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!!



Honda Fit Part 4

Many of the next steps required the engine to be off the engine stand so I got it off the engine stand with the engine hoist.  I set it on the pallet that it came on. 

The oil pan is nice and flat so it wasn't an issue to just sit it on that but when I went to install the flywheel I realized that the flyweel was not going to go on unless the engine was elevated slightly and the flywheel was allowed to be slightly lower than the bottom of the oil pan.  So I stuck a piece of 1 X 8 underneath the oil pan.  I was then able to install the flyweel and the clutch with the pressure plate.  In order to line up the clutch, I used the input shaft that came with the kit.

I then installed the starter and the harmonic balancer.

Unfortunately, I messed up here as well.  I forgot that a pulley to drive the oil scavenge pump was supposed to go in front of the harmonic balancer and the kit supplied the pulley, a spacer, and a longer bolt.  My wife had helped me install the harmonic balancer as pictured above by holding the engine while I torqued it but she wasn't around to help me fix my mistake so I used straps to keep the motor from wanting to move while I torqued the new bolt.  You have to torque the bolt to 130 ft/lbs and then undo the bolt and then re-install it by torqing it to only 27 ft/lbs.  However, after that you have to move the bolt anothe 90 degrees which takes quite a bit of torque.  I was then able to install the belts.

It was now time to install the water pipes which was a little confusing.  I had already installed the thermostat and thermostat housing that the manual pictured but it turns out that the Van Diemen uses a different housing which was also supplied in the kit.  I reached out to someone else with a VD.  It turns out that his VD is also in the build stage but he was able to send me some pics of engines installed in other VDs so that gave me the info that I needed to figure out what I needed to do.

Well, that is basically it in regards to the engine.  I purchased and additonal wiring harness with three additional sensors and although the manual mentions them, it doesn't tell me where to install them so I need to figure that out.  That shouldn't be too hard though.  The input shaft also needs to be installed in the transmission.  I'm not sure if I'm going to tackle that task though.  I might have Eric Langbein do that one since he has a lot more experience with these transmissions.

Honda Fit Part 3

I'm considering the excerpt on the oil pan and oil scavenge pump as Part 2 in the engine build so this excerpt is Part 3.  HPD sent me the jam nuts I needed to remove the oil filter boss so I was able to get that removed and installed in the new oil pan. 

After I got the boss moved over, I installed the oil pump pulley.

Next it was time for the alternator.  The manual wasn't very explanatory and it took me a little while to figure out exactly how it mounted.  One of the things that confused me was that the nut provided was too big for the bolt that it was supposed to go on so I ended up using an AN nut and bolt that I had.

Next, I tackled the intake -- a very nice looking piece!



A couple of sensors needed to be installed in it, a MAP sensor and an Air Temp sensor.

In order to get the intake on the engine I had to first re-install the plennum.

And finally the intake with the support brackets.

Now it was time for the throttle body.  The manual gave directions on changing the throttle lever but the lever that was installed looked like the correct one and I didn't see a different one provided in the kit so I'm pretty sure that I didn't have to go through that process but I emailed HPD about it just to make sure.

The airflow to the engine is restricted via a restrictor plate.  The one provided has a 29mm hole for SCCA competition but the F1600 series uses one with a 31mm hole so I need to get one of those plates.

After I called on the intake and plennum installed on the engine I went to install the engine wiring harness.  I installed the coil wires with no problems but when I went to install the fuel injector wires I realized I messed up and should have paid a little more attention to the manual.  I should have installed the wiring harness before installing the intake.  Not a big deal, just had to take off the intake.

The engine is almost done but that is it for now!