THAMES VALLEY HOODS

Engine Cooling : Many hoods are now fitting extra louvres to the bonnet sides, to aid the removal of the hot air from the engine compartment.

I have purchased these vents, pictured, from my local marine stockist ( visit any boat yard to find one ). They are stainless , with 5 louvres, and cost £10.90 each. Ask for part number 4181 from the ECSmith catalogue. They are not always on the shelf, but delivery of mine took just 3 days.

John.

Items to use:

Car Ramps, Jack, 23 socket head cap screws, various spanners etc

I used ramps that have screw jacks built into them to raise the car up. This allowed plenty of working clearance under the car.

Remove the four anti-roll bar bolts that hold the roll bar bushes onto the bottom of the car. The best bet is to remove the whole bar, but you will need to support the car so that there is no weight on the suspension. This will allow you to move the anti-roll bar to gain more clearance. A long metal bar levered between the car and the anti-roll bar is your best bet. You could completely remove the anti-roll bar (or better still fit front wishbones, which I will be doing in a few months), but moving the car could be risky as without the anti-roll bar the front suspension moves around a lot!

Drain the engine oil!

Remove the starter motor buy undoing the electrical wires (make sure they are covered up as you will get some sparks!) and then undo the three starter motor bolts.

Undo all 23? Of the sump bolts and with a bit of wiggling the sump should come away from the engine.

Most likely the underbody panel of the car will be cut close to the profile of the sump, this will cause a lot difficulty in pulling the sump out. The best bet it to unbolt the bolts securing the engine to the engine mounts, these are the bolts to the rubber mounts not the three bolts that connect the engine mounting brackets to the block.

Then place the jack under one of the engine mounting brackets and jack the engine up (most likely a block will need to be placed under the jack as the car will be raised quite high off the floor). The bolts of the by the rubber engine mountings are quite long so you can jack-up the engine quite a bit without fear of the engine falling down onto you.

The raised engine should allow enough clearance for removal of the sump. Clear off all gasket from the block face and undo the two bolts securing the oil pick-up, there is also a support bracket that has one bolt that needs to be removed. Remember to clear off gasket from face.

Fit the RS2000 oil pick-up pipe along with new gasket.

You will need to remove the clutch cable from the gearbox in order to re-route it through a hole in the RS2000 sump. This is a bit fiddly. Place a block under the clutch pedal so it can’t be de-pressed. Remove rubber cover from gearbox and using pliers disconnect wire from clutch lever.

Now, working on the RS2000 sump using a file or similar, remove metal so that the starter motor will be able fit against the gearbox once sump is in place. One of the starter motor holes interferes with a rounded part of the sump.

Before starting to fit the sump make sure you have all the bolts ready. I used S.Steel socket head cap screws 25mm long.

Now apply a nice thick bead of gasket sealant (non-hardening type) onto the face of the engine block and place the two side cork gaskets and the front & back rubber gaskets (and the little paper-type blocks if the old ones look shot) onto the sealant.

The sealant should hold the gaskets in place while you mount the sump onto the engine block. The oil pick-up pipe will most likely be the item that causes the most pain while trying to replace the RS2000 sump. The way in which our sump was finally fitted was to try and place the sump farther forward towards the radiator then manoeuvre it into the correct position.

All bolts then have to be tightened in order. This takes ages and my torque wrench did not go low enough for the ‘correct’ value so I just kept going around in order until they were pretty tight.

Some (most) of the bolts are really fiddly to get at. I recommend a very small ratchet device that you can put Allen head fittings into. My very cheap ratchet wore out half way around to further complicate matters. The main problem bolts are the ones above the side extension on the RS2000 sump. This means that the driver for the socket head bolts has to be very short 3"? or you use a small ratchet device.

Now once that is done, feed the clutch cable through the hole in the sump and reconnect it to the clutch plate through the hole in the side of the gearbox. Remember to feed the rubber cover onto the cable first!! It is quite difficult to connect the cable back in put it just requires a bit of muscle (remember to check that there is something underneath the clutch pedal to stop it moving down).

Re-tighten the bolts to secure the engine back in, re-fit the starter motor and then get car off ramps. We filled the engine with oil and drove it off the ramps. This caused a worry as oil started to drip from the back of the sump (gearbox end) however once on flat ground the dripping stopped. I put this down to the fact that the car was on such an angle on the ramps the oil level at the back of the sump was higher than the gasket line. The gaskets can stop splashed oil but not if the oil level is higher than the gasket.

To re-fit the anti-roll bar brackets that secure the bushed to the underside of the car (don’t worry I did not forget about them!), you will have to raise the car off the front suspension. Jacking one side of the car up at a time is fine. By relieving the weight from the suspension it will make lining-up the bolts in the holes much easier.

There you have it, a RS2000 sump conversion.

Pictures of the mayhem are available at : http://www.evoposters.net/carsb/Sump-Change