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Craig's 6Fire In Aus


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Well, she's a lot more like Priscilla than Elvis, but after just over 2 years, she's left the building!

 

She looked ready and raring to go

 

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But I swear that when the door opened, she looked like a nervous puppy who isn't sure if it's ready for the outside world.

 

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Before long she was loaded up and ready to roll

 

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Soon she was home

 

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And tucked in

 

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Of course that meant the red Mk3had to give up the garage space she's been taught was hers alone

 

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Which led to a 30 minute incredibly careful trailer reversing session to get down the narrow twisting driveway.

 

A hour later, the Mk3 is hiding in a buddy's garage in the hills.

 

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Only fair that she's tucked up too

 

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Yeah.... I can think of a couple cars parked a few metres from me that would really benefit from a "holiday" with Uncle Craig  :P

 

Hope you can maintain the momentum 'cause you must be bloody knackered having come so far, so fast with it.

 

Nick

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Kind words lads, cheers!

 

Had a long chat the other night with the red Mk3.  She's been sadly neglected due to this build, but she's very much my favorite car.  She'll be back.

 

The Cosmics cost waaaay to much to have refurbed, then cost even more to get them to fit over the M12 studs - thats a story in its self.  They also limit the tire choices, and I may yet regret the 185 70 r13's if they rub.  Minilite replicas would have been easier and cheaper, but the cosmics are kinda pretty.  They're about to cost me even more time and money looking for center caps too.

 

Got to admit that my momentum is pretty much stalled - I need to empty out all my crap from Alan's factory this week, and then I'm gonna take a short break to get some work done and make some much needed funds before I finish off the Sixfire.  I have two day jobs to try to pay for all this, and I'm really really tired.

 

I cannot tell a lie though, as I sat in the quiet garage at home the other night talking to the Mk3, I couldn't help but think that a solid month of bodywork could have her looking as nice as the 6fire...

 

Lucky I have no room for such shenanigans...

 

C. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I always seem to underestimate just how long machining parts will take.

 

Last time I needed to cut down bungs I MacGyvered up this fitting, 

 

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which let me cut 16mm arcs into the bungs,

 

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but it wasn't stable or safe enough to cut in more than one direction or dimension, so then I had to wrap a piece of emery around some 38mm pipe, and laboriously rub them down one at a time to fit the 38mm profile.

 

 

Building up this fixture so I could run a repeatable program to mill down the injector bungs to sit flush on the 38mm runners seemed a stupid thing to do in a freezing shed, but my OCD just wouldn't let me bodge it. (yep, I bought the fixture bits just for this...  Stoopid)

 

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The 6 pretty bungs at the end made it worth it though.

 

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I think I've now got all the programs and fixtures to repeatably make GT6's run on Megasquirt.  

 

But now I'm out of GT6's.

 

Time for some hot gluing...

 

C.

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Mat's hot glue gun got a good workout

 

Runners done

 

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Inlet plate ready

 

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And plenum on

 

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While we were at it, we made a little addition (or six) to the header. I wish I had his skills

 

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With the injector pockets on the runners it was back to the mill

 

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Where my new tilt table made things much easier than last time. Still a tricky game, but a lot easier.

 

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Finally, the fuel rail is taking shape, and has been drilled

 

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And milled

 

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So it's hot glue time again...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Packaging, packaging, packaging.

 

Test fitted the manifold to a spare head. Didn't go well at first - heat plus alloy equals movement, and even though I left cutting off the supports between the manifold brackets till last, the outer ends sprang in slightly.

 

After some G clamp work and some percussive encouragement,

 

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That let me treat it to a couple of heat cycles with a blow torch.

 

Time to get it under the hood.

 

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Annoyingly, when I wrapped the end of my new design fuel rail in bubble wrap and gently lowered the hood, it's too damn close (actually it was so close I didn't dare fully close the hood).

 

Time for a redesign of the rail.

 

C

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That is a thing of beauty.  Surprised the fuel rail is an issue, it looks low.  Are you already using the shorter injectors?

 

Presumably the engine is already as far down and back as you can get it?  And as you've spent ages getting the panel fit perfect you don't want to raise the front of the bonnet......?

 

Nick

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Shorter injectors? - Check.  0280156080 

Engine down and back? - Check.  No distance pieces, and it's almost touching the rack.

Front of bonnet as high as possible? - Check.  When we did the panel alignment, I purposely set everything up starting with the bonet at full up and high.

 

I think I know why I'm in trouble though.  More on that below.

 

For now, the fuel rail underwent 3 hours of filleting, welding, grinding, re-welding, re-grinding, etc etc etc this evening at Mat's factory.

