Final Engine Assembly

A number of small jobs came together this weekend to see the substantial completion of the engine build (minus the intake manifold because I haven’t started making that yet!).

• The addition of fuel injection requires a crank position signal so I have designed my own sensor mounting bracket and trigger disc target which were laser cut from steel.
• The mounting of the trigger disc required me to turn and machine some custom spacers to put the disc in the correct location relative to the sensor as well as aligning the crank pulley with the water pump and alternator.

• The spacers and fasteners for the alternator mounting needed modifying to suit the particular configuration of my engine which has taken some to-and-fro to get right, but this is now finally fixed.

•  With the machining carried out on the block, along with the various aftermarket parts used, I needed to check the valve to piston clearances. This involves placing some blu-tack on the top of the piston, fitting the cylinder head and rockers then turning the engine through one complete cycle. The head is then removed and the thickness of blu-tack is measured. I had just enough, so I’m glad I didn’t go for the higher ratio rockers after all!

• The crank sensor mounting bracket is also the timing pointer so with this finally mounted, I no longer needed access to the pistons (used to determine Top Dead Centre for fine tuning the timing pointer position) and could install the cylinder heads, rockers and covers.

The next task is to align the bellhousing and the fit the gearbox which cannot be done on the engine stand, so I have started fabricating an engine cradle. This picks up on the engine to chassis mounting points which will allow the engine assembly to sit on castors and crucially frees up the gearbox mounting bolts for adding the rest of the driveline. So far, I have tacked the structure together and test fitted the basic frame - this then needs to be fully welded and the wheels added before it can be pressed into service.



Once this is complete, I can move on to rebuilding the donor suspension components.