Site Projects
Gav's 1.1 Ghia
Day One - Out With The Old
Starting on the inside, the first thing to go was the seats whilst at the same time all the minor bits and peices were removed from around the engine bay to ready it for removal of the engine. During this time the dimples in the rear pannel were drilled out ready for fitting a second fog light.
Once that was done, it was time to get dirty... With all the water pipes, cables and wires disconnected, the engine was unbolted and lowered onto the ground. Now on the ground we were able to unbolt and removed the gearbox to allow the engine to clear the battery tray and be lifted up out of the bay. Here comes problem number 1. For whatever reason the engine hoist wouldn't go up far enough for the engine to clear the front of the car, so back onto the ground it goes and the car was then lifted up and the engine dragged out from under it!!
With the engine out of the way the dashboard was removed and we set about cutting away and pulling out the remainder of the old 1.1 wiring loom. Before removing the old 1.1 master cylinder and brake servo and starting to remove the old brake lines from under and around the car.
And so ends day one...
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Day Two - In With The New
With the car now stripped of everything old and the new brake pipes inplace, the 1.6 brake bar, servo and master cylinder were fitted in place of the old ones. This was slowed temporarily by a minor problem - the hole for the brake bar seemed to be in the wrong place due to the orientation of the 1.1 bar. However closer inspection revealed that there was a removable plate covering the section of the hole that we needed. Once removed the bar fitted into place without any problems.
Next came the new loom, this had to be fed through the bulkhead from inside the car and clipped into place around the engine bay before the new engine could be put in as, once fitted, there isn't really enough space around the engine to get the loom into place.
So with the loom in it was time to fit the new engine. Like with removal of the old one this had to be done by lifting the car up and sliding the engine under the it. Then we had to reattach the gearbox. This proved to be harder than anything else we'd done so far and it took lots of time, effort, cuts and bruises to finally get it lined up and bolted back together. Having got the engine and gearbox back together it was fairly straight forward just to lift it up and get it bolted back in place.
Now the new engine was in place the exhaust was reattached and the driveshafts, hubs, brakes and wheels were put back on. Eventually the dashboard was put back in and the loom was fitted round the rest of the car and connected up to everything electrical.
Unfortunately we discovered too late on day two that we had no inlet manifold gasket for the new engine. Whilst this wasn't really a major problem it meant that we couldn't finish putting the engine back together and so couldn't check that it ran. This didn't stop us from carrying on with the other bits and peices but meant that the job would take a day longer than originally reckoned.
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Day Three - The Finishing Touches
Having bought an inlet manifold gasket the engine was finially assembled and fired up, it needed some basic tweaking to get it running but wasn't tuned properly initially. With the engine now finished and running, attention was turned to the rest of the car the XR2 interior was fitted in and all trim was put back in place before the car was finally completed. The following weekend the car was properly tuned and it now running spot on. All together a very sucessful project.
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The Victim - The Donor Car
Every project needs a source of parts, once a mere 1400S, this one had seen much better days. It was previously (badly) fitted with an XR2 body kit and then after changing hands was fitted with a tuned 1600 CVH XR2 engine and full XR2 interior. Althought the mechanics of the car are more or less sound, sadly the same cannot be said for the body work and it was only a matter of time before the car came to the end of it's life.
The end came in November 2002 when having been off the road for some time it became the donor for this project. Everything useful was stripped from it for the project and the rest of the car left to be taken away to the scrap yard. Probably with the old bits from the project car dumped inside it!
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