Carl's ST Rocket Build

[carlostheoptimistic]

EDIT: I have just closed my Photobucket account as I'm sick of getting emails from them, so all of the images may disappear. I'll try to re-host them elsewhere, but just in case, if you want any images from this build PM me and I'll do what i can.

 

Hello There!

So I thought it was time to start a build diary, my name’s Carl and I’m in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, I’m building a Rocket and using a donor car for as many bits as possible. I got the donor car a couple of months ago and have been making, let’s call it, steady progress on the build. Initial thoughts, this may take longer than I thought.

A quick story so far: I've gone down the donor route and the donor is a 53 plate ST170 that was on the road when I bought it. I got a few days insurance cover for it so I could pick it up and took the opportunity to run it for a weekend. I went to see some mates out of town to put some miles on it and see how it ran. When I picked it up the engine management light was on, I used a scan tool to see what it was on for and the code said it was the IMRC unit. I cleared the code and the light never came back on while I drove it over the weekend drive around. It drove ok and the engine ran smooth. I took the IMRC off, stripped it, cleaned it including the contacts and put it back together (one job done, many, many to go).

The engine came out with the gearbox attached

The engine was a bit grubby, well it had done 90k miles! Decided to give it I good clean up and a lick of paint.

And a new timing belt, water pump, aux belt tensioner, aux belt idler pulley…..second initial thought, this is definitely going to cost more than what I told the wife! 

I went down to RTR to pick up the kit and took the chance to have a look around and ask some questions.

It was good to finally get my hands on it.

Turned the chassis over and fitted the floor.

With the chassis upside down I lined up the floor panel with the rear chassis tube and after figuring out the fixing spacing’s I drilled a couple of holes in the rear tube. I used a couple of rivets, just stuck in the holes and some clamps to hold the floor panel while I marked out the chassis tubes. Took the floor panel off again to measure and mark it up, cut it to shape, measure out the fixing holes and drill it. I used the same, rivet in the holes and clamps technique to hold the floor panel in place while I marked the fixing holes for the chassis tubes. I took the floor panel off again, centre punched the marks on the chassis tubes and drilled them. I put the floor panel in place and riveted it all on, job done. Turned the chassis back over. Bloody hell, I’m starting to sound like an instruction manual!

[ncohen]

Looking good mate! You're off to a cracking start

[carlostheoptimistic]

Well it's a bit embarrassing to find that my build diary has only 1 entry and it's over a year old! I'm not going to bore you all with the excuses so let me just say that when I get any spare time I like to spend it on the car.

The car is almost ready so I have sent off the application for the IVA and I am waiting to hear back for a test date.

The following is a short run through of the build so far, any question just shout up;

Bushes chamfered with a dermal, crush tubes polished up a bit with a scotchbrite pad and pushed in with a vice.

At this point the vice (that a mate had given me) was loose cause I didn't have a workbench to bolt it to was a bit unstable and I was having a bit of trouble doing this, so I devised a way of fixing it to a cheap workmate that I had.

So this became my workbench for the build, a bit wobbly for some of the heavier work!

Once I had all the bushes pushed in I built up the suspension.

Steering assembly in, donor column and an extension made from a steel rod with the ends milled into flats and a hex.

I modified the ST gear shifter

I went for an all in one (all 3 pedals) pedal box from Compbrake so I had to put an alloy plate in to fix it to.

Started to look a bit like a car.

Was going to use the 17" wheels from the ST but the tyres were shot and I found some 15" with good tyres close by on eBay for less than new tyres for the 17's so I grabbed them.

I then moved on to getting the engine in and as I saved some cash on the wheels/tyres I (eventually) splashed out on a lightened flywheel and clutch assembly from TTV

Got a kind colleague to turn down a bit of tube to make a spacer for extra belt pulley

Gearbox before and after and engine getting ready to go in.

And it's in!

However, it just didn't sit right on the standard engine mounts. It was too close to the chassis and the gearbox outputs were nowhere near inline with the hubs.

So with much alignment done with a bit of string

And with a bit of CAD work, I set to making my own engine mounts.

For the exhaust I got a 4 into 1 Toyosport manifold that I chopped down to make fit, again using string to help with the alignment/fit.

The rest of the exhaust was made from the modified Cat from the donor and a set of twin bike end cans welded together

I welded in some 1" box section for tabs to fix the seats to

For the seats I went for some Corbau

[carlostheoptimistic]

Duplicate post deleted

[mr9802]

Impressive build! What color panels did you do?

[carlostheoptimistic]

Cheers mr9802, I've gone for an all black look so the panels are all black.

I used the donor fuel pump extended with threaded rod, sealed in with petrol resistant sealer and held with self tappers.







I put more sealer on when i was happy with placement.

Wiring and pipework going in...






