C20LET Westfield Project

[LongLiveTheNova]

Top work.

[d128mat]

looking very nice indeed

[Drizz]

Great progress! I wish i knew what it all meant though lol

[lepo5]

one of these would look better if it had been a caterham

[ashtal]

Nice work mate.. Im planning something similar to this but with a v6 and home made chassis (mcsorley 7 +442). Bet you cant wait to get it finished.

[Neil Adams]

Just to bring this thread up-to-date. Since the start of July I have...

Installed the V8 (5 Core) Radiator.



Made up some brackets and mounted the Pacet 'suck' fan.



Waited around for ages for silicone hoses to arrive then did some plumbing.



Mounted the airhorn.



Ordered the warning lights and wired up some connectors for it.



Temporarilly fitted the roll bar and petty strut.

[Drizz]

Nice!

[rc]

very nice mate!

have you got any more pics of the engine configureation, bit confused? air filter from top?

[Drizz]

XE at the mo

[Kev_cav]

ive been lazy and cant be assed to rear the website so im lost as well, why the xe?

[Neil Adams]

The XE is there to get the car through the SVA test - once that's out of the way I'll drop the LET in. I've bolted the turbo up just to make sure it all fits as it should.

Neil

[astra16V2004]

nice work mate,gonna be a beast when its finished even with the xe in it.

[Kev_cav]

yeah is a great project always wanted to do one of these with a let for years, hope it all goes well for you it will certainly be an animal mate!
Wouldnt SVA appprove with a silly sized turbo hangin out of the side!ha

[AndySTT]

Envious, me, never!

[Trig]

sWeet

[Benn]

Looks great dude,
was gonna ask about it being a xe not let but now i see ya plan,
very cool project..

[Adam Knight]

nice project, i think il have a go when i bored with the cav turbo

[Nobbie]

Looking good mate.

[CortraGTE]

Very noice!! Good work mate

[jollysoutherner]

Looking good Neil

Looks like I am going to be at the same stage as your car after an incident at Spa

[Neil Adams]

Looking good Neil

Looks like I am going to be at the same stage as your car after an incident at Spa

What have you gone and done Mark ???

[jollysoutherner]

Update please Neil!

Ive pretty much sorted the damage on mine. Wishbones are all straight along with the chassis. The rails that hold the fuel tank have taken a knock and ive cut them out and replaced. Only slight issue was one of the suspension pickups was a tad bent and had a slight crack in the powdercoat. Not sure if it was through to the weld so have cut it off and replaced it. Biggest problem is my nice new tub with less than 1000 miles is shot and needs replacing.

Fingers crossed it will be back on the road for a day at Sneterton in November

[Dylan Mcrae]

Any progress since last post??

[danielparrish]

excellent project dude. i'm looking at doing one my self robing hood seem to be the cheapest one? but i like the dax rush but his kits are 5k
how you getting on with yours??

[Neil Adams]

I've made a fair bit of progress since the last post - I've wasted time moving house and forgot all about this thread sorry!

Anyway, the main thing completed was a custom inlet manifold - as mentioned above the 'how to' is as follows...

Parts used:

SBD Fuel injection inlet manifold with fuel rail



Jenvey tapered throttle bodies with throttle linkage and 19mm trumpets. (This is a little OTT for most and simple Jenvey 50mm spacers could be used here with a single throttle body installed at the plenum's inlet instead)



Plenum from a Nissan Pulsar/Sunny GTiR



Besides being perfectly shaped with a nice taper, the right length to cover the 4 VX ports, it also has an ideal outlet pipe to fit a dump valve to.



First job is to build up the throttle bodies and attach to the SBD manifold



Next, using the Nissan gasket as a template, I got a 5mm ally backplate and a 12mm spacer cut



I marked out the positions I wanted the ports cut into the backplate using the trumpets as a rough guide to ensure they fitted under the plenum. The space of the left-most port needed to be 35mm in from the edge of the backplate. Each port is 48mm in diameter with a 45mm gap between each one. (This is slightly different if you use the Jenvey spacers instead of the throttle bodies)



A VAT free day at Machine Mart got me this budget pillar drill so drilling the backplate was a simple job.



I drilled out the thread on each of the throttle body-trumpet holes to ensure I could tighten the backplate down solidly to face of the TBs.



Because this manifold is being used on my LET I needed to got a post throttle pressure feed so I drilled a 1/8in channel into each of the 2 middle ports.





I then drilled another hole down to where the 2 channels meet and tapped it.





Looking inside you can see where the 2 channels meet





Fit the backplate to the throttle bodies



With the trumpets bolted down the backplate is sandwiched tightly between the TBs. Then gasket, 12mm spacer and another gasket are positioned on top of the backplate. Although it looks like there's some sort of lip inside the trumpets - it is actually completely smooth - it's just the slightly different finish of the metals.



Now the plenum can be bolted down (except in my case it shouldn't be as the TB's still need to be set up and balanced - doh!), it's a perfect fit!



It's easier to fit the throttle linkage off the car so I did it before mounting the manifold.



With the linkage in place I mounted the manifold to the head and fitted the fuel rail.



Finally I connected up the fuel lines and FPR - the only thing I forgot was to drill and tap a hole for the inlet temp sensor but that wont be any hassle.



The good thing about this setup is that if need be you can just spin the plenum around the other way if you want the inlet pointing in the opposite direction.

For this exact setup the cost has come to around £1,300 but it can be made several hundred pounds cheaper if you use the plain Jenvey spacers and a single throttle body. I can supply the backplates and spacers if required and Pulsar plenums come up on ebay from time to time. I'm pleased with the result and cant wait to give it a proper test out.

Mike Hayward came around just after Christmas to sort out the wiring. He did almost everything on the Astra so knows the Autronic loom inside out and to be fair he's done a cracking job.

Last week I took a trip to PWR and picked up one of their barrel charge-cooler kits





Just had a chance to test-fit it on the car and it all fits nicely.