Finally got some motivation to start my project. Last night i had a ride out in a renault 11 with a 5 turbo engine and it made me realise how much i miss having an old fast car. So today the gutting began.

Originally i was going to throw in a 1000cc fazer engine and turbo it, but since i havnt been able to find an affordable workshop i decided that was too much to take on as a drive way project. (if anyone is interested i still have the bike engine and turbo, which can produce roughly 280bhp at 1bar. Would have made for a mental car).

Anyway, so this was my daily for a while until it caught fire on the m25 dumping its oil out the intake.

Started life as a 900cc. Removed most of the bits today, just got speedo cable and driveshafts to remove them i can drop the engine out.

Not much to show yet, and not really sure what my plans are. Its going to be quite a long project. Managed to get a psd eaton kit with toothies for a really good price so I'm going to attempt to fit that. Hopefully just a little bit of cutting should squeeze it in.

Progress so far:

Its a really solid shell but still uncovered quite a bit of rust in the engine bay, so that will be the first angle of attack.

Anyone ever removed one of these little engine before? I was thinking i might just jack the front up and try and drag the engine out, think its possible? I removed an engine mount and i could life it up on one side, doesnt seem too heavy.

Edited 8 June, 200818 yr by milgo1

A PSD Eaton kit, aren't there only 9 of them? You jammy git! I would have loved to have gotten a hold of one.

Sounds interesting, dropping the block and box out should work fine, old skateboard is your friend :)

Heh, yeah just a bit of luck i guess. I've always wanted an eaton since i had my mk3 g40. Bought toothies for that as well but never fitted them so maybe at last i will get to enjoy the noise! How much were the PSD kits new? It doesnt include the rad drop bar though, but thats no good to me anyway.

Yeah il give that a shot tom :) I know its nothing amazing or new but i thought i would post my progress anyway. Going to be a learning experience for me also as i havn't removed an engine before. Although saying that i'm almost there :)

Forgot to put up, also got myself a bit of a steal with a new bumper. If i remember right the old lady who owned the car before went the wrong way round a roundabout or something and dented in the front a bit, the old bumper was pretty wonky.

Got a brand new one off ebay for £40 including the postage.

Sorry for the fuzzy pictures btw.

Refreshing change to alot of stuff on here, and not something that's being done particularly regularly! I'd never even considered removing an engine when I first got my mk1 You'll be in the deep end before you know it. Do you know where you're going to cut the front valance for the new charger?

Wonder how big a hole you are going to have to cut in the front for the charger hehe!

lol havn't got a clue to be honest. Looking at it i can see where it is likely to foul up, but its just going to be a case of popping it in and seeing what needs to go. I mean anything is possible so it will fit in the end. I just hope i don't have to cut away too much. I'd like to keep things in tact as much as possible really.

I would rather modify the bracket if its possible rather than cut to much out of the car. Its going to be interesting as well trying to find a place for a good size intercooler. I think aquamist will be my friend :)

i still think the bike engine idea sounds cool!

Good luck with it all. Not quite sure how a mk1 with that much power will handle like tho ???

Lol probably pretty scary i'd imagine. Thing with bike engines is that they arn't massivly torquey. So at like 280bhp on that setup you would have maybe 170 ft/lb of torque and that peaks right up the rev range at 10,000 rpm or so. So it might be quite manageable.

So today i have learnt how not to remove an engine. Don't have an engine crane yet so i tried to drop it onto the floor solo. I removed the gearbox mounts and had that side jacked up, the idea was to support one side holding the cambelt and lower the jack at the same time. Unfortunatly i wasnt thinking about what i was doing, removed the front left engine mount front the chassis leg, with two bolts left in the block. I thought to myself ok il removed one then il get ready to support the engine. Of course when there is just one bolt it is free to rotate and the engine just dropped onto the floor. Lol. Luckily it fell nice and cleanly and missed everything. Only some light scratches on the paint from the cam belt guard. Jacked the car up and slid the bastard out, was amazed at how heavy the thing still was, did manage to pick it up in a bear hug. But I'm guessing the block and gearbox must weigh 100kg? Unless it just seems heavier because its so awkward.

