[James3990]

So to end this chapter on the car, I had a few things to finish:

Exhaust needed refitting.



I didn’t work underneath the car like this but I took the picture as a demonstration to the stiffness of the chassis with all the strengthening done


The car never came with one fitted, but it was suggested to me refitting the plastic cover to protect the fuel connections like on a road car. Chris Taylor very kindly supplied me one of these






The existing rear caliper bleed valves were in bad shape, so I replaced both on the rear.






Brakes are now functional again so it was time to start the engine and move the car out the garage for the first time this year. It felt good even if it was just spinning it round 180 degrees on my driveway



I’ve turned it round in the garage because next job will be to remove the gearbox for a rebuild due to a noisy input shaft bearing.

Thanks for looking.

[James3990]

So time for a update,

I've started the strip down of the engine bay ready to remove the gearbox for a rebuild:




The power tool of choice, not sure how I've only just brought one of these, the time it saves is incredible:




Took around 45 minutes to get to this state, I'm happy with that time and this car is so much easier to work on compared to the blue one:




The coolant has only gone through a couple of heat cycles under no load really, so managed to save this fluid using a couple of bottles out the recycling bin




Always a good sign when the gap appears between the gearbox and adaptor plate 8)




Gearbox removed, exposing the brand new Bork & Beck Clutch kit I fitted around 1 mile ago


Clutch removed:


Flywheel removed & thankfully everything is bone dry around the crank seal!



Time to finally fit the TTV billet Flywheel I brought a few months back. The weight difference is shown on the box, massive difference 8)




Loctite & torqued to spec:




Here is a picture of the crank sensor between the flywheel teeth. This flywheel from TTV is a serious piece of metal, great quality and I can't wait to notice the difference:




Whilst the coolant was drained down, I took the opportunity to fix a 'bodge' I did back when I installed the heater matrix system. I brought a heater control valve but unknown to me at the time, there was a difference in bracket therefore at the time, I made my own rubber pipe to suit. With Tom on the ropes now able to offer a high quality alternative to Samco & SFS on silicon coolant pipes, I placed an order with him for the correct heater matrix to control valve coolant pipe as I sourced the correct metal bracket:






Correct bracket fitted along with the new silicone pipe, all fitted as per the original cars should be:




Saving the best till last, here is the 220 (type A LSD) PG1 gearbox removed from the car. I will most likely fit this box to my blue coupe once rebuilt and fit a steel caged 620ti gearbox to this race car due to the shorter ratios. The Type B LSD is also known as the stronger diff compared to a type A therefore it just makes sense to do this swap:




Bearing in mind I fitted fresh gearbox oil to this box when I reinstalled the engine and transmission 2 years ago and Ive only done around 1 mile of driving and around 1 hour of idling the engine, the state of the oil was seriously bad The sump plug had 'glittery' metal attached to it and the oil I collected in a bowl was full of metal. I'm not sure if this picture does it justice!





I decided to stick a magnet in the oil just for the *laughs*'s:




Next job will be to get the gearbox opened and inspected for what needs replacing.

Thanks for looking

[James3990]

Small update:

Whilst I’m sorting out the logistics of rebuilding and swapping gearboxes, I’ve been working on a little side project that’s getting closer to being finished.

When I stripped down the rear end of the car back in December, I noticed I had two different trailing arms fitted which I wasn’t happy about. With a fully stitch welded chassis now, I need all the suspension components to be in the same condition on both sides of the car to maximise its handling potential so I went away and brought some spare trailing arms to modify.



Regardless of brake setup, the trailing arms are identical so I went about stripping these arms down to the bare minimum:










There's a company in Australia called 'Honed Developments Ltd' who specialise in tuning Honda Civic’s of the same era and they offer a few nice modifications based on their own experiences on track. One of these options are a pair of 'gusset plates' to stiffen up the rear arms which is totally different to the Roversport design (arguably better too) so I purchased a pair for delivery to the UK.

I sent the spare arms away to be shot blasted just to clean them up:






I then had the plates welded on the back of the arms:






And then some real race parts delivered! A pair of spherical bearings to replace the main bush on the trailing arms, directly from the manufacturer in the USA.




Quick mock up so that I can drill the two holes for pressing into place and bolting down:




next I’ll be sending them off for powder coating, and then the reassembly can begin.

Thanks for looking.

[James3990]

Arms are now back from the powder coaters, looking very nice.






Time to reassemble and get them fitted to the car.


So some progress on the gearbox situation.

As previously mentioned, I’ll be using a different gearbox on the race car moving forward, a C6SBUT (Type B, 620ti) gearbox which I’ve been running on my road car.

