Wednesday 12 March 2014

Build Day Seventeen - Starter Motor, Alternator and some odds and ends

Yesterday I was the victim of the jet lag catching up with me.  In bed by 6:30pm, and slept through until 7am this morning!  My brain wanted to get working on the car yesterday, but my body wasn't interested in the slightest.

Anyway after a good rest, I got to work on re-fitting the starter motor and the alternator.  As the throttle bodies and the carbon part of the air box take up quite a lot of space the access was limited and these two jobs were quite fiddly and time consuming.

Starter motor got re-fitted first.  I need to check the wiring with Derek at CC tomorrow, and also where the alternator brown wire goes to.
Starter motor re-fitted.
Starter motor re-fitted.  
Then I moved onto re-fitting the alternator, the pulley we had to remove to get the engine in and the belt.  Seemed easy, but I realised I fitted the earth lead the wrong way round for the engine, which made this menial task a lot more time consuming.  I had to partly re-hoist the engine to take the load off the mount, undo the bolts from both sides to the engine mounts and fiddle around with it to release the weight off the engine mount so I could get the bolt out.  I also needed an extra pair of hands, so got Charlotte to help out for 15 minutes or so.

The alternator was again fiddly to fit, but got there in the end.  I then re-fitted the pulley and the belt.
Alternator, pulley and belt re-fitted.
Alternator, pulley and belt re-fitted.
I found it difficult to by an imperial sized 3/8 hex bolt for torquing the main engine mount cap head bolts, so bought a dirt cheap set of allen keys from b&q.  The Dremel came out once again - I cut the allen bolt in half and used that which worked perfectly.  All the engine mounting bolts got torqued and marked accordingly.  I then plugged together the main engine wiring block and tie wrapped it to the scuttle where the front of the battery is - seemed an obvious place to put it as there was a cable tie mount there, but I'll double check this with Derek too.

Plugging main engine wiring block together.
Plugging main engine wiring block together.
I then moved onto some odds and ends that I should've done before I went on holiday.  Namely the rear brake callipers and brake lines.  The passenger side one went together fine, and after a quick post on blatchat I torqued the top black bolts (with some new lactate) that go into the nuts with the rubber bellows to 20nm.  I've not fitted the handbrake cable yet.  The drivers side rear calliper will not fit though.  It seems that it is too narrow to fit the brake pads and then over the disc.  So I thinking it may be one of the brake pads that was too thick I undid the work of finished calliper to try these brake pads, but it still wouldn't fit. Another Derek check email job.

One brake calliper finished.
One brake calliper finished.
At this point I was ready to pack up for the night, but wanted to do one more quick job, so fitted the gear stick and the reverse light switch.
Gear stick fitted.
Gear stick fitted.
Reverse light switch in place.
Reverse light switch in place.
Had a quick tidy up, and found I've only got 4 boxes left..!  It seems that the list of things to do are getting smaller very quickly.  Which is great news as I've got the guys coming on Monday to re-apply the correct stickers and to apply the stone chip protection film.  The car is booked in to be collected on the 24th March for the PBC and IVA via Caterham after that so time is ticking...

Lee is coming over tomorrow night to give me a hand with the rear wings and stone guards.  I'll also try and get the rear indicators on and if we've got time take a more in depth look at the cooling.

3 comments:

  1. Daniel,
    Ah yes, the excellent documentation of the electrical connections to the starter motor (not). Here is what you need to know, with details and picture here http://csr175.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/water-electrics/ .

    Basically, the fat red cable from the battery/battery master switch, the fat cable from the alternator and the dual brown cables from the alternator all connect to the same large terminal furthest from the engine block. There is a smaller terminal below and to the left of this and the red/white solenoid control cable attaches here. The other large brass terminal has nothing connected.
    Mark

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    Replies
    1. Yes, there's no mention of it whatsoever in the manual, so done a 'best guess' attempt. I'd already emailed Derek at CC, then your info came through - appreciated.

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    2. Daniel, I get to read your posts from my position 8hrs behind you here in CA., so you get to see any comments the following day. Glad things are working out. Hitting your timing for the IVA is going to focus your attention :-)

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