One of the bearings is a Timken 28577 / 25821 – the rest I’ll have to look up. The input shaft bearing is new anyway, I changed that when I replaced the input shaft.

EDIT: The SKF Part number for this bearing is 25877/2/25821/2/Q

Anyway, the gearbox is partially apart. Next week I’m off work, so I’m probably going to get on with it then – I really want the car back together! Only getting to drive it a few miles sucks!!!!

Oh well. Had to take it apart to find out that this had happened, and the bearing piston was solid in its bore! *Sigh* – Won’t be going to Germany in it in a few weeks now!

I think that’s probably the most worn “pad” I’ve ever taken off one of my cars! lol

Best I start doing a few more general maintenance jobs on the Mondeo. It also needs an inlet manifold to stop the erratic idling too!

Broom, Broom!

EDIT:

Chris, The coolant system is using a Davies Craig EWP115 electric water pump. The coolant system is arranged as below. I will get a few photos for you in the next post. Thanks for your interest!

I finished bolting everything back on the engine, and started with a few extras like a cold air feed and exhaust manifold shields as the under bonnet temperatures last year were a bit keen!

After checking everything over it was time to start her up again. First checked fuel pressure – all was good and no leaks. Then checked oil pressure with a drill on the dry sump pump while the belt was removed, again all was good and no leaks. The coolant system was quickly filled and bled, and AGAIN no leaks! Very unusual! lol

Started up using the fuel that’s sat in the tank for the best part of a year and she burst into life. Missing quite a bit, but pretty responsive and definitely working okay whilst not chucking oil, fuel or coolant all over the place so I’ll class that as a win!

So now it needs some fresh fuel, and a new set of plugs and we should be all good.

The rest of the exhaust needs fitting as does the prop and some gearbox oil would be nice too! Then it’s just mechanical handbrake and the final checks for MOT things that need to be done before I can drive it down to the MOT station to get a ticket. Can’t wait!

So, I can just get on and order one of them when I want to replace the motor. The next thing is that the three-jaw automatic centring chuck is okay, but it doesn’t allow fine adjustment of centring because it’s not independent and it cannot do objects that are not round or hex such as bearing blocks because there are only three jaws. I need to replace this chuck with a 4-jaw independent chuck. But first, I need to make a backplate for a new chuck to mount on. I’ve gathered some photos of the current Orac chuck, so that we can see how it’s mounted:

I also found a really useful PDF which describes how to make your own backplate on a mill. It includes some useful tips on how to drill the bolt/stud holes for mounting the chuck to the backplate. This’ll come in useful I think:

Fitting a Lathe Backplate

And back to the car. Silencers both on, the result is a much quieter car – still noisy though

watch?v=fjcnHkzI2vo&list=UUIPzzkLnPfMbZBTCjXZJQMA&index=1&feature=plcp

Next on the list is to measure up for the driveshafts, and to get the floor in. I’ve got some sierra cosworth 2rd driveshafts knocking about and they have the 108mm lobro cv joints which I’ll be using on the Aston Martin Diff. I’m using them to help me to determine the correct driveshaft length.

It’s a tricky thing to get right, as the cv’s have plunge in them, and the correct length will have the cv’s in the middle during normal ride height, and have enough movement in them in droop and squat so they don’t bind.

The last piece of the puzzle is to get the de-dion axle centered, which I’ve roughly done, but I need to get it accurate before I’m happy to take the measurements.

One of the driveshafts fits ok as is, so technically, It’s now 1wd

I’ll do the other side at the weekend.

The other jobs I’ve been working on are the floor, the electrics and the steering arms.

In order to put the floor in, I needed to start thinking about the sidepod width. The silencers will fit into the side pods, and I want them to be the full width of the car. To help me visualise the final solution, I built up the front suspension and dropped the wheels on.

It looks better and better all the time.

The nightmare steering column is back on.

In order to get this far, I needed to replace the oem plug leads on this side as the steering column would go through them. There’s one lead made up above, and the other 3 are now done. More photos of that and the floor to follow, I forgot to take photos last night.

Electrics are taking a step forward, I spent some time grafting connectors onto the dash so that it’s very easy to remove. it looks like a wiring car crash at the moment, as it’s not finished, but once I’ve got all the wiring complete I’ll tidy it up and secure it properly.

When I assembled the front suspension, I found that the steering arms are binding at full droop. They were a temporary thing anyway, but it looks like the time has come to make the real ones.

This weekend’s job list is to replumb the oil pressure gauge, add in a low oil pressure switch, find and fix a minor oil leak around the dry sump pump, and then progress with the floor and the driveshaft measurements.

The exhaust manifold’s wrapping was looking a little past it’s best:

So I decided to wrap both manifolds again with some new wrap…

I also decided that the hose that interfered with the subframe was too risky to use and it had got a proper beating. So I decided to remake it with some new hose just to make sure:

I also remembered that I had bent a rose joint on one of the engine mounts when I took the engine out after Germany last year, and so I replaced it. I tested to see if it would bend back straight:

I refitted the exhaust manifolds. The manifolds had been blowing a bit at the manifold flanges, so I decided to give a bit more sealing with some assembly putty this time round and see if it made any difference:

Then it was time to get the engine back in place:

Et voila!

Now to start hooking everything back up and get her started up again. Can’t wait to get to drive it again! Woooooo!

So I had to remove the engine again to modify the subframe to clear the hose. But at least it’ll give me the chance to re-wrap the exhaust manifolds properly before I put it in again at the weekend.