Engine Fitting

At last I have been able to get back to the serious business of car building. I had originally wanted to have pretty much finished the build by this Easter, but in hindsight that was never going to happen...

I thought it was about time to get the engine and gearbox out of the way and in to the car. In order to achieve this I needed to fit a new Clutch (something I had never done before), attach the Gearbox to the engine, and rig up the engine hoist to slot the combination in to the engine bay.

After removing the old clutch it turned out the spigot bearing also needed replacing which meant removing the flywheel, another new experience. Once removed, the old bearing slipped out easily with the aid of a hammer and the right size socket. The new one also fitted neatly with the help of the same hammer and socket. Flywheel replaced, on with the new clutch.

I had bought a special tool to help line up the clutch plate but it turned out to be just too short to fit through to the spigot bearing so the job needed to be done by eye. Not as difficult as I thought it would be but I did spend a few hours making sure it was right. The gearbox attached using the original bolts which I cleaned up on the bench grinder.

The drive shaft has arrived from being shortened at GBS which I have attached to the differential (I'll add about more about that to a later post). Now just need to slot the engine and gearbox in to the chassis...

I'd bought an engine hoist to get the engine out of the Mazda so it now gets its second use. By now it's gone 4 o'clock on a Sunday evening and I am thinking that I really should leave all this to another day but for some reason I persisted. Actually fitting it was actually incredibly easy. The engine and gearbox just needed a bit of guidance as it lowered in to the chassis, using the load leveling bar helped a lot. Slotting the end of the drive shaft in to the gearbox was the only tricky part, but really the whole activity would have been much easier with another person.

One problem that may turn out to be more serious is the intake manifold and plenum chamber does not fit in the car. There is a crossbeam right where the intake curves down preventing the engine from lowering in to the correct position.

The options are to lift the engine up a bit or to remove the intake and chamber. I tried packing out the engine mounts with washers but to get it high enough for the manifold to clear the crossbeam means the rocker cover will touch the bonnet and will probably need extra space meaning bonnet scoop or something, so I opted to remove the intake for the moment and put off thinking what to do about it.

I've started putting the rear suspension on, which I'll take up in my next post.