The Rocket ST159

[Tim Kerr]

I agree. But that's what MeV first advertised it as (or a figure close to that) based in selling every last bit of trim, switch etc that you didn't use.

I think it was a bit of poetic advertising on their behalf.

But if that's what they advertised it as why not use it to your advantage.

[casesensitive]

Cheers for the input lads.

I would love to 'just' do the UK IVA and import it, but it's even more expensive than the accepted methods. Also, I believe we're not entitled to register cars in the UK; they want proof you live there (utility bills etc). I think Geoff (ecowindman) had looked into this.


Also, the 3k car is a bit of myth really, I'm expecting to come in around €10-11k, excluding tools, and I might get a few hundred quid back for my donor's leftovers.

There are a few odd factors at play in Ireland; a car is deemed as new if either of the following is true:
1) it's less than 6 months old/been owned for less than 6 months from leaving the factory (sitting in a dealer doesn't count
2) it's been driven less than 6,000km

If it's new, you have to pay VRT and VAT on it when you bring it in. VRT could be as much as 36% (for undetermined CO2) of the OMSP of the Rocket, which they could decide is €30,000 they really hate you. Which gives us a VRT liability of nearly €11k. Then, and here's where it's taking the piss, they stick 23% VAT on that. Then there's a year's road tax (€1,200). You could easily build a second, and possibly third MEV for the price.

The best bit is that a Kit Car builder here was told that the UK IVA may not be recognised by NSAI, so you could go through the trouble of registering it and they look at your IVA and say "so what?".

As I said, I'm going into the first of the relevant authorities tomorrow, and I'll begin to have a better idea of the process.
There's a very real chance that after much expense and heartache, that my Rocket will have to hide in a garage 360 days a year. I say hide, because the moment they learn of its existence, when you bring it in for its Test, they know about it, and you're liable for VRT. The only way to keep them from impounding it, (they frequently pick up yellow-regs on the M1 and N11 and turf the drivers out on the side of the road), is to keep it somewhere other than where you live, and documentation would have been sent. Or some people get around it by keeping cars 'unusable' by removing the road wheels or battery.

Crazy.

Thread on Boards about it.

[casesensitive]

Meeting with NSAI went surprisingly well, two lads I met were friendly, helpful and I swear, slightly excited by my project.

More details as I hammer them out; but two big things are that there isn't a manual for our IVA (yet), but good news is that the UK IVA is in fact recognised, and NSAI will, with some paperwork, convert your IVA into our one in good faith, and here's the good bit, without having to registered it up North, which we're not permitted to do anyway. Then VRT, god only knows what they'll want.

There's also an intriguing-sounding loophole, that will be closed soon, suffice to say, I'm now looking at moving up my build. A lot.

[casesensitive]

Great news, I got my build slot today! Should be building towards the end of August.

I changed my order too, the Starter kit is out, and the Complete kit is in. Finding it very hard to contain my excitement.

Buying an engine crane (second hand) this weekend, old 'trial breaker' should be finished and mostly out within in 2 weeks, ST170 dismantling to start mid-July!

[Paul (madeye)]

Did you get all of those promises in writing with a signature? For when they start changing the goal posts

[casesensitive]

Um... no..

Revenue nixed the loophole, wouldn't quote a reason, just 'No'.
Looks like UK IVA is the only show in town, NSAI have a list of checks they require completion, but in addition to there not being a manual, there's no single formal test either! Instead, there are a list of (private) Approved Testing Centres that may carry out the various tests for you.
Brilliant.

Should have my kit in August anyway, sure, I'll build to UK IVA standard, then see what's what. May never drive on a road :-|

[casesensitive]

Ordered a GPS / GSM tracking device with motion detection, geo-fence, engine cut-out, SMS alerts, 60-day battery; the whole 9. I'll post up here if it's any use. Going to run it in my daily driver for a month, see where SWMBO goes :-)

Won't be posting WHERE I've hidden it, but I'm planning on welding in a housing for it somewhere.

[casesensitive]

I got the call there, build starts TOMORROW!
Excitement is building!

Now, got to get some of these cars out of the way, two weekends to make 10ft x 5ft of space.

Ordered a very exciting custom grille, which I think will be unique, photos on here when it lands.

