16 replies to this topic

[chazpowerslide]

Thought I'd add a few pics of the conversion now it's done.

I had a few issues with the install initially as the chargecooler rad supplied was built to have the feed/return pipes on the passenger side which I did not know.

In this pic you can see that the fans are offset to the rear of the car when the feed/teturn pipes exit on the O/S




This means the rear of the fan cowlings catch on the rear edge of the crash structure and the rad housing will not bolt down on the on the crash structure.




In this case it means that the chargecooler rad has been manafactured so the feed/return pipes exit in the passenger side and the rubber pipes will run down the passenger side.
Thanks to those on the .org that put me in the right direction.
I would not have minded so much but I spent 3 hours fitting the chargecooler rad to the rad housing the wrong way round and pulled the sill cover off the driver side sill.

The car is already fitted with a Pro Ally radiator, so I bolted the chargecooler to it and then made a card template around the rad outlet and the chargecooler inlet/outlet.
The rad assembley was then bolted into the the rad housing and the hole positions for the chargecooler inlet and outlets were transposed onto the rad housing and then the holes cut with a holesaw.

You can see also that I put a patch of fine mesh on each of the heater air inlets to stop the bugs getting in..........


We join the story with the front clam off and the fitting up in progress a few days later.
This was what it looked like on wheeling it out of the garage on the morning of the 29th March (Thursday)




The work bench looked like this wuth all the new fasteners ect laid out..........



The first job was to get the car in the air and begin to look at running the pipes through the passenger side sill.



In this pic you can a grommet in the front of the sill, there is an equivlent grommet in the trailing edge of the sill, on removing these I looked down the sill through the front hole and could see the hole at the back which seemed to me to be good news.
I opened these holes up to 28mm with the holesaw.
I find the right angled drill handy in situations like this.......





Once the holes were opened up I fed a length of electrical conduit into the the rear of the sill and carefully slid it along to see if it'd go all the way through which it did not, the next stage was to tape the holesaw to the end of the conduit and cut neat holes through the foam bolsters in the sill.
The conduit was then extracted through the front of the sill.



Hey presto it re-appears.
Once I had the pipe runs cut into the foam bolsters I could then begin the job of pulling the pipes through.

More to follow.....................

Chaz.

[Duncan VXR]

Are you sure the coolant rad did not need rotating to make the pre rad. holes line up to join? The cooant rad can be fitted the wrong way which would have caused this DG

[JG]

Also that pipe is going to be very close to the wheel when turning.

[chazpowerslide]

The next bit was to start to pull the rubber pipes through.
The rubber pipe was taped to the conduit which was then carefully pulled through pulling the pipe along with it.
In progress......




And out the front...........





I then did a little measuring and calculating to get an idea of where the pipes would finally exit through the top of the sill.
This was a little tricky and required re-fitting the arch liner and compromising a bit on the ideal position of the pipe exits as the pipes need to turn up at quiet an angle from the depths of the sill to the exit point.
The next bit was to ensure that there was no pipes/electrics behind the area where the holes were going in.





All done.

The rubber pipework





Pipes run through and arch liner fitted to check all was well.
The pipes are fitted with big grommets to protect/seal them on the sill.





This is a shot of the front end with the origional rad supports removed so the chargecooler will sit on the crash strucrure correctly.
To tidy this up a bit I rivited an ally pannel over the area where the rad edges sit down and then used some high density foam doe the assembley to sit on.





Rads fitted to the fan cowling............



The next bit was to transfer to the N/S/R arch and pull out all of the old chargecooler stuff including the pump which I was re-using.

This is what I found.




To be honest I was pretty shocked at this particularly as the fan/pump was only working when switched on via a dash switch.
The total fluid capacity couldn't have been more then about a litre and the airflow over the rad must have been p*ss poor as it was all cable tied roughly by the side vent in the O/S of the rear clamp.
The real laugh was the pump polarity was reversed so the flow must have been crap too........
Thankfully the pump was in good order and re-useable.

More to follow...................

Chaz.

[JG]

• I don't understand why you drilled the sills at the bottom? Anyway its done now so it doesn't matter, but you can get the pipe through without adding the holes.

[The Batman]

[chazpowerslide]

Are you sure the coolant rad did not need rotating to make the pre rad. holes line up to join? The cooant rad can be fitted the wrong way which would have caused this

DG

Yep Duncan, the Proalloy rad will fit either way around and it made no difference which way the pre-rad was bolted to it with the inlet/outlet on the O/S the welded brackets that the fans bolt to are wrong.
You rotate the the prerad so the inlet/outlet on the near side and the fans then clear the crash structure.
Chaz.

Also that pipe is going to be very close to the wheel when turning.

JG, you didn't really think I'd exit the pipes there did you?

Chaz.

Edited by chazpowerslide, 06 April 2012 - 09:36 PM.

[JG]

Well you don't need to drill those holes. So i was wondering.

[The Batman]

its a good thing that the pipes run down the passenger side where did you get that original cc system from? that an early CS one?

[chazpowerslide]

• I don't understand why you drilled the sills at the bottom? Anyway its done now so it doesn't matter, but you can get the pipe through without adding the holes.

It seemed to me to be less of a faff to to it that way as I managed to neatly hole the foam and draw the rubber tubes through without destroying the foam blosters.
The holes now have OE looking grommets in them so it all looks standard.

Chaz.

[CocoPops]

The foam was only there during the build to help line up the sills. It serves no other purpose. (I was told that by someone)

[chazpowerslide]

its a good thing that the pipes run down the passenger side

where did you get that original cc system from? that an early CS one?

It was already on the car Jo.
The rad has KTM stamped on it and the fan looks like it's from another motercycle.
I have no idea if it's Courtney's kit or not.
Lookes pretty (poorly) homebrewed to me.

Chaz.

[smiley]

Are you upgrading an existing SC cooling system, or is this the first step in an SC built?

[chazpowerslide]

The next bit was to mount up the header tank.
I choose to put this in the boot rather then in the engine bay.
The tank was made by a friend of mine and had a capacity of half litre.
He has much the same tank on his Locost that's running a 300BHP turbo Yamaha R1 motor that's on 15psi of boost and has less fluid capacity in the chargecooler system and it's prooved to be entirely adequate.
I gave the car some pretty hard use over the weekend and the water in the system was barely over tepid so it appears that the location of the tank in the boot and fluid capacity in the system is adequate for my 250bhp.

I made a template and then cut the holes in the boot.




And mounted the catch tank up using riv-nuts and stainless fasteners.



The inlet and outlet as seen through the rear N/S arch.



I then added 90 degree elbows to the inlet/outlet of the laminova coolers, fiddley with the rear clam on.....................

These are the silicone elbows and home spun hose joiners that were used.



The pump has been mounted on a home made "P" clip and sits in the rear of the N/S sill as shown.




I then completed the pipework to run in the following order.

Header tank - pump - pre rad - laminovas - header tank.

The wiring was then completed, I mounted the relay on the rear bulkhead as shown, this will be re-located when the clam comes off this winter to an easier to reach location.



The wiring was done as follows.

I did not want to run wires from the front to the back of the car.
Power feed for the pump, from the starter motor main battery feed
Pump earth to chassis earth.
Relay power from the fuel pump live.
Relay power ground to chassis earth.

It was a case of firing it all up and hey presto it all works.



The pump flow seemed low to begin with but as the air was purged out of the system it picked up significantly from the pic above and now you can see the fluid pouring out of the inlet pipe and swirling around the tank.


The worst bit of the whole job was re-alinging the front clam but that's now better then than it was before.


One think that I think was crazy was that in the past most of the fasteners have been replaced with stainless ones but NONE had any lube on the threads.
I was lucky that none of the fasteners has seized as this would have made the job a real PITA.

I have given the car some hard use since the conversion and it seems much happier under power now and the water temps have dropped considerably.

Chaz.

[chazpowerslide]

Are you upgrading an existing SC cooling system, or is this the first step in an SC built?

It's an upgrade Smiley from the heap of crap that was in one if the above pics.

The car was S/C when I brought it.

Chaz.

[techieboy]

The car was S/C when I brought it.

Do you know who's it was originally? Wonder whether it was thelynxeffect's old car, as that seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth?

[chazpowerslide]

I'm the 4th owner. The origional owner was a Mr P Griffiths. Then Mr Colchester Then David Griffiths Then myself. I really need to trawl through the invoices to see hwo did what and when. The chap who had it before me basically ran it and had it regularly serviced no expence spared (Plans/CMS from the invoices) He had it from 11/02/10 untill 10/09/11 I'm not sure if it was the owner before him that did the SC conversion or the origional owner but I do know I CMS finished off and mapped it. The car is on the CMS webiste being dyno tested with the Weapon R exhaust. There were some bits on it that I was not happy with which were the origional chargecooler setup and the wiring for the fan over rides and chargecooler fan/pump It was shall we say not up to my own standards so I have pulled it all out and upgraded it all and now it looks very "OE" which is what I wanted. The car has obviously had a lot of money spent on it over the years and in general terms is well looked after but it's the little things like lubricating fasteners/locks and hinges, using copper-slip when servicing the brakes ect that have been missed which is a shame considering the money spent. However I'm very happy with it so far, it's comfy, as fast A to B as the Westy was and is easier to drive especially when cracking on a bit. What the Westy had in terms of the thrill and raw driving experience the VX beats in steering feel and comfortable competence, I don't think I'd go back to a 7 type car now after the VX. I have Turbo side vents, a Seat Leone front spoiler and a Turbo rear spoiler to add later but for the moment I'm happy to just drive it. Chaz.