More CADing

 Following on from the last post where I'd drawn up the plenum & the throttle body in CATIA V5, I then refined the design & re-drew it in SolidWorks as I find it more intuitive.

Looking at the compound angle cut in the plenum I realised there was a lot of space on the flat closing plate, which was an ugly feature so I moved the TB as far to one side as I could get it & yes, there was just enough room for the Idle Speed Control Valve.

The way the system works is that the butterfly in the TB shuts off the airflow to the engine, but there is a bypass drilling that allows air past the butterfly into a chamber in the base of the TB. This chamber is connected via a pipe within the Ford inlet manifold to the ISCV which meters air into the engine to allow it to idle at the correct speed. As I'm not using the Ford inlet I needed to duplicate this system.

This is the same view as above but with the TB & the ISCV removed, you can see the 3D printed mounting block with the large hole for the main airway & beneath it the collector chamber for the bypass air. To the right are 2 holes for mounting the ISCV, an upper hole coming from the collector chamber & a lower hole straight into the plenum.

This is the same view again with the mounting block shown transparent & the airway through it highlighted.

Hopefully this should all work wonderfully well. I am a little concerned about the temperature resistance of the 3D printing, but the Ford inlet manifold is thermoplastic & that's in direct contact with the cylinder head, this will be well away, thermally insulated by the silicone hoses & cooled by the airflow, so fingers crossed.

Also currently un-reported in this organ - the engine I bought was missing an upper cam belt cover. On the Fury I made a cover from aluminium to make the engine look older that it was. That's not a consideration on the much more modern looking Quantum, so I drew one up & printed it, for the first time I changed filament colours in mid-print & was quite please with the result.

It's certainly a unique touch.

Jommatry

 

I think I've worked out the correct shape for the plenum to get the throttle body ("TB") to clear the brake servo & point the the air intake somewhere towards the front of the car. This has mostly happened because it's too cold in the garage & I can do CADing in the house. The pic to the right is the plenum with a very roughly modeled TB on the right hand side - the viewpoint is more-or less standing in front of the car looking down over the engine. At the right hand side the plenum has been cut on a compound angle (an angle in two planes) to tip the TB forward & up to clear the brake servo.

If I'd made the cut at two angles, the shape would be difficult to transcribe onto the plenum for cutting, so I used a plane controled by three points to cut the CAD model, each point is a measured distnce along one of the folds, so marking out is easy, draw on the points, roughly align them & join with a pencil line.

This is how it looks on the engine. It's not precise, but there's "wriggle room" by adjusting the length of the legs in the silicone hoses connecting the inlet runners to the plenum. A by-product of fitting the TB here is a nice smooth throttle cable run.

 

 

 

So here's what I mean - there's the cut line marked on the plenum & it's obviously not striaght.

 

But seen from the other angle, it's a stright cut line! It's like magic isn't it?

When I'm feeling brave (probably after the silicone hoses have arrived & been test fitted) I'll slice down that line, cut some 1/4" plate to fit, tap four holes to match the throttle body & weld it together - OK, I'll get someone else to weld it together.

But if it works that's another major hurdle crossed.

Festive Period

 Over the last few days I've made a little progress, I've fitted the inertia shut-off switch to shut down the fuel pumps in the event of a crash, the switch I got had three terminals, a common, a normally on & a normally off, so I've wired the supply from the relay to the common, wired the normally on to the fuel pumps & the normally off to a lamp adjacent to the switch. The switches don't usually trip, but if it does the light will draw my attention to the reason the engine won't start.

I've also been looking at the inlet plenum - & cutting it up.

I did some trial fitting & found that, as expected, if I fitted it the was the manufacturer intended it hit the suspension turret - it was intedned for a rear wheel drive car with the engine the right way round, my plan had been to cut the "runners" - the tubes between the plenum & the mounting flange - & fit the plenum the other way up. However, that meant the throuttle body hit the brake servo (sigh). The plan now is to cut off the "badger's head" tapered part of the plenum at 60 deg & mount the throttle body on an angled plate which should work.

 

 But having cut the thing in two I started modifying it to fit on the part it should just match - the mounting plate of the old inlet manifold, I got it to fit but was a little shocked when I looked inside the runners & saw the miss-match between them & the plate. In the photo you can see the step where the lower side of the runner is about 8mm below the hole in the plate. I've done some porting work to blend this out to try to smooth the air flow.

So the inlet side is almost done, it needs some packers made up & some fettling done but it's not far off, this photo's 90 deg out, so you'll have to put your right ear on your shoulder to see it propely, the black bit is the mounting flange & the runners, the silver bit is the fuel rail & injectors.

Next job - the plenum itself.

Roundup

 A fair bit's been happeing, mostly because I'm going to see my Dad on Boxing day, so as Covid is running riot where I live I've decided to stay in the house (& the garage).

