4th December

Time: 0.5 hours Agg: 94.5 hours

Having bought some more caravan waste pipe to act as protection to the fuel lines, just a quick job to thread it around the return hose and Tyrap it in place. I also used some of it to slightly re-route the feed pipe to ensure a smoother run and to miss the RH lower suspension arm.

10th December

Time: 2.5 hours Agg: 97 hours

What I thought to be relatively straightforward turned out to be quite a struggle – fitting the radiator.

First job was to tap the plastic bosses M6. These are blind, so I had to be careful not to tap too far in otherwise, either the tap would puncture the plastic header rail or strip the thread.

I then bolted the fan unit to the intermediate mounting plate. Again the manual is out of date here in using pins pushed through the radiator matrix to attach the fan. Neither were there any M6 screws/nuts so I bought some 25mm long ones and cut them down to length, assembled the fan to the mounting plate a sprayed the screw ends to hinder corrosion.

Then the fun begins in bolting the whole lot to the car. The lower brackets are welded to the frame but need bending to be at the right angle. I suspect they are set up for the ducted rather than my non-ducted one. As they needed to be bent in two planes and of course there’s not enough metal there to do this, they end up in a rather poor position. The lower mounts need to be in before the position of the upper mounting plates can be determined, this was bit like trying to hold a set of bagpipes and attach some of it to the wall. In the end got it all in place, only to find that when I came to screw in the fan thermostat the plate holding the fan was the wrong way round, there being a cut out on one side to clear the flange of the thermostat – dooohh!!

All of again and refitted in the end.

12th December

Time: 3 hours Agg: 100 hours

OK – 100 hours done and I’m damn sure there’s more than 20 left!!

Objective today was to fit as much of the water pipes as possible – the heater needs fitting before this can be completed. Achieved!

Before starting this, though, I torque tightened the steering rack and the engine mounts.

Slight digression here now. I have been told that owing to the closeness of the Zetec thermostat housing to the chassis, if there is any degradation of the engine mounts, the engine may move back and crack the plastic housing against the chassis. An alternative suggested was to use the Raceline Water rail. This is a casting that replaces the plastic housing, relocates the thermostat and takes the place of the long Westfield supplied pipe to the radiator top inlet. Now this all seemed a good idea to me and wasn’t that expensive in the grand scheme of things. I got the instructions from another Chris Smith at Raceline and did some reading up on the WSCC Boardroom. In the end, nothing made any sense to me as there were seemingly contradictory advice and the “standard” Zetec set up did was described as different to mine. So, in the end, put that idea on the shelf for a later time.

The piping generally went on OK, the hose from the ‘stat to the yet-to-be-fitted heater was pretty difficult, resorting to soaking it in boiled water to soften it.

As fitted, the ‘stat to top radiator pipe came very close to the engine and only needed a short rubber hose to connect them. I was a bit concerned about this as the pipe is clipped to the chassis via a rubber lined p-clip and a bolt. As the engine moves it would react through this pipe and fixing. So I decided to shorten the pipe – losing the swaged ridge around the end to aid sealing – so that I could use a longer flexible hose before the rigid pipe.

To round up the day’s work, I installed the horn by tapping a M6 hole in the chassis rail and bending the supplied bracket at 90 degrees.

I also wired up the radiator fan and it’s thermostat switch, which is set into the LH header tank.

13th December

Time: 1.5 hours Agg: 101.5 hours

Last 2 jobs on Module 4, the speedo transducer and the washer bottle. The latter was straightforward, the former, less so. Having Smiths instruments rather than VDO, the loom connectors over the Lobro joints were not correct. A bit of thinking and I saw that the long cable of the transducer has to thread its way to the front of the car and through the panel over the gearbox. Here, my masterful plan to hold this down with screws paid off as I had to remove it to thread the cable down to the back of the car. To be fair, the manual does recognise that alternatives are now used and instructions as to an extra hole in the bracket needed. What it doesn’t say but shows in the picture is that it needs bending down (as in hit-with-big-hammer).

I need to check with the factory the transducer clearance and what I need to do with the spare connections at the rear, I suspect cut them off but we’ll see.

Washer bottle – fine apart from no M6 bolts left in the Westfield pack, but I have others to do it.

14th December

Time: 0.5 hours Agg: 102 hours

After an e-mail from Mark Walker, I know now to tie back the spare connectors at the diff end of the speed sensor loom and to remake the connector to the speedo at the other end – why doesn’t the book tell you this?

I am also due some missing p-clips for the coolant pipe to the header tank and heater, which will get caught up in the Christmas post along with Jan’s present of a Westfield jacket!