I decided  to put the engine electrics behind the drivers seat and the vehicle electrics (lights etc.) above the steering column



I decided to create a bund for the fuel tank to sit in with drain hole in the centre, the bund nearly got in the way of the fuel tank cover but it just fits.





I did what a lot of other builders have done and modified the wash/wipe stalk to control the lights. I glued in bits of plastic to restric the stalk movement.





Keeping things simple I went for an Acewell all in one dash. I have managed to get the signals for the revs and speed from the donor loom and the fuel sender seems to be working correctly too.



Rear lights going on, conbined rear, turn, stop and reflector and I've used seperate rev and fog (not shown). And exhaust end cans with all the Aprilia decals polished off.



Brackets made to raise the headlights up for IVA



Fast forward a bit and the panels are going on (also note the new man cave being built in the background!)





Covers made of the engine mounts, who can guess what they are made from?



I am going to use the donor steering wheel for IVA so what I did was took the airbag out, cut the centre part up to get the part with the fixings in and I am going to attached this to a suitable pad and cover it with some leather type material. This way i can take it on and off as per the original assembly.







Juat need shaping a bit and covering.

And here it is moving into its new home, I finaly have a proper workbench and vice!





The rear wings are now on and I am down to a few jobs on the to do list, where is my IVA date!!

[pocketrocket]

Looks to be coming along well

[carlyd]

Looking good, black is the new black 

[BobN]

Nice build and I like your new garage too.

I am using the same Acewell dash as you but have the fuel gauge working the wrong way round. Its read full when empty and vice versa.

How did you get yours to read correctly, what settings did you put in?

Is the engine mount cover a metal bowl?

Thanks
Bob

[carlostheoptimistic]

Yeah, it's nice to have a good sized garage at last. I'll have a look at the settings for the fuel sender and let you know.

10 points to that man, the engine mount cover was a stainless steel mixing bowl from the supermarket....

[carlostheoptimistic]

Went out to check the fuel sender wiring and also check and found that my side lights only came on when the ignition was on and reading a recent post on the matter, they need to work with the ignition off. So a quick mod has sorted that, the only thing now is that the main beam also operates with the ignition off but I think that is ok?

Bob, regarding the Acewell dash and fuel reading, first thing to check is that I am using the fuel pump and sender assembly from the ST170, are you using the same? and if not is there any difference between them?

For my set up, on the fuel pump plug there are 2 wires for the sender signal, White/Red and Brown/Red, the Acewell dash only has 1 wire for the fuel gauge (Blue) and on the instructions for the dash the other side of the variable resistance (sender unit) is shown to be connected to ground (chassis). I have run wires directly from the fuel pump plug and I have the White/Red wire from the fuel pump plug connected to the dash ground wire near the dash (so basically to chassis) and the Brown/Red wire from the fuel pump plug connected to the blue fuel signal wire to the dash.

I have set the dash to 150 Ohms for full and 10 Ohms for empty and it appears to work, now let me just add that there wasn't much fuel in when I first did this and there was 1 bar showing on the gauge, as I have run the engine now and again and used fuel the gauge has now started to flash and the low fuel light has come on so it has gone down when the fuel has gone down so it must be working in the right direction. As a check, I just set the dash to 20 Ohms for full and 10 Ohms for empty and the gauge went up to about a third full.

As I final note I didn't bend the sender arm the other way as I have read other people have. Have you tried setting the dash values the other way around i.e. 150 Ohms for empty and 10 Ohms for full? I'm pretty sure you can do this on the Acewell dash.

[BobN]

Thats for the info. I am using the 1.8 focus fuel pump. I did not bend the sender arm either.

The ohms setting is what I need to so will try this out when I get my car back from the garage.

[chizzy]

Im also using the acewell dash and i used the same ohms readinga and it works fine.


Mine is all black too, i even went for black wheels lol, looking good mate, bet you can't wait to use it.

[carlostheoptimistic]

Chizzy, yeah I'm itching to take it out but I'm being a good citizen and resisting the temptation! Your car looks Sweeeeet!

With regards to waiting for a date for my IVA, I rang DVSA this morning to check that they had received the application forms and everything was there that needed to be, I sent them off in the last week of March. They said that they had received them and everything was there and the application had been accepted, it was just waiting to be processed. Only thing is, is that they are currently processing applications they received in the second week in March therefore mine wont be processed for another 2 weeks and once processed it has to go to the test centre for them to give me a date. So I'm guessing that I might hear about a date by the first couple of weeks in May. From other peoples experiences how long does the process take once you've got your date, i.e. will the date be a couple of weeks from hearing about it? or longer? them how long to get a registration plate through from DVLA?

I'm thinking I should have got the application sent off sooner

A note to anyone wanting to be on the road this summer, Get your applications in!

[BobN]

Mine took 8-10 weeks from application to IVA day. Then another 2 weeks for dvla papers. Back then there was 2 month backlog due to some one being ill though.

Bob