Bike Engine transplant Central

I elected to make my own engine mounts. I scanned the pictures of the other cars and compared the solutions. The general method is either to build mounts UP from the floor level or build mounts DOWN from additional cross brace bars welded onto the chassis.

I elected to do the former and basically followed the lead from the Fisher Fury-Blade. My mounts are rather agricultural looking but look good and strong. After talking to Mark Fisher I elected to soft mount my engine with rubbers. I bought three large cortina round bobbins and used these. My mounts are made from 3mm angle and 16SWG box mild-steel. They are MIG welded together. Due to the long bolts used in the bike engine I also welded spacers onto the mounts to allow full bolt grip into the block.

	This is the front mount. See the newly welded plates on the chassis of the car.
	This is the offside mount viewed from the front of the car. More support weld plates on the car chassis as my Striker had an "old-style" set of Ford-only mounts.
	Here is the rear mount. (Chassis rail visible is the nearside top rail).
	The three engine mounts after painting black.
	Here is the engine trial-fitted into the car on the mounts. See the wooden boards on bricks underneath. These were set at a height of 4" to set the basic engine ground clearance.
	Engine on crane (a big lad is more use - it only weighs 70Kg!!!).

The three mounts suspend the engine about 4" off the ground so as to be inline with the bottom chassis rail. The location of the engine is such that:

Does it work?
The only tests so far have been performed by me jumping up and down on top of the engine in the engine bay. The engine does not move appreciably and none of the mounts are stressed. Previous to this all welded joints are tested by whacking them with a big hammer over and over!

Battery location

Due to me originally intending to use an electric reverse I elected to keep the car battery rather than use a small bike battery. To improve layout, maintenance and CofG I mounted this low-down at the front of the engine bay. To do this easily (and provide an easy plate location for the the engine mounts) I welded in a new crossbrace at the front. The battery is held down with some bolts and clamps. It allows easy maintenance and charging without removing bolts etc.

I made up all new battery leads to take the battery volts and earth into the cockpit.

Feb 2001 The cheapest place to get the cable is from Vehicle Wiring Products. Multi-part connectors are cheapest from CPC.

The only problem I can for-see with the arrangement is if the bike alternator/regulator does not produce enough charging current to keep the battery full. Watch this space for news on this.

Radiator & cooling system

I used a bike radiator (from an FZR1000 bike). This has only an IN and an OUT on it. The R1 has no less than 5 cooling tubes.

I located the radiator on new brackets (3mm plates welded to chassis) at the front of the car. I then bought some extra 25mm bore radiator bends from a local car shop and some 1" Alluminium pipe to extend the pipes. A total of 4 pipes Ali pipes were used and the bike radiator hoses were cut to form some of the bends. I used an Astra Mk2 header tank as it was cheap (£5) and relatively small. Bike header tanks are no use as they are really just an overflow (one outlet) type only. The tank was mounted on a small bracket to the firewall.

	Cooling Pipes and bike radiator added onto new brackets.
	Awkward R1 engine thermostat sticks out over the side of the chassis rail if engine is located nicely. This is an old bonnet hence the huge cutout where the old XFlow exhaust stuck-out!
	Feb 2001 Astra Header tank. Bottom joint has the rubber pipe inside the tank pipe. The rubber pipe is reinforced with a piece of tube internally, and the whole lot glued up with Araldite. It has been watertight over 6months now.
	Feb 2001 New radiator Positioning. Old Xflow brackets were chopped-off and new ones welded on. The matching paint for this Striker is a CarCare Talbot Hertz yellow! See the extension tubes for the cooling. Made of 1" Allumnium pipe and some 1" bends obtained from a car spares shop (these had to be ordered from a catalogue of parts). The pipe holder clips are the rubber lined ones - to give isolation. The horn is mounted to the left , leaving a gap to the right of the radiator for air ducting.
	April 2001 Newly positioned thermostat. This allows the bonnet side to fit!

The Clutch

May 2001

You can re-use the car engine cable. Simply weld-on a bracket to something solid (i.e. an engine mount) near the clutch release arm. The clutch release arm is usually just held on with a circlip so it can be rotated as required.

Shorten the cable to suit, making sure that the adjuster nut will be about half-way down the bracket to allow for tensioning. Make sure you leave enough slack cable to accommodate the slight variations in engine position.

