Episode 17

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:01]So, we are home. The car is washed.

[00:00:04]Everything in the chassis looks good except, you know, this little bit, no engine. We have uh looked a little bit more at the Mercedes and uh it will be a pretty long time until we get this rolling again.

[00:00:40]uh we have been working flat out. It's Monday night now, so trying to find an alternative to put in the Mercedes.

[00:00:51]This almost happened. It didn't happen, but it would be pretty awesome or not.

[00:00:58]You be the judge of that. But, uh, we have this BMW S14 2.4 L engine almost ready to go.

[00:01:11]It would be pretty weird maybe to have a BMW race engine in the Mercedes, but yeah, that did not happen. So, we're going to put in this one. Evo 16 valve 3.2.

[00:01:29]It's Adam man's old engine that they had like a spare one for now. So big thanks to Adam and his father Tumas who let me borrow this for the next event so we can race.

[00:01:46]Uh and good news is that we have had an Volvo engine in this car before. So I have one engine bracket left. Need to make the other one of course. Uh, I have the clutch housing and everything that fits my axle for the prop shaft going down back to the gearbox. So, yeah, it's starting to look, of course, it's pretty much part here, but starting to look pretty good. So, we will start right now.

[00:02:22]So, the engine is in its place.

[00:02:27]As I said, I had this uh engine bracket since before I had a Volvo engine in this car. So, that was a good thing.

[00:02:35]Just mounted that and the engine was in the right place.

[00:02:41]Uh I needed to make a new bracket for this side. The exhaust was a little bit different. So, I need to move this bracket was kind of in here before.

[00:02:54]Uh, move that to the outside. Need to weld it again to the chassis.

[00:03:00]Just made a new bracket like this. I just have tag welded a little bit. I need to when I take down the engine out later, I will weld that more.

[00:03:16]Uh, we also need to rearrange the water coolant lines.

[00:03:24]Right now we are taking out the whole wire harness for the Mercedes engine. Put it in the car.

[00:03:31]Then we will, you know, put the wire harness for this engine in with its ECU.

[00:03:43]But other than that, it's pretty straightforward where the engine sits. Now, the prop shaft is just bolt on.

[00:03:52]Uh the air filter is clearing here. It's a little bit tight up the on the hood, but we checked and it will work. So that's good. The dry sump lines, I think it's some other type of fittings. So we need to change those, get some adapters, maybe.

[00:04:18]The good thing about uh my car here, I don't have a alternator generator uh for the 12vt power. I have a inverter from the hybrid battery that's provides you know 14 volt 150 amps.

[00:04:36]Uh so I don't need a generator alternator. Uh but uh so it's just a button I switch on and then I have you know 150 amps 14 volt uh but you I have to remember to flip on that button. I didn't do that in TR Q1.

[00:04:56]So driver mistake so that won't happen again I hope.

[00:05:02]So it's now Monday night. I will very soon go to sleep. I'm just sitting here thinking.

[00:05:12]We have uh kind of made a list of what we have to do, things we have to fix. Uh right now we don't have the right clutch. It was the wrong splines on that one. So I need to see if we can get one.

[00:05:27]Uh of course this engine is different fuel.

[00:05:32]So we need to change that. the throttle cable.

[00:05:38]I don't really know say I've decided to mount my e throttle system on this.

[00:05:49]It's just this small engine. It's the do some brackets and mount this on the under side.

[00:05:58]Instead of this uh this uh pin going up to this roer cable, it goes down.

[00:06:05]So yeah, the thinking is done. I just need to do the work now. But first, I need to sleep. Good night.

[00:06:33]Daniel is out again. We have uh welded the engine brackets, paint those.

[00:06:43]We need to change this water coolant connectors. It was with a A fitting. I just need a hose and a clamp. So, I will fix those. It's in here in the back, too.

[00:06:59]Last in and smooth.

[00:07:51]And we'll hope a couple of minutes left.

[00:08:08]Yeah. And it's always like this. you you think you're it's kind of like yeah we do this and that and not so much work but you know it's every little detail adjustment and you need to do everything because otherwise it's just you know you just toss it away. I want to do is fast as possible of course but with quality and uh so everything is you know 100% It's really important these type of situations. It's not hurry hurry like it's race day, but it's kind of in a hurry to get everything sorted out. And it's really easy to miss this little little details and everything when you put in an engine like this. Uh, luckily I've done this Volvo swap a few times on this car, so I know I have some parts left. So, but this is this is like this little thing I'm going to show you. Uh, so this is the clutch lever arm or what do you say? It has a hole here. Clutch liner sits in there.

[00:09:23]Of course, o and if you are have bad luck, this plastic breaks down and the the pin goes through the hole and lose the clutch. This is like a simple simple thing just to weld that hole and you won't get any in uh trouble later and it's really easy to miss these type of things when and you know it's hurry and you have to go test start time with fuel pump water pump is going. We got fuel and oil.

[00:10:01]We got the dashboard somewhere here.

[00:10:04]Yes, this is good with the phone. And you can just take it loose and watch it. Watch it.

[00:10:58]It's always a good feeling when you test start an engine and it's working. So, uh, yeah, really good. We have uh just uh had it running for a few minutes and I need to make some calls tomorrow morning just to double check some things. So everything is is h good to go. But every everything seems quite okay.

[00:11:24]So uh what we have left to do is the wire harness down so it is not loose of course.

[00:11:35]Inside the car, we have the ECU just hanging here right now. So, we need to make a bracket or something to get that on the right place.

[00:11:56]Yes, that's it. That's all the testing we are able to do right now.

[00:12:02]Uh we started Monday night. Now it's Tuesday Tuesday first Thursday night. So uh yeah, 4 days new engine. Uh it felt a little bit different this engine. Of course, it's a completely different one. 3.2 L. Uh kind of a different uh power curve, power delivery. felt very strong, torquy compared to the Mercedes.

[00:12:35]So, uh we have a little bit work to do, I think, on practice and to get everything uh sorted out with that. Uh so, that would be interesting to do do the practice uh tomorrow.

[00:12:50]Uh but now it's just uh going to the bus and start the journey to Hungayok.

[00:12:58]Uh I will take just a short time here to show you the race bus driver's seat here. Of course, uh this whole interior is from a crashed uh motor home that I bought. I uh remade the floor here and mounted everything.

[00:13:20]So, starting off to the right here, we have the kitchen. We have two chairs that you can spin around turning towards the table or both in front both to the back. Uh we got freezer refrigerator.

[00:13:40]Here we got some food sink.

[00:13:46]Here we got a table. You can put that down. Made a pretty good sleeping bed there. You can sleep here on the sofa if you want.

[00:13:56]We got toilet here.

[00:13:59]Got some storage. I have my helmet and my driver's kit and a microwave there.

[00:14:05]Closets, more clothes. And we got one bed there, one there, and one monster bed up here for me and me and the family.

[00:14:17]So, we are pretty comfy going on the road to the races.

[00:14:23]Yes.

[00:14:25]So, uh yes, let's go. It's uh starting tomorrow, race day. And big thanks once again to Tumas and Anna Merman with that uh engine and everything. And uh yeah, I think we will be good.