She's alive again!
Could have had her back on the road sooner but lots of mods done while the engine was out.
1st up was cooling system mods. Main one was to install an electric water pump to help with idle and low rev circulation duties and at the same time re-route the inlet from the header tank to also self bleed the radiator return pipe.
After the rediculous amount of stripping needed to get the old engine dropped out from underneath the car (gearbox had to come off and the air con pump, alternator, turbo, exhaust manifolds plus the rear suspension had to be stripped and pulled out of the way) the fixed chassis mountings have been cut off and replaced with bolt on mountings. I recon I could now manage a complete engine swap in a weekend, professional crew could probably manage it within an hour (provided no siezed screws/nuts.)
The old charge cooler had been blown up like a balloon because of slightly higher boost than originaly designed for, so a new system was called installed.
While the suspension was in bits the drive shafts were modified to cure a problem with the passenger side one bottoming out in its tripode housing when right hand cornering (ie every roundabout taken at reasonable speed.)
All of this was done while a new engine was sorted out (this one only had 110,000 miles on it, 40,000 less than the old one) unfortunatly when the new engine went back in quite a few of the mods clashed. Chargecooler was fouling the exhaust manifolds, charcooler tank plus re-routed header tank feed were fouling the cambelt cover.
So engine out again. Repositioning of the chargecooler tank and header tank pipework were fairly straightforward but timeconsuming. The chargecooler on the other hand involved new brackets, pipework and I even had to cut out and reroute the petrol filler pipe to get enough clearance from the exhaust manifold.
A few other minor mods done at the same time but now back on the road.
Can't say if they are performance improvements yet as I have 3/4 tank of old petrol to use up before filling up with fresh Vpower and giving her some beans.
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