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Coalnotdole's Scimitar - Machining work: Speedometer Drive Unit 12/4/19


coalnotdole

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Signs of pre-ignition isn't too surprising with that compression ratio. For 11:1 I'd want to see a team of 20 engineers, led by a bloke in a tweed jacket with a PhD in thermodynamics and everyone else with 10 years experience in engine design. They would use 50 grand's worth of software to try and predict how that flame front progresses under different revs and loads.

 

What probably happened is a mechanic said "yeah, probably be alright if we stick some octane boost in there"

 

Full marks for sorting this out!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've not really used the GTE much since fixing the head gasket, I spent some time flushing cooling system out, Which looked particularly nasty and took quite a few flushes to get rid of the contaminated coolant.

 

First flush:

 

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Last flush before refilling with coolant.

 

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I'd more or less put everything back together but over the bank holiday weekend I experienced a bit of a tangent involving the paintwork... After the deer incedent the drivers side front wing was more or less stripped back to gelcoat in some places. At this point it would probably have been easiser to chuck some primer over it and a couple of colour matched rattle cans and forget about it until I can actually afford a decent respray. One of the problems with this is that due to the thickness of the paint it was quite hard to tie in the repair as the levels were all over the place. So in the end I ordered some two pack epoxy primer, colour matched to the existing paint and decided to sand / scrape off all the paint, starting with the front end.

 

Eariler in the summer pre omghgf!

 

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The Head gasket / top end work distracted me from the sanding, Its not really practical to use the DA next to a stripped down engine. But with the engine finally back together I was finally able to contiue with some of the sanding back work, my aim was to get it so that the front end was all one colour...

 

Interestingly as part of the paint removal process there is some evidence that the car may once have been Highland Purple. Difficult to confirm as I only have DVLA records that go pack as far as computerisation In 1976. The DVLA say it was definatey red by then, so its hard to know if there was a colour change while it was at Reliant. or if it just had a respray early in its life. The purple paint is the first colour after the origonal primer and there is no primer between that and the red coat.

 

 

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Heres another shot showing how thick the paintwork is!

 

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Here's a few more shots as the sanding back progressed.

 

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Its taken a lot longer to get to get the paint off than I expected. Hopefully later in the week I'll have another non bodywork update covering the wiring and sensor upgrades...

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Highland Purple definitely floats the boat......... but as it's a part strip it can wait - we're patient buggers over here.

Added lightness yo - Colin Chapman styleeeee with the 400+kg of paint removed though.

 

Can I ask - what grade do you start stripping the heavy stuff back with - and don't they all clog up extrmeley quickly? Mine bloody do!

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Highland Purple,my favourite Reliant colour.knowing Reliant,it could easily have been resprayed in the factory if someone waived an order for a red one under their nose,iirc colour codes didn't start to be used on the vin til the SE6?

Yes thats correct there is no colour identification on the vin plate until the SE6 cars. Highland purple is also one of my favoirite reliant colours, Ideally with a black vinyl roof and a webasto sunroof. I'll probably paint it red again though...

 

I hate it when people paint cars.

Do carry on though, since youve started.

 

I understand this, but its not like Its origonal paintwork car. I see new paintwork as needed at this stage of the cars life, If I do a reasonable job It will hopefully last a decent length of time, Its a daily It's never going to be perfect I'm sure It will accumulate patina and battle scars all over again!

 

Can I ask - what grade do you start stripping the heavy stuff back with - and don't they all clog up extrmeley quickly? Mine bloody do!

 

I've been scraping back to the reliant primer layer with a chisel, (footprint brand)  Followed up by 80 grit DA disc's which i've been buying from tool station, I've then progressed to 120 and 180 progressively. It's now more or less ready for primer. I've got some two-pac epoxy to go on which is RAL 3001 a similar shade of red to the cars present colour.

 

Scraping tool:

 

584.jpg

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I've been scraping back to the reliant primer layer with a chisel, (footprint brand)  Followed up by 80 grit DA disc's which i've been buying from tool station, I've then progressed to 120 and 180 progressively. It's now more or less ready for primer. I've got some two-pac epoxy to go on which is RAL 3001 a similar shade of red to the cars present colour.

 

Scraping tool:

 

584.jpg

 

Alas - my downfall - I'm not allowed sharp instruments unless under strict supervision....... spatulas just don't cut it!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Intermission...

