Oil Pan Leak

My plan was to make big progress on the belly pan this weekend but an oil pan leak got in the way of that plan.  I had read where a couple of other racers had oil leaks from their oil pans and someone suggested to put oil in the engine prior to installing it to make sure that the oil plan didn't leak.  I put 4 quarts in the engine on Christmas Eve and checked it on the day after Christmas.  I should have checked it on Christmas day!!  There was a lot of oil underneath the engine and it turns out that most of it was coming from a loos plastic plug but there also was a leak from the oil pan at the front of the engine. 

I think the issue was that I didn't use enough silicone and I also did some research on the internet and there was a recomendation to not use the Ultra Blue silicone (which was what I used) and to use the Ultra Black.  So I bought some Ultra Black and put a little more on oil pan.  Of course this was after I took off the pressure plate, flywheel, belts, etc.  I also put the engine back on the engine stand so that I could turn it upside down -- glad I didn't return the engine stand to my friend!!  Removing the old silicone was again and pain in the neck.  But I got it all reassembled and I'm glad I found the problem before the engine was installed in the car!

I did get a start on the oil pan but I haven't gotten very far along so as long as the oil pan doesn't cause me anymore problems.  I have got three days to work on the car next weekend!

Chassis Conversion Part II

Well, the car is back home -- just in time for Christmas.  Here are some more pics of the mods made by Eric Langbein.

Due to the size of the rivet holes in the frame, Eric and I decided to have him weld strips on the inside of the frame.  I will install 5/32" rivets in the new strips as well as in between the existing holes in the chassis when attaching the belly pan.



I also had Eric modify the shift linkage to get it closer to the frame and away from my elbow.  That was the only thing that felt uncomfortable to me when I sat in the car.

Now that the car was home, the plan was to start on the belly pan but before I could do that, I needed to paint the new parts of the frame.  I probably should have had the frame sand blasted and painted but I decided to save a little bit of time and money and do it myself.  Here is a pic of the frame before painting.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a pic of the painted frame but there will be plenty of pics of other things that will include the frame to follow!



Chassis Conversion Part 1

Eric Langbein sent me some pics of the chassis conversion -- it is looking GREAT!!

The car should be back home soon!

Bodywork Part 5

The warm weather that we have been blessed with in November has really helped me finish up some of the bodywork which should definitely save me some time in the Spring.  Eric Langbein still has the chassis so it was also good that I was able to keep myself busy with the bodywork.  I actually got primer on four pieces so here are some pics of the pieces just before primer and after primer.

The Crush Box:

The Cowling:

The Shock Cover:

And The Nose:

I'm happy with how those pieces came out but the bodywork is not over yet.  I still need to finish the side panels, the side pods (which I haven't started on), and the piece that will require the most work is the tail section but I can't start that until the engine and a number of other pieces are installed in the chassis.

This part isn't really related to the RF97 conversion but I said goodbye to my Protoform P3 FV this past weekend.  It went to a good home in Canada.  It was a very special car for me, partly because it taught me so much about racing including doing bodywork such as what I'm showing in this blog.  I wish the new owners all the best and hope that they have as much fun with it as I did.

Bodywork Part 4

In this post I'm continuing to work with the bodywork to try to get it to fit better.  I'm a little bit picky about this stuff and I have to say that I'm not worried about additional weight that results from some of what I'm doing.  I know that I'm going to add ballast to the car so the little bit of weight that I add in fiberglass and bondo isn't going to affect much.  Here are some pics of the areas that I'm focusing on.

This is the nose meeting up with the crush box.

This is where the shock cover meets the cowling.

These are the gaps between the nose/shock cover and the side panels.






Ok, so there are a number of items to get to look a little better!!  None of them are completely finished yet but they are at the point where I can still work on them while the car is with Eric. 

First, I will explain what I'm doing with the crush box so that it takes on a more similar shape to the nose -- which is more curved.  On one side, I needed to add material that was at least 1/4" thick.  I didn't want to do all of that in bondo so I decided to use foam because I could sand it easily and it is obviously very light.  Some types of foam will dissolve if it comes in contact with resin or bondo but I found some 1/2" styrofoam at a craft store that seemed to be pretty resistant to that.  It was definitely resistant enough to the bondo that I could use it.  I used bondo to glue it to the crush box and then I sculpted it with sand paper.

