All the colours of the rainbow - Stuart Sportster photochopped into various colours:






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Misc items done such as finishing the steering column mount and putting the pedal box in for the last time (we hope!)


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New tubes added


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AFM Mount:


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Also started wrapping the engine wiring loom ready to go back in the car.

We've spent quite a lot of time on the engine wiring loom this weekend, routing elements of the loom and placing key bits of kit like the ECU. Decided to put the ECU on the passenger side - there's plenty of room there. Also the whole engine loom will enter the car through the bulk head with the rest of the element routed around that. The coil pack as moved over to the other side of the engine bay - with a bit of cable re-routing there is no need to lengthen the cables to this. The motronic diagnostic port has a home on the top of the bulkhead where its easy to access. We've also painted up various brackets and created a panel to cover the hole in the bulkhead that the engine wiring loom is passing through.


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Stoneleigh national car show 2006 was on this week end, was a very good day out with lots of opportunity to pickup ideas and tips from other Sportster builders! We also picked up out full front windscreen and returned the build stands to Marlin.







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Lots of pictures from the event

Today we worked on the doors installing the latches and trimming out the door pockets so that the latches are usable and there are no square or sharp edges. Had to cut the opening for the latch about 1 cm bigger at the top over the marked line so that they would unlatch the striker pin.


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We've been moved to a shiny, new and faster server (again!) sorry for the down time.

Seat belts are here :)


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We've decided to use the stock 4 stud alloys to start with, but with larger tyres that we've got from and E36. The alloys have seen better days after a good 15 years on the car! So today we've had the old rubber taken off the rim and started the refurb process. None of the pro restores I called would touch the plastics caps and most wanted £55 per wheel. So as these are only until we've worn through the tyres we decided to try the Halford wheel restoration kit. The results are pretty good consider its DIY - only finished one of the three so far, it take a long, long time with lots and lots of sanding to get anywhere!


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Also a small job in the engine bay, mounting the coil and arranging the pipes. The Car Builder Solution pipe that I had custom made instead of the 3rd radiator cap is install with the pipe over to the header tank:


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Sanding, sanding, sanding, sanding.... after find there is not enough paint in a halford repair kit to do a proper job it turns out you can't buy the paint separately?!?! Ok plan B filler primer, sanding, primer, Honda Noble silver, lacquer! That should yield much better results than the paint in the kit. The stuff for filling the holes was good though.


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Coil overs have arrived from Gaz - first test fit. Its tight and the chassis might need a bit of modification to get everything running nicely! Finish quality is excellent with ball joints at the top are welded into the E46 top mounts I sent to them.


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Fuel system sorted! Two new fuel filters from Sytec (BTC spec - maybe a little over the top!!) one with 12mm unions and the other with 8mm. The pump sits in the middle on two short pipes. The hose clips are not too tight so that the pump can move a little.


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It took 1 halfords referb kit (minus paint as there was not enough), 6 1200 grit wet and dry sheets, 2 cans of primer, 3 cans of Honda Nobel Silver and 2 cans of laquer + hours and hours and hours and hours of sanding!! But the alloys are finally ready to have some tyres added. A set of Bridgestone RE720 in 205/65/R15 are ready to go on these 15x7J rims.


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Finally got around to making an extra leg for the AFM bracket. In the absence of welding kit & ability this has turned into a brazing experiment. Will add a hose clamp just in case as well! You might recognise the parts as they were originally the Y bracket for the radiator that we've not used:


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New tuning section for M20 engine - so far big bore trottle body and throttle body water by pass!


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Paul brought his Marlin around today. A big thank you from everyone for taking us out for a drive. The car is very nice, really like the colour. A stunning looking interior! A few piccys here:


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We did a little bit of work on the doors and body, but I was installing new shocks on my daily drive which too up most of the day:


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The mechanical stuff is essentially done apart from tightening up all the bolts and matching sure everything is secured. Did some final tweaks over the weekend to the rear coil over installation and engine bay brackets.

The rear shock towers needed widening due to the installation of coil overs. With the modification the coil over has 1.5-2cm of sideways movement which should be more than enough to allow for movement under heavy cornering. If not it can always be widened further.


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The AFM bracket required some modification to give the IVC (idle control valve) a little more space when the engine is running.


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Richard spent all day knee deep in BMW wiring diagrams. On reflection buying the "Marlin" loom may not have been the best option - we were told this is custom made for the car, which it's not. It is in fact it's a generic Lucas loom, its nicely laid out but is missing several connections needed for the car. The other more worrying thing is that it does not use any relays for turning things on as its laid out - not ideal when running high currently through the switches.

Using the BMW loom and striping out the bits that are not needed might be the better option. It may seem more daunting at first but the cables are still good in 15 - 20 year old BMW. In the end you get all the well thought out circuits laid out as BMW designed them with lots of built in protection for the car - you don't want things going up in smoke!

Easy wires to replace that were rotten on our loom - In the car audio world it's know as TB3 - the big three. Alternator to starter, started to battery and ground straps. These were not in the best of condition and will be replaced with new 4AWG cable - thicker that standard which allows it to handle more current with less voltage drop - not so important unless your running high current amplifiers! However new good earth can't hurt to get everything running nicely.

We will be using the Lucas loom as we have it and wire in the BMW fuse box, this will provide all of the required relays. We will also add extra cables as required to the loom. These modifications will hopefully improve the safety and reliability of the electric system over the standard Lucas loom.

Not much to see this week but the ignition works, the starter runs, battery light comes on, handbrake light works and the horns work! Richard's do an excellent job of combining the E30 fuse box with the lucas loom.

Also fitted the thermostat adjuster. Found a nice little place to hide underneath the crank sensor / spark lead sensor wiring connectors - needed a bit of machining on the lathe but everything fits fine now. Its the bracket that the diagnostic plug used to sit in, but was removed as there is not enough space.

More wiring done today. The ECU, main relay and fuel pump relay have power. The power for these items has a separate power connection that will be fused. This will bypass the kill switch; the ECU requires power so that it does not lose its setting, each time the ECU is disconnected from the power it require about 20 minutes on idle and a 10 min drive to set-up again.

The fuel pump circuit has been also been completed, this will be tested ones the pump is wired up and ECU wiring is complete.

It's alive, nearly a year after it last ran its alive!!

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You'll need Quicktime to play as its off my phone :)

Two issues we ran into during the first engine start:

1. The fuel tank has a tiny leak we hadnt found before - ordered some tank sealer from Frost to fix that one
2. The connection between the rubber fuel pipe and copper than runs up the centre of the car was not tight/good enough as we got a bit of leakage from there. Plan A is to flare the pipe and tighten the hose clips furhter. Plan B is to run Aeroquip hoses from the  front to the back. This should be SVA - Ok as long as we've got the paper work from Think Automotive to back it up.