[kiwicanfly]

I feel for you mate, I could tell a tale or too but the fun of the build leaves no room for major stress over such hiccups ( the pills work well too ).

Also I planned to have a two week leave period at the beginning to get really stuck in, it didn't work out for me either which I think was a good thing in the end as I spent more time looking and thinking but not doing. Best to do the thinking at work and then you get more "value" out of the hours at home.

[casesensitive]

Yeah, I'm all about silver linings today; going to replace the rocker cover gasket today, fancy plugs, really give the donor a once over before I start stripping it of it useful parts. In the greater scheme of things 2 weeks is only a small percentage of the project.

[casesensitive]

Service the donor


Having read the performance mods section, I thought a nice place to start would be with some iridium plugs, might help performance a little and they’re low cost.

When I went to clean the cheapo K&N ‘style’ filter I discovered it was beyond saving, so I bought a genuine K&N filter from fleabay.
Also from Ebay, a timing belt kit and water pump, Contiech and Bosch, not taking any chances with cheapos.
Picked up 4l of Ford fully-syth 5w30 and a new oil filter (apparently ST170 filters aren’t the same as the regular 2.0L? I was dubious, but paid the premium anyway) and we’re off.

Service costs: (costs include ParcelMotel charge of €3.50 per delivery where applicable)
4L of oil €25
Oil filter €11.50
New sump plug €9 (read on...)
4 x Iridium plugs €50.70
replacement K&N cone filter €48.70
rocker cover gasket €40
Timing belt kit & Water pump €111
Pay A Man to fit the timing belt €later

Changing oil sump plug
The service started out very badly. The oil level was pretty low, and grubby, so I jacked it up, removed the oil cap, and tried to take off the sump drain plug. It was so rusted and jammed that it rapidly went from a 13mm hex to a 12.5mm circle..



After a few panicked moments where I considered drilling it out (and then what??), I calmed down and went to the Ford parts place, which is conveniently 2 km from my garage, to find a new plug. This would give me time to figure out how to get the old one out. Guy at Ford parts counter showed me an interesting tool that you bang on to shredded nuts and pull them off, looked very expensive. I went with a low-tech joint pliers and lots of brute force, and thank fook, it budged.



Lots of swearing later and it came off.



Old and new



I have now hung this up at eyeline where I keep my tools as a warning sign against going Gorilla on things too early.

Oil filter was a bit of a pain to get at (above driveshaft), and despite the newspaper and drain pan, I still managed to get oil on the deck.

Changing Rocker Cover Gasket

The plug change was also not straightforward, the engine cover was pretty grubby, with oil and dirt everywhere, but much more worryingly, two of the 4 spark plug leads had a significant amount of oil in the sockets, which is a pretty big uh oh.







I made a few videos which I’ve stitched together and sped up to make them more watchable, essentially I needed a new rocker cover gasket. I'll post this when it's ready/
In order to get the engine cover off properly there’s a bit of a chain of things that need to be moved or removed:

Detach electrical connector
Pull off the breather tube
Engine coolant expansion bottle (1x 10mm, one awkward spade connector)
Free the coolant expansion tank to get at the screws holding the timing belt cover on, loosening this and we can remove the engine cover.
Timing belt cover (4x 8mm)
Screws were pretty manky, so I chucked them a makeshift tuperware tumbler with some WD40 and gave them a rattle





Spark plug cover (4x 8mm - yellow)
Engine cover (10x 8mm -teal colour)



The screws have little rubber rings that keeps them bound to the cover gasket, so they stay attached to it.




I cleaned the head side too, but with a microfibre cloth lightly coated in the degreaser, and then wiped down afterwards with a clean microfibre cloth.

I pulled off the old gasket, noting which way was up (took a few photos to be sure), and inspected it. It looked grand, but who am I to know, so I threw it out. When the cover came off I took the opportunity to clean it with lots of degreaser, particularly around where the gasket is supposed to make a seal. It took me about an hour, as it was really grimy and I didn’t want to use so much degreaser I could perish my new gasket. For the cover:
High pressure blast with water
Scoosh with degreaser and water
Light scrub with a soft brush
hard rup with microfibre cloth
another blast of water, close up
Dry off with air gun

After




Inserting the new one was pretty simple, I just had to make sure everything was nice and tight, starting from the screw gaskets.



