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With the ‘36 now starting on the button and no leaks, bangs or knocks there was nothing left but to get it booked in to the rolling road for mapping.
I managed to get a slot for the following week which gave me some time to tie up a few loose ends.

The first job was address the starter motor.
When the motor was running there was a clattering coming from the bellhousing/starter motor area. You can hear it in the first start video.
I suspected the starter gear was hitting the ring gear and briefly talking to Jim at Royal Kustoms confirmed that sometimes the clearances can be off.
I removed the starter and straight away the witness marks on the end of the gear proved I was on the right track.



Measuring the stick out of the stater and the depth of the ring gear showed a deficit of 7 thou. Yeh, that would do it.

A shim would be needed. I got all fancy and dug out my shim stock but the thickest I had was 15 thou and it wasn’t wide enough anyway so I turned back to BS standard 20 thou cereal box.



This worked and noise was gone but I’d now progressed onto actually moving the car around under its own power and every time I pushed the clutch in it clattered again. Still not enough clearance with the forward thrust of the clutch on the crank.

Mark II was a 1mm (40 thou) steel shim.



The outer circumference was rough cut and ground to final dimension with the inner started with the closest undersized holesaw I had.



To open up the inner hole I clamped the die-grinder into the vice as a kinda makeshift floating router and carefully(!) and slowly open up the hole to dimension.



Finally marking and drilling the two clearance bolt holes.



In hindsight this was all foreshadowing of what was to come…

The original charging wire had become too short so this got extended which I failed to get a picture of so imagine this brown wire but 6” longer.



I remembered that the steering box was still dry from its rebuild so that got filled up with the proper stuff.



The rear shocks got bolted on. I’d left them off because they are fairly knackered and I had intentions of getting new ones made.
I can’t see me doing that anytime soon so the old ones may as well be refitted. This was also a small milestone because they were the last bits left clogging up the garage to go back on.





With a few heat cycles a couple of head studs, one on each bank, started leaking coolant.



All the head studs go into the water jacket and all had sealer on them when they originally went in.
Luckily the ARP studs have the hex in the top so the leaky ones could be removed without affecting the others. I never like doing this on a torqued head but what other option do you have?



The stud and stud hole were cleaned up as good as possible and the stud got a liberal coating of sealer on the threads and anti seize on the shank. The anti seize is more for when running aluminium heads so they don’t corrode to the studs but it can’t hurt on iron heads as well.
I used the opportunity of the reseated studs going back in to retorque all the head studs.



The rev counter was all connected up but had lost its signal wire trigger when the ignition coil was deleted.
The only reason it wasn’t functioning was I’d been too lazy to research how to!
The signal would now come from the ECU.
There are 4 digital outputs from the ECU which can be used to activate pretty much what ever you want from cooling fans to traction control.
I had de-pinned and removed all these when I stripped back the loom. 😁
It turns out the no.1 digital output wire is allocated for this function and would now become the signal wire to the rev counter.



I dug out the original pinned DPO1 wire which I simply run back into the loom and repinned back into the main harness plug.



The original signal wire was one of the wires that had been pulled back through the firewall and rolled up.
I had to now disconnect it from the rev counter which made it completely redundant.



The wire was wrapped into the original loom but only over a 6” length so I pulled the loom wrap to completely remove the wire and rewrapped the loom.
The new signal wire from the ECU was routed over and up to the rev counter mounted on the column to be terminated.
I chose to piggy back it the original car loom rather than run it back in so I can still keep the 2 looms separate.



With it all connected electrically it was simple matter of going into the software, allocating the output and selecting the number of cylinders and rpm sweep of the rev counter.
One working rev counter.

No, its steam. Alot of condensation buildup from all the short runs I think.

This brung me up to pretty much the last job before attempting to start the engine for the first time, connecting the turbo outlet to the carb hat.
I’ve been dreading this job as I knew it would be a nightmare and it didn’t disappoint.
I mentioned previous that I had abandoned the idea of fitting an intercooler setup. Firstly I don’t think it was even possible with the space available and secondly I’ve lost patience now and just want the thing running.
Running no form of intake cooling is certainly not idea and also quite limiting in how far I can take things.
A job for the future that has me now looking at charge cooling (air to water) but that’s a story for another day.

This is where I was at with the two components.



