Exhaust & handbrake. Plus a start on the RH side.

I was hoping to get a good day in on the car this week, but other things have come up and ive also not been feeling too great, so havent managed to put much time in. I was up at 5am again today, so after feeding the baby and cats I managed to get in the garage for 7am.

First thing I managed to do was to remove the exhaust. I was running an after market Scorpian stainless system which I think is about a 2inch bore. This system comes in 3 parts so is easy to remove. The downpipe is bolted onto the rest of the system using 13mm bolts and springs. Easily got to from underneath the car. Im replacing this with a 2.5inch side exit system. You can see the difference here in the 2 pictures below. The new system looks like its been thieved from a lorry or something, it looks huge in comparison!!!

Apparently the 2.5inch system is good for 250bhp so it should last me a while. Very annoyingly I missed out on a tubular exhaust manifold today on ebay. It went for just 80quid and I was prepared to pay upto £100 for it. Oh well, i will keep my eye out for another one.

With the downpipe removed you can see behind the engine nicely. And see the starter motor. Ive changed this before, many many years ago, and normally the best way to get to this is under the drivers wheel arch. Ive a high power one to replace this one, so thats another job on the list, but will have to wait until I can get under the drivers arch - still with the downpipe out, access will be much easier.

After removing the exhaust I was looking to see what next I could do. Finishing off fitting the new LH handbrake cable was a good start. Under the car you can see the handbrake adjuster below. Theres a 13mm lock nut, then a 11mm nut and a knurled adjuster. I was expecting these to be completely seized, but to my surprise they werent. I did notice they were on max adjustment though. So I slacked these off completely which allowed me to remove the old handbrake cables from the pivot bit. I lubed this up with plenty of copper grease and cleaned it all up. You can see in the 2nd pic the new handbrake cables fitted. I will adjust the handbrake up after ive finished with the rear brakes.

Whilst under the car with the exhaust removed you can see the brake lines & fuel lines going from the back of the car to the front.. you can see they look a bit rusty. Im going to replace these.

So I then decided to make a start on the drivers side of the car. I pulled the car away from the wall a good bit and jacked it up on axle stands. I was hoping the drivers side was better than the passengers side, but unfortunately not. Jacking point at the front is shot, and mega rust along the sills. The back bumper mount below left is completely rotted away. So looks like I need to buy some more steel sheets to weld in!

Also under that side you can see the fuel pump & filter. Im pretty sure this probably the original fuel filter! Ive a high capacity fuel filter and a more powerful fuel pump to fit here. Ive sprayed all bolts/clips with penetrating oil so hopefully they will come undone easier.

Whilst i had access to the drivers rear side of the car I stripped off the rear brakes. Only took a few minutes. The bits are below. As with passengers side, ive new disc, caliper, pads, lines & hoses to fit here. I did feed the new handbrake cable through the rear trailing arm so thats all ready and did make a start at trying to remove the original brake lines this side. They are proving hard as the reserve fuel tank is in the way which is messing up access to the lower brake line. The top one came off easily enough after cutting the line off and using a 11mm spanner on it. Anyway, thats it for today, a good 2 hours work. Hopefully will be able to put some proper hours in next week.

AEI unit, coil, rear brakes

 I had a couple of hours spare last night so thought id get some more work in on the car. The first task was to swap out the old AEI unit for a newer one. My car seems to be kind of what is known as a phase 1.5. Its 1987 so one of the early phase 2`s and apparently they used up a lot of phase 1 bits in the process. My AEI unit was mounted above the turbo inside the engine bay. Its a Bendix 209 unit which is what the phase 2`s used but its in the phase 1 position. My previous 2 GT Turbos were both 1988 and by then the unit was moved inside the bulk head next to the battery to avoid heating problems from the turbo. 

You can see in the pic here of the engine bay, just above the header tank the AEI coil unit inside the engine bay.

I bought a later phase 2 AEI, mines a 209 B this new ones a 209 C. Im not sure what the differences are, as the main difference is between phase 1 AEI 208 and Phase 2 AEI 209 which has a different ignition map and 500rpm higher rev limit.

I firstly opened the unit up and undid the 2 torx screws holding the coil in. Reason being is that my rev limiter & shift light units need to be wired directly to the coil. The coil once you pull it out you can see 2 terminals either side of the spade connector on the front. Handily they are labeled - and + so you straight away know which ones are plus and negative to wire the gadgets to.

I drilled a few mounting holes inside the bulk head and mounted the coil up. I then had to extend the TDC and knocking wires to reach, plus drill a hole for the main king coil lead to reach through. Luckily the lead set I bought was for the phase 2 so it was plenty long enough. I have to admit I do now feel a bit nervous as to whether the car will start now. Im always reluctant to change to many things at once incase of having to narrow down any problems!

Pictures here of the new shiny AEI unit and the old worn one.

I then couldnt resist fitting the back brakes, so I fitted new EBC disc, new calliper, new EBC green stuff pads and bearing.

 Looks pretty good! I then had to fit the brake line which goes from the flexihose on the beam (replaced by new braided HEL line) to the calliper. Luckily I had kept the old brake line so I roughly knew where the route was. I also hadnt broken any of the mounting clips in removing the old line so could re-use them. The new copper-nickel line was really easy to bend into shape and you can see in the pix, looks lovely.

 I also fitted new handbrake cable whilst I was at it. It looks like the pivot on the adjuster under the handbrake is seized so I need to free that off, but new cable fed through the rear swing arm and to the calliper a treat. I need to get the rest of the exhaust off first before I can get better access to the handbrake adjuster/pivot.

So thats about it for this update, more later!