My wife and I have recently had a baby so the last few months have seen little progress, however this weekend they both went away which gave me a chance to reacquaint myself with the car.
It had gathered a lot of dust and grime over time so the first order of the day was to give it a good clean.
I've had the windscreen frame back from the powder coaters for months now, but have been putting of reassembling it, until now.
The glass has been shifted around the garage wrapped in an old duvet and it's only a matter of time before it gets broken, so I decided it was about time to refit it in the frame.
This was not a task I was looking forward to, and that trepidation was for good reason. Unfortunately; due to my intense concentration, I forgot to take any pictures of the process but the general idea is this:
1. Refit the lower frame first
2. Start in the centre and work outwards gradually
3. Use washing up liquid liberally between the seal and frame
4. Take your time. I ended up doing it three or four times before getting it right
5. Find something soft to work on. I used an old foam mattress
There are two main challenges, the first being the fact that the frame and glass aren't exactly the same shape so careful manipulation is necessary.
The second; and most frustrating, is that the seal isn't a 'U' shape buy instead it is flat. This means that you need to simultaneously fold it over the glass, press it in to the frame and stretch is slightly so the corners meet. All this whilst trying not to break the glass and being covered in washing up liquid!
Ideally a second pair of hands would be useful, however after much cursing and nervous sweating I eventually managed to piece it all together without major incident.
I think it looks great along with all the other matte black 'chrome'
I've actually had two Cobra builds underway, one a GD and the other a lesser known Fujimi RS-5 427. The latter is generally a quicker build and only took a couple of months!
Now that the engine and gearbox have been coupled together it was time to deliver it to GD, they need it in order to fabricate the mounts for the chassis.
The 20th May was the GD open day at their new premises in Grantham so I seized the opportunity and loaded the powertrain in to a borrowed trailer and headed up.
It was a great turnout and fabulous day despite the heavy downpours and the engine was unloaded without issue. I was pleasantly surprised to find most people very interested in my choices rather than the shunning I was expecting for not using an American V8!
I still have to reconnect the loom to the various ECU plugs but that can be done when I get it back along with the chassis, hopefully in a couple of months.
It was also great to meet a few new people, some of which I had already chatted with online but great to put a face to a name.
So I finally received my adapter plate & pilot bearing reducing sleeve (SWR Motorsport) and clutch & flywheel (TTV Racing) so I could bolt the two together.
I had trouble getting accurate readings while clocking the bellhousing however the gearbox did slide on easily. Even though, I've ordered another DTI so will likely do it again just to be sure.
There's a lot of bolt on, bolt off activity to set this all up but I got there eventually. The bearing sleeve was used as the TKO pilot bush was too small for the 1UZ crankshaft, it's a tight fit so was put in the freezer the night before and then fitted with a dab of Loctite 272 in to the end of the crank. The pilot bush just slots inside this.
Next the flywheel was bolted on with new ARP bolts and torqued up as per ARPs instructions. The clutch pressure plate, bell housing and adapter plate were temporarily installed so I could measure the distance from the gearbox mating face to the pressure plate fingers. This measurement was then used to set the adjustment of the Tilton hydraulic release bearing.
Next the bellhousing came of, pressure plate removed and bellhousing refitted complete with adapter so I could clock it in. The opening in the adapter is quite small so I struggled to get the DTI lined up properly so I will probably have to repeat this step once I get a different DTI.
With the bellhousing back off again I could assemble and align the clutch. My alignment tool needed a few wraps of tape to get the right fit but was pretty straightforward.
The bellhousing was then bolted to the gearbox and the clutch release was slid over the input shaft bearing retainer. This release bearing requires one of the bearing retainer bolts to be replaced with a pin which stop the bearing from spinning. The release bearing position can be adjust by screwing it in or out on its own sleeve. There are two hoses which need to exit the bellhousing so holes were drilled foe these, although they may have ended up too close to the exhaust!
With a bit of graphite grease applied to the splines, I could now mate the engine and gearbox together. The engine was on the hoist and the gearbox on its stand (old office chair) so a sexond pair of hands was needed to keep everything steady but it all slid together remarkably easily.
I will be taking the assembly up to GD at the beginning of April so they can make up the engine mounts with a view to hopefully picking up the chassis at the GD open day on 20th May, fingers crossed.
The engine has been stripped down externally, all the parts media blasted and painted. As the outside of the car is loud I decided to be a bit more restrained with the engine colour scheme using a matt black and graphite grey two tone, the only orange parts so far are the fuel rails.
I stripped the original Lexus wiring loom to its bare neceasities and have begun rerouting and sleeving the loom completely. I can't go much further with that until I have the gearbox mounted and decided on the oil temperature, oil pressure and MAF sensor locations.
With regards to the gearbox, I have ordered the following:
1. Adapter plate - Ford TKO to Lexus bellhousing (SWR Motorsport)
2. Reducing sleeve to fit TKO pilot bush in 1UZ crank (SWR Motorsport)
3. Custom flywheel and clutch (TTV Racing)
4. Tilton 6102 concentric clutch slave cylinder (from Jegs in USA)
5. ARP flywheel bolts
The above should allow me to finally connect the engine to the gearbox and finish the wiring loom. Then I can cart the lot off up to GD so they can design the mounts to fit it in the chassis.
It's been quite a while since my last post and progress has been slow of late, but has still be moving along steadily. Not much has happened with the body as I have been concentrating on the engine and drive train, there are two major challenges with this:
Engine Wiring Loom
To cut a long story short, I managed to compile a comprehensive list of pin outs for my ECU using a selection of wiring diagrams from various sources (some in Japanese!).
This allowed me to strip out all the unnecessary wiring (power steering, traction control, ABS, aircon, auto gearbox etc) and install a few relays.
I was then able to start it up on the hoist to prove everything; especially the OEM Lexus immobiliser, was working. Voila, it worked and sounded fabulous with out any exhaust fitted, I needed ear defenders!
The loom will be tidied up and rerouted once the engine goes back together.
Manual Gearbox
As I mentioned in a previous post, the Lexus UZ family of engines were never available with a manual gearbox so there is no direct bolt on replacement for the 5 speed Auto. Although briefly considering keeping the Auto and making it 'Flappy Paddle', I have decided I will have to vet a machine shop make an adapter plate.
There are already some off the shelf adapters for BMW and Toyota gearboxes, but the ratios don't suit the final drive so I have opted for a TKO600 instead. A man called Roger; formally of Thor Racing, but now of SJ Performance Engineering has a lot of experience with these engines and is the only person I can find to has mated a 1UZ to a Tremec gearbox before so I'll be catching up with him on Tuesday.
With the wiring loom removed I now started stripping the rest of the engine for cleaning and painting, I'm not going to bother with the internals so the heads will stay put for now but pretty much everything else has come off including timing belt and water pump which will be replaced.