Feb 2001
Top Tip - You will need a much shorter cable than your old car one. Buy a cable from a motor-factors (Mk3 escort for me) and cut it down to size. Make sure it has the right end to go into the pedal box (both the plastic seat and the metal pin hole). Cut the cable at the nipple end down to size. Aim to have the adjuster approximately half way adjusted when the arm is met. Now you have the approximate position take the cable off and fix on a new end. Some people say you can get special crimp ends - I couldn't find any so I took a shortcut. Get a small nut (M3) and put this onto the end of the cable so that the end pokes out about 1mm. Then secure the two together and use the trusty MIG welder to weld the nut to the end of the steel cable. Clean up the weld afterwards and you end up with a strong small end suitable for use with the bikes clutch arm.

The clutch release arm on a bike moves about 1" very easily (this is just slack) and will then be hard to move for another inch or so. This is the ACTUAL arm motion of engaging the clutch.

I expected the clutch to be an easy job. Already connected I thought it would just work. However when I fitted the propshafts and tried it out it stuck wide open as I tried to release the clutch. I dismantled the clutch to try to work out why.

	Clutch Cover. The clutch release arm pivots in bearings in this and turns a small pinion cog.
	Clutch as fitted to the engine (just the cover removed). See the spindle in the middle which is a small rack. As the release arm rotates the pinion rotates and pulls the rack out. This reduces the pressure the clutch spring is exerting on the set of clutch plates. The reduced friction results in the clutch slipping and hence disengages the clutch.
	Clutch cage. The plates slide into this cage and are secured by a clutch spring and boss.
	A set of Clutch plates. The rubbery looking ones are the friction plates, and the others are the clutch plates (made of metal).
	Clutch spring and the boss it fits into.
	Clutch and friction plates closeup. The clutch plates are all discoloured. No warpage is visible though. The friction plates are well within spec too.
	Clutch release arm at rest allowing the clutch to engage. Note that in this state you CANNOT see the plates through the oil hole very easily.
	Clutch release arm pulled to disengage the clutch. The linear motion of the end of the arm is about 1".
	The man with the muscle - my mate big Cam doing a fine Brutus impression!

After the whole thing was taken apart and checked I now had a pretty good idea of how it fits together. I put it back together and tried it again.

Nope - still stuck wide open when I tried to release it. At least it had now stuck open in the failure mode, which enabled me to see what was wrong. As Cam and me had discussed we thought it was the clutch boss somehow being pulled out so far it was un-latching itself from the basket. Basically there are a set of mortice-and-tenon type joints where the two pieces interlock. However if you pull too hard on the lever when the engine is running it seems to jump out of position and wedges the clutch wide open!

	Failure Mode - View down the oil-filler. See how the clutch is fully edged disengaged and the plated are almost touching the inside of the clutch cover.
	Failure Mode - Side view. See how the clutch spring fully compressed.
	Failure Mode - Top view. You can just make out the view down the gap at the front. When the two pieces are aligned they interlock and you cannot see an edge. Here the two pieces are wedged open on top of each other.
	Failure Mode - front view. See how the spring is being compressed - the clutch is jammed fully open (disengaged).

In this state you can turn the bit at the front by hand - which you can't do when it is engaged. The symptoms were confirmed when I turned one of the bolts to undo the thing - it pinged the spring back into position and the clutch was engaged again.

Fixes? Perhaps the clutch pedal is pulling the lever too far and pulling the thing out? Perhaps the spring is weak? It's difficult to know as all the components look fine.

After some thought I realised the only that could be happening is that the arm is pulling the clutch too far. I measure the linear throw of the cars pedal at the point it interacts with the clutch. Mmm... 30mm. Seems a lot. I then measured some bikes at work. Mmm... 10 to 15mm. Aha!

Measuring the clutch throw. Use a piece of tape and mark a centre line on the tape and the arm.

Use a long stick to poke down the pedal box which allows the clutch pedal to be moved. I used an offcut of steel 1/2" bar I had. This allowed easy exercising of the clutch with visibility of the arm.

Aha! Theres a resistance that is constant up to a certain point - and then becomes very soft. I bet this is the bit that you don't need to pull!

Measurements showed the throw required to be about 15mm. Half of the clutch throw.

I started the engine and repeated the experiment by just pulling the clutch back slightly. Yep - the clutch then turns drive on and off and doesn't jump!

With this in mind I opted to limit the clutch pedal travel. There are loads of ways to do it but I wanted a simple method that could be adjusted. I did this by making an end-stop from a 6mm bolt (40mm long I think), welded to a 1/2" pipe again 40mm long. A hole was drilled in the pedal-box and two nuts at each side used to adjust the position. The pedal stop hits the top of the plastic moulding in the pedal.

I then tested this.... Yep! fixed. The prop can be seen rotating and stopping as the clutch is used!

