(That’s not our engine, BTW…)

The nervousness probably began when I decided to figure out the pins for the starter motor. So I put it on my desk in my study, connected up what looked right, and tapped it to the battery. Click. The solenoid when on and off, but no spinning. This was by design, I wanted to make sure I got that part right before committing to the big cable. So next it was to wire up that big copper lug. Ready, steady, go – flip sakes, that thing is a beast. It jumped about 10cm into the air, and came crashing back down onto my desk. If your finger was in the wrong place it would be chewed to bits. And that’s JUST THE STARTER MOTOR!

So the previous post stuff all happened, bringing us to Tuesday night. Engine start night. There are so many hose clamps that I was pretty sure we’d forget to tighten one of them.  Start attempt #1:

What happened? The engine is all set to go, the necessary switches are flipped and I’m about to hit the start button, when I decide to glance at the fuel tank area. The spreading pool of flammable fluid is evidence that the predicted loose hose-clamp is on a fuel line. Sucky.

So a 10 minute stoppage is called, while the fuel is mopped up and the air is cleared. Then it’s back to setting the switches and pushing “start”. Or rather, the tiny red push-button switch.

There were definite signs of life, the branch was getting warm and you could smell half-burnt fuel. But no success. The coil connectors seemed loose, so they were re-attached and a third attempt made.

SUCCESS! What an awesome feeling, and what a cool sound. This is going to be a fun car to drive. Of course, we’re still a little way from there yet, but a big step closer.

We were worried that the engine did not idle – it’s computer controlled, so it really should. Then we realised that it seemed to be getting no air through the throttle, because it was completely (as in almost sealed) shut. A quick call to the guru (Andre) confirmed this, and he recommended taking off the vacuum hose from the air manifold to the cam cover. You can see this in the next video – it just lets through enough air for the ECU to do its job. With this done, the car started like a dream, and idled perfectly.

The next day I decided to get a video of the idle, as well as record the sound using a proper microphone (rather than the silly little thing in the camera). I managed to then overlay the new soundtrack on the video, to bring you what she really sounds like:

You will need a set of decent speakers for this, since most of the sound is really in the bass range.

A huge thank you to Andre, who has been a massive help the whole time. I’m pretty sure his regular assistance and guidance played a major role in our Rocam not ending up like the engine in the first video.

Thanks for watching.

B

So we’re about to start the engine, tonight. Which is a rather hectic jump from plugging up the hole in the fuel tank and putting on the windscreen. In fact, that catchup has become so big that I’ve been unable to write anything on the blog because there’s just too much to write. It’s also rather boring, albeit hopefully useful. So instead I’ll try to put up pages of the useful stuff when I get a chance, and rather just start blogging again from where I am now.

Deon, hero that he is, has mounted the water pump pulley on the alternator. Details here.

We had a button clutch made. This thing is awesome, and it turns out there’s more to clutches than you might think.

Also mounted the hydraulic slave cylinder for the clutch release. I really hope I did my maths right, but it seems to be ok.

The roll cage and the exhaust were manufactured. This is a mission because we don’t have a trailer, or a car powerful enough to pull it. A plan was made.

The electrics have been done. This is not a small job, it is in fact quite a big job. I’ll try to write up as much of my experience as possible; hopefully it will provide a starting point for your own system. You are building your own car, right?

The seats are in – the driver’s seat slides, but the passenger seat is fixed. It’s quite a brainteaser getting these things in, since the seat covers the area where you need to drill the hole. I’ll put in a page showing how I did it, in case it’s useful.

On to the engine starting. It’s very exciting, but it’s also quite a mission. First up there’s the ECU. Wiring it up is covered under the electrics page (or will be). The ECU itself also needs to be calibrated and a suitable map put into it. Andre supplied me with a startup mapping file, but it turns out that it’s from V2 of the XMS4A-2A. Mine (same model) is V1. The software for my model is a tiny bit different to his. My software can’t read his file, and his software can’t talk to my unit (it’s quite rude about it actually). It gets even stupider than that, but you get the picture. Eventually I managed to get screenshots of his mapping file, which I then MANUALLY typed into my mapping file. Number-by-number (no copy-paste, and only idiotic block setting). There are two main tables, 384 numbers in each.The software is crap in a very special way. Fun.

