September 27, 2003
Day 14 - engine in
First thing to do was to have another go at bleeding the brakes. This time I roped in my girlfriend and use the old fashioned 'up/down' on the brake pedal technique. I got a little bit of air out and the pedal was a bit higher once we'd finished so I'll leave it for the time being. There was still a leak from the rear flexible hose/solid pipe connection which seemed to be caused by the tightened locknut acting to pull the two parts away from each other. I ended up just leaving the locknut finger tight and will get Caterham to sort it on the PBC. The leak seems to have stopped though (famous last words).
The engine crane had arrived from HSS just before 08:00 (!) so everything was in place. I spent a couple of hours finishing off the gearbox/bell housing/engine assembly and bolting the starter motor in place. (Note the car is down on it's wheels for the first time!)
Next job was to protect the engine bay. I didn't know it then, but make sure you put some tape/card on the pedal box edge (I had anyway) as there is a particularly nasty metal bracket which sticks out and tends to catch on there.
Steve (Grubbster) who had just taken his car to Dartford for the PBC and SVA dropped in with two mates on the way back to Gosport and gave me some tips on the engine installation and other bits and pieces that I still had to do.
My best mate had just had his first baby so wasn't able to help me as planned, but luckily Lucy volunteered instead.
So, just got to get the engine/gearbox angle right now! It's worth spending some time getting this right and we had two or three attempts at offering the assembly to the car before we went for it. Once sorted, it went in pretty easily and I didn't even think it was particularly tight. It was a real pain in the arse getting the propshaft/gearbox output shaft to engage and I ended up having to feed them together by hand whilst constantly trying to turn them one way or the other until they finally slotted together (doesn't sound too bad, but I probably spent an hour and a half attempting this whilst above/below/at the side of the car). After about three hours it was finally in!
Time to go out - I left the engine sitting on it's mounts and still in the crane just in case anything went wrong.
5.5 hours today, 47 hours total.
Posted by charles at September 27, 2003 7:56 PM