Taking advantage of the new unit I have been able to get a few hours here and there over the past few weeks.
First up was main seal, once on the crane I used a £10 piece of Perspex tubing which worked great in getting the seal to sit straight, left it about 2mm out as per the original. Flywheel, clutch and gearbox then bolted back up, I am now where I was 4 months ago!
Managed to then fit the engine on my own without too much drama, mounts all torqued and manifold fitting perfectly with fresh studs and gasket.
Driveshafts installed, linkages back on and clutch bleed with a strong pedal, everything was going well, too well. Decided to stop and start double checking things, looked at the exhaust and thought ‘no cats, that’s going to flow well’, ‘no cats’ ah fcuk. I obviously need a cat to meet MSUK regs, I am going to blame it on the hit to the head as I have somehow missed this.
Obviously not an easy fix as the PMS manifold has the longest secondary’s known to man and I have already had to chop about 300mm off the Akra to make it work as is, I am therefore left with this:
My plan is to purchase a 200 cell cat and weld in before the Akra resonator. However this will also likely involve shifting the resonator downstream a few cm to make it work. No expert but I imagine this will probably affect the sound but shouldn’t impact performance (I hope) as it looks the current position is based on space.
Moved onto the front support / alternator to find my pulley bracket has bent in the crash. I had hoped replacing just the pulley was enough but the bracket is out by a degree or two and I don’t fancy risking that!
Continued building up the engine with new plugs, fresh gaskets on the inlet manifold and everything torqued to spec.
Almost ready to start putting fluids in, although absolutely terrified of starting it.