This post is sponsored by Newcastle Brown Ale,

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This post takes a brake from sanding and bodywork and takes a short interlude into the exciting world of wiring, This was a job I'd been hoping to tackle in July / August when I had planned to take the car over to the IOW so my mate Dave could give me a hand sorting out the wiring loom to cope with some upgrades...

The head gasket failure left the car immobile for the whole of work's summer shutdown so the opportunity came and went. A revised plan was pencilled in for a weekend in September when both Dave and I were free (rare enough these days.) Typically work then got in the way and we were stood up for production Saturday morning which left me with a day and a half to do what was probably 3 days worth of work.

Rather than cancel I decided to press on and see how much we could get done....

The objective was to modify the ECU wiring loom to accept the following additions: Knock Sensor, Camshaft position sensor, 3 more coil pack wires to allow for sequential ignition and to add twin Wideband 02 controllers, route them through the car, and connect them to the ECU, Then weld a boss to the exhausts to take the 02 sensors and finally test the system.

With the loom stripped off the car we started by running 3 more wires for the coil packs (correct coloured wire was sourced from eBay)

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We then tried adding an extra 2 core shielded wire for the knock sensor and quickly rand into problems with the acrylic protection being too tight to accommodate the extra wires.

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After struggling for a while trying to get the wires through, we decided to take the whole loom apart, this would make running the new cables much easier. Its a Y shape Loom the base of the Y is the ECU Plug & Relays, one fork goes onto the engine the other to the battery & coil packs.

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With the loom apart adding the new wires was much simpler, we could then add some new bigger protective sleeving.

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I'd bought some larger diameter sleeving with this in mind, its made by Vidaflex and is heat and oil resistant, I've used it where the loom goes into the engine as extra protection.

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This photo is the loom going back together...

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This is the ECU Plug gold terminals are ones we have altered / added, silver ones are originals.

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Plug From the other side,

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We spent a bit of time finding the best location for the knock sensor, this needs to be reasonably close to a cylinder, It is essentially a microphone once setup it should detect preignition and allow the ECU to adjust timing / mixture to compensate.

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I've fitted this one to the head just above number 4 cylinder, which was also a convenient from a cabling point of view.

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This photo shows the loom as it enters the drivers footwell,

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There’s now an additional relay for the 02 controllers, they are connected to the main loom via the 2 4way plugs you can see at the centre rear of the photo. There are two controllers and 2 sensors as its a V6.

The O2 controllers are innovate LC2's and they will be concealed behind the panel that covers the heater matrix, they just fit without interfering with the mechanical heater control linkage,

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The cable from the sensors uses the same cut-out as the original radio braded earth, This brings the cables for the 02 sensors out in the gearbox tunnel...

Next stage was to find a spot to weld the boss into the exhaust for the 02 Sensors...

Heres how the tubular manifold looked as standard:

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Idealy the sensor needs to be at the collector where all 3 downpipes meet, On a Scimitar with tubular manifolds this means a collector just past the outrigger, unfortunately there is not enough clearance to to fit the sensor to the top of the manifold. So as a compromise we came up with the following sideways position,

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Here it is once the boss for the sensor had been welded in...

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The cable is routed via the outrigger, along the chassis. Dave welded some new tabs on to hold the wires. I’ll give them a coat of paint before the car goes back on the road.

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The passenger side is clipped along the gearbox crossmember,

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A future improvement would be to have the collector for the exhaust a bit further forward, this would allow the sensor to be fitted in the channel of the outrigger better protecting it from debris. Something to consider when at a future date I improve the exhaust...

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With the sensors fitted and the wiring all connected we started the car and with the laptop connected we were able to view the AFR Live, The spike in the readings corresponds to me revving the engine.

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After some consulting the manual,

I managed to get the ECU to register the waveform from the o2 sensors,



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which proves that the wiring is all working as it should however there Is something not quite right with how the ECU interprets the voltages. So I've left the Active feedback turned off until I can ring Omex or get the ECU setup by someone who knows what they are doing...

Still not bad for a day and a half...

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Glad people are interesed, by nature I like to take photos of stuff I'm working on, even if they are crappy Iphone pictures! It's the writeups i find much harder, Its difficult to strike the balance between keeping it brief enough to read and providing a reasonable explanation. Its also not helped by the fact that i write them late at night which can leave some stange spelling and gramatical errors!