I roughly worked out a 30 degree angle from turbo outlet to the horizontal, which had me ordering a length of 63mm beaded aluminium tube to match the turbo outlet and a 63mm silicone bend to join the two.



To hopefully look something like this.



This is when it all started going downhill rather fast.
Every surface was a curve or an angle. There was nothing to work from so it just became an educated guess of where to put a hole in the dome…. And I don’t even think that was right.



That is where the pictures dry up because…

I spent 2 days stomping round the garage making the tube fit worse and worse and even struggling to squeeze it all together on the motor as everything was so close together.
It took all my self control to not stamp the hateful thing flat and frisbee it out the door.

In the end and out of sheer desperation I passed it on to people better than me who managed to actually salvage something from the steaming turd I’d handed over.



I could finally bolt down the base plate for good.



This was all that was left of the joiner hose. I had to scallop the hose to get more hose surface area on the hat for the hose clip to grip onto.



All fitted up. Notice the rad hoses are now in place as well.
These stainless water tubes with rubber joiners are my old setup. I changed over to one piece rubber hoses some time ago but space is so tight over the the top of the turbo that the smaller diameter stainless tubes compared to the thick rubber hose gained clearance and the fact they are metal with water coolant inside means there shouldn’t be any melty issues.

With the breather/catch can located it meant I could now put in another order for fittings and Teflon hose.
Not only for the breather lines but also the oil feed line for the turbo, turbo drain back and catch can drain back.



Straight away there was a problem!
Some idiot had mounted the turbo so close to the top of the manifold that there wasn’t enough clearance to screw a fitting on the drain back outlet.



A little thought later it might just fit if the bend was mounted direct to the flange.
That was sent off and this is what I got back.



It’s bloody close but it all clears. A lucky escape.



The Teflon hose goes straight onto the turbo fitting and is permanently fixed, loops around the front corner of the block and down to a 90 degree elbow connected to the threaded bung on passenger side of the sump.



The oil feed line was straight forward made in -4 hose. The oil feed is taken from an unused port at the rear of the block that feeds straight from the main oil gallery.



I mentioned previous that I didn’t want the faff of potentially having to drain the catch can of oil.
Having located the catch can to the drivers side of the engine bay gave me a straight shot to the second threaded bung on the drivers side of the sump so I could create a recirculating breather system.
I simply replaced the supplied NPT drain tap in the bottom of the catch can with a NPT to -4 adapter and a line back to the sump.





The breather pipe from the up stand was simple enough being a straight run across the engine bay.
I didn’t feel that a single -10 was enough breathing capacity so I looked into running a second -10 line.
A prime candidate was a threaded boss on the manifold at the front of the valve chest that had a blanking plate over it.
But, we’ve been here before…



Using the same trick as before I could just squeeze in a second fitting.
A standard 90 degree fitting was dismantled.



Removing the hex left a nice round stepped lip.
The original blanking plate was drilled for the fitting.
It hasn’t been drilled curse word, honest!
The original cast hole in the manifold is considerably off centre but that did me a big favour as following the position of that original cast hole moved the fitting down and over giving me some much needed clearance.





Again that was sent off for welding and returned and fitted up.



To finish the plumbing was a vacuum line from the common plenum of the inlet manifold to the MAP sensor built into the ECU.
I already had a blanked off 1/4” NPT port drilled and tapped into the plenum portion of the manifold.
I eventually found a 90 degree 1/4” NPT to 4mm barb fitting, a weird collection of features I guess.



Which then wouldn’t fit as there wasn’t enough space to swing the fitting. 🤦‍♂️



I wasn’t too sad about this as it wasn’t in the best location.
A new hole was drilled and tapped in the carb/throttle body spacer on an alternate face instead for a neater installation.

Addressing the engine breather system I total rethink was needed.
Flatheads, like all engines from from the 30’s era, had pretty much non-existent crankcase ventilation systems. The best you got was a hole to atmosphere.
The aftermarket comes through in modern times with retrofit PCV setups, which I’ve run on my previous NA builds.
How good they work, I’m not so sure?
The PCV setups still vent to atmosphere which is an issue when competing in motorsport.
This issue I tried address previously with my sealed system. As documented at the beginning of all this all I managed to achieve was to strangle the whole system which blew the inlet gasket out!

Anywho…

This has all gone out the window now there is a turbo strapped to the motor.

