Preparations for the engine...
03/10/2011
Sadly, I can’t crack on today as there is an essential business meeting that I’m needed for in the morning. Fortunately, it turns out to be useful and fruitful, so that is a small mercy. At the end, one of the other participants asks if I’m off back to my office now – standing there in suit & tie I reply that no, I’m going to prepare an engine for fitting to a chassis.
Checking my email in the carpark after the meeting, I see that Caterham replied before 10am to confirm that my differential arrived there on Friday afternoon – it must have missed the truck by only a few hours. Anyway, they are sending it today by overnight courier, along with my knee trims. Excellent service, thank you Caterham!
The trip out does give me a chance to drop by at a Halfords store near to the meeting venue, where I look for shorter lifting straps. There aren’t any (how do all shops manage to fill huge acreages with the stuff you don’t need?) but there are some tie-down ratchet straps that are rated at 500kg. As the build manual only asks for a hoist rated to 150kg I grab two to see what I can make with them.
Returning home, I open up the straps to fit they have a sewn-in warning label that says “NOT FOR LIFTING”. Oh well. Instead, I try re-rigging the towrope so that it is doubled-up along its entire length, which seems to work better (although we’ll see when it comes to fitting it to the chassis). With that doing the hard work, I can fit the straps at either end and use them to adjust the angle of dangle instead.
This lets me lift up the engine to meet the gearbox and after a little to-ing and fro-ing I manage to get the gearbox shaft engaged with the output thing (or whatever it is called). The gearbox doesn’t want to go fully home, though. The manual explains that you may need to rotate the gearbox to align the two splines, which I try, but no joy. The problem is that you can’t see what you’re doing; the bellhousing covers up the area of interest long before they meet. I pull them apart to see if anything is obviously amiss; it isn’t, and when I try to re-unite them the gearbox slips effortlessly into place. Quick – get the bolts in!
The manual describes in detail which bolts go where, but is obviously wrong as it suggests that some need to be fitted in the opposite direction to the obvious provision in the metal. The fastener pack (unusually) lists what each bolt is for, so I go with that instead. It seems to work, I’m typing this an hour or two later and it hasn’t fallen apart yet.
The starter motor then needs to be fitted, and slips into place nicely. Three bolts hold it on, each of which goes through a flange on the motor, through the engine flange, and into a threaded hole on the bellhousing. The outer two are a doddle, but there is one in the inner side of the starter, adjacent the crankcase, that I can only just get my fingers to. I have a go with an extension bar, but there is a structure behind the bolt that interferes. An allen key can almost engage, but not quite. Eventually, I find that my tiny ¼” drive can reach in, and can turn it one click at a time. That gets it tight, but all these bolts are meant to be torqued. I can do the rest easily, but I’ve no idea how to do that one. I decide to email Caterham and ask.
With the engine and gearbox (largely) done, I decide to do a dry run through the engine install to check I understand and that everything I need is here. Checking the bolts, the manual is quite specific about using two different bolts for the left- and right-hand engine mounts. The right mount takes a 1” bolt (oddly, Caterhams are a random mix of metric and imperial, perhaps this is due to them being a classic British car) but the left mount takes a 2½” bolt. This seems odd, as both mounts are identical. I’m sure the left bolt will bottom out on the chassis long before it is tight. Another question for Caterham…
Other than that, the process seems straightforward, if insanely difficult. The assembly has to be lowered in with the gearbox tilted down at about 40 degrees, and then inched backward so as to insert the gearbox into the transmission tunnel, and tilted back up as you do so, until it is all seated neatly in place. I suspect that is easier said than done, but it is for another day – and after I have spoken to Caterham.
One last thought – I have heard that the prop shaft only fits into the transmission tunnel fro the front. I’m going to go now (right now) and put it in place before I forget. I would really not want to have to take the engine out because I forgot to put the prop shaft in first!
Update – after checking, the prop shaft cannot be fitted from the front and must be fitted from the rear. So I’ll leave it in the box for now, until I’ve fitted both the engine AND the diff so I can be properly upset.
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