At least the hardware seems solid, and perhaps the V2 of the software is an improvement – it would have to physically poke me in the eye to be worse.

Calibration is not too hard once you get the hang of it. Engine temp is a bit of a mission, I ended up using good old “y=mx+c”

But before you can think about starting the engine, you need to think about cooling. This means not only the pipes to the radiator, but also plugging all the spare holes meant for creature comforts.

Johan did us the massive favour of machining some awesome aluminium stoppers for the heater hose holes.

They fitted very snugly, but then were also held in place with rubber hose and clamps. One of the stoppers was designed to fit a standard temperature sensor. This will serve as a backup sensor, part of the instrument panel.

Next on the to-do list is to make sure you’ve got oil pressure. This means putting oil into the engine (if you took yours out) and then turning the engine over using the starter motor until you get pressure.

Best idea is to remove the sparkplugs so that there’s no compression. This is less effort for the starter motor, and not too draining on the battery (don’t use your racing battery). Also, you might want to take special care that you’ve got the hoses on the right way round. There is a non-return valve in the filter, and you will get zero flow the other way round (and you might damage your pump). Don’t ask how I know all these details.

After this we checked that there was fuel flowing. We simply linked the feed and return lines, and put cheap filters at both ends to catch any dirt from inside the fuel lines. Have a few fire extinguishers handy until you’re sure everything works ok.

The fuel needs to be ignited, so that means checking for spark. Now you really get to see if the ECU is working. Sparkplugs, shorted against the engine (make sure there’s no loose fuel lying around) should show off pretty sparks.

To make it easy to turn things on and off, a simple dash was made. I also got to use a missile switch cover. That’s a real milestone in anyone’s life.

So, did we get the engine started…? Tell you soon

-B

The wishbone therefore rotates on the poly-bush. This has two implications – firstly you can use bolts with fully threaded shanks, since the insert should not actually be rotating on the bolt. The thread of the bolt will therefore not damage the insert. The second thing is that the bushes need to be properly lubricated. This new set of wishbones gave us the opportunity to really pack in the red rubber grease. (Note – this does not apply to the shock-absorbers, which do rotate about the bolt). Many thanks to Chris for helping out with this sticky, icky job.

We got our engine mount brackets welded – big thanks to Ken of Zodiac Steel for assistance and doing such a good job. As soon as we had those sorted, we were able to properly see how the engine and gearbox would fit in. Needless to say, several adjustments to the bell-housing were needed, and we chopped some more bits off.

To fit the gearbox we needed to drill and fit the gearbox mounting plate. This is an H-shaped piece of steel plate, onto which the rubberised gearbox mount is, well, mounted. With the engine in place and the gearbox supported by a size-14 temporary mount, we could see if the mounting plate lined up with the mount points on the chassis. It was a wonderful moment when we realised that the fit is perfect. We marked and drilled the holes (8mm, although one was a slight miss, so it became a 9mm hole).

Feeling inspired by getting 3 out of 4 holes right, we marked and drilled the engine mount plates. We’d obviously improved our skilz, because we got 8 out of 8 of these right (no cheating here – 8mm holes for 8mm bolts, and they went in smoothly).

Checking the engine again, we realised that there was a risk that the starter would foul against the chassis. So it was another “engine out, attach part, engine in”. Only we realised a slight problem – the starter does not fit. There is a small sticky-outy bit on the sump that gets in the way. A couple of panicked phonecalls to Locost SA, and we confirmed that this needed to be chopped off.

