Confession time - Throttle bodies!

We have planned from the start to attempt to pass emissions testing on throttle bodies rather than the standard Ford manifold and ECU. This was and is a less than easy approach. Everyone spoken to has warned of the difficulty. The fantastic thing about the clubbie community is that there is always help and people have been incredibly generous and frank - the last thing you need is to start something like this in the dark. However we are nothing if not stubborn! We suspected the emission requirements might relax a bit and this now being the case we feel we are in with a chance. In order to avoid large egg/face interface scenarios when it fails dismally we have obviously kept a bit quiet but now that we have confessed we'll keep the blog updated more regularly. We still have all the OEM manifold gear so if it does fail we will just bung that on again and mark it up to experience.

Anyone who may have read earlier post might have noticed the bodies in shot already - they are from a company called AT Power in the UK. They have been designed for the Duratec motor as direct to head replacements and they are magnificent. The quality if the engineering is outstanding and I have seen video of them running on a clubbie - the induction sound is outrageous. Yippee!!!

Carbon Canister and Fuel Reg 2

Not earth shattering but I remade the bracket for the carbon canister from aluminium strip - it won't rust and I can almost hear Mr. Chapman's approval. Or maybe it's Gordan Murray....one of the two. I also added a moisture/dust trap to the manifold pressure outlet on the fuel reg - this isn't used in my car as it's non turbo - by coiling some hose and lock tie-ing it on.

Heater Fan

We attached the fan to its mounting point by drilling 2 holes in each side and making a small aluminium plate to act as purchase for the rivets. It was then riveted in place and the mounting bolts for the brake and clutch resevoir holder used to clamp the mounting plate firmly to the scuttle. This means that it is firmly attached despite being quite a heavy item and hopefully shuold keep supplying warm air for the Victorian winters in years to come!

Rear Caliper Issue

On bleeding the rear calipers we discovered an issue - they leaked badly. After attempting to tighten them with force failed, we loooked a bit more closely and discovered the bleed valves were placed inside two adapters. This looked odd so we removed them to discover the adapters were BSP or NPT fittings that had beeen forced into a straight walled metric fittings. Any seal formed had been acheived by mangling the first few threads and bunging on some sealant.

I would strongly urge those with birkins of this era to check up on the calipers as it is not a great engineering solution. After peering under cars with similar calipers it would appear that Birkin have swapped the position of the bleed valve and brake line - leaving a fitting too big for even a truck bleed valve and hence the "solution!" We had the original hole retapped and coiled and ground off the lip in the casing to allow the brake banjo fitting to leave the caliper at the right angle. This meant getting a larger banjo fitting attached to our brake lines and getting bleed valves that matched the original smaller holes but the end result is a system that has not leaked a drop and has the bleed valve at the highest point of the caliper where it was intened to be.