 

I had a week off work last week and after a few days in the new forest came back home and resumed the sanding and bodwork on the GTE after several solid days sanding It was something of a relief to write about wiring.

 

I have a few more pictures that show some of the other screens and menu's in the OMEX ecu software. If anyone is interested in knowing more about that?

 

 

Question - perhaps I missed it - but the knock sensor - did you use an existing bolt/fixing for attaching to the head or drill n tap?

 

The head / block on the essex has a number of unused threads for extra's depending on what application Ford were putting it into... I think that hole is one used to mount extra belt driven auxillaries such as power steering pump or aircon compressor.

 

I just bolted it on with a 5/16th unc bolt from the spare bolts drawer, I'm not brave enough to randomly start drilling into the block!

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Why didn't Reliant use coloured gelcoat like boatbuilders rather than going to all the trouble of spraying?

 

Gelcoat dosn't generaly have the same standard of finish as a painted surface, you (can achive it but its generally more labour inensive)  All Reliants have a gelcoat layer, which helps ensure* a smooth finish straight from the mould. 

 

But its then rubbed down by hand, primed and pained in a fairly conventional way, presumably so the finish of the car when new would have been comparabile, or possibly even slighly better that on a contemporary steel bodied car. Reliant did use gelcoat only finishes for industrial products.

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Also Reliant had a reasonable range of colours,so it wouldnt have been viable in a small factory to be able to make the bodies in all the different colours they offered.Speaking to a former employee the bodies were usually full of pinholes and imperfections when they came out of the oven,and a process he called "rag filling" was done before sanding for paint whereby a cloth dipped in neat resin was wiped over the body to fill the holes,only in Tamworth :-)

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Poking holes....

 

Wiring intermission over and couple of weeks later and I had a few days off and was hoping to get all the sanding finished and get a coat of primer on so I could go back to using the car.

 

The sanding progressed reasonably slowly due to the thickness of the paint, I utterly killed my old Black and decker dual action sander which started to turn slowly and smell of hot electricity....

 

Here’s a few work in progress pictures:

 

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This photo shows the crossection of the paint layers. Starting at the top you can see:

 

1. Gelcoat

2. Reliant High Build Primer,

3. Reliant Primer,

4. Reliant Highland purple Layer,

5. First Red Coat, (possibly Reliant Mexican Red,)

 

The next coats are definitely after it left the factory. Possibly suggest 2 more resprays.

 

6. Grey Pimer filler coat,

7. Red Coat. Unkown shade,

 

8. Dark guide coat, (very thin)

9. Red Primer.

10. Red topcoat.

 

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In places there are several layers on top of that which are rattle can touch-ups in the time I've had the car.

 

I'd decided to take the primer down into the engine bay by an inch or so. With a view to sorting the engine bay out as a sperate task.

 

The process of sanding back the back of the engine bay has highlighted that there are still some sections lurking under the filler are actually heavily fire damaged. I first discovered this shortly after buying the car 8 years ago, at the time Dave and I fixed most of the structural damage but a section at the back of the engine bay was overlooked.

 

When fibreglass burns its generally the Resin that burns leaving the CSM as is very black and dry mess, that is difficult to fix. A previous "matey" had simply skimmed over the remnants in filler which gave the illusion of being structural. Over the years since the filled had started to crack and chip in places.

 

Rather than sand it down I elected to wipe most of the old paint off with acetone to evaluate what was there. this is usually effective on cellulose paint and stable on normal fibreglass. Unfortunately, on contact with the fire damaged section the fibres mostly dissolved...

 

 

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I wont lie this is a difficult fix, to do anything nice with it would need the engine out and donor section. which isn’t really a practical option.

 

Not wanting to dwell on that repair job I stripped off the back end, to start sanding that back. The back end of the car is a bit of a horrible area, When I first took the body off (now over 7 years ago) some bad accident repairs were highlighted and a repair section let in around the fuel filler and boot lock. Then in 2011 after I'd had the car on the road for a month someone drove into the back of the driver’s side and another replacement section was added...

 

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On both those occasions I'd noticed the jagged bodywork hiding behind the passenger taillight and each time I had decided not to look too close...

 

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Still that crack looked really shit...

 

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I Picked at it and it all turned out to be body filler...

 

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Bollocks...

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