Boy, am I past due for an update or what? I've actually made some good progress on the car. I wanted to get the fuel system and AC done and the powertrain installed before I focused on body work and paint prep this summer. Well, here it is, August, with only a couple months of warm weather left, and I'm behind schedule.
Here's my current status. AC system is still in progress. The fuel system is done, but I don't have any decent pictures of it. Imagine three fuel filters, a high-pressure pump, a low-pressure pump, a 2-way solenoid valve, another shut-off solenoid, a bunch of brass fittings, a bunch of carefully routed 5/16 fuel line and hard lines, a trailing link suspension member, and a gear change rod all sharing the space that's equal to about 1.5 Little Igloo lunch box coolers and that's the bulk of my fuel system.
I want to get the powertrain assembled and into the car soon and then go nuts on body prep, so I managed to fund a full summer day to spend on my car. Perfect weather, solitude in the garage, tunes on the radio and cold beer in the fridge - it was blissful. I managed to get a fair amount done today.
I started off by installing the pilot bearing (Brits and Aussies call this a spigot bearing). It consists of a needle bearing which supports the input shaft; the bearing is pressed into a machined steel adapter which is pressed into the rear of the crank. I heated up the adapter in the toaster oven and put the bearing in the freezer, and I still had to use a vice (with wood and aluminum blocks for protection) to press the bearing into the adapter. Then the whole unit went into the freezer again before I tapped it into the bore in the rear of the crank. God have mercy on me if I ever need to remove this thing. Here's the pilot bearing and adapter.
Next I bolted up and torqued my flywheel, which I had surface ground a few weeks ago. It took the better part of 3 weeks to get these damn Ford flywheel bolts. After I had them all in and torqued I realized I forgot the thread locker, so off they came. The FRPP parts are supposed to come with thread locker already installed, but someone at Ford must've figured out how to increase profits by letting the end user do this step, or forget about this step, as the case may be.
Next I installed the clutch disk. I'm told this is a Rover unit retrofitted with a new center spline to fit the Audi input shaft. Note the high-tech clutch alignment tool I used. The manual specified a shaft with an 18.0 mm diameter which steps up to 18.3 mm 30 mm from the bottom. Instead of seeking out a machinist, I just used a socket that was a close fit, and wrapped it with clear tape until the desired diameter was achieved. That's why there's tape hanging off the socket in the middle of the clutch disk. It worked perfectly, and the clutch disk was dead center on the pilot bearing.
Before I installed the pressure plate I test fit the bolts in the flywheel and was concerned that they might bottom out before the pressure plate was good and tight, so I ground a thread or two off the tip of each bolt. This time I didn't forget the red locktite.
