Its nice to have a fan

Christmas preparations, a busy work life and low funds are slowing progress at the moment, as is waiting for key parts to move the build forward.

My drive belt should arrive this week and then I need a spacer for the thermostat housing as the LS6 housing when turned as AK do on the LS3 fouls on the drive belt. Once I have these I can plug in the ECU, connect to the pedal and start button and in theory it should all start up.... well see if that works out to be the case.

In the meantime I thought I would get on with another job that I realised I hadn't thought of - the radiator fan. A rather important oversight when doing the cooling system, which I had already filled with coolant. The air was a little blue when this dawned upon me.

I managed to source a trimline chromed 16" fan which another cobra had in their garage. This came recommended from a different cobra owner so hopefully it will do the job.

Then - first problem!

AK had fitted the air filter so close to the radiator that I couldn't offer up the fan properly so first job was to take of the air filter and stainless air intake pipe and cut 2cm of the pipe. A quick job but it felt like such a waste of good stainless steel - never mind, it had to be done.

Once offered up I realised that the great thing about a 16" fan is that it pretty much fits between the two AK radiator brackets which means you don't have to use the ugly plastic zip bolts that most radiators use. It took just a few minutes to locate and drill the top bracket and locate the bottom fan holes but then.... second problem... the bottom bracket didn't quite reach the bracket.

Light bulb moment - I had some 100mm Wickes angle brackets and the holes lined up perfectly so I trimmed the brackets down, painted them up and then put one M6 bolt down through the radiator bracket and angle bracket (same face as the rubber grommets) and the other M6 bolt through the bracket and radiator.

To help ensure the bolts don't bottom out on speed humps I trimmed the bolts down to just passed the end of the nyloc.

Another task completed and now just to await the last couple of parts before refilling the cooling system.

All that remains to say to the blog readers is for those that celebrate it, Merry Christmas and I wish you all a happy new year. I look forward to what 2016 brings the build.

Ancillaries and Shiny Bits

After cleaning up the water pump with the polishing kit I had a go at the alternator bracket. This polished much easier than pump and now it has a shine to it, not quite fully polished but good enough for me. This meant I could finally put the power steering pump and alternator onto the engine. 

First though I had to tackle another one of those minor cock-ups which was the brake flexi pipes at the front were catching on the wheels at full lock. It appears on the rear the flexis need to point downwards towards the chassis, wheras at the front they need to be upwards. The picture below shows the correct way (right of the pic) and how I had it (left of the pic).

Easily corrected and onto the slow task of fitting the power steering pump. This job was fairly straight forward but I had to present the pump up from underneath the car as the header tank was in the way. I said in my previous post but to re-iterate; you are much better off sorting all the engine parts before fitting the cooling system as it just gets in the way.

Before moving onto the alternator I decided to fit my edelbrock valve covers. These are designed to fit the coils too but in typical aftermarket style, the holes on the cover dont line up with the holes in the coils so I am going to use a coil relocation bracket instead. 

Also in true aftermarket style, despite it stating the covers are for LS1 & LS6, there is a note inside saying that the parts are designed to go on custom installations and may require modification. In the AK Cobras case this mean removing pretty much all of the front of the cover to shape it around the alternator mounting bracket. 


It also meant taking 15mm of each of the mounting lugs to move it closer to the valve cover and a small part removing to allow the breather pipe to pass through it. It requires M6 * 1, 35mm long cap screws to attach it.

The cover was a bit of a mess after I had finished cutting with the angle grinder but the file and polishing kit tidied it up nicely and I am very pleased with the result. 

It fits quite snug into the alternator on the pic but there is actually about 2-3mm gap between the two. 

I haven't completed the other side yet so that's the next task, along with measuring up for the serpentine grooved belt. 

I've also picked up the battery, a Yuasa 50ah from Halfords but I am waiting for the battery wire connectors to arrive before I can jury-rig something together to test fire the engine. Hopefully just after Christmas it'll make noise for the first time since it ran on the dyno in March 15.

New Thermostat

The new thermostat has arrived so I decided to get it fitted and fill the engine and radiator with coolant. This is because I had noticed some limescale-like flakes in the water pump housing and I figured it would be much better to get the water/coolant into the system to prevent any more occurring.


Before doing this I removed the water pump to clean it up a little. The aluminium polishing kit I had purchased from metalpolishingsupplies.co.uk did the job well and if I had a really small detail polishing wheel I could have done even better, but I am happy enough with it compared to how it was. 

Once the engine fires up and has been run to warm I'll drain the system and re-fill it just to make sure I've got rid of any junk from the engine.

I bought concentrated coolant from Halfords and mixed it at 3:1 (water:coolant) and the system still took about 4 litres of coolant to fill it.

For those following the blog regularly, you'll know I  don't have the heater yet so for now I have connected the two heater hoses together so that everything is sealed.

A learning point here is make sure you have all your engine accessories sorted before doing the cooling system. I have not yet finished fitting the alternator and power steering and I'm finding it very difficult to work behind the stainless header tank.