The Pressure's On

Been rather too busy in the garage this week. After putting the engine back in I played with the plumbing & ordered some parts to make it all prettier as a great many hoses wanted to occupy the same space as the air filter. To assist with that problem I decided to ditch the foam "sausage" air filter breathing hot engine bay air & instead make something that looked similar but smaller & was in fact an airbox drawing filtered air from in front of the rad, so it's breathing nice cold fresh air. I did something similar on the Fury which worked well.

So I drew up a minimum airbox on the computer & carved it from styrofoam, wrapped that in clingfilm, wrapped that in tee-shirt material (stretchy cotton) & covered that in GRP resin. Because it still has the cotton surface it looks like a foam filter, but smaller & because it's only waffer theen, it's the same internal size as the foam one.

While that was curing I decided to take the spark plugs out, fit the starter & make sure I had oil pressure - I didn't.

Over-night research found that the Raceline sump the car has is for a silvertop - I panicked, was this the reason I had no pressure? Is the oil pick-up in a different place on the blacktop? If I couldn't use the Raceline sump I'd need another sump. The steel one I bought for the Fury was about £200, was perfectly good & lighter (because 1.5mm steel is lighter than 1/4" thick aluminium with cooling fins), but for some reason those sumps now seem to be £650!!

So today the car's gone back up in the air & the sump's come off again. The first thing to note was the vaseline in the pump input pipe was still there, so it's not been sucked up the pipe, so there was too much air in there. the next thing to note was that the 20+ year old O-rings between sump & engine were flattened off. Fortunately I had a couple the right size. With dimensional checks confirming the pipes should meet I found a nice fat syringe & pumped vaseline up it until it could take no more! (because it had got as far as the pump), I also poured engine  oil into the oil filter port, so now satisfied that I'd done all I could, I bolted the sump back up, filled it with oil, re-fitted the starter & yes! Pressure (sigh).

While all this was happening the door bell heralded the arrival of the silicone hose bend & aluminium joiner to finish the bottom hose & the 12mm heater hose. After a great deal of cutting & re-cutting, taking 1/4" at a time, the bottom hose is now complete, but I've come in for my tea before connecting up the heater that will mean I can fill the cooling system. I'll do that tomorrow & finish the airbox & maybe go for the big start to see if it works