Prop Shaft
Finally got round to ordering from Bailey Morris who were most helpful and got this in the post within a week. They provided the yoke for my Tremec 'box as part of the assembly, the whole deal including postage was around £270.
The tail-end is bored to fit over the diff pinion spigot but proved a little tight so needed a light sanding with the Dremmel to open up the bore of the coupling flange. The dimension of the spigot is needed by Bailey Morris when they are making your shaft and it turned out that they had provided exactly what I'd measured, I just needed to allow a little for clearance.
The flange is attached with M12 cap screws high tensile 12.9. I've used nylocks to secure them but will research this a little more in case there needs to be a special fitting for this job.
Side Pipes
Been putting this off for a while but a job I knew I'd struggle with was the Exhaust Side pipe fitting. I quickly realised that this was a two man job so I arranged for my mate Bill Holden to pop up and lend a hand.
Jon at AK advised that a good plan is to grease the pipe joints to ease the process as these will need to be on and off a few times during the build.
Even with plenty of grease it took two of us to force the damn things on and I'm now dreading the time when I need to remove them again for body-on.
Once they were on, we fitted the hangers with M10 set screws after by drilling and tapping. I've used two set screws per hanger. The rubber mounts are secured with standard nuts for now so as not to waste nylocks given they will be on and off a few times.
The distance from side pipe to chassis rail is between 85-90mm according to my research on the forum.
I've covered the fitted exhausts with bubble wrap for now to try and avoid any unfortunate dents should I drop something!
Plumbing
As this was over the xmas break, Bill brought his goddaughter Alice Boote with him who is a 6th form student interested in a career in engineering. She turned up mad keen to have a go a to working on the car so this is turning out to be a bit of a community project!. Its encouraging that more girls are considering engineering as a career so I hope my little project hasn't put her off too much. Unfortunately Alice turned up nursing a bad back so we gave her some lighter duties, fitting the heater rails and filling the gearbox oil. The heater rails are quite a neat solution from AK, fitting on the inside of the offside rocker cover. Getting at the rocker cover bolts with it in place is another matter so it was handy that Alice had small fingers for this bit!
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| Alice Boote - introducing youngsters to American V8 engines |
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| Heater rail plumbing |
AK supply a couple of lengths of hose and clips for fitting the heater take offs to the heater rail.
The next part of the plumbing is the header tank. AK supply a lovely looking stainless one which unfortunately costs over £300 so I've done a bit of research around alternatives and found an alloy one from OBP for around £60. The standard one doesn't have the outlets in the best positions but OBP do a bespoke service so I sent then a mock-up of how I'd like the unit modified and I now have one on order - and only £15 or so for the mods. This also means you have to be a little more creative with the top hose fitting as you don't get the AK T-Piece that comes with their kit. I've bought a modular connector from CBS which has a fitting for the Fan Switch and I plan to fit a hose tail to the side of the unit to run to the header tank.
More on this soon!
