My rust really don’t cost a thing
The Ambulance is exhausted, and JLO gets mounted
Previously I had established that ‘Bambi’ ran sweetly. So, I set about curing this most uncomfortable state of classic car ownership by taking the engine apart. The reason? A large amount of flaked rust visible inside the water pump aperture and the rather noticeable absence of a core plug from the rear of the block. The bores were perfect and the engine turned smoothly, so I’ve taken a chance on the bottom end, only rebuilding the cylinderhead, flushing out the block and putting it back together with a new old stock gasket set from Ian at Classic Spares. The sump took a fair bit of scraping – its tar-like contents only a few years from being refine-able into petrol – but it and the oil pump both went back on cleaner than Theo’s plate after a visit to the carvery.
The brakes turned out to be easy… sort of. I found almost everything I could need from one of my new classic car heroes: Bernie Smith at Vintage Vehicle Spares. His shed is the British commercial vehicle equivalent of the one from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I left with a full set of front wheel cylinders, master cylinders for the brakes and clutch, and a clutch slave, all new, all mint, and for a very reasonable price indeed. I lost many hours of my life trying to source new rear wheel cylinders but eventually came up trumps with a chap I met at the Beaulieu Autojumble, John Blockley from JCL Spares. Apparently, they share a part number with some sort of ancient gun carriage that the armed forces still use, thus are like hens teeth.
Piped perfection
The exhaust was original, retaining all of its factory rust, so in the bin it went! Then I climbed into the bin, and took it out again to use as a pattern. After some quick work with a tape measure, phone and credit card, everything I’d need to replicate it, (in stainless steel), arrived from MIJ Exhaust in Birmingham. I fired up the TIG welder and performed surgery. I’m unbearably smug with the results but it fits well and sounds civilised – perfect.
The only other thing to mention is the rear step. It was pretty rusty under there, so I decided to rebuild it with a twist. I moved the spare wheel to underneath the rear floor section, with the wheel now entering its cage through a neat flap at the rear. This has freed up the side locker nicely to suit future plans, but for now it’s onto the dreaded bodywork stage, prepare for itchiness, the glassfibre is coming
Not so Dolo-mighty… yet
Moving swiftly on, there have been growing pains and eventual progress on the resurrection of ‘JLO’ the Mazda- engined Dolomite. In truth, this has needed rather more work than I had anticipated. My fiendishly optimistic plans for ‘JLO’ included reinstalling the engine with a new sump and gearbox, and an MOT… wrong! Having fitted the new 323 sump to the engine, the new dipstick simply required a core plug in the oil pump housing to be punched out. ‘The engine then went easily back into the car’, lied the boy.
I had planned to use the gearbox and engine mounts that Matt Tomkins made when he first did the MX-5 engine swap, but the position of the engine with the new sump would not allow this. It was time for a spot of Cardboard Aided Design, or CAD as it’s usually known in the industry, and I had something approximating engine mounts fabricated up from 2mm steel plate. The gearbox mount received the same treatment, steel tube and folded 3/4mm steel sections, with a Jaguar XJ engine mount bobbin for isolation – noice.
Now unfortunately I am a weird shape. I have a long body and average length arms (I blame my dad) and once the gearbox was installed in the car, the stubby MX-5 lever was too far away to reach comfortably. This was exacerbated by the fact I had to shorten the shifter housing by four inches to have a hope of it fitting in the tunnel. Surprisingly, this is easy to do. Simply put, the modification requires the shifter rod to be redrilled and shortened, and the shifter remote
housing to be cut and moved forward 103mm. It’s a great hack for someone installing this engine and box combo into a kit car or similar. The stock MX-5 shift is a shortthrow item, so I could get away with just extending the lever and adding a 45˚ bend to bring it back towards me a tad. Comfortable knob position and ‘engine-mountedness’ achieved, I will next turn my attention to the cooling system. A £50 aluminium rad sourced via Facebook arrived shaped like a banana, while the first one I bought had a hole in it, so for now Jenny from the engine block exits stage left until I can afford a shiny new one.
‘I utilised a spot of Cardboard Aided Design for some engine mounts’