It’s actually quite an easy job, but you don’t want to get all “power-tool” on it. The sump is aluminium, so if you get too aggressive you are likely to chop a hole in it. Another tool you’ll be needing for this job is a torque wrench that can handle 67N.m (thanks JR and Nick). The process is:

1) Remove clutch pressure plate (about 6-8 bolts, fairly easy).

2) Remove the clutch plate, to be left with the flywheel:

3) Remove the fly-wheel (6 bolts, fine thread), resulting in this:

4) Now you can get to the sump, and carefully cut the piece off. See pictures for confirmation.

You might need to remove two of the sump bolts, but we did not. You will not be able to use a normal hacksaw. A junior hacksaw got close enough that the last bit could be snapped off. Then a file neatened it up. One of those blade-only hacksaws will work, as will a dremel tool.

5) Clean off any loose shavings.

6) Put the flywheel back on.

Use a touch of lock-tite (removable) on each bolt, then torque to 67N.m. (Following all the right rules for tightening sequence. I tightened, bit by bit, a triangle of bolts, then chose the next triangle as starting from the opposite bolt that I ended on. Clear as mud?)

Leave the clutch and pressure plate off for now – they’re not needed for a while.

7) The starter motor now fits very nicely:

After this the engine went back in – we’re really getting our money’s worth out of that engine crane. The starter is a tight fit against the chassis, but it does fit. We then tested the bonnet for clearance – the dip stick handle will need to be “lightened”, but the 710 cap is fine (thanks to the bonnet scoop).

While we were fitting heavy things, we decided to balance it all out and fit the diff. It didn’t fit, which is a painful thing to find out while trying to hold that stupidly heavy piece of metal in place. The grinder was called to service again, but not quite vigorously enough. We actually think we might leave it as it is, since with a couple of spacer washers it fits fine.

EDIT 2011-02-25: It’s actually recommended by Locost SA that you rather grind away the webbing on the diff, than the diff mounting bracket. The theory is that the diff is more over-designed than the chassis mount point. We’re holding thumbs that it all stays together.

With the diff in place, it was possible to see how the gearbox and diff lined up. Badly, it turned out. The gearbox was shooting mortars clear over the head of the diff. Undismayed we put some longer bolts in the gearbox mount plate, and dropped it by about a centimeter. This lined it up perfectly, so we’re almost ready to order the prop shaft.

A small miracle happened during the week. We’ve been searching for ages for a solution to our alternator problem. We have a small, awsome little alternator from a toyota forklift. Unfortunately it comes with a v-belt pulley, not a 6PK pulley (which is used on the rest of the Rocam). Also, it doesn’t like high revs, and the test sheet shows its only able to handle about 6000 RPM for any extended time. The crank pulley on the Rocam is quite large, so if you put a small pulley on the alternator it is going to see some pretty high revs. This is NOT good, and others have mentioned burning similar ones out. So we want a big pulley which will fit the thing. The solution is a 6PK water-pump pulley, just like the one on the Rocam. If you attach this to the v-belt pulley, you are sorted. Well, we’ve been to several scrapyards looking for pulleys, with no luck. It seems you very seldom find a water-pump pulley separate from a water pump.

I posted for help on the forum (as I should have done first) and immediately found one pulley, and a suggestion to try Ford for spares. “Maybe they won’t be so expensive” – yeah right. So I got hold of Ford (it’s really worth telling these guys what you are doing, often they are very helpful) and I found out they do supply the pulley on its own. The price: r50 .11 ex VAT. I figured there was a number missing there – surely it’s R500.11? Nope, they ordered the part for me, and it came to R57 incl! Amazing. Even the guys at the parts desk were amazed (they showed me a much worse pulley for R900). The part number is XS6E-8509-AA if you want to find your own. I’ll post more info if it successfully gets attached to the v-belt pulley.

Our engine bay is now getting quite full, and we are becoming more and more convinced that the sequence we did the build in is just wrong. The brake and fuel lines really should only be going in once the immovable objects have had their say. As part of this blog I’ll put together a suggested build sequence.