I then started to fill in the areas around it with bondo.

This is where it stands now.  It just takes lots of sanding and re-applying of bondo until I'm happy with it!

Now I'm moving onto how the shock cover meets the cowling.  This required a little more demolition.  First, I think one reason why it was so out of shape is because over time the center fastener squished the shock cover to the point that it was flat on top and wider at the sides.  So, I'm not going to use the center fastener and instead I will use side fasteners that will join the nose/shock cover to the side panels.  However, I do like how the center fastener locates the shock cover so I came up with the idea of installing a pin.

I used high strength epoxy and put it underneath the head and then used fiberglass filler to surround the pin on the underside of the shock cover.  I also used a grinder to take down the head a little bit and put more fiberglass filler around the top side of the pin where I removed the fiberglass and bondo.  I then fiberglassed over the top of the pin and will use bondo to get the curvature that I want. I also re-fiberglassed the area where the pin will go into and drilled a smaller hole for the pin.

I think that will work pretty well!!  The next task was to get the shock cover shape to better match the cowling -- which meant removing a lot of material!

Obviously I needed to lay some more fibreglass so in order to fill the holes and to end up with the shape that I wanted, I taped some flashing to the top of the cover so that it matched the curvature.  Fiberglass resin doesn't stick to the flashing so flashing is a great to use for this.  Here are pics of the bottom side with the flashing in place.  You can also see that I sanded the fiberglass on the underside so that the new fiberglass would adhere to it properly.

And here is the top side after the fiberglass was layed.

I just need to cover the areas with bondo and get the shape to match the cowling. 

Next, it was time to tackle the gaps between the nose/shock cover and the side panels/crush box.  I had to think about this task for a while.  I didn't really want to try to fill it with bondo and I did try to fit the pieces better by removing some material but I wasn't getting anywhere fast.  I finally came up with the idea to use balsa wood.  Balsa wood is flexible, sands easily, and even compresses.  So I went to my local hobby shop and bought a bunch of 1/8" X 1/8" and 1/8" and 1/16" strips.  I used more of the high strength epoxy to bond the strips to the nose/shock cover and I glued it so that it was less than 1/16" from the edge so that I could fill that gap with bondo.  The pic on the right shows that I glued two 1/8" strips so that one was on top of the other to fill the 1/4" gap.



The basic structure is there now and they just require bondo and sanding like the other areas.  That is it for now, I will post pics as pieces are finished and hopefully Eric will send me some pics of his progress with the chassis so that I can post those as well.

Input Shaft

I was a little leary about tackling the swapping of the input shaft, the shaft that transfers the power from the engine to the transmission, but I called Eric Langbein and he gave me some great instructions.  The first thing I did was remove the clutch slave cylinder which is pictured below.

All I had to do to remove that was to disconnect the lines -- much easier than I thought!  The next task as to separate the gear box from the bell housing. 

High Temp RTV silicone was used in between the transmission and the bell housing so I knew that separating them was going to be a little difficult.  After I got all the 8 nuts off, I had my wife, Terry, hold the chassis while I pulled on the gear box and hit it with a rubber hammer.  That didn't do much so I ended up getting a pry bar and putting it between a couple of choice spots where I could get some leverage.  That broke the seal and I was then able to pull the gear box away from the bell housing. 

Unfortunately, one thing that I noticed is that there was gear lube at the point where the shaft was coming out of the gear box and I didn't have another seal so after talking to Eric it was decided that Eric would change the seal and I didn't need to bother with putting in the input shaft provided by HPD.  However, I went ahead and removed the old shaft.

All I had to do was remove 4 bolts and then I removed 1 spring clip to slip the bearing and seal off of the shaft.  Removing all the silicone took a lot longer!!



The next thing that I tried to do was to install the HPD provided clutch slave cylinder.

However, I ran into problems because the first bolt that I tried to screw in stripped the threads in the bell housing.  I hate it when that happens!!  It isn't tough to fix but I unfortunately didn't have the right size helicoil so I left this task for Eric as well.  The good news is that this morning I took the car to Eric's shop this morning so that he can modify the chassis to accept the Honda Fit engine.  Big changes are coming!!