Monday, February 18, 2013

Bonnet pins installed, temporary exhaust started.

It was too hot inside the house to have any excuse to not make progress on the E21 tonight, so I decided I’d knock one of the relatively easy tasks off the list; installing the bonnet pins. Pretty simple really, you drill a couple of holes for the pins, enlarge the ones in the bonnet so the top can sit flush, and then install the nuts on them tight so they are held in place.





I chose to use the top of the quarter panels to hold them as these are much sturdier than the section of radiator support attached to them (because of the removal/modification I have done)





Like these bonnet pins? Here's where I got them from

Next, I started to fit up a temporary exhaust (eventually I will have to make a call on re-using the extractors from my EB, or building new ones from scratch) using a factory cast iron two piece falcon manifold. These were used in the same design all the way through from EA series one to AU series 3! Unfortunately, the exit points straight at the steering arm, so I’ve got to do some tricky pipework to step around it. Not ideal for a temporary solution, but hey – it’s all practice cutting/welding various materials!



Another angle of how it’s aiming right at the steering:



I’ve made this up so far, this steps it easily away from the steering arm so now I’ll just need to start cutting/rotating/welding etc until I get something that works. I would have done more tonight except I’d sat my welding mask solar panel down and the battery was flat. My poor eyes discovered the hard way what it feels like to get welding flash. Thankfully the helmet still has SOME degree of shading when it’s not switched, and I was able to at least get this one piece done. The flange is freely rotatable, so I can get it just-right as I go.


Saturday, February 2, 2013

Revised gearbox mount

Decided to get stuck into making the new gearbox mount today as there was a chance I'd need to move the E21 off the pit; but the gearbox was supported on a trolley jack in the position I wanted it to be mounted.


 I measured, drilled and then installed the mount on the gearbox by removing the factory harmonic absorber (pictured below, normally this is just two heavy pieces of metal hung from the gearbox by a bracket and seperated from the box with two rubber pieces), then drilling out both that and the 50x25RHS together and located a bolt that fits (from the rear control arms of a Falcon)


I then welded the ends of the mount into the transmission tunnel/floor pan of the car. These bolts are designed to be hit in and out with a hammer (hence the taper and lack of exposed thread on the end) so it should be easy to remoove them and the rear rubber from the gearbox when it comes time to remove the engine or box. The bracket the harmonic absorber hangs from is also removable if required.


Clearance for the steering tube is now fine as pictured above, and below shows the general clearance of the sump to steering rack.



Finally, one last shot looking down the transmission tunnel. Installed like this, the trans sits much higher and I believe I will be able to install the centre bearing assembly with the factory nuts/bolts instead of the spacers I needed previously.