Phew, long post! Till next time, happy building. Don’t forget, more build pictures here.

B

We’re back and busy! Our chassis got back about two weeks ago, and so it’s been a matter of chopping out the bits of life that had intruded on the build process. This weekend and past week have been the first opportunities to really get stuck in, and we’ve made some good progress.

The first thing was the chassis and work area. Messy, dirty, dusty. Seems the chassis travelled from Durban on an open trailer, during a storm. More like a mudslide, given the amount of dirt on it. The layer of dust on everything else was evidence of how long it’s been since we did some serious building.

Once we’d given everything a hose down and wipe, we were able to get stuck into the work. The big thing that’s been on the cards is the engine mount brackets. I managed to go to a scrap metal mechant and buy a length of tubing and angle bar. I also got some real insight into where all the bridge railings and street signs are ending up. We already have the upper brackets for LocostSA – they are awesome.

So we just need to construct the lower ones to meet the engine mount at 45 degrees. To achieve a nicely accurate 45 degree angle, the first approach was to use a piece of angle-bar with plate across the hypotenuse. However, we decided that it would be better to construct the whole thing out of plate steel.

So the brackets consist of 3 plates. The base will rest either on the chassis support plate (cut out in the previous post), or a tubular support. The main part of the bracket will be the angled plate, with a groove cut in it for the engine mount bolt to slide through. A similar groove is cut in the vertical plate. To get a neat 45 degree angle, the plate was clamped to a scrap piece of angle bar, lying with its open ends down. The result was reasonably pleasing, although not to watch-maker spec.

We test fitted the engine, partly to see what our options were with the engine mount brackets, and partly to see how well it all fits. There really is not a lot of space in there. Word of advice, remove the throttle support bracket (that piece of pressed plate steel that the throttle cable slots into, it’s attached with Torx-head bolts) before doing this. It really sticks out, and chances are you’ll break it off on something.

Then we fitted the bell-housing, to figure out what bits of it to remove so that the engine sits far enough back. It’s pretty apparent that a couple of spots get in the way, and prevent the engine from sitting nicely back. The angle grinder was used to remove the unwanted bits. We are counting on the bellhousing being over-designed – so that our handiwork doesn’t cause significant structural weakness.

Several months ago we tried removing the oil filter arrangement, so that we could fit a Locost SA remote oil filter. No matter how we tried, one bolt remained unmoving. However, it was a case of the right tool for the job. We tried again using a ring spanner, and managed to crack it. So that’s half the job done – next is fitting the remote filter bracket. We’ll be needing longer bolts for that though.

Starting work again like this was a reminder of how much time even the smallest thing takes. When the chassis arrived back, it had new (customised) wishbones installed. We decided to remove them to clean the chassis. It’s a simple job to unbolt the wishbones, but it takes over half an hour. So although it’s been good, productive and fairly long hours, writing it all down makes it seem so little.

Hopefully we’ll be able to get really busy with the build. More to come!

B

So yesterday I posted about how we cut down the gearbox input shaft. Only it wasn’t yesterday, it was more than a month ago. That’s over 8% of the year since my last post. Life is passing by too fast. Many thanks to those of you who have been bugging me to write something

One of the reasons for the lack of a post is that not much has happened. Well, a big thing has happened actually. You see, several months ago we decided to assemble as much of the suspension as we could. The right-rear needed a fair amount of force to get it in, which was a tad worrying. Then we got to the left-front. We had already made a plan for one of the suspension bolts, to get it into the bracket. This was on account of there simply not being enough space for the bolt-head to get past one of the chassis struts. However, when we put the whole wishbone setup on, it was visibly apparent that there were alignment issues. We went back to Locost SA, and Brad was very helpful in offering a number of solutions.

Ultimately we decided to send the chassis back to the manufacturing plant to have the struts and brackets chopped out, and then welded on again with the chassis clamped into the jig. This is the only way to ensure we don’t just make the problem worse.

