Engine Cradles Arrived!

Tonight when I got home there was a box on the dining room table from Eric Langbein Racing. In the box were my freshly plated engine cradle subframes. So out to the garage I went to get them installed. The right side cradle was a bit of a hassle to install. The oil line was in the way, and getting all of the holes to line up while pushing the AN12 line out of the way was an exercise in one-armed paper hanging. But after a couple of false starts it all went together nicely...

On to the right side, I pressed the shift lever bearing into place and installed the circlip. Then I proceeded to do the install. This side had much less stuff in the way and was a breeze. It is probably a testimate to the rigidity of the chassis with Eric's new braces on the front of the engine and the stout HPD stressed oil pan that the holes all lined up perfectly the first time and it all went together very easily. With the new subframe/cradles in place the car is really starting to look finished. (minus body work).

Once I finished up with the cradle installs, I moved on to reinstalling the fuel sample port and the pressure sensor. I used a bit of thread locker in hopes of stopping the slight weeping of fuel - so far so good. I also chose to put the pressure sensor in the line first in the hopes that it would read more accurately. (seemed to have no effect though). My Dad confimed that his car reads 51psi too, so I am pretty much over this issue for now.

Next I installed the clutch and rear break lines and the shift lever shaft. I bought some of the neat "saddle washers" from Pegasus to better secure the shift shaft couplings. These washers are half moons on one side and flat on the other so that the bolt more securely grips the apex joint sides. Tomorrow I need to replace two of the bolts with slightly longer units to have enough thread area. Hopefully this improvement will prevent a failure like I experinced on the first lap of the ARRC race this year. We were not using the saddle washers on the shift linkage joints on my father's Swift, and one of the jet nuts backed out disconnecting the linkage. Hard to drive Road Atlanta in first gear!

Next up was replacement of the jet nuts and tightening of all of the front crush structure, suspension and steering rack bolts. Then I was on to do the same for the rear suspension. I am rapidly approaching the point where I can reinstall the seat and body work!

At this point it was getting quite late so more tomorrow.

Couple of other quick updates:
- The new Panasport wheels came in today. Tomorrow I will get the rains mounted at the local tire shop.
- Hoosier has a set of the F1600 Series spec tires on the way to me, and I may be able to mount these Saturday.
- My shocks are back from Steve Lathrop, but UPS required a signature waiver, so I should see those tomorrow night.
- A call to Tom Grosart at HPD confirmed that the "8 flash" ECU warning is an unintended 'feature' of the recent ECU update. They are working on a fix, and hopefully I can get it reflashed at VIR next month to make this annoyance go away. In the mean time Tom assured me that the error can be ignored and has no performance implications, so I can tape over the light while on track for now...

Sean
-