However the illusive Edelbrock fuel pump arrived (took easily 2 months from order) This is now in suite to replace the blanking plate that was fitted from the engine supplier. It is mounted to an thin adapter plate which is bolted directly to the block. There is a long metal rod that slides up into the depth of the engine which operates the pump via a cam shaft lobe.
As you can see from the picture that i will be removing the pump again as i will need to rotate the "line in" and "line out" feeds as so they don't/wont foul the inside of the wheel on full lock. I'm also replacing the "line out" with a 90° union to help re-rout the line from pump to carb.
I have also picked up my side pipes and manifolds from AK, these are the latest 5" pipes that are absolutely mega. they look (IMO) seriously cool and ironically they can be fairly cool to touch after a hard drive..... seriously i went out for a blast about in the AK demo car with these pipes fitted and when we returned i could easily touch the pipe without burning myself. The headers and tail piece will still get stupid hot so i will have to watch that.
The exhausts are fitted via two brackets bolted to the underside of the chassis to support each sidepipe with a cotton bobbin (engine mount) between pipe and bracket.
The manifolds are slightly harder to fit as they are specific to each side of the engine, and take some fetteling to align the fixing bolts to the heads.
As with a fair few jobs on the AK kit, there are not many jobs that you can do once and be happy with. When fitting my manifolds the HT lead from one of the spark plugs is in contact with the manifold down pipe. This will cause problems, as the manifold will get fricken hot and basically melt the lead and in turn create all sorts of nasty running issues.
As you can see in the picture this is way to close for comfort. It also will not allow me to remove the leads when the manifold is fitted... so that would involve removing the sidepipe and manifold just to service the car and change the plugs.... need a solution!!!
After speaking with AK, Jon said its not uncommon for this to happen, just means i have to remove the manifold and heat up the pipe causing the obstruction (red heat) then flatten out a little. So this is something I'll have to do once my neighbour has got some more oxy gas. I will also be fitting a protective sleeve over the rubber boot, which "according to the manufacturers" can be touching the pipe and it will not transmit the heat to the lead or create firing issues? I'm only fitting them as a safety precaution as even after i have flattened the pipe a little it will still be close!
As you can see the headers of the pipes fit to the manifolds using a slip fit. There has been a thread on the Cobra forum lately about these slip joins leaking, this will obviously be IVA/MOT fails. But considering i still haven't had my engine running yet, its not an issue....yet!
I have also placed an order for some gauge senders and all the relevant adapters with pressure switch. So technical once these are fitted i can do a test fire of the engine!!! that is something to look forward to. I could test fire now without the oil pressure switch, and gauges however this is stupid risk with such an expensive engine. I need to be able to see whats going on as its running so that i can shut down if any problems occur, and potentially risk destroying my engine.
So come back in the next 6 months and I'll have fitted the new fuel union. LOL seriously i must warn you that i have been robbed of a wad of cash for a bloody holiday for 2 weeks in September, so this will slow progress down even more!! LOL