So now we wait with baited breath to see if our body panels still fit when the chassis comes back. I must commend Brad (Locost SA) for his openness and willingness to help. Manufacturing errors can creep into any process, and it’s how the company responds when errors are found that really matters. Top marks to Locost SA.

So what has been done in the meantime? Well, we’ve got our hydraulic clutch mechanism. It’s a standard part from a Ford Mondeo. Hermann has been hero again to organise the associated tubing and connections. This includes the inlet tubing and a “remote bleed” tube. The original Ford fittings are simply removed, and the new hoses attached. With this we have all our hydraulics organised.

A bit of work was done on the engine mount brackets. A piece of 4mm steel plate was sourced to be used as the chassis platform to which the engine brackets will connect. These were traced out before the chassis was sent off.

Then the tool-of-the-year, the jigsaw, was used to cut it out. I never realised just how useful a jigsaw is.

There are such a variety of blades that come for this thing! It zips through wood and aluminium, and is no slouch when it comes to plate steel.

Special “high-speed” blades were purchased, and a little oil was used just to try to keep the temperature down. The jigsaw (on a medium speed setting) was able to cut about 1 cm in 10 seconds – so a couple of minutes per cut. It did spray up a surprising amount of metal shavings, so eye protection is recommended.

That has been about it – we’ve been a bit on-hold with the chassis problems. I have been thinking a bit about the electronics, and will post some info when I formulate some conclusions. Please drop in a comment, as I would be interested in hearing feedback of any sort.

And don’t forget, if you want to see more pictures they are all on display at my PicasaWeb site.

B

I can still remember, how that building used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance, that I could make that Locost…

Building has recommenced, after a break of almost two months. Sometimes one has to bow to the demands of the job. And when those demands take you to far-off lands, it’s tough to bring the chassis along with you. So it was good get the hands dirty and full of little splinters of metal. Ah, the joy of building.

We started with a visit to the scrapyard. Our outstanding bits include the yoke (connecting the gearbox to the prop-shaft), alternator mounting bracket and alternator pulleys. Hermann actually gave us a yoke, but it seems it’s for the smaller gearbox output shaft.

I can’t help but feel a little sad when going to scrapyards. Hundreds of engines, diffs and gearboxes all just lying around. Like organs for sale. Those once belonged to Daddy’s (or Mommy’s) pride and joy. They came home one evening, and said to the kids “come look outside”, and got all the “wows” and “hoorays” – Daddy has a new car. Now that pride and joy is an unidentified chunk of metal rusting on the scrap heap. And that’s not even contemplating the final act that may have caused it to be there. Sheesh, that got melancholic rather quickly.

Anyway, on a cheerier note, the visits were a complete waste of time. Scrapyard 1 was completely closed, despite a confirmation call the previous day saying it would definitely be open. The others had prop-shafts, but not exactly what we needed. The alternator mounting bracket, as well as pulley, were a complete loss. Then they all closed. We did find out (thanks Brad) that actually the guy who makes up the prop-shaft can typically source the yoke anyway.

For the afternoon we decided to sort out the fit between the gearbox and the engine. Previously we had machined the  end of the gearbox input to 10mm. However, the pointy bit is too long and must be cut down a bit. To avoid changing the steel tempering (hardness) we decided to cut this the old fashioned way – hacksaw. But first we needed to measure how much to cut off.

So we removed the clutch pressure plate and clutch. Then assembled the engine, bellhousing and gearbox. Remember to attach the bellhousing to the gearbox first, not to the engine. We knew this, of course. The photo is just demonstrating the wrong way to do it.

Now because our gearbox needs to have a bit chopped off, there results a gap between the bellhousing and the engine. We adjusted the various bolts to ensure the gap was even the whole way round (check with the vernier), and then took that gap as being the amount to remove. The whole shebang was disassembled and then the tip was lopped off at the right place (well, more or less). Be warned, that thing is made of hard metal. You’ll need a good quality hacksaw blade to get through it (or rip the teeth off a cheaper one).

