| Thames Valley Member - Alan's Injection |
We saw an article on the RHOCaR site published by Dave Wilson on Friday 14 May 2004 titled "Lowering the EFI vellum chamber".
In July 05 this looked just the ticket as our P100 low compression engine due to be blown (supercharged) which had in fact just blown up, cam belt snapped probably due to lack of oil on the cam bearings resulting from the sump impacting the road here in the UK, Kent to be precise and later in France.
The article by Dave shows the engineering without dimension and a full kit is offered for DIY drill and tap with no welding for the plenum to pipes. I didn't like the look of all that drilling and tapping of the plenum so thought about welding the bits together.
Now I know a man who can weld aluminum, he gets his kit in a week and needs something to practice on, me thinks I know what that could be. That was the end of a bright idea, oh we did fit the finished plenum but that caused a second bout of work after the fitting & welding cost £120.
Off I set using the casting marks in the pictures published by Dave for the cut and chop phase of the operation. Cut 20mm above this line.
(Dave Wilson's photograph)
The shunt was done by my man and my instructions were twist it as far as it is easy without making your life difficult. Wrong twist the b***** thing just past where is practical, 110% effort to get the plenum inline with the engine block is the minimum.
Well you can see the front pipe is only just inboard of the outer edge of the plenum, but that is too much! Next time I might use the outer face of the front pipe leg to block off the side hole in the rotated plenum. This would mean cutting the pipe/s with castleations.
That last 10mm is so important on the front pipe as is pulling the back out as this will cause the overhang at the front to swing a few extra mm inwards (towards the engine) go for every mm you can get.
We had to make an adaptor, and in true Robin Hood tradition have used a can, no not a Tesco bean tin, a Batchelors Stilton and Asparagus soup one. They go so much faster you know. Following this picture we turned the slow running throttle body bypass vale round the other way so it faces backwards and thus propels the car forward when in operation (Believe that and you would believe anything). (Nice brown toes there Jim lad). Shorten the throttle cable mounting bracket, cut down the throttle body mounting axle nut and carrier plate and finally cut the side of the bonnet inner edge and we wound up with a near miss, the bonnet actually closes and pops up just like the original Ford engine cover did.
On 16th February 2006 I took another look at the RHOCaR web pages and saw this photo and I took extra note:
(Dave Wilson's Photograph)
I think the chassis tube is the pipe below the throttle body. That is the problem I wished to bring to your attention prior to making a start on this job. As you can see I expect Dave had problems shutting his hood too.
Chris Brown has put additional notes on the RHOCaR web pages. He is correct about modifying the fuel regulator bracket and the high pressure pipe from the fuel rail to the regulator. We have just had a leak caused by my bending of this pipe. A soldering job fixed that, we had loosened the swaging of this pipe into the fuel rail! More photos to come.
Update
The car has now been to leMans twice, though it didn't run on the track during race day. The injection system now works fine and I would not go back to carbs, it starts first time and runs great, of coures except when it has a problem, that means broken. The picture below shows the finished job and the first repair, the soldering on the Batchelors can gave way, a temporary repair with epoxy metal seems to be lasting as it has made the 2ns trip to leMans. The car just started stalling due to the air leak but the chemical metal fixed it.
The difference you should note is the slow run actuator has been turned through 180 degrees, as it is symetrical on the outside this causes no problem and ours works fine with a reverse air flow through the internals. The actuator is below.
Now it becomes hard to see some of the original modifications we had to make as well. So lets start at the begining. Below are the other components associated with casting modification.
They are at the top, the fuel rail with pressure relief valve; bottom left, the throttle body; and bottom right slow running actuator. Only the slow running actuator is left as standard. Below the throttle body is as it was originally, the fuel rail with pressure relief valve has already been modified, a 70 degree bend made in the bracket which supports the pressure relief valve.
I cut a simple V in the side of the suppoer bracket and bent it. Bending the pipe was more difficult and was undertaken while the pressure relief vale was removed from the assembly. As in the original posting this pipe is swaged into the fuel rail and I created a leak, I think. Also I may have cracked the pipe. Alteritively it could have been one of the rubber injector rubbers that I damaged, the upshot was a leak which I never found. Make sure you have a set and a half of the rubber for the injectors, when reassembling it is easy cut a rubber or two on each fitting and the rubbers seem to swell when they are old. Yes I did lubricate them but to no avail.
So here is the replacement fuel rail assembly as fitted to the car, it is made with a copper bend between th fuel rail and the pressure relief valve.
So the throttle body;
As you can see the chemical metal has been used again, I broke the former which the throttle cable runs in. I cut the length of the former bearing down and shortened the nut to suite afer removing the spigot from the nut see below. The bracket which holds the throttle cable end has been choped and a new orientation groove made. The bracket now has a bent extension arm, see 3 below.
I am sure Dave Wilson had a similar problem with the one in his original phota above, but without his article I would never have started. As you can see mine is just in NOW! WOW!
Back to the original photo (again below) you can see the original flexible rubber pipe which connects the throttle body to the airflow meter. I have used a second of these rubber bends to connect the airflow meter to the air filter the cone shaped thing down in the bowels.
So if you need any encouragement or information give me Alan_builder a PM on the Hoodies website.
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