The engine makes an appearence.....Again!

 Lets start with the brake lines which, incidentally, are now all in. The rears were fairly straight forward, and I opted not to use the stainless P clips I purchased in bulk at the start of the project. A couple of reasons for this...a), I find them quite large when space is tight, and b). The holes to fix them (if you want to rivnut them) need to be 9mm if you want to use a 6mm bolt. So, I've gone for the more indiscreet clips for the longer lengths off copper nickle, but finished off on the tight bends with the P clip. Anyway, job done.

While still waiting for a lottery win, I need to keep busy without spending money, so the engine went back in. Although I will need to remove it, is was a good opportunity to see if the gear stick resided in the correct place when the handbrake and steering wheel are in situ..Thankfully it does, and reminded me how utterly superb the gear linkage works with the IB5 gearbox. Another interesting snippet I found out recently was that the Puma gear box has closer ratios than the standard fiesta version, which will be nice on track. The Ford Racing Puma came with an LSD, but I'm guessing a gearbox from one of those is as rare as rocking horse doo doo.

Something else that was bothering me was the engine position...Not because there is anything wrong with it, it's just I feel it could be a tad better placed....Why do I think this?. Well, there is a cut out in the bottom of the chassis (you may be able to see it in some of the older pics), the sole purpose is so the gearbox / engine can sit a little lower, and I suspect it was there before Sylva decided to add rubber engine mounts (hence raising the engine higher).......BUT, it doesn't actually do anything, the gearbox sits above it, so actually it has no purpose. The old grey cells were working overtime (again) and a quick picture taken from under the car with the gearbox linkage in place showed a surprising amount of ground clearance. So, If the engine could be lowered a tad it would enable the throttle bodies / air filters to have a little more clearance, and of course lower the centre of gravity (only slightly).

So, with this in mind, I lowered the engine down an additional 15mm simply by adding spacers between the top engine mounts and the engine....Simples, and had the desired result.

The exhaust system is really going to be a pain...the Stainless manifold that I purchased with car is rather nice and was a reasonable price, but getting the silencer hanging out of the gap at the bottom of the rear clam is not going to be easy as the whole thing hinges rearwards. There is an option of hinging it forwards which would give more room, but having seen a few pics of other builds, it all looks like a convoluted affair. It's a shame because I could imagine this car  with a nice twin exhaust like an Elise, but alas I doubt this will work. But I am exploring this solution at the moment (more about this next time).

Finally, to finish off, a couple of shots of the rear (that should get the blog views up!). It really does look rather nice.........