Throttle pedal

I must admit, I didn't think much of the standard Sylva offering for a throttle pedal fixing. It consisted of a bolt with two nuts....theory being, bolt through a hole on the pedal box, slide on throttle pedal, tighten up one nut but not tight to the pedal, use the other nut as a locking nut......OK, I'm sure this would have been OK, but it did mean there was a fair amount of slop in the pedal (sideways), and also, the potential for the nuts to tighten up and jam the pedal was (I thought) too high. My basic thought was to simply put a bar across the entire box and slide the pedal over it with the appropriate spacers.

So, I gave my design brief to my engineering consultants (i.e. retired dad)......

In true engineering style, the brief turned into a mission to see just how good he could make a throttle pedal pivot....so a shaft was machined up with push through spacers, the pedal received a couple of high quality bearings that fitted....result...a pedal with no sideways movement whatsoever, and a very smooth action. Very pleased

More dash pics

Ultimately, as a future mod, I will fit a carbon dash, and move the key to the side pod.......

Dash

Had a pop at the dash this week.......I made a bracket up with a curved edge then grafted on the dash .The dash is actually a westfield dash from playskool and has a nice rounded edge for IVA. I really wanted carbon, but this will be fine for the forseeable future. All put in with rivnuts so it can be removed if required.

Cutting the top wasn't easy but the end result so far looks quite good. I need to now cut around the horrible key barrel  and the steering lock

Lots of issues with the position of the handbrake vs the dash, but got there in the end

 I've stuck on a print of the dash so I can get an idea of position.

Bright light......

 

 

12 volts and hydraulics

Just returned from a very relaxing 4 days at Center parcs. A huge thank you to the amazing people at Naomi House who looked after our little Ollie while mum, me and our eldest were able to get away from the hum drum of everyday life and let our hair down for 4 nights. It was hard leaving Ollie for that long, but we really did need it, the Tracheostomy has meant that neither myself or my wife ever get a night where we are not up at least three times.......The staff at Naomi House (who offer respite for families with disabled children) are simply incredible.

Anyway, batteries recharged, and a battery in the car....thanks to Mark for the loan of a stunt battery so I could make up a bracket.

 I thought carefully about where to position it, the obvious place is just behind the rear bulk head behind the passenger, but having a think about weight distribution I think it would help to have some weight further over the left hand side of the car and a forward of the driver. The simple logic for this is because the engine is over to the right as is the driver, so anything to off set this I'm guessing will help in my quest to have a rapid track car.

The clutch hydraulics are also almost finished (just need some small hose clips). The connection and the pipe was retained from from the Puma, I reformed this with my trusty pipe bender, and made a small bracket to hold the pipe.

Back to the engine position I mentioned in the last post, You can see here how much I've dropped it.....

 .....which has given a little extra clearance for the air filters. As mentioned before, the clearance is far from ideal, but I've tried to make to best of a bad situation...The trade off was always inlet length vs closeness to the rear bulk head.

 Finally, and very dull....the fuel tank fittings. I really would like to use the aeroquip connectors, and braided hose all round, but will put this down as a future upgrade.

The engine makes an appearence.....Again!

 Lets start with the brake lines which, incidentally, are now all in. The rears were fairly straight forward, and I opted not to use the stainless P clips I purchased in bulk at the start of the project. A couple of reasons for this...a), I find them quite large when space is tight, and b). The holes to fix them (if you want to rivnut them) need to be 9mm if you want to use a 6mm bolt. So, I've gone for the more indiscreet clips for the longer lengths off copper nickle, but finished off on the tight bends with the P clip. Anyway, job done.

While still waiting for a lottery win, I need to keep busy without spending money, so the engine went back in. Although I will need to remove it, is was a good opportunity to see if the gear stick resided in the correct place when the handbrake and steering wheel are in situ..Thankfully it does, and reminded me how utterly superb the gear linkage works with the IB5 gearbox. Another interesting snippet I found out recently was that the Puma gear box has closer ratios than the standard fiesta version, which will be nice on track. The Ford Racing Puma came with an LSD, but I'm guessing a gearbox from one of those is as rare as rocking horse doo doo.

Something else that was bothering me was the engine position...Not because there is anything wrong with it, it's just I feel it could be a tad better placed....Why do I think this?. Well, there is a cut out in the bottom of the chassis (you may be able to see it in some of the older pics), the sole purpose is so the gearbox / engine can sit a little lower, and I suspect it was there before Sylva decided to add rubber engine mounts (hence raising the engine higher).......BUT, it doesn't actually do anything, the gearbox sits above it, so actually it has no purpose. The old grey cells were working overtime (again) and a quick picture taken from under the car with the gearbox linkage in place showed a surprising amount of ground clearance. So, If the engine could be lowered a tad it would enable the throttle bodies / air filters to have a little more clearance, and of course lower the centre of gravity (only slightly).

So, with this in mind, I lowered the engine down an additional 15mm simply by adding spacers between the top engine mounts and the engine....Simples, and had the desired result.

The exhaust system is really going to be a pain...the Stainless manifold that I purchased with car is rather nice and was a reasonable price, but getting the silencer hanging out of the gap at the bottom of the rear clam is not going to be easy as the whole thing hinges rearwards. There is an option of hinging it forwards which would give more room, but having seen a few pics of other builds, it all looks like a convoluted affair. It's a shame because I could imagine this car  with a nice twin exhaust like an Elise, but alas I doubt this will work. But I am exploring this solution at the moment (more about this next time).

Finally, to finish off, a couple of shots of the rear (that should get the blog views up!). It really does look rather nice.........