A file was used just to neaten it up a bit, and we’ll probably give it a last touch-up with a grinder. A bit of water-paper to polish it up.

The reason for all of this is that unlike a FWD gearbox, the RWD needs to be supported in the crank. The crank has a 15mm hole in it, for which a brass bush has been made. It’s 15mm OD, and 10mm ID. The gearbox fits into the bush, providing the necessary support. Since these only spin at different speeds when the clutch is disengaged (i.e. no load), it’s hoped that the bush will be sufficient.

Next up will be engine mountings, since we have now sourced all the materials we need.

B

Thanks to Hermann, we were able to get ourselves a brand new engine, straight from Ford. It comes in a box, with “Service Engine” on the side. “Service Engine“, like it’s some sort of spare part.

“Say Jim, how’s my car?”

“Bad news Bob, coupla problems wid da engine”

“Can you fix it?”

“Nah, but I think I got a spare in the box out back. I’ll just chuck a new one in”

It’s V8 5.7l hemi engine, with a twin supercharger. Not.

It’s a 1.6l Ford Rocam engine. “Rocam” stands for “rollerfinger camshaft”, obviously. This engine is well known for low/mid range torque. Why such a small engine, for a sports car? Two reasons – the car should weigh under 600kg, and the racing series restricts the engine to this specific engine.

To compare its performance consider the power to weight ratio:

• Mazda MX5 (2006 model) : 107 W/kg
• Rocam Locost: 135 W/kg
• Nissan 370Z: 162 W/kg

So it’s halfway between an MX5 and a 370Z. Until you chuck it round a corner, and then it’s got a lot less inertia trying to tear it off the track.

Specifications (from the Ford website):

Engine: 1.6i
Type: SOHC-Efi
Cylinders: 4
Valves per cylinder: 2 (8 valves in total)
Capacity (cc): 1597
Compression Ratio: 9.5:1
Bore and stroke (mm): 82.0 x 75.48
Power (kW) @ rpm: 70 @ 5500
Torque (Nm) @ rpm: 137 @ 2500

To quote “The RoCam design ensures a more accurate valve performance and greatly reduces friction and noise levels. Valve performance is controlled by hydraulic lash adjusters (the cam follower stays in permanent contact with the camshaft), which reduces maintenance bills as no setting of tappets or valves are required. Furthermore, the cylinder head is a cross flow design, which improves “breathing” and, as a result, combustion and performance. This is done without detracting from fuel efficiency”.

The RoCam has been designed to “withstand South African conditions”. This means that it can listen to Juli-ass without smashing its head into a brick wall. Although it doesn’t agree with it, it doesn’t get upset when its government spends millions on flashy cars and world cup tickets, but struggles to pay teachers, nurses and policemen properly. Ooh, politics and building, perhaps a bad mix.

It is manufactured in Ford’s Port Elizabeth based plant, which now supplies diverse markets such as Asia, South America and Europe. It is a highly robust engine, supposedly capable of being able to run on fuel of almost any octane rating.

Another article from Ford states

“The engine incorporates several advanced product and manufacturing technologies – including plastic intake manifolds, a fabricated camshaft and modern weight-reduction techniques. The engine has electronically controlled fuel injection and ignition which adjust automatically to cater for variances in fuel quality.”

Don’t kid yourself, a necessary building expense is an engine crane. Since the engine and transmission are quite light, you can get away with a very small crane. We got a mobi-jack 1 ton crane, apparently that’s a good thing? One thing that is good is how small it folds away. Very nice. Careful when picking it up – one of the mount points is right by the plastic coil pack. Better to remove this to not damage it.

Unfortunately both of us have got very busy lately with work, and we’ve pressed pause for the next (and past) few weeks. We’ll pick it up again towards the end of Sept.

B