Caged

A Brief photo update - The cage was installed by the guys at Brunswick Motorsport. It could definitely use a lick of paint, but otherwise it's a fantastic job, and I'm very happy with it! The photos aren't the best as the car is still full of...itself, but it should give a good idea. They've also put a bar through to the front turrets through the old wiring loom hole - genius!

A long break, some progress

After a long break we've made some progress today. The main hoop of the cage is installed, and today we seam welded the engine bay and most of the interior. Hopefully the rest of the cage will be installed during the week!

Late Christmas presents?

Winter really does seem to halt the progress on projects, not to mention the holday season included in there. Not much in the way of progress can be seen (yet), but I have recently acquired a couple of treats for the engine. While my brother is gas flowing the head in his spare time it shouldn't be too long until it's ready to be rebuilt. With this in mind I have purchased an ARP head stud and nut kit as well as a new Kent CVH36 kit and Adjustable pulley. Needless to say I'm very anxious to get the head rebuilt as soon as time allows :)

The cam kit includes new hydraulic lifters, valve springs and valve stem seals. Not to mention a bit of lube.

Engine out

Another quick update and a couple of photos for you all. Today we spent a couple of hours finishing off last weeks prep to drop the engine out. Little bit tricky in the confined space but it went without any major problems! Essentially we had a big hoist and some chain secured to the engine and dropped it to the floor and then lifted the shell up and pulled the engine under it and out of the way. It was suprisingly clean in the engine bay but still a little bit grubby so a pressure wash is in order at some point. We can keep both the standard engine mounts in the hope that they will come in handy for mounting the RS lump when the time comes. Here's a couple of photos, nothing fancy and the photo of the Ka pointing to the sky once the engine was removed didn't come out so well but hopefully you'll get the idea ;)

A long break.

Evening all, a long time since my last post but hopefully we will keep some momentum and get some more work done shortly. Todays task was to try and get the Ka engine out. We set about removing anything unnecessary from the engine bay and disconnecting the multitude of hoses that would prevent the engine from coming out.

After that the driveshafts were removed and that is where we've had to leave it for now. Next step is to drop the engine off the mounts and then lift the car over the engine.

Quick photo of the engine bay after everything had been removed.

New EFi Head and a blasted inlet manifold

As the title suggests I have recently purchased a new cylinder head. WE were going to machine the original but this would have required quite a bit of fabrication. We found an EFi conversion kit on eBay and I won that for a very nice price. Came with literally everything we need to get the top end of the engine running all bar the cam we want to run etc. I stripped the head down and then gave it a nice clean up with some lovely smelling solvents :) everything came out well and I'm very happy with its overall condition. My brother also very kindly grit blasted the EFi inlet manifold down to bare aluminium, looks lovely and I think I'll keep it that way! I want to colour the EFi lettering the same colour as the block to keep things co-ordinated :)

Here are the pics taken throughout the day, enjoy!

Grindy Grindy.

Well I have this week off to help get the shell prepped for when the engine is ready and to also have it seam welded and ready for the roll cage to be installed. Task for the day was to remove as much sealant as possible. This was done with a wire brush attachment for a Dremel. If anyone has done this before you will know full well how shitty a job it is. Fortunately the sealant comes away pretty easily revealing bare metal. I called it a day with about 80% of the sealant gone, there are some bits I can't get to with power tools so it will have to be done manually this week when I can bear to look at the stuff again :) Couple of Images of the Ka itself and the piles of sealant that I collected.


















Also the steering wheel appears to be harbouring intelligent life. Daren't touch it without gloves on :)