This resulted in the first moving test of the car (30th May 2001). It moved so nicely too ;-)

Throttle Cable

Try to get the cable from the bike. It will probably be too short but its fittings may be useful. A great tip for sources of cable etc is a bike shop (pushbike). You can buy cables very cheap and they often sell the bits to make your own too!! I was quoted £16 from SpeedyCables for a new cable with fittings. By reusing the old fittings (from the xflow installation) and buying a new cable I did the job for £4. Bike throttles use two cables, one to open the throttle and one to shut the throttle. For a car installation just use the opening one and make sure you route the cable as cleanly as possible. Any bends/kinks will show up as problems in closing the throttle fully.

Note that the range of cable movement is very small (only about 15mm). On the end of the accelerator pedal this equates to about 25mm of travel from idleRPM to 14kRPM!!! With this in mind I welded on a new link plate onto the accelerator pedal arm and relocated the holder too. This gave me "proper" 4" travel.

Feb 2001
I am still not 100% happy with the throttle cable linkage. The pedal now sits "higher" that the others in the rest state. A re-weld of the bracket may be required. This is something that can be done later however.

Choke Cable

Again, try to get the cable from the bike. It will probably be too short but its fittings may be useful.

A replacement cable can be bought from a car-shop for £4 or so. The bike choke plates are sprung so make sure you get a choke cable that has a built in "twist-lock". The first one I bought didn't. So technically it cost me £8! Doh!
You then just secure this cable to the dash. Try to route the cable as straight as possible. You will have to clamp the carb-end of the cable onto a handy carb screw/bracket.

Other brackets

Coil Packs

The coil packs need locating. On a bike they are suspended upside-down on a plastic plate. I elected to mount them on a small steel plate above the head so as to keep the same HT leads. This keeps them away from the hot exhaust area and allows them to move slightly to allow for engine vibration. I mounted my packs on rubber foam strips on top of the plate. Nylock Nuts were welded underneath the plate and some long coach bolts used to bolt the packs onto the plate. The foam will have cushion vibrations.

Electrics

Loom

You can use a standard bike loom virtually untouched. To keep things neat I elected to hack up the loom and remove all lighting, fuses and superfluous relay-crap. I then laid the loom back over the engine and re-taped the loom to fit as required. I added a multi-plug to take this loom into the cockpit area. It meets the other looms (front engine bay, rear of car and dashboard here).

CDi

I put the CDi unit in the cockpit on top of the transmission tunnel on some foam tape (with bolts). This keeps the unit dry and cool relative to the hot engine bay. The tape helps protect against vibration.

Starter Relay

Bike starter motors use a relay rather than a solenoid (ok - the basic principles are the same but the physical scale is different here). I mounted mine on the transmission tunnel using its rubber boot holder in a homemade (welded) frame. I also mounted the rubber-clipped relay unit here too.

Fuelling

I am using the bike electric fuel pump. I removed the weird rubber bracket on it and mounted this on a chassis crossbrace with a small Ali clamp and some more foam tape. This will protect against vibration. Hopefully the pump will be man-enough to pull from a tank 5feet away. If not I have the old electric fuel pump and regulator from the XFlow setup.

I used a cheap disposable filter from the tank and re-used the bike rubber petrol hoses.

Airbox/Filters

TTS engineering claim expertise in bike engines in cars as they have been doing hillclimb cars for years. Their opinion is that you can re-jet the carb's to suit either airboxes or foam-filter setups. There is some contention on this point it must be said.

My intention WAS to have a homemade 2part airbox. The bottom part of the airbox will be bolted around the necks of the carb inlets, and will house the air filter unit at one end (probably at the windscreen end to take advantage of the clean high-pressure air there). The other part of the airbox will be moulded into the bonnet such that when it is closed rubbers will seal the airbox.

Scrub that idea as too complex. I don't want holes and to reduce the effects of carb re-jetting I opted to make my own full airbox.

After lots of excellent discussions on the bike-engined cars Yahoo-Group I decided to try the homemade airbox before resorting to foam filters.
I got hold of some flexi tubing just big enough to go over each carb (2" in my case). I then looked for some household objects to use as an airbox.
A chap on the list reckoned the rule-of-thumb was 10x the engine capacity. So for my 998cc we are looking around 10litres.
Mmm... My first candidate was only 5litres. A storage box from the kitchen was 10litres. My God... it's huge!
It didn't fit too well in the Striker engine bay and looked utterly naff too. I would need even longer duct pipes and I wasn't too happy with them anyway - I couldn't tighten the tye-wraps tight enough so they kept falling off the carbs.

