Garage News
Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 8:21 pm
Evening all.
After buying the Quantum last year & doing a couple of blats - at the back (1.4CVH) & touring Wales between lock-downs with the Rogue Runners - at the back, I rashly decided I needed a poject, which to be fair has been a life-saver over the winter lock-downs. Getting stuck on my own with nothing but day-time TV doesn't bear thinking about.
So for the THIRD time I found myself pulling out a carburettor engine & replacing it with a Zetec. this one - like the one I put in the Rickman is a 130bhp Silvertop from a MkVI Escort GTi.
It's a reasonably easy swap, I had to make a couple of tubes for the front subframe to take it out round the cam cover, modify a CVH engine mount to fit the Zetec's bolt pattern, but nothing too complex - until I came to the inlet manifold. Yes it's all been done before & yes there are dozens of ways to skin that particular cat, but I did not have unlimited funds - I wouldn't have bought a front wheel drive car if I had - so I wanted to use all Ford parts.
The engine came with an inlet manifold - from a Focus. It didn't fit, not by much, but a/ it's plastic, so not readily modifyable & b/ the thing it hit was the brake torque tube, so not really moveable. Plan B was the alloy inlet that would have been on the Escort, but much Ebay searching only came up with one - incomplete & in Italy. So I decided the best way out was to buy the GBS plenum, it's expensive but it would fix the problem. It was "something of a dissapointment" (I may have ranted for some time). I knew it wouldn't fit, but I thought if I cut the runners, I could mount it the other way up on some hose. No, firstly it doesn't even fit the Ford parts it's intended for, the mounting flange hits the fuel rail mounting bosses & at the other end the welded in studs are TOO SHORT for the throttle body, it's also amazingly HEAVY - it's made from TWO MILMETER THICK STEEL! But it didn't fit the car either, when I cut the runners & turned it over the throttle body would be in the same place as the brake servo. After a lot of jiggery-pokery I've made something that fits by cutting the whole end off the penum & welding on a plate that mounts the throttle body & the idle speed control valve with a cunning 3D printed adaptor with airways for the ISCV built in.
The exhaust also looked like being a problem, I had three manifolds, the tubular one from the CVH, a tubular one from a Focus & a cast one, none of them fitted, but I realised both engines had the exhaust ports pitched the same, so I cut the mounting plate with a couple of inches of pipe off the Zetec tube manifold, cut the mounting flange off the CVH one & bingo, one slid nicely inside the other. A bit of welding & grinding & it fits.
The fuel system was the same as I've done before, mount a low & high pressure pump on a rubber mounted plate with a filter & swirl-pot made from an old catch tank. The cooling system was a bit like the exhaust, I worked out all the bits of silicone hose I would need, baulked at the cost & used bits of Focus, Escort & Fiesta hoses to make something up.
Currently I'm wrestling with about a mile of electric string. I have the Ford loom, the car has a loom, so several items have two lots of wiring, so I'm trying to rationalise all this stuff down into one manageable loom. Will it start when the time comes? No idea. but the last two cars I Zetec'd did, so - maybe.
And to prove it happened:-
After buying the Quantum last year & doing a couple of blats - at the back (1.4CVH) & touring Wales between lock-downs with the Rogue Runners - at the back, I rashly decided I needed a poject, which to be fair has been a life-saver over the winter lock-downs. Getting stuck on my own with nothing but day-time TV doesn't bear thinking about.
So for the THIRD time I found myself pulling out a carburettor engine & replacing it with a Zetec. this one - like the one I put in the Rickman is a 130bhp Silvertop from a MkVI Escort GTi.
It's a reasonably easy swap, I had to make a couple of tubes for the front subframe to take it out round the cam cover, modify a CVH engine mount to fit the Zetec's bolt pattern, but nothing too complex - until I came to the inlet manifold. Yes it's all been done before & yes there are dozens of ways to skin that particular cat, but I did not have unlimited funds - I wouldn't have bought a front wheel drive car if I had - so I wanted to use all Ford parts.
The engine came with an inlet manifold - from a Focus. It didn't fit, not by much, but a/ it's plastic, so not readily modifyable & b/ the thing it hit was the brake torque tube, so not really moveable. Plan B was the alloy inlet that would have been on the Escort, but much Ebay searching only came up with one - incomplete & in Italy. So I decided the best way out was to buy the GBS plenum, it's expensive but it would fix the problem. It was "something of a dissapointment" (I may have ranted for some time). I knew it wouldn't fit, but I thought if I cut the runners, I could mount it the other way up on some hose. No, firstly it doesn't even fit the Ford parts it's intended for, the mounting flange hits the fuel rail mounting bosses & at the other end the welded in studs are TOO SHORT for the throttle body, it's also amazingly HEAVY - it's made from TWO MILMETER THICK STEEL! But it didn't fit the car either, when I cut the runners & turned it over the throttle body would be in the same place as the brake servo. After a lot of jiggery-pokery I've made something that fits by cutting the whole end off the penum & welding on a plate that mounts the throttle body & the idle speed control valve with a cunning 3D printed adaptor with airways for the ISCV built in.
The exhaust also looked like being a problem, I had three manifolds, the tubular one from the CVH, a tubular one from a Focus & a cast one, none of them fitted, but I realised both engines had the exhaust ports pitched the same, so I cut the mounting plate with a couple of inches of pipe off the Zetec tube manifold, cut the mounting flange off the CVH one & bingo, one slid nicely inside the other. A bit of welding & grinding & it fits.
The fuel system was the same as I've done before, mount a low & high pressure pump on a rubber mounted plate with a filter & swirl-pot made from an old catch tank. The cooling system was a bit like the exhaust, I worked out all the bits of silicone hose I would need, baulked at the cost & used bits of Focus, Escort & Fiesta hoses to make something up.
Currently I'm wrestling with about a mile of electric string. I have the Ford loom, the car has a loom, so several items have two lots of wiring, so I'm trying to rationalise all this stuff down into one manageable loom. Will it start when the time comes? No idea. but the last two cars I Zetec'd did, so - maybe.
And to prove it happened:-
.
Didn’t think the CVH would be around long. 
.
). When I took the engine out, the crank moves backward & forward by about 1mm, so the engine was pretty tired - or maybe that was just the result of spending a weekend in third at the red-line.
