Up and running…

Gentlemen, start your engines!

After almost 3 months, and few minor hiccups with the start up, she’s alive again! On Wednesday we finally got her running, smashing our deadline of August 31st!

Here’s what we’ve achieved in this time:

Complete removal of entire interior including dash, climate system and wiring.
Remove doors and all panels fwd of driver
Remove engine & transmission
Install new “Plasmaman” plenum
Re-route intercooler piping for more direct flow to new intake
Modify stock BOV position and re-circ piping
All new cooling for engine:
- New larger aluminium radiator
- New remote oil filter and oil cooler
Completely removed all wiring looms fwd of the driver:
- removed original ‘auto-ECU’, HICAS and other redundant wiring and relays
- anything we knew we didn’t need got buzzed out, checked and then tossed
Thorough clean of engine bay including transmission tunnel and underbody
Respray of most of the engine bay
Fit new lightweight flywheel (down from 10kg stock to 5.5kgs)
Fit new ew oil pressure, oil temp and water temp gauges
Removal of ignition switch / steering lock
Removal of washer bottle and pump
Fabricate new dash panel for gauges and all accessories and ign switches
Replaced bonnet cable and latch with bonnet pins
Refit engine, transmission, wiring, fire up car, test wiring changes…

We still have a fair bit of work to do to be ready for a track day next month but at least we know we didn’t screwup the wiring completely!

Again the priority here was to improve the reliability of the engine through improved cooling for air, water and oil in addition to simplifying as much of the engine bay as possible. The only real ‘performance upgrades’ were the new plenum and flywheel.

Now it’s really just tidy-up work left to do: