Brakes, Suspension, Steering, Clutch, Fuel Pipes and the Remaining Brake Pipe

The next step was to reassemble the brakes, attach them to the car and correct a couple of things with the suspension/steering whilst doing so.

I started with the front calipers. One of the old calipers had seized so I only had to rebuild one of them. I initially struggled with getting the longer seals through the caliper bracket but a tiny bit of WD40 and the slid straight in.

Once done, I jacked the front of the car up and fitted the calipers. Whilst doing so, I copper greased the joints that I didn’t do during the initial part of the build and torqued up the joints that don’t use the metalastic bushes.

Whilst apart, I tapped the M14x1.5 thread in one of the upper front wishbones which had a little powder coating in it. The ball joint then went in perfectly.

 

Whilst the front was in the air, I also decided to fit the track rod ends. I removed these from the Mazda steering rack (that I luckily hadn’t had time to get rid of) and fitted new boots using a 32mm socket and G clamp. I fitted these with the extenders, set the toe about level and dropped the front back down.

One evening that week, I then decided to fill and bleed the clutch system. Unfortunately I just couldn’t stop it from leaking at the slave cylinder end. I found a few problems that caused this; the standard Westfield banjo bolt is too long and the aftermarket slave cylinder does not have a flat surface to seal against the copper crush washer (this wouldn’t be a problem in the Mazda as the hydraulic pipe has a different fitting). In trying to get this to seal, I then tightened it too much and broke the thread in the cheap slave cylinder…

I therefore ordered a Mazda slave cylinder and a shorter banjo bolt (http://www.carbuildersolutions.com/uk/banjo-bolt-m10-x-1). Once these arrived I fitted them and it worked perfectly straight away.

Next I rebuilt and fitted the rear brake calipers and  put on the car. I also rebuilt part of the rear suspension and think that some of the bolts for the upper wishbone are too short so I will order some 4 1/2 inch bolts. I think I may have used the wrong ones elsewhere. The manual says to use 2 1/2″ bolts for the upper rear wishbones but on the Mazda SDV they need to hold the diff bracket so need to be over 4″.

Slightly out of sequence, next I bent the feed and return fuel pipes and taped these in place under the car. I think I read somewhere about  not needing the carbon cannister so will investigate that before bothering to bend the pipe for it. These were much easier than the brake pipes as the end points aren’t so defined and the profile is generally flatter.

I then bent the remaining brake pipe (master cylinder to rear T piece) and taped to the car. I started at the front and actually had a bit too much pipe when I got to the T piece so would have been better off starting at the rear.

Next job is to drill the holes and rivet all those P clips in place!

The Return to Warwickshire

A few days after getting the engine in, my Dad winched the Westfield onto a trailer and brought it back to Warwickshire for me to continue the build.

After struggling to push it back onto the drive (due to the front wheels not being connected to the steering rack!), we put the main part of the body on the chassis for storage.

The first job was to put the propshaft into place now that it had been shortened by Bailey Morris. Once this was in, at the gearbox end, there was about 20-30mm of the splined section outside of the gearbox and judging by the corrosion, only about 10mm of this had been exposed when in the Mazda. I don’t know if this would have been a problem but decided to move the engine back a little whilst it was relatively easy to do so.

The slot on the right hand engine mount was almost still OK ( I enlarged it by about 2mm) but it meant re-drilling the holes on the left engine mount and for the gearbox mount. Without the engine hoist to remove the engine, the gearbox mount meant drilling the holes from underneath the car, then sliding the engine backwards before locating the mounts. I also used this chance to fit the gearbox mounts recommended on the WSCC forum here.

With this done and everything bolted in place, I put the propshaft in place and the splined section was now very close to where it had been on the Mazda so I’m happy.

I have now created a list of jobs and started to work through them:

During transport, the engine had been protected by the combination of a canvas bag and sticky back plastic wrapped around, this had definitely worked to keep the worst of the rain off the engine but unfortunately took some of the paint off the cam cover so one of the first jobs was to repaint this.

   

Fitting the clutch slave cylinder and hose. The master and slave cylinders are very close so I can’t work out a better way to route the hose. Need to get some fluid and bleed the this.

New air filter into the standard box, tried to mount it to the chassis but I appear to be missing the small L shaped bracket, it’s fairly simple so I will cut one out of some spare aluminium sheet.