HC turbodiesel estate.

[bikingnutcase0]

Then I commenced some cardboard-aided-design for the new engine mountings-

engine mount flanges

And began manufacturing a gearbox mounting. I am using the hot-rodder's standby of land rover engine mountings, and I decided to use two for the gearbox and two for the engine. The two at the rear would fix the angle of the engine. It's at a 7degree angle in relation to the gearbox, hence mounting the gearbox centrally and level first would simplify making the engine mounts.

Because of the height of the mounting rubbers it would need recessing into the gearbox crossmember, so I modified the crossmember thus-

modified crossmember

[bikingnutcase0]

This tied down the longitudinal location, the angle of the engine, and to some degree the lateral location. This allowed me to bolt it back in and begin manufacturing the front engine mountings.

gearbox mounting in situ

Obviously this is a gross over-simplification, it involved an awful lot of measuring, bolting things on to ensure clearance, juggling frontwards and rearwards to make sure there will be space for the sump, and the rear of the cyl head is as far back as possible (making the C of G as central as possible) without causing clearance issues, it took probably three weeks of a couple of evenings a week and many lunchtimes!

[bikingnutcase0]

[bikingnutcase0]

More cardboard-aided-design, you get the gist, a picture is worth a thousand words.......

[bikingnutcase0]

And Voila!- it's in! You'll notice the "work-in-progress" sump design has further evolved, and now features an angled front. In order for my big fat chunky Carlton R22 gearbox to fit the gearbox has to be almost touching the trans tunnel, and the block has to almost touch the crossmember.

To anyone else wondering will the GM R22 gearbox fit, it will, barely, but theres many, many compromises involved. If the windage tray and oil pickup were any lower on the engine it would foul the steering rack (theres a notch in my sump and you'd struggle to get your little finger between), and my gearbox points ever-so-slightly downhill. as I'm going to have a two-piece prop, and the factory rubber donut coupling I'm using is designed to allow for a small misalignment I have confidence the setup will work.

However long story short, if you can lay your hands on a Manta Gearbox, use it, it will make your life much easier!!

You'll also notice a braided hose flailing around, that's the turbocharger oil-feed pipe, tee'd into the brake servo vacuum pump oil feed pipe (as this engine was N/A originally it doesn't feature the drilling in the block for the normal oil pipe, and I didn't want to risk filling the oilways with swarf by drilling and tapping it).

I also drilled and tapped the block for the turbocharger oil return fitting- (I did drill a pilot hole and step up several sizes btw, just thought there wasn't any point posting multiple pictures of me drilling the same hole...!)

[bikingnutcase0]

In other news, I took the car home hoping I could get more evenings and Sundays on it and make more progress, didn't really work, however I did do some more rust-busting, pretty much finished driver's a-pillar down behind the front wing, and did some repairs to the scuttle, I didn't take many pictures tbh but some progress achieved there nonetheless.

I also bought a load of stainless tube for the exhaust manifold, and made a "merge" collector. I did take a picture of that cause I felt a bit proud... I'll put more info and pictures when I EVENTUALLY get back onto the manifolds.

So that's about it for the time being. After my wedding I'm now impoverished, and my house has been ripped to shreds, I need to spend the next couple of months sorting that out or I'll be setting myself up for an early divorce, so the viva will have to sit on the back burner for a while. When I do get back onto it my work will mainly revolve around using up all the parts I've already bought and doing cheap things like rust repair and suchlike, but rest assured it's not forgotten!

Next step is make an alternator bracket (needs relocating because it fouls the crossmember), finish the exhaust manifold and sump, build a propshaft from all the bits of Viva, Carlton, Jensen Healy, ford transit, and land rover Propshaft I've collected for this purpose, Make a gear stick/knob/linkage, and look at piping up a fuel system. once those are done I can at least see if the engine will start, or if I've over-egged my compression ratio reduction and built myself an expensive paperweight, door-stop or boat anchor..........

[bikingnutcase0]

Cor, looking back through the thread it looks like I've done bugger all, in reality your probably looking at seven months work and around 120 hours work in the last eight posts. Plus all the little things I've not mentioned E.G. modifying bits of propshaft to allow the sliding joint to fit between centre bearing and axle, specc'ing brake parts, sourcing bits of window rubber and stuff, I could go on. I really need to update the thread more frequently when I do something lol!