Bobbyspit.: Another Year another excuse

Well its been a long time since I posted. In my defence I have been very busy and I have made progress on the house. garden BBQ area and also the Spitfire.

A little progress.

The Subaru Limited Slip Differential is now fitted and the car is back on all four wheels now. the front brakes are now four pot running vented discs. The rear brakes are now converted from drum brakes to disc brakes and almost finished.

Ok ready for some info? The Subaru differential has been fully fitted and linked up to the Rover 100 shafts, inner Subaru CVs and outer Rover CVs which are fitted to the Gt6 rear vertical links which have been machined out to take the rover 100 outer CV with the larger MGF TF bearings fitted to the vertical link. Outside the VC is a MGF TF disc and calliper, I made the calliper mount myself to allow the MGF rear calliper to fit the GT6 vertical link. Got that???

The radius arm for the Spitfire are mounted to the outer location points on the body (at the rear of the seats in the cab) where as the GT6 utilise the longer radius arms and mount to the inner mount to the inside of the cab. As such the Radius arm locating bracket on the inside of the cab have been cut out and moved to the inner mount location (These parts are no longer available hence I did not buy new)

My seats were eat by mice a couple of winters ago whilst at a friends barn as I did not have a garage at the time and the carpets are shot due to the same fury friends. My plan is to replace the leather parts that were eaten and buy a new carpet set.

The Zetec engine is supplied fuel by a very successful system consisting of a low pressure fuel pump providing fuel to a swirl pot that then feeds a high pressure fuel pump via a high flow fuel filter the fuel passes along braded high pressure rubber fuel pipes to the fuel rail and any excess fuel is passed back to the swirl pot and an overflow back to the main tank from the swirl. The combination of the swirl pot/low pressure fuel pump/high pressure fuel pump and fuel filter in the boot took up some needed space and decided a few years ago now to replace with a fuel pump swirl pot and sender unit (for the fuel gauge) to be in tank and save space in the boot so for this blog entry I hope to cover this.

I have extended my tank range by 100% by adding steel and providing a great location for the fuel pump.

The fuel pump is a webcon supplied in tank unit and is not cheap but I have since found the fuel pump elsewhere for a third of the price *(hey I got a spare) anyhow the matter of fitting the fuel pump to the tank. I ordered metal rings from a laser cutting company measuring the outside diameter of the fuel pump and the outer some 15mm larger they came today.

The rings arrived plain so I could use one welded to the tank and the other on top of the fuel pump held down by bolts! so I drilled the pair to accept 6 x M6 stainless Allen bolts, the pair now become the upper ring and lower ring the lower will be welded to the tank. The lower ring has been tapped to accept the M6 Allen bolts meaning they will be fixed permanently to the ring and held in place with thread lock.

The rings drilled and lower ring threaded then I test fitted them together and found them perfectly fitted.

Next was to test fit the fuel pump in to the rings and it fitted superbly. Now to cut the tank.

Tank was cut with a jigsaw and was straight forward and allows me to clean out the tank of any welding swarf and debris I will carry out some seam welding with my Tig to tidy up my welding on the extension of the tank prior to welding the lower ring in place.

The ring was placed on the tank to test fit and it fits great and allows the fuel pump loads of clearance on the surrounding and the fuel pump being spring loaded will compress to sit at the bottom of the tank. I also baffled the tank whilst extending it to slow and reduce the sloshing of the fuel in the extra large tank.