Engine Bay - 3

Another day another bracket...... this time for the fluid reservoir hoses:

Made from some bent up aluminium plate, two modified Harley Davidson triple hose clamps and bolted the steering column bracket. I haven't come up with a neat way of fixing the three pressure hoses yet.

There is a bit of a delay on the next batch of parts as there have been some supplier problems with the windscreens....... maybe I should use the time constructively and cut out the bonnet hole for the scoop and the scoop opening!!

Bleeding Brakes!

Fitted the brake pressure hoses to the chassis bulkhead fitting and with some pedal pumping help from my wife the braking system was filled and bled. Rolling the chassis backwards and forwards 6 inches it only takes slight finger pressure to stop it dead. The pedal can only be pushed about 1/4 of it's travel before it becomes immovable. The pedal is not spongy, rather very firm but not hard. The feel of the pedal will improve as the pads are bedded in to the discs.

But most importantly - after sitting for 10 minutes with the pedal pushed as hard as I could manage - I could find no leaks anywhere.

So I can fit the body in the comfort that I won't have to take it off again to tighten leaking unions on either the clutch or brakes.

I'll have to bleed everything again as I'll have to disconnect the pressure hoses to fit the body - but that's no big deal.

Result!

Main Body Loom - 2 & Hydraulics

Round 2 with the body loom! After some more contortion, effing and blinding, the relays and fusible link were fitted into place: Flushed with this success I then fitted the fusebox and started to tidy up the loom:

Having been working in the engine bay I thought I might as well fit the fluid reservoirs and washer bottle - I'll be needing the reservoirs shortly to fill, bleed and test the hydraulic circuits:
Continuing with the hydraulic theme the next thing was to sort out the pedal box hoses:Now at first sight you may well think that the reservoir feed hoses should be shorter..... however they need to be long enough to allow the pedal box to adjust to the fully forward position (for my other half). The snag is when the pedals are set fully back there's a bit of slack to take up!! I'll have a look at what can be done to tidy it up later.

I'm quite pleased with this next bit - a bit of forethought that worked. I had always been a bit worried about the brake and clutch circuits leaking when first tested. I didn't want to put the body on - connect everything up - find it leaks - and then have to take the body off to tighten up those inaccessible unions. So the plan had always been to put the body on a trestle that was low enough to allow the pedal box to fitted and connected to the union block on the chassis by routing the hoses straight down (instead of around the inside of the engine bay - the final route when the body is on).

The plan worked: Just need some brake fluid now..... soon I'll find out how many leaks I have!

More Bits

Had a trip down to GD this morning and picked up some more parts - The body loom:
There's rather a lot of it and it needs modifying to incorporate the additions I've made in the engine bay loom!

Next is the adjustable pedal box - this really is a masterful piece of engineering - I might just put it on the coffee table and stare at it!:
Also I picked up some of the flexible hose for the pedal box and the clutch reservoir - the brake reservoir and the bulkhead hoses are on back order: And finally the heater and de-mister kit:I also collected a battery tray, washer botttle and brake light switch and bracket.

I was the planning the first job to be the mocking up of the pedal box and testing the hydraulic circuits. However I can't do this without the missing flexible bulkhead hoses. So I think the first job will be modifying the heater box (it wont fit in a MKIV body as it is) and fitting that followed by modifying the body loom and installing that.

Brake Pipes Finished - Fuel Line Not....

Set to work drilling holes in the chassis and fitting rivet nuts and rubber lined p-clips for the brake pipes. All the chassis members that were drilled into were waxoiled through the drilled holes before fitting the rivet nuts. A fairly neat result:

I also bent a fitted the rear brake feed. Like other people I found this pipe to be a little on the long side which results with a bit of a "loop" by the union block. However there should be plenty of clearance to the clutch bellhousing - in hindsight it would have been easier not to use the brake pipe kit supplied but to make them up myself - might still have to do this if clearance is a problem?

I also bent to shape the rigid fuel line (10mm and a real thumb killer!) - However the p-clips supplied are 9mm... for a 10mm pipe! - I'll have to get some before I can fix this, so at the moment it is held in place with masking tape:

The engine doesn't arrive until w/c 17th June - that's 7 weeks away with not that many things to be doing! All I have on the to-do list at the minute is:

• Fit the replacement track rod ends and set the front end up (again)..... I'm still waiting for the track rod ends from GD!
• Clip the fuel line into place - need the right clips and to sort out clip spacing.
• Fill the diff with Oil.
• Fit some external return springs on the handbrake mechanism.
• Fit jaguar wheels ready for engine / gearbox install (should be getting them next week - thanks again Lee).
• Obtain all the parts that I need for the engine install stage and prior to recieving the body(propshaft, speedo cable, throttle cable and bracket, handbrake cable, radiator, twin fan kit, coolant header tank, oil cooler, coolant hoses, exhaust system, gearbox mounting bracket and anything else I've forgotten!).

So I think I'll spend the next few weeks sourcing parts - GD can supply everything you need - with some parts this is important to ensure compatibility - but there must be plenty of items that I can get cheaper elsewhere?

Still doesn't seem like enough to fill seven weeks? - I feel some garage tidying coming on!

Undoing the undone

Having had to take the steering arms off to get the track rod ends out I needed to put them back. As I have now got my hands on some more lockwire I was able to do this. All I need now are my replacement track rod ends.... still waiting.....

I also received my latest addition to the tool family today .... a blind, nut and stud riveting set. So now I can fit some rivet nuts and fix the brake pipes to the chassis members.