Main reason for doing this is the fact that the gear ratios from a 620ti gearbox are a very close match to an original R8Z Roversport Gearbox and also the Type B LSD.




I rebuilt this gearbox around 8-9 years ago with all new uprated bearings (steel caged versions were possible) and I’ve only covered approx 5,000 miles since. However before doing the swap, I wanted someone with more experienced eyes to precisely inspect the internals of this gearbox therefore Tom Pinney very kindly stepped in and offered to help.

So a trip down to Toms was in order with Monster Hunter for the health inspection to begin







Tom completely stripped the gearbox down to individual components, the magnet was cleaned, all the gears clean and even input and countershafts were cleaned and given a clean sheet of health




The only concern was the input shaft end float was out of tollerence, so it just needs the correct shims added. Thankfully no damage to the bearings so we gave everything a good clean, swapped over the speedo drive ready for the postman to deliver the new parts for reassembly.

Thanks for looking!

[ROVER Cabby]

This thread has seemingly bypassed me!

Most impressive resto, i'm nowhere near that skill level, but it is very inspiring!

How much does a full polybush kit cost these days?

[James3990]

This thread has seemingly bypassed me!

Most impressive resto, i'm nowhere near that skill level, but it is very inspiring!

How much does a full polybush kit cost these days?

Thanks for the comments, the polybush kits have shot up in price over the last 10 years. I brought a full kit back in 2013 for approx £400 from Superflex, but today you are looking double that price. Powerflex are another brand that support Rovers and they have more options available in terms of stiffness, but they are the most expensive out the two brands.

Small update:

it was time to finish the rear suspension now I have my spherical bearings pressed into the main RTA bush location on both arms.



Here are some comparison pictures of the exisiting arm vs the new modified arm. The exisiting arm is unfortunately a ‘home-Bodge’ attempt at replicating what should have been a Roversport arm.






Now the rebuild & reassembly process:

Stub axles cleaned up and fitted:





Exisiting Wheel bearings are fine, so a quick clean up and refit:





And then some before and after pictures:

Before:


After:


Before:


After:



I’m very interested to see how these feel compared to a rubber bush. I’ll be replacing the discs and pads at some point in the future before the car gets a shake down.

Thanks for looking!

[GTiJohn]

Absolutely fascinating thread

It just shows how much work is involved to 'do the job properly'

[James3990]

It just shows how much work is involved to 'do the job properly'

That's questionable John, I'm no mechanic I'm just someone who's curious how things work and willing to give it ago. I have been tinkering with these cars consistently for over 10 years now so I'm not going to discredit myself too much!



Small update:

I got the new gearbox on the car fairly easily, all on my own too which I was happy about.






It was the reassembly were things started to bite me, When I did the exhaust manifold stud conversion 2 years ago, some of the threads in the cylinder head weren’t in great shape. I should have fixed the problem back then but I never did. Its obvious from the picture below that cylinder 1 wasn’t sealing correctly to the manifold.




Some of the other threads were even worse than before, so it was time to fix the problem once and for all. Alternator off, drilled out the existing threads (what was left), cleaned up the new hole and then tap & Heli coil fitted. I ended up doing this to 3 of the threads.




Problem resolved, all manifold nuts tightened up to spec (45Nm) no problem in the correct order too.

Next problem I had was completely my own amateur mistake, despite having the turbo intake and outlet ports covered up, I removed them to start fitting the last items and ended up dropping a torx bit inside the turbo :facepalm: Completely my fault and I don’t mind sharing this publicly on the forum, I’m no mechanic and things don’t always go as planned. I brought 2 different ‘Pick up Tools’ with magnets on the end but I just couldn’t find the part, so I ended up removing the turbo and dismantling it to find the part. This cost me around 3-4 hours of time. :facepalm: :facepalm:




So in total, it probably took me around 10 hours to reassemble the car fitting the gearbox, fixing an exisiting problem with the exhaust manifold and then dropping a tool inside my turbo. A big lesson learnt, but thankfully the car is now back together and in its best possible condition yet.




Need to source some MTF94 gearbox oil then I’ll give the car its first fire up of 2023 and a quick drive down the road to see how the gearbox feels.

Thanks for looking!

[James3990]

Small update:

I brought some MTF94 oil and filled up the gearbox which took approx 2.2L.

Then it was time to fire up the car for the first time in approx 6 months after a load of work, here is a video - https://youtu.be/FC9B8BpwXns

Car runs absolutely fine, nice to have a smooth quiet gearbox fitted!

Thanks for looking.

[GTiJohn]

Nice and smooth

As a matter of interest, what spark plugs do you use?