 

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There's a beautifully rounded of plate hiding under there, TIG'd into place, and ground back till it's hidden.  Under it, the path for fuel to the last injector has been carefully crafted and rounded.

 

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It shouldn't have needed that much work.

 

But it does look nice.

 

On the car, it now clears the hood.  Juuust.  

 

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I'm going to bolt everything up and see if it needs anything more.

 

So why is it harder than last time?

 

At first I thought that I must have set the bungs further out, or higher up.  

 

Unfortunately, the MK3 is at a mates place an hour away, so definitive quantitative measurement is out of the question.  However, looking at the photos's of the original

 

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and comparing it to the second edition

 

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the bungs look shorter if anything, and I know from tseeing the injector wiring plug clearances that the angle is certainly no higher.

 

So why the clearance issues.

 

I think I know the answer.

 

I remember that on the MK3 the rail and the 180 degree coupling on the end live in the end and outside border, of the power bulge.

 

The 6Fire has a MK2 hood, and the entire fuel rail seems to be outside the power bulge.

 

So, since the MK3 is to far away to run a ruler over it, some photos.

 

Here's the MK3 hood

 

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And here's the mark 2 hood in white undercoat

 

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And again in paint.

 

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I reckon the MK3 powerbulge is wider and more aggressive, with more fluted sides..

 

Anyone got a more definitive answer?

 

C.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Bulge is bigger on Mk 3. Pretty sure I've heard it said / seen it written before and certainly looks like it from your pics.

 

Fuel rail fix looks nice but you don't want to be doing that every time.

 

Nick

Mk3 of the fuel rail may be a winner

 

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Gotta love prototyping on the fly!

 

C

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  • 1 month later...

My parents spend.the winter months of their retirement as Grey Nomads, touring their caravan and 4wd around the warm parts of this wide brown land.

I took advantage of that when I needed somewhere to store the in-progress hard too for the 6Fire, and placed it on a work stand in the 4wd"s garage.

Cue a call last week to get it out of the way when they arrived home.

So Dad and I made and mounted a bracket near the roof.

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Which held it nicely

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With plenty of room left for the Pajero

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 Sleep little hardtop - your time will come

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C

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We met Grey Nomads (lots of them) on our WA trip in 2008 (Jeez, that long ago......) and found them a very pleasant bunch.  Some of them weren't very grey either.  We noted a wide variation in equipment levels varying from one couple living in a tent and Subaru estate car to another (parked in the next slot of this particular campsite) with a Dodge Ram with 5th wheel in the bed and gigantic caravan with pop up roof, push out sides, satellite TV etc.

Hard-tops are great when the weather is crap but storage is a PITA.  We have 3 kicking around.  The Vitesse one is a lightweight Honeybourne one and lives in the rafters of the garage.  Last used in 2008 on the RBRR.  The better Spitfire one lives in my dryer shed and the rough one (and it is very rough) in the carport.  I should take it to the tip!

 

Nick

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  • 5 months later...

I spent the weekend working at a country airshow (cue a couple of gratuitous photos of me paying the rent)

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Fun times.

One of the attractions was a car ow by the local car club.  They had some impressive Aussie and American iron, and then in the corner I spotted this little gem.

Look closely, spot the standout feature.

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This may help

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Yep, there are only 4 intake socks under there.

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(I do love that cold air delivery system).

The sign on the windscreen meant it was time to hunt down the owner...

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Finding him was well worth the effort.

He (nice bloke called Greg) worked at AMI, who built all the CDK Triumphs brought to Australia.  Like the sign says, this one was brought out here to be build and tested with the public, to see if a GT4 would be a goer, but it went no further after the build, and he bought it off AMI when they stopped selling Triumphs.

The kicker is that AMI used the running gear out from under a MK3 Spitfire shell for this build, which left an orphaned shell, and the leftover parts for a GT6.

When I bought the 6Fire off Todd, he recounted the story he'd been told, that it had been factory built at AMI of leftover parts, but that there was no way to track down the story.  

I think I just found the 6Fire's sister car, and I'm a step closed to closing that loop.  Greg thinks so to.

Happy days.

C.

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  • 3 weeks later...

back in the late '70's there was a similar car right here in in latham,ny, usa. It was a white gt6 with alloy wheels but no power bulge, and it had graphics down both sides claiming "GT4". I can remember my buddy and myself, both being gt6 owners scoffed at the idea of a gt6 with no power bulge. Never had the opportunity to speak to the owner ... might have been interesting to learn the story behind the car...

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