Part 1 - Basic Chassis and Front Wishbones
After buying my dad the book as a 'present' ;-) around November 1999,
we found someone locally who had started on the project but had given up
due to lack of time. He had several components partly built - including
the chassis, wishbones and the scuttle (he had decided to make it from steel
and not GRP). Guess what I got for Christmas? A partly built chassis!
By the end of January 2000 the chassis was completed and we had started
to assemble the suspension components.
Luckily, we had bits and pieces around that we could use: several Escort
axles and diffs (deciding to use the 3.9:1 unit). This meant we didnt have
to go out and buy things, and could get on with things straight away.
You can see the fully completed chassis in this picture, along with the
assembled suspension components and rear axle. The engine and gearbox are
on temporary mounts.
While we had bought the front wishbone sets, they needed assembling and
bushes fitted. We also got a reconditioned Escort steering rack and managed
to find a man who wanted toget rid of a Cortina that was just taking up
space - we got a 1600 OHC out of it, a set of hubs, and a nice tubular exhaust
manifold that had come off a GT. We also needed to buy a set of coilover
dampers. We couldn't really afford much at the time so we looked at the
'Zeemeride' units advertised by Monospares (a division of Robin Hood). They
are adjustable for preload (spring tension), and erm.. thats it. They come
with a choice of 3 different spring rates - we chose 180lb units for the
rear, and 200lb units for the front (the Pinto being a heavy lump!) - 200UKP
for a set of 4 with springs.
In hindsight, we should have waited and paid a bit more and got some good
quality Avo or Koni units - because, to put it bluntly, these are crap;
but they work and we can't afford any more.
As you will have no doubt read (and seen in the pictures above) before
we are using the 2L Ford Pinto (OHC) engine from a Sierra along with its
Type9 5-speed 'box.
Because this combination is altogether bigger than the usual 1300/1600 &
4-speed Ford Crossflow combination, some changes had to be made to the chassis.
Several chassis members had to be moved and replaced, and we also made the
decision to mount the engine as far back as possible - this cut in on the
amount of legroom slightly, but freed up valuable space in the engine bay.
With the engine further back it meant that the cam cover would not be sticking
up through the nosecone - that would not have been pretty!
At about this time we managed to get hold of a pair of 40DCOE sidedraught
Webers for only 40 quid, they will need rejetting/servicing and a Pinto
manifold as they came off a Crossflow; but altogether, a good deal I think.
Moving the engine back does not remove the problem of its height completely.
It has been mounted lower and modifications to the sump will need to be
carried out also.
After getting the engine and gearbox in, and finally setting their exact
positions we could start getting the pedals setup. This was much trickier
than we expected:
We started off with a pedal box unit from a K-series Rover Metro (not mine!),
this was small enough to fit in, but brought problems as the pedals were
far too long and would have required a hole in the floor to press them!
We resorted to cutting them down, and after a lot of blood, sweat and tears
we were at a stage where the clutch pedal and brake were in a fairly comfortable
position.
We have also decided to initially fit a servo to the braking system - the
perfect one to accompany the pedal box was the K-series Metro unit. Its
quite small and fits easily on the bulkhead in front of the scuttle above
the pedal box.
After getting the clutch pedal and a system to hold the cable in place,
we found that the cable MAY wear quite fast - so we are having to rethink
the way the cable is held in place.
This page updated: 25/Mar/2007