined bracket made to the same specs at the end of a XE/LET exhaust camshaft. The bracket totally replaces the large washer that sits on the exhaust cam sprocket and has the same thickness as the washer at the lower part. The standard bolt slots into it nicely, then the dizzy's locator dowel slots into the bracket as normal.

Dizzy with large spacer bracket:


Dizzy with spacer and drive bracket:


Then its a case of reversing the leads (1342 becomes 2431) and away we go!

[Johnny A]

Exhaust was also skimmed when the brackets were made, so now the rest of the heat wrap could be put on:



John.

[bstardchild]

Exhaust was also skimmed when the brackets were made, so now the rest of the heat wrap could be put on:

Now where did you get that stuff from - looking for some for the Monza and it only comes in huge reels!!!

[Johnny A]

ebay!

[bstardchild]

ebay!

I know where I'll be looking for the rest of the evening then - ta

[Johnny A]

Update:
Not much exciting really, fitted the downpipe, offered up the centre sections and wasn't happy with the alignment, so I removed the O/S CAT replacement pipe and bent and lengthened it slightly so the O/S centre section now sits under the floorpan very snuggly N/S to be done tomorrow, but it doesn't need as much work as the O/S did.

Also get a tip off Carltontoy (ta) about someone breaking a Carlton nearby with a set of lowering springs on, found out they are more or less brand new! Very chuffed with that.

Tomorrow: Fit new lower arms and front suspension, then do N/S pipe.

[Johnny A]

Right got the new lower arms on! Was a total pain on some of them rusty bolts! The one that holes the hub carrier to the wishbone was very welded-on! Anyways they are all on as is the front lowering springs

Random pic of exhaust system:


With lowering springs on front:

It doesn't look very low, but the springs only have 100miles on them so expect them to go down a little more once bedded in.

Now I am off back outside, this time with a notepad, pen, peice of string and a tape measure..... yep I am measuring up the loom for modding during the week!

[Johnny A]

right over the past few nights the wiring loom mods have been going very well. At this point I have done about 70% of it, the loom plus are now all in their correct positions. The only thing left to do it the largest part which is to lengthen the ECU plug loom by about 15 inches! About 30 odd wires to do

[colonelk]

pah thats only 60 soldering sessions dude.... should have it done in an hour! :p

Good to see it coming along