So just gave the bay a jet wash and rubbed it with some spirits for a little while. Got some nice rust going on in there which is going to need sorting....

Bloody hell you have got even less room in there than my mk2 polo. You worked out how close charger is to that cross member yet? Looks like a deeper angle than mine and that is tight as a badgers arse! Good luck mate

Some bits arrived today :) Going to strip it all down and give it a good clean and replace a few parts, hopefully i can totally strip down the charger to bead blast the casing. The charger pulley looks pretty nackered so i'm thinking i might make a new steel one at work seeing as the ally doesnt wear very well.

An eaton with this kit runs maybe a bar i think? How far can you safely go with the g40 lump thats god forged pistons? I thought if i'm going to make a new pulley i might make it a bit smaller.

Oh and tim dont know how close its going to be until i drop a g40 engine in there :) Will be tight though.

Edited 17 June, 200818 yr by milgo1

This looks like a cool project mate . I will be keeping my eyes on this thread .

Iff it were me i would look into getting a subframe and also putting some vw1 calipers on it .

Standard mk1 postage stamp breaks are crap to put it bluntly .. lol .

good luck making a new pulley mate - i bought my kit from steve and fitted it myself and il warn you that it wouldnt be cheap to copy it!

the pulley has a metal sleeve over it at the back for the bearing face to run on and all sorts!

i hope you make it fit mate as it will be unique - but geez you have your work cut out for you!

KiZ

Shouldn't cost me anything to make the pulley. Found the correct size stainless steel today, so going to turn up the billet and then have the teeth cut into it on the wire eroder. Should have a good finish as well. Reckon it will take the machine about 6 hours to cut it. I'll have the pulley off tomorrow so i can look at that plate you mention.

The brakes etc will all get upgraded as well, lol don't fancy using the ones on it. Probably just brace it a bit, change the bushes etc first and see how it copes. I can look at a sub frame later on.

Youngprodigys how much boost does your kit make? Not sure whether to make a smaller pulley, i guess the one on the kit will be good enough though.

cool project!

going to be a fair old job fitting that eaton in there as even g-laders tend to need a fair bit of cutting in mk1s. Still, it'll be cool when it's done.

I'd give that engine bay a clean down and respray while the engine is out. Rattle cans give a good enough finish for an engine bay, unless you're trying to make a concourse car but I don't get the impression you are :)

Yeah i started having a go at some of the rust in the engine bay. Its all surface so isnt too bad to sort out. I was thinking about having it shotblast and properly resprayed but i dont know how much that would cost.

And no, lol it's not supposed to be concourse. Cars are meant for driving, can't be worrying about chipping the paintwork etc. All its got to be is fast and fun!

Edited 18 June, 200818 yr by milgo1

Can anyone tell me the order in which the kit is assembled? I'm trying to take it apart and i'm having a little trouble. The pulley doesnt seem to want to come out on its own, I tapped one side of the bracket off a little but I'm not sure if thats the way to remove it. I dont want to damage anything. Would be a great help if someone here has built the kit up.

I haven't fully built the kit up although I dismantled mine the other day which is just as good. First of I want to say that you should buy a few belts and change them every 3-5k as they get a very hard life. It is possible to change the belts without moving the tensioner, by tilting the bracket down slightly. The belt should not be too tight, slacker than a cambelt.

The upper arm with roller bearing is to be fitted so that it does NOT make contact with the belt on idle. Its not a tensioning arm, but a way to stop the belt bouncing at high rpm.

Secondly if have it as part of your kit fit the eaton bracing bracket, this stops the eaton moving at high rpm causing premature belt failure.

The eaton is a sealed unit so if you split it then you might as well change the oil. Which pulley are you having trouble removing? The bigger one is the lower crank and the smaller one is the alternator pulley.

