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.

Battery Mount

There's a few places to put the battery, including on the scuttle or in the nose by the steering rack. The former is low but out front, and also awkward to reach for those jump-starting moments which I'm informed are pretty regular occurences. The scuttle is good but we're trying to keep it uncluttered - especially as we're planning to put a huge air filter there some day. So we decided on the wall in front of the passenger footwell.

First we riveted in a plate to the chassis tubes to help take its weight, and covered this in foam strips from Clarkes. We then got a steel bracket made up to enclose the battery and bolted this to the footwell wall. Rob from Meridian fabricated the bracket as it's something they've made several times before and it fitted nicely. We had to take a bit off the edge of the starter  motor and cut a resess in the bracket to allow for a bell housing bolt - we expect the engine to rock a bit under torque and don't want them to touch. All in all the hardest part was drilling in  a confined space and a right angled drill bit was a big help for this. We still managed to scuff the bracket but rest assured this will be tidied up soon!

Water Rail

We have finally added the water rail which is from Raceline. It's a lovely bit of engineering, with plenty of take-offs for temp senders and heaters. Due to the Birkin headers being a bit tall, it does need some modification to fit over the exhaust manifold of number one cylinder.

This was achieved with the angle grinder and a metal file. Rob from Meridian welded a plate over the resulting gap and once a few troublesome bosses were ground off the engine block the rail fitted as nature intended. It looks great!

Carbon canister and fuel reg

 We've used a Toyota MR2 carbon canister as it's very small and fits nicely in between the tank and the side wall of the chassis. The bracket was fashioned from 2 hose clips riveted to a strip of steel which had been bent to suit the profile of the canister. The canister was wrapped in two strips of sticky foam, the clips tightened and the whole thing was bolted to the car with minimal stress. Which was a first......

At the same time we attached a fuel filter and pressure regulator to the back wall of the cockpit, as our pump doesn't have one inbuilt. They are pretty standard items and again didn't require any Anglo-Saxon language. We'll tidy up the lines as we go along as I think they will need protecting from abrassive contacts - for now though we'll just cable tie them out of the way