More updates, airbox thoughts

Work continues on the airbox and I've had a couple of quotes for aluminium cut to size for a backplate and sealing ring, £40 + VAT and delivery for the pair, so I doubt it's worth trying to make one myself or buying and cutting a ITG one.

So the plan at the moment is to have the aluminium backplate and ring supplied, that's the yellow and the blue parts in the cad image below, and then form the rest of the airbox from fibreglass or carbon fibre.

I'm not sure at this stage whether to bond the sealing ring into the airbox or just have it on top to spread the weight.

The best quote I had for the backplate was £30 plus delivery and VAT from LaserMaster, so I confirmed the drawing and paid them yesterday morning and this morning the parts were delivered.

Next job is to finish off the grommets, the ITG ones had a very large OD, meaning they would overlap, so instead I have managed to find some wiring grommets, though these need slight alteration to fit.

I was pleasantly surprised with the service after another company, who quoted £40+ also would only start work after the cheque cleared, LaserMaster took payment over the phone.

The first trial fit looks OK, I'm going to have to fettle one or two of the holes though to make it fit better (my measuring inaccuracies) and then add a mounting point or two back to the inlets to hold it steady.

Then I thought I'd make a start on the airbox, first step was to find something I could mould into the shape of the airbox to lay the fibreglass onto. First thought was to use that green flower arranging foam, oasis, but I couldn't find a large enough piece locally, so I got creative with a cardboard box, some plastic and a can of expanding foam to make this:

Which was roughed out to this, using a jack saw and rasp:

Before adding radii, covering in tape and trial fitting one of the air inlet pipes, which will be moulded in with the fibreglass:

Overdue updates

Right, so this blog has gone from being a bit out of date to being very out of date, so it's time to get things back on track.

Following my last missive, the inlet manifolds now all match-up with the head a lot better now after a bit of fettling and I've managed to get most of the butterflies to seat a lot better, one is still a lot worse than the others, so that manifold will have to come out again. The trouble is that the manifolds and butterflies are all clean and I have heard people say that they are a pain to seal up again when clean.

Engine mounts,

This is the new design, it uses the original bracket with heavy box section and a tube welded on the end for the bolt to pass through to the new rubber (Jaguar E-type)

The pic below shows how much the rubber has sagged and the new bracket behind it prior to being tacked in.

I fitted the newly modified engine brackets and I am pleased to say that so far there is no noticeable increase in vibrations or noise from the engine.

All the butterflies in the inlet manifolds fit a lot a better now and other air leaks from the top of the manifolds have been sealed off, so I can have the engine tick over at 600rpm again if I wanted.
Driving around, I can sometimes hear a knock from the back and some of the blue Polybushes fitted do not look as good as they should, so I will probably end up replacing those with Superflex ones.

The next area I feel I should concentrate on is air delivery to the inlet manifolds. All of the components for this need a good bit of thinking through, the basic plan though is to have a box over the manifolds, fed by colder air from the front of the car.
Considerations to be made;

• Air box backplate buy or make? - Both ITG and Pipercross sell them for around £30, but they are only pieces of alloy sheet with fasteners
• How to secure the backplate to the ram pipes? - Again ITG sell these, but £8 for a grommet
• How to seal the backplate to the air box? - Adhesive foam? rubber?
• Where to route the pipe/s to the air box
• Where/how to induct air into the pipe? - Under the radiator, but not so low that it picks up water?
• What size pipe/s to the air box? - I'd like to have two feeds so not to starve one end of the engine

I've seen Pipercross and others sell air boxes of a suitable length, but at over £200, I'd rather make my own from fibreglass or Carbon Fibre and have something that is exactly what I want.

I've been going through some more of those finishing off jobs. The Facet low pressure primer has now been replaced with the pump from George, fortunately it has the same mounting centres as the previous pump, so it made for easy fastening down and I now have two quieter rotary fuel pumps.

The search for the elusive speed vibrations have led me to reduce the gap between the bonnet and sill on the passenger side, so the bonnet assembly no longer vibrates as much at speed. In addition to this, the rear tyres have now been replaced with Conti Eco Contacts and doing these two things have really made the car much more steady.

Had the Bank Holiday over in East Anglia, which meant doing a bit over 400 miles in the GT6, the miles just flew by and it was a pleasure to drive, much changed from 18 months ago.

Unfortunately my camera did not get any video from the last rolling road session, but I have put together a video from footage collected by Alex at Maynards. GT6 PI on the rolling road