So progress has been made, firstly the engine is mounted - this was not as simple as I'd been led to believe, there is a bracket on the sub-frame that mounts the engine mount - it could not have been more awkward if Quantum deliberatly made it so, it's only an angle bracket with a horizontal face for the engine mount & a vertical one for support, so it really doesn't matter which side the vertical is, but it's on the forward side, so it got in the way of the wider Zetec head.

That is NOT a lot of clearance. I haven't trimmed it like that, that's just how it ended up.

The engine mount had been a git to get on as well, but I took it off, jacked the engine out of the way, covered it over with a rag & reached for the angry grinder with a cutting wheel. There was just enough space to get it in & I made vertical cuts, levered the slices out with a mole wrench & cleaned all the edges up

This was better, I've taken a little more off since & now have the plastic cam belt cover on. It was during the repeated removal & replacement of the engine mount that I remembered I own a borescope. The camera is 8mm dia & the mounting bolt holes (tubes) are 11 so it was easy to put the camera into a tube & jack the engine until the tube & the thread were aligned - then fit the bolt. This was much easier than trying to align it all blind.

The next job was to go around the engine bay fitting other bits & tightening bolts that had been just wound in to keep parts roughly in place during the fitting. I also renewed all the nyloc nuts holding the suspension on.

 While I was walking past the car I noticed the steering wheel looked a bit - spotty. I looked closer, then wished I haden't, there's quite a collection of mould there, yellow and white!

 

 

 

 

I then looked at the inlet plenum - the one I was complaining about a couple of weeks ago. It's all a bit sad really, as built it won't fit (even if it would fit on the engine - which it won't) the right way round because it hits the suspension tower, my plan had been to cut though the runners & flip the plenum the other way up so it pointed out over the gearbox - no, then it hits the brake servo. My next thought was to block the inlet off & fit the throttle body to the top, like it is dead centre of this photo.

Now I've always fancied a car with an air filter poking up through the bonet, but I really don't think the Quantum could carry it off.

I'm working up another plan which I'm hoping will work.

Today I've been looking at the electrics & have fitted the ECU on the front bulkhead with an improvised bent up bracket, not very pretty, but it's a LONG way out of sight, it was really awkward to fit the bolts but I got there in the end - I just hope it works because it's pretty damn inaccessible if I ever need to get to it.

 

 

 

 

As a finale, I fitted the OBD port into the glove box wall.

A kit car with an OBD port - what ever next??

Midweek

 I got very little done last weekend as I was waiting on parts, but a small hose adapter arrived yesterday & today a cam belt & water pump kit arrived. The elbow 6-8 dia adapter enabled me to finish the plumbing of the fuel plate, so this afternoon as there was not much of anything going on at work, I came home & fitted it, making off all the hoses & connecting up all the wires EXCEPT the earth for the high pressure pump, which I'l do after the system is flooded as I don't want the pump spinning dry while the low pressure pump sucks some fuel out of the tank & fills the swirl pot. I all looks OK, but can't be tested yet.

With that done I could <drum roll> put the rear wheels back on & drop the back of the car back onto the garage floor.

Then it was a fairly simple matter of changing the water pump, pulleys and cam belt for the new ones, all though the old ones were in perfectly good condition really, but it's going to be a pain to change them when the engine's in the car. The remaining parts went into the parts washer & tomorrow they'll get a coat of paint, screwed back on & the whole power train is ready for the big install at the weekend.

Hurrah!

Another Busy Day

 Yesterday evening I put a coat of silver Hammerite over the black POR-15 on the front subframe - I wanted light grey, but Hammerite don't seem to do grey, greenish grey, purpleish grey, but no greyish grey, so I went for silver. Many people insist that black is the only colour for a chassis, but I think it just makes it hard to see anything you've dropped & impossible to see any cracks.

Anyway, this morning I fitted the Zetec to the gearbox & gave the subframe another coat.

 

Then I carried on with the fuel plate, it's almost finished, just waiting on some hose connectors really, I also made a bracket to support the two fuel lines & turned them to point towards the fuel plate - not the tank.

So looking at the picture on the right (underneath the car, looking forward under the back seat), the fuel will come from the tank on the left, through the filter attached to the low pressure pump (boxy thing in the middle), turn left into the swirl pot  (silver box mounted at a jaunty angle - deliberatly), from there it'll drop through the fat hose & up into the high pressure pump (vertical, right hand side, through the high pressure filter & into the pipe to the front of the car, the return line from the fuel rail comes into the other connector into the swirl pot & air & excess fuel comes out of the banjo connector at the top of the swirl pot & returns to the tank. The thing going across half way up is one of the handbake cables .

I couldn't finish it as I'm still waiting on a couple of connectors, so I turned my attention to the boot & made up a false floor to cover the spare wheel & battery. As you can see the remaining boot is still plenty big enough. I'll finish this off tomorrow