Hgf + Diy = Kr1

[Elise+Imp]

 

Do you have access to a lathe and milling machine to make them?

 

Yes, i'm a bit of a sucker for tools and ever since i did my apprenticeship i wanted a lathe and mill, finally got them about 5 years ago, have since upgraded when better machines came along,

 

dowels can be made on a lathe, just need a 4-jaw chuck to do the offset turning

 

problem is once you have such machine you find jobs take longer, the results are better, but when you have little tools to do a job you get by with a hacksaw and files, once you have a machine it pains you not to do a make things that are machined all over.

 

 

Cheers

Brian

[Elise+Imp]

Phil,

 

guess i'm a week too late for you, but might be one to look at another day - had a play and made these...... hopefully it will help Jamie.

 

it required me to make a small fixture to hold them but i can now do any offsets people may require in the future.

 

[Phil S1]

Looks interesting Bri....if you've got 5 minutes on one of your many forthcoming Derbyshire weekends you're more than welcome to come and fit me some

[jimbo07g41]

Brian they look great..... Nice work.

[russelld]

Impressive Bri.

 

The first one needs a polish if your thinking of fitting it to Phil's car.

[jimbo07g41]

Impressive Bri.

 

The first one needs a polish if your thinking of fitting it to Phil's car.

 

...and no polish for my car as it will outshine the rest of my Elise!

 

Me and Brian have been discussing VVC timing and ported heads etc.

 

DVA has recommended I use 6 degree off set dowels so look out for a fitting guide/how not to do coming this way soon.

[Daniel]

Bri, you never fail to amaze me! It's people like you and Martin that I'm awe of with your spannering and fabrication.

[Elise+Imp]

Impressive Bri.

 

The first one needs a polish if your thinking of fitting it to Phil's car.

 

lol, after posting that pic i did think that the first one looked like it needed a bit of polish with scotchbrite

 

 

 

Bri, you never fail to amaze me! It's people like you and Martin that I'm awe of with your spannering and fabrication.

 

lol, i like a challange, oh and there is a saying i subscribe to: why buy something for $2 that we can make for $20 (and £3K of machine tools!)

 

how did you get on with the merc? Pass the MOT?

[Daniel]

The Merc is road legal, MOT'd, Tax'd and insured! I've been annoying the boy racers in it already.

 

Just need to fix the rev counter as it's proving a little difficult.....

[olliecast]

Great work all. Phil, may have to pop over and have a look

[Phil S1]

Thought I'd update this now that I've driven the car a bit and done the trackday evening at Donington on Monday.

Really pleased I opted for Roger's KR1 upgrade whilst the car was in bits, the car feels generally faster, probably not by much but most notably in the 5-6K region where it seems to pull much more strongly. The short uphill straight between McLeans and Coppice, that previously I would remain in 3rd gear for, now definitely requires a brief use of 4th as well, so there must be some more power there. Need to get it on a rolling road some time. So a thumbs up from me, well worth the £715 plus it's a good step in the right direction, ready for cams.....one day.

 

So now the embarrassing bit:-

Whilst the car was going great at Donington, at the end of the evening Paul_C's dad thought he'd seen a bit of smoke emanating from the engine cover. I'd not noticed anything untoward but next day I decided to investigate and this is what I saw....

Oil lying on the exhaust side of the head:-

 

A general film of oil on the gearbox and the bottom of the engine and when I took the undertray off, it looked like this:-

 

I took the spark plug cover off and that was oily underneath and then I saw that all of the spark plug sockets looked like this:-

 

After quite a considerable bit of mopping up and degreasing it wasn't too long before I then noticed I could see the cam cover gasket overlapping the spark plug hole :-

 

I removed the cam cover and there it was, pressed into the gasket in inch high characters 'EXH MAN SIDE' .....fitted on the INLET manifold side

How I fitted that the wrong way round I just don't know.....at least I got TOP right

So today I went and bought a new gasket and this time fitted it the right way round:-

 

I've endured ridicule from the wife and daughter all day with comments like...."should've gone to Spec Savers!" so I'm more than ready for any mloc mockery

On the plus side, the car didn't catch fire going round Donington

[jimbo07g41]

Bloody hell Phil thats fairly conclusive!

[Martin R]

Phil, easy done How long did you spend cleaning the undertray and the other parts ? Im glad it was a real easy fix though.

[Elise+Imp]

i did feel guilty, embarrassed even about this , until Phil jogged my memory that he put the cam cover on - glad to see you've got to the bottom of it

[Phil S1]

It did take quite a while to clean it all up again, biggest pain was trying to get the oil out of the spark plug holes, I used old towel poked down with a thin screwdriver. There's still a tiny amount at the bottom of each hole, don't know whether it'll slowly disappear or whether to try and suck it out with some tubing?

Oh, I've also just edited my previous post.....(I forgot to upload the incriminating photo!) It seems I've turned 50 and instantly forgetful