First idea was to go back to a stock baffle, breather/fuel pump stand and vented cap.



The opening of the stand was looking a little worse for wear.



So that got a little tappey tappey tap tap.



The baffle tube was given a good clean and dropped in the hole.



The stand then got bolted down over the baffle with a fresh gasket.



I needed a breather catch can, picking up an OBP one.
Finding a mounting spot proved troublesome.
An area of firewall was earmarked which meant removing the old fuel block which I’d only really kept for old times sake.



I tried the catch can and it was a fail all round.
The barbs were in the wrong locations, too small and more than I wanted. I didn’t want the sight tube either.
So that went back.



I found a cheap Cheap one on EBay that had just two -10 fittings on the front which was what I wanted.



When it arrived it looked like this…! You can’t make this stuff up.



I still couldn’t get my head around using the factory upstand or an effective means of creating a sealed cap so I dug out the old sealed one that I’d made before that was too restrictive.



Problem was, I was now using the drop-in baffle tube so the replacement upstand sat proud on the baffle lip.



The factory pair work together because of recess cast into the upstand.



To get around this I used some of that thick gasket paper again which fitted perfect.



I then got thatshgr high random -10 weld-on fitting that came with the turbo kit welded on as a replacement to the undersized barb’d fitting.



From what I’ve been told a turbo’d motor will push out a fair amount of oil via the breather.
This would mean any catch can would have to drained via the tap on the bottom periodically.
This sounded like a faff so I always had the idea of running a drain from the catch can back into the sump.
Luckily, I’d added that extra 1/2 NPT bung to the sump.
This is why I was trying to mount the catch can high on the firewall even though it was ugly and messy.



I found I could squeeze the new catch can into an area under the master cylinders. Which was a win all round.



A couple of aluminium spacers were made to move it directly off the firewall for clearance of the brake pipes.



Then went down and dirty with *cough* metric rivnuts. I managed to find two countersunk M6 rivnuts so the spacers would sit flat on the firewall.





All fitted up.

Remember last year when I stripped the car the complete front clip got dumped on the patio for storage?
Well..
Winter turned into spring and spring into summer and it was now in the way being moved around a few times until it ended up the lawn.



I wasn’t too fussed as I knew the time was imminent for its re-coupling. The hold up was finishing the wiring in the engine bay as it was a lot more comfortable sitting on the front tyre terminating wires than bent over the front wings.

The re-coupling happened rather quickly as it’s a 2 person job and when help comes it’s all go.
The only real prep was to grind the tacks off them disastrous shock mount extensions I made and still hadn’t removed and mount the radiator as the front panels partially hang from the rad itself.



This was the first time the car had been complete with the new motor set-up and it always comes as a shock how tight everything becomes after working around an open engine bay.





With the front clip on I could finally get on with the final section of exhaust from the turbo.
It was always my intention to send the exhaust under the firewall and under the car like a conventional system but the mass of stuff that had accumulated in that corner and the 3” exhaust pipe meant that idea was now a no go.
Plan B was to now send it out via the inner wing panel.
When the front clip was bolted on it was done without the inner panel on that side.



Now, I could just run it without the panel which would mean all the water and curse word off the road entering the engine bay but worse is the panel ties a lot of the other panels together and these cars are terrible for stress and fatigue cracks at the best of times so losing so much support was going to be disastrous in the long term.



Cutting up my original panel was out of the question. I thought about making a copy of the panel with the necessary clearance but it’s a complicated thing to copy.
This left me the only option but to try and source a sacrificial replacement.
I’d been down this route before with no luck sourcing one in the past.
I tried one more time before having to bite the bullet of shipping one from the US.
I got lucky the second time!



I also got myself a pile of exhaust bends to get started with.



A quick mockup showed the exhaust would end up in the back corner, which suited things nicely.
The panel got chopped.



I only lost 2 of the least important fixing points.
I also remembered to drill the horn mounting holes.



Bolted up it still wasn’t enough clearance to be comfortable.



Back off I took another cut, the furthest louvre.



Which gave a more comfortable space to work with.



I could then lay out the first section of exhaust.





A short, straight section was added to get me beyond the chassis rail and into the arch.



I was tempted to pretty much finish it here but the novelty of that would wear off in about 10mins.
I didn’t take it much further, managing to squeeze a stubby silencer under the arch.



