Polycarbonate Engine Hatch

Over the past 4 months or so I have had a bit of a side project on the car. This has involved working with a acrylics company in order to tool up an affordable, lightweight clear polycarbonate engine hatch option for the S1 Exige.

Finally after much development I have the first part on my car. Weighing in at about 5.5kg, it's a good 3-4kg lighter than the OEM part!

I am able to offer these in a rough-trimmed state for the user to trim and fit themselves as of now. Contact me on here or SELOC for details. In the future I hope to offer a fitting solution that looks totally "Factory Fit".

Still waiting for some catches to arrive before I can finalise the fitting of it, but it's pretty close now I have finished trimming it:

prior to trimming with about 15-20mm stock on all around

screen demist

As I removed the heater matrix and fan in the interest of  weight saving I was left with no method of screen demist.

One option would be the heated screens that are available, however they are expensive to replace following stonechip damage and also they have quite a high current draw, not good when you only have a tiny alternator!

So the solution I have come up with is to run 4 small fans in the vents in the dashboard, on a manual switch so I can blow some air over the screen on demand. Total current draw = 0.6Amps

As always, pictures explain better than I can:

mocking up diffuser

Playing around with the standard S1 diffuser. Still quite a lot to do on this as I need to extend it quite a bit to make it in keeping with the rest of the bodywork. 

Looking good potential though :) 

(got the decent camera out for change rather than being lazy and using my phone)

misc. updates

Once again I've been a bit slack at keeping the blog upto date. Progress has been good though, I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Splitter removed for paint.

Battery tray.

Inserts (to prevent fasteners pulling though/wearing out)

Splitter back on the car.

Battery pack mounted to splitter for best weight distribution.

Front wheels roughly mocked up (I still don't have the front uprights)

 Radiator exit ducting.

Trying to ensure no air can bypass the rad at all. Working in 0.5mm aluminium so it is nice and conformable.

NTR shocks are now cleaned up and fitted to the car :-)

more soon!

cranking test!

Quite a nice milestone this one. Had a couple of hours spare this morning so rigged up a battery direct to the starter motor, as I hadn't actually tested the motor and solenoid which came with the 2nd hand (but only 19,000mile) gearbox. 

Cranking the engine over allowed me to visually check that the alternator mounting looked ok. It looked fine, but the real test of my pulley will be once the engine is running at full speed.

The cranking test also enabled me to check my oil circuit. The pump seems to be priming correctly and even at this slow speed cranking I was getting good oil flow around the circuit and back into the dry sump tank. J

Worth mentioning: the cranking is such slow speed as I am using a knackered old battery from my road car for the testing. It still holds charge but drops down pretty quickly under load. You can just about see in the image from above, the multimeter reads 14.2V, under cranking this was dropping down to 10.5V or so after just a couple of seconds. I will actually be running two batteries in parallel on the Exige as I have figured out this is the lightest way to achieve the CCA (cold cranking amps) I think I'll need for this large, high compression V8.


Quick vid of the alternator pulley during cranking:

chassis loom complete

Hazards:

Wiper:

This completes the chassis loom. I have now tested and confirmed as working:

• LED indicators (LED friendly relay in-transit to slow the flash speed above)
• LED headlights
• LED brake lights
• LED rear rain light
• new washer pump
• new horn with new horn button
• wiper with 3 speeds as per standard but with vertical park
• Fuel pump

All this with removing a total of over 2kgs from the standard loom! Not to mention tarting up the horrible standard switches with some nicer illuminated toggle items.

There is one further addition I plan to make to the chassis loom and that is to add some small laptop fans to act as screen demist now that I have removed the standard heater matrix and fan.



In other news, the main loom design is complete. Further updates shortly but here is the schematic:

Electrical systems testing

Sorry the updates have been a little lax lately. I have been busy on the car however so I'll try to cover quite a bit in this post.

The main focus has been on various aspects of the electrical system. I have been busy trying to get the lighting system working again having ripped out 75% of the standard loom. As this included the standard dash and also the alarm/immobiliser units the indicator hazard circuits were interrupted, and as yet I haven't managed to get them fixed.

The brake lights are fixed and working though:

(as is the rear rain/fog light!)

The car is now full of fluids. Engine oil, gearbox oil, coolant and 10L of unleaded have been poured in. 

Filling the coolant and fuel systems allows me to test the pumps. I started with the fuel system. Giving the fuel pump 12V allowed me to set the adjustable FPR (3.6bar) and check the system for leaks well prior to the first engine start:

The tissue paper around the unions is good trick to check for leaks. Sometimes a tiny leak is very heard to spot with the naked eye, and such a small amount of leaking petrol will quickly evaporate. So wrap some tissue paper around any unions you are suspicious of and then inspect. Even the tiniest leak will leave a mark. 

So far the integrity of the system looks good. I am going to run an extended test for an hour or two later in the weekend just to be 100% sure.

Following completion of the fuel circuit testing I will be switching to the EWP. Even without the engine loom and PWM signal I can give the EWP 12V to kick it into action and check the coolant system for leaks.