A tale of a chassis

Well, I haven't posted for quite a while. Thats mainly because I haven't achieved anything for ages. I've DONE loads, its just that, as the French say, I have been peddling in the semolina ((They do, really!)

I managed to get the engine back together relatively easily. No great issues except:

1. New cylinder head bolts for the engine were apparently not available at the time, so I reused the old ones.
2. New flywheel bolts from a well known supplier of parts for ford engines are made of cheese. This time I felt it start to go and removed it, before it broke off, so I saved myself yet another trip to the engineers!

So, there I was with a nice newly rebuilt engine, bell housing attached and everything, and all ready to go in. I sourced a new pair of engine mountings attached them, slung the engine from the crane and lowered it into position.

Could I get it to fit?

No!

What ever I tried to do I could not get the engine attached to the mountings with the starter cowl clear of the chassis on the right hand side and the clutch slave bracket clear of the lower chassis rail the other side.

Bell housing fouls the chassis triangulation on the RHS

Clutch mounting fouls the chassis rail on the LHS 

I spent quite a while jiggling the engine around, but to no avail. I was beginning to think maybe I had the wrong bell housing or something like that. 

After posting my dilemma on Pistonheads and getting some helpful pointers, it became obvious several things were wrong.

1. The chassis was made with the wrong engine mounting brackets. These are the ones from my original chassis, taken from a photo supplied by the previous owner:

You can clearly see that the mounting face on the bracket is canted backwards and there is a curve at the top, pushing the mounting face outwards.

And this is the mount from the new chassis

The face is flat and there is no curve towards the top, which explains the odd angle the mounting is forced to take up in the second picture. 

2. The new chassis has one of the triangulations between the upper and lower chassis rails in the wrong place. Here again is the old chassis:

You can clearly see that the triangulation on the genuine S1 chassis is wider spaced on the RHS. The arrow shows where the bell housing comes.

This picture shows that my chassis has the triangulation identical on both sides, and you can see where the triangulation is fouled by the bell housing on one side and by the clutch slave bracket on the other. 

I have the original receipt for the chassis and it was clearly ordered as an 1800S chassis. If you look at an 1800S chassis it DOES have the triangulation the same on both sides! 

With the help of some very kind S1 owners, I have managed to work out that the chassis has the same dimensions as the Vixen S1 chassis, but does have the wrong mounts and triangulation.

So I bit the bullet and cut off the triangulation.

I am now waiting to get the chassis to a specialist who can put it on a jig, check the dimensions, add the correct mounts and generally check it over. 

Thats where I had got to in August last year and, what with one thing and another, thats where I still am.