With this in mind I have decided to take the easy option and buy a foam filter from Burton (£34 for PiperCross PX600), make my own backplate from an Ali sheet, and buy a rejet kit from TTS. Job done.

The TTS jetting kit for an R1 for car use with a foam filter. Not much for £90. Just some new needles, main jets and some epoxy to seal some holes. The instructions are pants but TTS are very helpful on the phone.

Using a piece of 18SWG Aluminium I had lying around I made a plate for the filters.

The plate attaches to the carbs via rubber pieces. These hold the airbox onto the carbs on the bike. I had to buy mine and they were £9.60 from a Yamaha dealer.

The completed plate is shown alongside the filter.

The bottom picture shows the reverse side with the carb rubbers installed.

The plates you buy are made such that the plate fits inside the filter base. This provides the optimum seal. My plate was a little too big so I used some foam tape around the inside to seal the filter onto the plate. You can also see that I have secured the gaps in the carb rubbers and plate with bathroom silicon sealant.

The completed filter assembly on the carbs.

As I made my own baseplate I did not have the female sockets for the DSuz fasteners. So I removed them and used good ole 6mm bolts instead.

The filter assembly from different angles.

Bonnet Line

The engine is too tall for the standard old bonnet. The new bonnet only gives 1" more engine space so I elected to modify my old bonnet by adding my own homemade GRP scoop.

The next stage was to hack the bonnet around to get the carbs and filter clear.

As you can see they stick out quite a long way (up to 3" maximum).

It is unlikely that I will be able to buy a new bonnet from Sylva with this level of clearance, so I will require a bulge.

The bonnet is a state and will need a fair bit of work to get it ok.

See further into the page in the Bodywork section for details.

Oil Pressure/Sumps etc

General consensus in the kitcar world is that small engines (1litre or less) do not need any modifications for good oil pickup on the road. For track use baffling or dry sumping is the way to go. This is said to be required for larger engines such as Blackbirds/Hayabusas.

Exhaust System

Carburetion

Bike carburetors look more like SU types than Webers. Their operation is certainly similar to SUs. Due to the modified engine loads/air-intake and exhaust from the bike expect to have the carb's re-jetted (Dynojet kit etc). TTS have a rolling road and experience of re-jetting bike carb's for cars.

Gearchange

I first elected to use the homebrewed system of electronic change from the steering wheel. Button changes are soooo coool. But then I got scared of being stranded somewhere with no gears if my circuit broke. It is also a very tight fit to mount control solenoids down under the gearchange arm as you are very near both the propshaft and the car side panel.

With this in mind it is easier to move the control solenoids up to the battery shelf area. Once this is done you are at the correct level for a manual linkage. To implement this I used a steel tube coming in from the dashboard and a bellcrank pivot to turn the for-aft motion 90degrees as required of the gearchange arm. I used 6mm rod-ends to translate motion.

The rod comes through the bulkhead just under the dashboard. I have welded a handle onto the rod and used a rubber grip from a pushbike to finish it off. The rod needs quite a strong push/pull as it only moves about 15mm either way.

Once the system is proven to work on the road the solenoid shifter system can be activated. It is designed and built-onto the car and works with the vehicle stationary. However bike-boxes are rather more notchy than car boxes so changes may be required later.

	Bellcrank with manual shift-arm.
	Here is a shot of the completed solenoid shift system from the front of the engine bay. See the two black solenoids and the Ali tie-bars into the bellcrank. The control electronics are housed in the unit on the far left underneath the brake master cylinder.
	A close up view of the solenoid shifters, tie-bars, bellcrank and feedback switches. These switches are used to provide positional feedback to the control unit..
	Feb 2001 Top-down view of the gearchange mechanism. You can see the main bellcrank (black :-shape), and the two solenoids.
	Feb 2001 Steering wheel from the front (not secured to column!). See the two buttons for up and down. These two buttons have a cable connected at the back of the wheel. This routes to a coiled cable which enters the dashboard via an XLR 3way audio connector (cheap and rugged). The manual gearchange arm is visbible to the left of the wheel, and the reverse selector is visible at the tunnel top (next to the handbrake).

May 2001
This is a photo of how Dax are doing a manual paddle shift on their new Turbcharged Hayabusa nutter bastard car. (taken at Stoneleigh 2001)

I have also got this photo of the engine.... 350bhp allegedly.... mad.