There end the exhaust system!

Moving onto wiring the 8 individual ignition coils.
Each coil has 4 wires going to it, a live, signal (ground) and 2 grounds.
This would start to add up fast so I made the decision early on to have the coil wiring on another sub loom.
The supplied lengths weren’t going to be enough so I had to order more wire. The pre-made loom used modern-ish high amp, thin wall insulation cable, so I ordered the same. 1mm black for the grounds and 2.5mm red/yellow for the lives.



The 3 metres of black I purchased were quickly swallowed up before I’d even managed to complete one side!



The lives to the coils would be paired as they made their way back to the main feed. The pairing is different on each bank to try and avoid pairing coils/cylinders that fire consecutively. I don’t know if this is needed but it seemed the right thing to do.
I ran the lives and had a real battle trying to crimp and fit the the 2.5mm into the terminals and plugs.



After completing one side I realised where’d I’d gone wrong and why it had been such a struggle.
The crimp terminals, seals and plugs are only really designed for 1mm wire, so forcing 2.5mm through everything was way overkill for the individual coil runs.
I decided to scrap what I’d done but what I had done had used up the supplied terminals and seals and the terminals were also locked into their plugs.

I needed to unpin the terminals which meant finding a crappy old screwdriver in the bottom of the toolbox and grinding the end into a pokey tool.



Which worked a treat.



Another order was placed for yet more wire, all 1mm this time and a packet of replacement terminals and seals.



I revisited the grounds I’d run.
Having 8 individual grounds on each bank was stupid so I paired these up as well leaving me with a more manageable 4 which I could squeeze into a single ring terminal that is bolted down under one of the inlet manifold bolts.



The lives redone in 1mm went much cleaner.



A further development of the idea of a separate coil loom was the idea of being able to disconnect it at the firewall. Removing the engine in the future should mean unplugging the sensors and unplugging the coil loom as a whole which would stay with the engine.



The main feed is on a single 30amp plug and the signal wires on smaller 16 amp 4 pin plug.



With the plugs positioned I could finish running and connecting up the lives.



The signal wires had a little more complication to them. As already shown there are only 4 coil drivers but I have 8 coils!
The work around to this is a wasted spark system where 2 coils are wired from the 1 driver.
Obviously you want one cylinder to be on the compression stroke and the second paired cylinder to be on the exhaust stroke.
This is dictated by the firing order of the engine and means each signal wire is running from its source and cross crossing to each cylinder bank.







With (hopefully) all the wires taken care of everything was bundled together.



And removed….



… for wrapping.



Back in place everything else was tidied up to complete.

Before running the new wires I thought I should deal with the old ones first.
These are obviously part of the original loom which is still present. Some would need to stay like the sender wire but others could be removed like the coil and rev counter wire.



These were pulled back through and coiled up behind the dash for possible future use or reinstatement.



Starting off easy, main feed and ground run straight to the battery.



I dug out all the various plugs for all the various sensors and injectors.



All these plugs take terminals that need the heart shape crimp. As I had so many to do I bought myself some new crimps.
I tried them on some bigger terminals I had spare as practice and everything was good.



Starting with water sender I crimped the first terminal and completely bongo’d it beyond any usable state.
Tried a second one and had the same outcome. 🤬



Came to the conclusion that my new crimps were absolute dog s**t on the smallest crimp jaws. Annoyed and frustrated I tried some multi crimps that were in the electrical box and they actually gave a half decent crimp, so continued with those.



I went to clip them into the plug housing and they didn’t want to go.
When in doubt consult the instructions.
Doh!
On this style of plug the wire goes through and the terminal is pulled back into the housing!



Second or is it third attempt?



Success!
My first completed weatherproof plug.



Throttle position and air temp completed easily.



And the trigger wheel pickup.



Injectors next.
These would need the single live split to each injector and the individual signal (grounds) wires.



I only needed two of the supplied signal wires so the unused ones were pulled through and de-pinned in the name of neatness.
You might notice there is actually 4 wires here?
The loom covers 2 levels of ECU so actually has 6 injector wires pinned and run in the loom, even though the wiring diagram only shows 4.



Completed.



There was an ignition live that needed connecting.
I remembered that I had just removed the old coil ignition live from the engine bay so this got repurposed already with a change of terminal.