Nice Clean Bits To Work On

Jun 30th 2013

Now that the car has had all the old dirty bits removed and the "new" engine has been cleaned up it's a pleasure to work on.
 I made some new engine mounts to support the front of the engine. The old motor had no engine mounts and hung purely from the gearbox bellhousing. That's not a terrific idea as the box is alloy and one of the mounting lugs had a crack. I've got that welded up by my new friend Richard.

I've also raised the gearbox by an inch at the front (no metrics on here, matey). This is so that the engine slopes slightly backwards and increases the ground clearance a bit more. The spacer is just tacked in place for the present.

Of course, I had to slip the engine and box into the car to get the position for the new mounts

The red bits are the new mounts and the new gearbox mounts further back

I noticed the master cylinder mounting plate was bent, so straightened that and tacked a reinforcing rod onto it. The clutch master cylinder is undergoing a transformation as the reservoir will foul the new starter so I have to fit a remote reservoir.

Once the mounts were made, I fitted the gearbox on it's own so that I could trim and refit the bulkhead. The notch in the top is for the distributor which fits on the back of the camshaft. More of this later, suffice to say that it needed a bigger hole and that if I had done more research I could have fitted a more suitable distributor. 

Once I'd got this fitted it was time to put the engine in. I decided to slip it onto the gearbox in the car. It may have been easier to remove the bulkhead again, fit the two together as a unit and replace the bulkhead yet again. However with Ian (my passenger's) help we got the engine in and bolted up. All the bolts fitted in their various holes and we spent a while shimming the gearbox mount to within a few thou" to make sure there was no extra stress on the mounting lugs.

This is Ian trying to get a captive nut started in a very difficult spot.

Before fitting the engine we checked the timing belt for condition and tension, and checked the cam timing whilst we were at it.
Over the next few days (weeks) I set about fitting or modifying all the little bits that were needed to operate the new motor. The clutch slave cylinder needed it's brackets altering to line up with the new position of the clutch release arm. I made a new pushrod as I had moved the gearbox forward 15mm to get the distributor to fit without cutting the chassis frame. This meant the old pushrod was a little too short.

That piece of stainless bridges the gap between the cut ends of the original bracket. I thought I'd leave it bolted rather than weld it in case further adjustments are needed.

This shows the new braided supply pipe from the remote reservoir to the clutch master cylinder. The starter solenoid made it impossible to keep the reservoir on top of the cylinder. It's now mounted on the bulkhead.

I had to rewire the loom as the alternator and distributor are in different places and the ignition is completely different. I don't need the Chrysler Electronic ignition as the Suzuki has it all in the distributor. I only use the original coil now. I got some loom tape to wrap the wires in. It's shiny pvc, but isn't sticky so it's not a mess like insulating tape and can be undone easily.

This shot shows the temperature gauge sender and the flange I cut from 6mm steel for the carb adapter. I'm fitting an SU type carb instead of the enormous downdraft eco/emission jobbie that the motor came with. SU constant depression carbs are good for low speed torque, which is what I need. The copper pipe is the new fuel feed. It used to be on the other side of the car.

In order to get the carb at the right angle I tacked a piece of exhaust bend onto the manifold flange and then lined up the carb flange and tacked that in place.

This is the finished adapter.

It seems that people doing this conversion on Vitaras find problems with carb icing. I've found in the past that that seems to occur at quite wide throttle openings at higher speeds. As this car uses small throttle openings and rests between runs I think heat soak should solve any problems that may have been going to happen. We'll see.

This is the carb fitted. The top flange wasn't quite flat and fearing the lugs snapping off the carb (I'm not using Webber style O rings) I spent a few hours grinding it as flat as I could get it. I asked Richard to plane it flat, but mounting it on the bed of his milling machine was too tricky as the faces are not aligned in any plane.

I'll draw a close to this bit as I still have the exhaust, cooling, cam cover, skid plate, more bulkhead mods and bonnet bulge to cover.

I'll save those for the next post.