Polishing Pipes And Buying Lights

Since the last update, I’ve been busy buying bits and bobs at the Stoneleigh kit car show, doing more remedial work to allow me to fit the exhaust, and polishing & fitting the headers & first sections of said exhaust.

I’ve bought the tail lights that will be sunk into the rear wings:

These are tail, stop & turn indicators in one unit.

I also got the side indicator repeaters and temporary reversing & fog lights:

The fog and reverse lights are only to get me through the IVA test. I’ve seen some much nicer ones that are slightly smaller and have chrome bodies that I’ll put on once it’s passed. I can’t do it now, as they’re not ‘E’ marked - a requirement of the test.

As it was my Birthday, Mrs GOO bought me the headlights I wanted:

These are very nice quality 7” lights with side, dip & main beam. All of the lights I’ve got have come from Stafford Vehicle Components.

I also bought some ‘torpedo’ front indicators, that will sit on the top of the front cycle wings - but I’ve had to return (so no pics at the mo) these to SVC as when I checked them over at home, one had a flaw in the chrome, and the other had a dodgy screw that just span in the body without backing out (meaning I’d never be able to change the bulb). 

I also bought some ceramic exhaust wrapping tape, but more on that later...  

As you know from the last update, I’d been trial fitting the exhaust pipes. This had thrown up a couple of issues, namely the oil filter being in the way, and the AFM mounting stanchion I’d made was in exactly the wrong place as it would interfere with the exhaust on that side of the engine bay.

To over come the problem with the AFM, I made up a new mounting bar which runs from the front to the back of the engine bay. This idea has been shamefully copied from other builders. Remember, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! :-)

As you can see in the lower portion of the photo, the exhaust would have hit the old mount! 

My take on the copied idea is a 12mm square section aluminium bar that has been cut and bent to fit the bay, fixed in place by a bolt tapped into the cross section at the ‘front’ of the bar, and a triangular bracket fixed to the firewall to hold the ‘rear’.

The main relays have been relocated to a plate attached to the bar, as has the thermostatic fan controller

The AFM is a little more complex, consisting of two sections of aluminium ‘L’ section than have been fashioned to keep it in the same orientation as the previous mount did.

The oil filter issue was a much easier fix, as all it required was flipping the mounting plate 180 degees so the filter canister pointed toward the front of the engine rather than the rear. This did mean that the existing BMW hard pipes I’d reused to attach the flexible oil lines too would now hit the steering column - so I had to buy some adaptors and new oil unions.

The adaptors are actually M22 to 1/2” BSP  and are meant for Setrab oil coolers - but they fit perfectly with the new 1/2” BSP oil unions. I got the adaptors and the unions from Merlin Motorsport.

With all of the bits that would foul the exhaust out of the way, I mocked it all up again - I had to make a few adjustments to the lengths of some of the pipes, but it fit in the end. I then took it all off again and then spent what felt like forever cleaning up the headers. 

I started off with 120 grit, and then went through 240, 400, 600, 800, 1200 & 1500 grit wet and dry in succession to try and get most of the tooling marks off the pipes. They then got some metal polish and a lot of elbow grease. They certainly look shiny to me - what do you think? 

You can see your face in them in real life!

I also made a support bracket /hanger for the exhaust, as it all hangs off the headers before exiting the body work.

This is some 6mm bar that has been been cut to length and bent to fit, threaded at each end to secure it to the pipe clamp at one end and an L section that bolts onto the engine using one of the exhaust studs. both the bar and the bracket at the header have been painted in high temp exhaust paint.

The next step on the exhaust front is to wrap the lower sections of the pipes. You can just see that both headers empty into a U section that comes back on itself and heads up to the support. All of this will be wrapped, as it runs close to the brake lines and to where the drivers (i.e my) feet will be. This will shield those areas from the the heat. 

I also need to run the long pipes down the sides of the car, but I cant do that until I get the silencers and can judge where the pipes need to run along the side rails.