Compressor undoubtedly over-used here, but I needed it for the paintgun and impact wrench, so any excuse to get my money’s worth!

Taking the plugs out required a deep 16mm socket, which I had to run down to Macquillans (€4) to buy, extension bar and a quite a bit of welly. The Haynes manual says to torque them in to 15nm, which I did with the replacements, but the old ones required a lot more, I’d say 50 or 60, to extract them.

Cleaning the spilled oil out of the plug sockets (after removing the oil-soaked plugs) was challenging enough, and my first few forays, with kitchen roll and a long screwdriver are not something I’d recommend, very hard to get out again if it broke off! So I used the now-not-so-clean microfibre cloth on the end of a 3/8th extension bar, which fit really nicely into the spark gap too. Lots of dips, into all 4, until cloth came back clean.



Dropped the new plugs in with a magnetic pick up tool, gently turned them the first few turns with the 16mm deep socket and extension bar, then torqued them to a puny-feeling 15nm with the wrench.
Reassembed, put all the screws and HT leads back on, and said a little prayer before turning it over. No misfires or grumbly noises, so everything seems to be working. Let her run for 30 minutes, then took the plug covers off and inspected the formerly-soaked plug sockets and we’re still gleaming for now.



I realise I have no ‘before’ for this one, but it was covered in oil overspill and the dirt that collects in it.



When the engine comes out I’ll replace the air con and power steering pumps with idler pulleys and fit a new aux belt, as well as change the water pump and timing belt. Or get someone who knows what they’re doing to do it more likely.

[casesensitive]

Electrolysis cleaning

I have lots of parts on the donor with more rust than I’m happy with, so it’s going to have to get cleaned up before I put them on my Rocket.
I read in a few places about electrolysis as a solution, and being initially sceptical, I gave it a bash. The basic premise is; you stick the negative terminal of a 12V source like a battery charger to the rusty component, partially submerge it in water with washing powder, and connect a big piece of metal somewhere else in the bucket to the positive. Problem with most battery chargers is they’re too smart to be useful, they’ll detect what doesn’t look like a battery and not send any current through.
What I do have lots of is old laptop chargers, so I stripped the connector off and peeled back the wires, and for the initial test used C-clamps to hold the black to the top of a piece of my test donor (I honestly don’t remember what it is!), and instead of a small positive electrode, I used a steel (or possibly galvanised iron, we’ll find out soon) bucket with a heavy piece of plastic in its base to stop current flowing directly from the piece to the bucket.
Anyway, here it is, all hooked up



About 20 minutes in, and it seems to actually be working, you can clearly see the iron filings in the soap scum.
If you listen carefully, you can hear it fizz
www.flickr.com/photos/43278150@N00/9498629434/

Again, a before picture would have been useful here, but 30 hours later or so the water is a mess and the submerged part is pretty much rust-free! Phone pics are pretty crap, but you get the idea.





Now to all that remains is to scale it up and put on some proper connectors.

[Paul (madeye)]

if its not rebuilt yet, you can get a new sump pan with plug for 15 off of ebay. they are prone to rusting and very thin.
may benefit to put a new one on.

[Paul (madeye)]

and just to add, if you were to replace the water with hydrochloric acid, and soap with a metal filing of choice you will then be anodising your own kit..
Top result eh.. lol

[casesensitive]

Aug 13, 2013 5:58:52 GMT Paul (madeye) said:

if its not rebuilt yet, you can get a new sump pan with plug for 15 off of ebay. they are prone to rusting and very thin.
may benefit to put a new one on.

Ha! When I was in the Ford parts place for the plug, I asked the guy how much for a replacement pan, as mine was looking rough; "Ah, you'd want to try tidyin' yours up first; €340 PLUS the vat".

Quite a bit of my engine is tatty on the outside, nor *obvious* signs of lumps of metal in the oil, but I've a feeling my first engine project could get very involved and expensive! Still, I'll be able to thrash it in the knowledge that it mostly likely won't implode.

Update: Bought new one on Fleabay (transitparts) for £28.