And then there were two.
I'm terrible at taking pictures. Maybe it's my small workspace, or how cluttered and close all the stuff is... It's hard to get a clean shot of the new bits.
Anyways, check out the fitment! I'm pumped! I feel validated in the N+1 tool purchase.
3 down, one left. Anybody have ideas for how I can hold everything in place during finish welding?
In reply to Brotus7 :
Tack weld square tubing to the outside of the pipes creating little "boxes" every 12" or so. They'll do a lot to keep everything in place as you weld up the input flanges and such. Also, if you have a spare head or welding table, bolt the header down tight while welding to prevent warpage.
~Peter
Peter, that's a good idea and I have plenty of scrap lying around.
4th tube is in and was surprisingly tedious compared to the others. Now to zap away, my favorite part. Since this is only 18ga, I'm using mig wire instead of the 1/16" filler I typically use for 16ga tube and it's working pretty well.
Project isn't dead, yet. I'll call this chapter "E36 M3 or get off the pot!"...
I finish welded and sandblasted the header after my last post. Then life got busy, and I was generally choosing to go mountain biking instead of working on the car when I had time, probably because I didn't want to make a decision.
In any event, I'm focusing on getting the engine running and then see if the flame comes back. And if not, it's been fun and will be worth more if it runs.
With the header done, I wrapped up fabrication the cooling system (man, what little aluminum welding skill I had evaporated!). Hopefully the fittings are water tight.
I designed and printed a fuel pressure regulator mount this week and now have the fuel system half plumbed.
After fuel, I think it's time to start wiring.
You've come too far to give up now! You've got this.
Some pics of the Birkin pedal setup (context is in another thread). Let me know where to zoom in. I should note that I think my car was modified before my ownership to allow for more driver inseam by moving the pedals away from the driver. The white sheet of plastic is not typical, I think.
Entirely too much work went into this clutch cable fitting to convert from hydro to cable clutch.
3d printed a few prototypes. The pedal cluster initially just had a hardened steel bushing riding in the aluminum pedal... That just won't do, so I pressed in a bronze bushing and bored it to size.
The actual fittings were a fun exercise to figure out how to machine and I'm pretty happy with how it feels.
Other updates:
Um, next on the docket is to stick the pedals back in, connect the clutch cable, and machine up some tube nuts for the shift linkage heim joints.
Progress feels good!
In reply to Mike (Forum Supporter) :
Thanks for the pics. Looks like Birkin changed their pedal setup some time after your car was build. I like how clean your pedal box is.
Story time... Remember how I thought I had the cooling system plumbed? And remember how I was struggling with weld contamination (I think it was a combination of dirty grinding wheel used to sharpen tungsten, dirty wire wheel, and too much shielding gas?).. Before adding water I decided to try pressure testing the system, which inevitably found some issues - worst of which was the water pump.
See, someone put a driveshaft where a chain used to be, and wouldn't you know that the coolant pipe wants to occupy the same space. I tried zapping in an adapter but access was awkward and it got contaminated.
Replacement water pumps are also pretty pricey, which led me down a spiral that ended up with a BMW E46 electric water pump, naturally. Of course, it's controlled by pulse width modulation... So let's see if I can build one a controller.
Folks have done it before and uploaded some schematics with corresponding Arduino code. It worked, but getting it to be reliable enough was going to take more work than I wanted. Luckily there's an aftermarket controller available that's a bit pricey, but then again - it works and it's been field tested.
Next step is to mount the pump and plumb it - no pics, but it went in fairly easily.
Next step: wiring. The engine was used in a Dwarf car, so it already had a trimmed harness but nothing was labeled and there's some suspect stuff going on. Rather than troubleshoot it, I grabbed a complete harness to trim it down myself. As I laid out the harness and prepared to dig in, I did a quick search and found NXS motorsports has a harness trimming service for $200ish. Done! He was able to keep the factory gauge cluster wired in, and provided a diagram to make my life easy.
I didn't quite follow instructions since I wanted the fuel pump to run thru a relay, but all in all it was money well spent. I got the harness back 8 days after I sent it out! Things are coming together!! I spent the next few days drawing up my wiring diagram, then the wiring was pretty quick.
This was my first time using solder butt connectors for splicing and I'm in love. Used ratcheting crimpers and heatshrink for everything else.
Although the wiring is done, I'm going to spend some time cleaning it up during final assembly.
Now we're caught up. Muffler comes tomorrow, so nows as good a time as any to figure out how to marry a Subaru differential to Miata rear knuckles. I planned on welding axles, but the gas tank is right there, and even with a low torque motor it seems like a great "told ya so" waiting to happen.
Dutchman has a reasonably priced axle shortening service, so I just need to chase down either a Subaru axle that fits the diff and is long enough to shorten, or a Mazda unit to mate the the knuckle with length to spare.
After doing some measuring, I thought a Tribeca axle would to the trick, but they cut the axle down under the CV boot so it's doesn't have enough meat to cut new splines. That said, the Subaru inner CV fits the Mazda shaft! The Miata splines are .003" smaller diameter, so there's a tiny bit of play- let's slam it together for a test fit... (hybrid axles in the middle)
It ends up being about .25-.5" too short - so close! That's ok, I have a Protege/Ford Econobox passenger axle coming tomorrow that should have length and girth in the right spots to allow for Subie splines to be machined into it. It'll also allow me to chop up my Miata and Subie axles to test fit, zap together and send in to make sure I get what I need.
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