Reverse

I originally intended to have an electric reverse. This was due to cost limitations as proper reverse boxes cost £520+. I was to put a cog onto the front section of propshaft and mount a pre-engaged car starter motor on a bracket adjacent. When reverse is required you simply press one button to engage the two cogs and then use Another control to activate the motor. The main problems with this are:

	BGH GearTech Reverser Box. (FR2000)
	Reverse Box fitted into the chassis - view from the rear (cockpit).
	Underside of car - View of Reverse Box fitted with 4off M10 bolts and Nylock nuts.
	Reverse Gear selector Arm in transmission tunnel. Tie-wrap holder is temporary ;-)
	May 2001 Completed support - make a hole in the steel crossbrace (I used a dremel with the shortest burr I could get). I then rivetted a terry-clip to this. The lever sits in it and is 100% retained by a tie-wrap over the end.

Prop Drive Plate

To take drive from the engine gearbox output to the prop you need a drive-plate. This can be made from a bike sprocket cut down and welded to a support plate. This is then machined and balanced. This can be done for you by Fisher Sportscars et al for around £70.

Propshafts

May 2001

You will need new propshaft(s). Due to the extra distance from the engine to the Diff you need a split prop. If you are putting a reverser box in then you have two seperate props. The front one is conventional fixed length, whilst the rear has a sliding joint to allow for Diff fore-aft movement.

If you are not having reverse (competition car only) you can just have a two piece with a central support bearing. This sits where the old gearbox mount used to in your tunnel.

Both solutions cost from around £130 per pair to about £500 per pair depending upon who you speak to. My Bailey-Morris set was £164.

Make sure your prop is balanced properly! There has already been one case of a car with an incorrectly balanced prop. He noticed vibrations but continued to use it. What happened? The prop snapped at the gearbox UJ and ripped half the engine apart (and lots of other bits). He was lucky not to be injured.

	May 2001 Here are the Bailey-Morris propshafts. The short one fits between the reverser box and the engine. Unfortunately the flange is the wrong size for my prop-drive plate. Back to BM to try to fix it for me. BM looked but could not match the flange Fisher had had made for me. So the flange and the prop went back to Fisher. Mark couldn't understand what his subcontractor had made so they re cut the prop-drive plate to match the propshaft. This involved turning the centre out to give nut-clearance, re-drilling the holes, and turning down the nut so it wasn't so big!
	Front Propshaft and prop-drive plate (painted a funky yellow). Viewed from above and below.
	Other end of front-propshaft as it meets the reverser box. Viewed from underneath the car. You can just see the reverse select mechanism.
	Rear Propshaft fitted - close up of the reverser box side. A little too close to the chassis side there! This is scraping the paint off. Under vibration I'd expect this to move and hit this. I will have to use the angle-grinder to cut a section of the cross-bar out - 3mm or so will suffice.
	Rear Propshaft fitted - view from underneath the car looking back towards the differential.

Dashboard/Instruments

A new dashboard was designed and built to accommodate the different instruments.

Attach a long piece of cardboard over your dash as a drawing sheet. Sit normally in the car, armed with a felt-tip pen. as you sit mark out the areas of the dash you can see with the pen. There will be some which are obscured due to the wheel etc. Once done take off the card and you should have a clear set of areas for placing instruments.

A new revcounter was obtained (Burton were the cheapest - an Eliot Clubman that goes to 14kRPM). My steering-wheel mounted button shift has a gear display too that tells you which gear you are in!

	New dashboard shape fitted to car. It's made of 18SWG Ali. Notice the manual gearchange handle next to the wheel.
	Feb 2001 Finished Dashboard - see new Revcounter and 7segment LED display for gear. See the manual gearchange arm just to the left of the steering wheel. Speedo is pushbike computer. Other instruments are homemade. LCD is a lap-timer, a shift-light is also fitted.
	Feb 2001 Rear of dash showing multi-plug wiring. Still more of a mess than I'd have liked but not too bad. It can be removed in a few minutes as most connections are via multi-plugs into looms. The wiring at the bottom left is the tunnel-top. This has the ECU and fusebox amongst other things!
	June 2001 Completed dashboard with the tunnel cover in place. Some of the switches/lights are not in too good a spot so I will redo the dash later.

R1 Pipe (direction from engine)	Plumbing
Main Top Outlet (OUT)	Into Radiator Top
Main Bottom Inlet (IN)	Into Radiator Bottom
Oil cooler outlet (OUT)	Combined with radiator top hose
Bottom Breather hose (OUT)	Into header tank at bottom
Top thermostat out (OUT)	Into top of header tank

Marcs Conversion - The main bit

Putting in the New engine system

Engine Mounts