I wouldnt waste your time bead blasting your charger, it looks in better condition than mine. I just cleaned mine up with a wire brush and thinners then painted it with Silver Engine Enamel. Looks brand new.

I really don't think you need a smaller pulley. Kiz knows the exact figure but the PSD pulleys are alread slightly reduced. My car runs 11 psi. Although I remeber LregG saying his was running 24psi, which I thought was extremely high for an eaton. Maybe drop him a PM and find out From what Steve @ PSD said the eaton kit should be running 12psi [gauge] with slighlty less if you go a decent head set up. From researching online about reduced pulleys for a mini I found a 19% reduction will only make another 4-5psi. You can work out theoretical boost from the eaton using rpm etc however there are no exact figures as the pulley size was governed by the company using the S/C not Eaton themselves.

Saying that remaking the pulley from steel is still a good idea.

Thanks for all the info. I havn't got the bracing bracket, do you have a picture so i can see what it does and where it fixes? The pulley thats giving me issues is the charger pulley. It looks to me like its pressed onto the shaft. When i removed the bolt i expected a keyway but there isnt one there, so maybe its doweld at the back? i'm not sure. But anyway i have tried gently prising it off with no luck. If you could give me any pointers?

I agree about the casing as well. Will just get a scouring pad on it.

Also what kind of oil do you put in it? ATF?

Edited 18 June, 200818 yr by milgo1

Thanks for all the info. I havn't got the bracing bracket, do you have a picture so i can see what it does and where it fixes? The pulley thats giving me issues is the charger pulley. If you could give me any pointers?

Also what kind of oil do you put in it? ATF?

I will get the pics up of the bracket when I get home from work later. I remember speaking to Roland of GTT Tunning [Renault 5 tuner turned new mini] and he said the stock pullies are a pain to remove. You need a crows foot puller to remove it. You can see how it works in this picture. Attach the puller then off you go.

. I know a company called Madness EZ make a tool specifically designed to take off the Mini pulley but this wont work on oyur pulley so make sure you get a universal one.

Many aftermarket pulley manufacturers create a multi-peice pulley, where the outer peice determines the size. So you can easily change between 15/17/19%.

Not sure how often you plan on changing pullies etc, but it may be an idea to buy one of the Mini Cooper S 2/3-peice pulleys then just manufacture the toothed outside section making it suitable for your aplication..

Not sure on the fluid but fair to assume it would be ATF or something with similar properties. They are sealed units and are apparantly good for 100,000 miles.

Yeah there was a small amount of oil that came out. Looked really thin. Will have to read up about them and see what they run on.

I like the idea of a detatchable part. At first i was thinking of going this kind of route anyway. But for strength and piece of mind i'm going to make it out of one solid piece.

Managed to get the pulley off quite easily in the end with a large screw driver just working round the edge. Really impressed with how the psd kit was made. More to it than it looks. The pulley is aluminium and goes right back another 30mm or so with a ground hardened sleeve to run on the bearing and doweled to the drive in 3 places around the pcd. Talked about it quite a bit at work and i think I'm going to make the whole thing out of one lump rather than fitting a sleeve. Makes life a bit more simple. I'm going to use some en24t i think? Which is a tough steel and fairly hard. Will post up some pictures tomorrow with my progress if there is any. Didn't expect there to be so much work involved.

Edited 19 June, 200818 yr by milgo1

A little progress today on the pulley front. Turned up the basic shape on the lathe today. Just got some holes to drill on the dividing head and lathe and then its ready to get heat treated. I hardness tested the aluminium and it reads less than 20rc. Once hardened this pulley will be about 55rc, so far far harder and also tougher. Only reason i'm hardening it that much is for the bearing part. The sleeve on the psd pulley comes out at 54/55rc so I'm going to have to make it all that hard as its a single piece.

you certainly know your stuff! whats rc mean?