July  2004 

     Now its dead winter and a bit too cold for any body work. Even too cold for primer, so I now concentrate on some fabrication of steering and exhaust. I acquired an XY steering column with auto changer from an internet rodder called Dave ( thanks mate ) . Beats getting up at a sparrow's fart and freeze at some swap meet. I have bought and sold a lot of stuff over the net, especially the HRI site.

  So I dragged the 351 out from its nesting spot and bolted the C4 up and plonked them into the roadster. I have to admit it felt good to get it out after 2 years....2 YEARS!!!...where's the time gone?. This engine was built  about 5 years ago and never fired. I guess it will have to patiently sit a while longer until I get to it. I have been collecting a lot of dress up stuff and stored them away. So until then, here are the latest pics.

 

 

The original XY column had this large plate that was bolted to the floor. It had to be that large to allow the shifter lever to fit through. I didn't want to have such a huge hole in my floor, so I ground off the welds and removed the lever. I then made a collar the same diameter as the outside column. I then welded a tab on the opposite side of the lever. Once I was certain where the lever had to be, I then drilled a hole in the tab and collar and attached the lever using a screw and nut. That is the mock up. The end product will have another mounting hole on the lever side and I'll use allen key screws/nuts to hold it in place. Now there is just a 2 1/4" hole in the floor and when I want to remove the column, all I have to do is unscrew the lever and pull it out. The urethane is not some trick part. The original rubber bush was missing so I found this bush in my parts bin. I think it may have been a stabiliser bush from a Datsun 1600, or maybe the Cortina. In any case, I used a hole saw and file to cut it out so the steering shaft will move freely in.

    The original XY steering column had a rag joint bracket straight on the end so it couldn't be used in my case. The car had some column in it when I got it that looked like an XA or XB that was also column shift auto at one stage but had all the shift mechanism cut off. The previous owner overcome the rag joint bracket in his own way. He just cut it off and welded a uni straight onto the end of the shaft. I didn't like that idea, but more importantly, the engineer would definitely frown on it. I was looking at options and started to cut the XA shaft apart. To my surprise, inside the shaft ( which is hollow ) there was a 3/4" bar to give the shaft a bit of stiffness as the rag joint bracket was sort of crimped on. When I  looked closer at this shaft it slipped out to reveal it was in fact a splined segment, about 2" long, complete with a flat section for the retaining screw. I checked up on the regulations and it said it was permisable to weld/pin coupling segments to the lower steering shaft as long as they were suitable for welding. Well this certainly was, so I cut the rag joint section off the XY coulmn and slid the splined segment into it. I then pinned it and plug welded it in 2 spots. It will never move and is now legal.

The inside shows just a small plate at the floor instead of the huge XY bracket. I then fabricated a bracket to hold the column under the dash. I tried to emulate the changer indicator. It is welded permanently to the column. It should blend in well once its painted the same colour as  everything else.

The steering wheel is in fact off a boat. This is another item I got through the net from the infamous Choco...thanks mate. The next pic is a box of mandrel bends and collectors that will be formed into my headers. This is my first attempt at making my own...should be interesting. They came from Castelmaine Exhaust and Electrics and look well made. I intend to mig the pipes at the flange plate ends and the collector ends, but will use the Henrob for any pipe joins. This, I hope, will have better penetration and  be able to be ground back to hide all joins. Then I will have them HPC coated in alloy look...That's the plan anyway.

I mocked up a steering shaft and figured out how I will route it. At first inspection, I though I may be able to get away with just a straight coupler and have the first uni just under the engine mount but the shaft was a bit too close to the head. A slight bend downwards cleared the head OK. I'm using a 10.5mm drill bit to check for clearance. I do have a bit of latitude and can go down further if need be as there will be a uni straight off the steering shaft now..

The collector could have fitted next to the engine mount, but I thought if I moved it here I had enough room for a vibration reducer/ uni. You can see the black mark on the conduit to show where the vibration reducer will come up to. There is a lot of room around there so I may as well take advantage and make driving a bit nicer. This extra room was only created by using a gear reduction starter. It is so compact and tight that I had to grind off a casting mark on the block to make it clear. This is another Castlemaine Auto Exhaust and Electric product.

These pics are the gear shift brackets that bolt to the gear box pan. I made a mirror image of the original side ( right hand pic ) but discovered that the dip stick tube fouled the bracket. It appears that there are 2 versions of C4. One has the dip stick entering into the case and the other into the side of the pan. My luck was as usual, so I had to do some trickery to overcome this. After some more welding and head scratching I resolved the problem. You can just see the  dip stick tube with a dent in it. I didn't do that, it was as I found it. I have a nice chrome one somewhere, I just need to find it.

This is my scratch paper that I used to measure my mock up. Once I was sure of the measurements, I faxed off to Borgeson for the parts. I originally looked for junk yard sections, but it was just too hard to get any the right length....so its store bought stuff here. The last pic is the trusty old 351 ( I hope ) that will propel the 37 to dizzying speeds..:-)    It don't look much here but it has a lot of good stuff in it. Couple that with a good EFI set up and it should boogy real well.

 

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