Busy Week

I've been off work this week (hurrah!), but my wife (as they do) had plans for me, so the play room & utility have been decorated, the stairs & hall have been finished, & I've tiled behind the cooker. None of this is significant of course. What IS important is that I've also just about finished the engine mounts for the Zetec.

I made up the near-side one first as that was the most difficult, & my welding seemed to be even more lousy than usual - & I cut the main tube too short - BUT, I got there in the end, & a little body filler & some paint works wonders.

Then dear reader I moved on to the off-side mount, by this time I'd had some practise & my welding, having come on in leaps & bounds, had improved to the extent that without a word of exaggeration I'd describe it as "mediocre".

It needs a fair bit of trimming & reinforcing yet, but so far, so good.

The Zetec's In

Mmmmm BIG NEWS – The Zetec is indeed in.

In the end it was remarkably easy, just drop it in with the hoist & mate it to the gearbox, the wooden cradle I'd made to support it until I make up the engine mounts worked a treat, placing the engine in just the right place & there were no clearance problems at all.

This left me with plenty of time for messing about, so I fitted the exhaust properly, which meant cutting away the aluminium side plate, then I looked at the top & bottom hose routing, the bottom hose looks easy enough, but the top hose is awkward, but should be OK, then I made up a ply bracket for the new idler wheel it needs to keep the water pump rotating the right way, you can see it in the last photo, obviously I’ll re-make it in alloy in due course. But first I need to turn my attentions to the engine mountings.

Ah! a satisfying afternoon's playing.

Well, the credit card's taken another bashing, Monday's damage was £140 for the particular clutch release bearing I need, a fuel pump & a starter motor. This morning I've ordered an idler pulley. Have I mentioned last weekend's activity? The crossflow was ousted from it's position of dominance at the front of the Fury & a very nice man called Mark collected it the very next day, leaving me with an empty engine bay & a pile of £20 notes - hence the spending spree.

 

I would've liked to try the Zetec in for size, but I need the release bearing first, & anyway, the sun shone so I went out for a stroll & a nice lunch with my wife. I did manage to fit in some cleaning & got most of the accumulated crud off the chassis tubes, pipes & wires it has worked it's way into over the last three years.

 

One pleasing thing I discovered was that the crossflow weighed in at 110Kg, making the Zetec only 4Kg heavier & with all the other weight saving (mostly brakes & wheels) the car could well be below 580Kg with all fluids - which is light for a car-engined car with doors & a full windscreen. It's over 1/4tonne lighter than the "featherweight" Lotus Elise.

 

Light is good.

One Out - One Almost In

Big progress in the last couple of days, the front bodywork & pods are off the car, cleaned up & residing in the conservatory, the crossflow is out of the car & waiting for it's new owner to collect it & I've given the engine bay a good clean. I'm itching to test fit the Zetec, but it'll have to wait for me to buy a clutch release bearing & sort out a temporary way of supporting it in the engine bay while I make up the mountings.

Alternator Mounted

One of the issues I was facing with the Zetec swap was how to drive the electrics. Just Ebaying a Focus alternator wouldn't do it because modern alternators are controlled by the car's central "brain" & won't work without it, but I'd only recently overhauled the old alternator in the Fury, & asking around I think I've sourced a multi-vee pulley (thanks Mango). So all I had to do was mount it. A little googling provided off the shelf answers ranging from £36, to over £100 (this is just for the brackets!), so I drew this up on the computer - and I saw that it was good.

I ordered some alloy angle, chopped it up & made this, seen below mounted to the engine with the alternator in place (not quite finished at this stage).

That got it fixed down, but I needed an adjuster to keep the belt tight. I'd drawn up a bracket that attached to two existing hole positions, but it was too far back & the adjuster wouldn't have been rigid.
On the engine already was a bolt holding the cam pulley cover on, but that was going into a plastic cover & a thin steel bracket, so had the same wobblyness issues. It looked like there was nothing I could mount to in the right area. Then I was struck by the "bleedin' obvious" & combined a rigid alloy bracket with the thin steel one to make something that was both in the right place AND strong enough.

I took the cover bolt out, replaced it with a length of studding supported by an alloy bracket as shown in these pics. I also made the slotted strap from an off-cut from the main bracket. Of course it may all prove to be a waste of time, but I think it should be OK, all the parts have clearance & there's plenty of adjustment. Naturally it's also a lot lighter than the steel one on the crossflow. Total cost for all this lightweight alloy wizardry? £11 + £3P&P.

Marvelous

Engine's Ready

Weeeell, a Friday afternoon & home early from work. Push out the car & get the Zetec ready!
I was obviously having another of my "bad engineering days" when everything I do goes wrong, but after a struggle I have the stronger ARP bolts on the engine's big ends, & the new sump in place, the clutch is torqued up, so it's ready to go in the car.

I've had a measure up & surprisingly it's actually smaller than the crossflow - in terms of envelope size - that is it's slightly shorter in hieght & length & not as wide, although is is much boxier, so it fills the space envelope more. I still think getting it all under the bonnet is going to be a chellenge.

Under Way

The box of bit was at work this morning when I arrived, so this evening I've knocked in the spigot bearing & replaced the flywheel bolts with the very pretty ARP ones. Bit geeky I know, getting excited by some bolts, but they are "propper". The Ford one is on the left, (the ARP one has "ARP" engraved on it). They are all smooth & engineered - I may have to go & lie down.

As the second pic shows they are all installed & torqued up ready for the clutch plate to go on, hopefully tomorrow.

And So It Begins........

........ today I started stripping the crossflow out of the Fury - I didn't get far, just disconnected some wiring, took off the alternator & drained the water & removed the top & bottom hoses.

It's unseasonably warm here in Surrey at the moment, but as soon as it cools down as it inevitably will, I'll remove the bonnet & side pods, pull the engine & get started in earnest.

STILL waiting for my ARP bolts & other stuff from Burton's - it's not their fault, DHL can't find a building at that building's post code. Burton's have called them, I've called them & e-mailed. Hopefully it should appear tomorrow, then I can prep the engine with the new bolts, the new sump, & the spigot bearing.

Wish me luck ........ I'm going in.