I'm getting towards the point where I am going to need some wheels to start moving the chassis about. I posted a message on the cobraclub forum to see if anyone had any surplus to requirements jag wheels. Turns out a chap from North Yorkshire comes up this way on business and has offered to meet up next week.. Thanks Lee.

Just need to pluck up some courage to start drilling holes in my nice shiny chassis!

More Brake Pipes

After the pivot brackets - seeing as I was in the mood for doing things I'd been putting off - I thought I'd do the front brake pipe feed. As the pipes are made up and of fixed length it was going to be tricky to get it to fit as it followed a slightly tortuous route.

Anyways, after a lot of bend it, try it, bend it, try it etc..... the job was done - reasonably neatly as well as a bonus!
You can see that the pipe is held in place with masking tape at the minute - I need to get a rivet nut gun so I can fix the pipe clips to the chassis. I could just rivet the clips in place - but bolting them into rivet nuts allows the pipes to be easily removed. It's nice to have such confidence in one's own work!

Bend it like......

Still a trifle downbeat today - thinking about track rod ends. So time for something simple. I removed the transmission tunnel sheet, radiator support frame and body mountings so I could Waxoyl the inside of the chassis tubes. However judging by the smell from inside the tubes this may have already been done. A bit monotonous feeding the spray tube through the fixing holes - but well worth doing.

I felt like doing something else so I thought I would start fitting some of the brake pipes. I fitted the brake union mounting block, front splitter and the two pipes to the front callipers:

All pretty easy as each only has two bends in a straight line (note the longer pipe requires fixing to the chassis yet)

Next step was to fit the rear splitter and the two pipes to the rear calipers - these were awkward little buggers - short with tight bends.

I cheated my making a template out of a scrap piece of copper pipe and then using that as a guide to bend the pipe supplied by GD (fixed length with fittings on the end). It was important to ensure that the brake pipes cleared the handbrake calipers as shown:

I'm not sure how you will ever get back to these with the body on? Might have to devise a way of checking the integrity of the pipe runs as the pedal box is fitted to the body so you can't check the whole system until the body is on.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll find out what is wrong with my track rod ends?

Same Again

Got home a bit early from work today so managed a quick couple of hours in the garage. Essentially I just repeated the previous exercise on the other side at the front. Lockwire, brake pipes etc. Finished by fitting the braided flexible hoses and tightening all the unions.

To complete things I set the front hub end-floats to the Jaguar spec using a dial gauge as shown below. Whilst I was at it I double checked the brake disc run-out - all was OK.

With the end-floats set I fitted the locking caps and split pins and finally fitted the hub covers.

Job Done!

Unfinished business up front

Time to finish some of the jobs I've been collecting up front!

First thing to do was to drill the steering arm bolts for lockwire. There have been some posts on the cobraclub forum concerning bolt heads braking off due to inaccurate drilling. This can be a problem if you drill across opposing faces - however if you drill as you would for nuts - i.e across adjacent faces then this does not pose any problems. This would be impossible if it wasn't for this handy little jig:
And the finished product: So the steering arm bolts were fitted and torqued up together with the lower calliper mounting bolt. The three bolts were then lockwired as shown which prevents the brake pipe from clashing with the lockwire. Speaking of brake pipes it was time to make some new ones - having re-installed the brake pipe bracket the right way up! This was done pretty easily using 3/16 Kunifer pipe (copper nickel alloy). It is important to put the right flares on the respective ends of the pipe - one end male the other end female. Pipe flaring was again pretty easy (after a couple of practice goes) using the simple flaring tool below - this shows the mandrel ready to be pushed in to form a male or single flare. After this has been formed if the mandrel is removed the 45 degree taper on the screw can be used to form a female or double flare. After a bit of measuring and bending the end result was reasonably neat:But more importantly - on full bump there was sufficient clearance to the upper wishbone arm.Just need to do the same on the other side now.

Brake Pipe Bracket Dilema? - or not?

Carrying on from the last episode - I swapped over the brake pipe brackets and fitted them upside down. This gave much greater clearance to the rigid brake pipe and fitting. The rigid brake pipe was a replacement Jaguar part and had to be re-bent to suit.

However, after fitting the braided brake hoses it became apparent that the revised positioning was not ideal and the braided hoses had a tendency to kink at as the wheel has turned from lock to lock - it also rubbed on the lower wishbone.Having bent the Jaguar pipe to suit the new arrangement it dawned on me that the problem of it fouling the upper wishbone with the brackets fitted correctly could possibly be solved by re-routing the pipe.

In order to check properly I thought I would fit the steering rack and check the extreme lock positions of the wheel hubs. This was easier said than done as the large rack mounting rubber took copious amounts of hot water, WD40 and bludgeoning before the rack clamp could be fitted properly - this took quite some time.

Having temporarily fitted the rack (it needs to be adjusted for bump steer yet) I found that at the extreme lock positions with the brackets mounted the right way up - if the rigid brake pipe was re-routed there would only be the smallest of clashes with the brake pipe fitting on the bracket and the wishbone. This could only occur with the road spring fully compressed and on the bump stop with full lock applied - never going to happen in reality!

So jobs to do:

1. Drill the four new steering arm bolts for lockwire


2. Fit the steering arms and callipers


3. Make up new rigid brake pipes for the front callipers


4. Fit the braided brake hoses and check movement


5. Fit track rod ends


6. Set toe-in


7. Correct Bump Steer

I'm Going away for the Bank Holiday Weekend so I've got time to reflect on hopefully getting these things right first time!