Sunday 13 April 2008

Build Day 9

After taking yesterday off for the show I should spend today revising. The car is like a bug though so a few hours won't hurt right?

Engine components


With the engine in place we can move on and attach the throttle bodies. I gave them a quick clean up with some carb cleaner and they were ready to go. Once pushed into their rubber sleeves they need to be tightened with a 3mm allen key which is qutie a fiddly task on the middle two. Next up is the bike loom. I started with the easy bits like the wiring to the clocks, ECU, coils, sensors and colour coded connections. We're now left with this mess;

This, as you can see, needs some tidying up and we're going to hide as much as possible to leave a clean looking engine bay. There are also loads of spare connections as the car loom takes over from the bike loom with the lights, horn, etc. The rest is pretty boring as I had to check it all through with the Haynes wiring diagram to make sure we weren't missing anything - FUN! After as much as I could stand with that I decided to get the power commander out. It's a small ECU like device that we can use to upload maps to the car controlling its performance and can up the power. This actually has instructions, YIPEE! all be it black and white but it's simple to work out as the the power commander jumps in between the black connections above the gearbox, infront of the throttle bodies.

Cables


After this we wanted to have a look at all the cables. For our paddleshift system it looks like we need to get or make some brackets to attach the rod ends. The clutch cable needs some modifications to the mounting bracket and the bracket it attaches to the clutch lever. The throttle cable however can be fitted. Unfortunately the throttle bodies need to come off which means we need to undo the fiddly jubilee type clips. We attached the throttle cable end to the throttle mechanism and then passed it through the cable bracket and tigtened it up with a 10mm spanner.

Heres how were leaving it today.