Oil Filter And Converting Speedo To Electrical

 With the weather firmly in the cold zone not much has been done in the garage. Before the cold hit I started work on relocating the oil filter. The OEM filter was not going to fit and relocation made sense. However I couldn't find anywhere that sold an adapter for my engine. The closest one available was for a slightly different version of the motor and the maker couldn't tell me if it would fit and one of their distributors said it wouldn't. Took a plate and drilled it out and had some AN10 fittings welded to it. Volia adapter plate. Have pretty much everything I need to finish the relocation except for warm weather. Looking for projects to do inside instead.

Which brings me to gauges. Since I'm changing the motor and trans there isn't mechanical outputs to drive the tach and speedo gauges. The easiest thing would be to put in some smiths replica gauges but I don't want to give up on the mechanical odometer. For some reason this retro feature makes me laugh and want it to stay. Which brings me to a project I'd started work on two years ago but got put aside when the weather warmed that year.

Electrically driving the Triumph gauges. Seems like a fun project. My idea is to cram in a stepper motor to drive the odometer and one to move the speedo needle. Looking at the Odometer the trip and odometer are both driven individually which would make another stepper to drive the trip odometer. Room inside is at a premium and it does take a bit of torque to rotate the odometers. To make a long story short, I found the TR7/8 had a mechanical odometer but the trip odometer was driven by a gear from the main odometer. The guts of the speedometer bolt into the GT6 housing. Found one forsale cheap who's input was all froze up. With some modifications I was able to get the odometer stepper located in a way that it will all fit into the housing. Sweet. Just need to fabricate up some small mounting bracket and that's done. The speedo needle looks pretty straight forward. I bought some x27 stepper motors that are specifically made for gauge needles. Plan to use them for the speedo needle, tach, temp maybe all the needle gauges. Connected up one of the steppers to an Arduino and it seems dead simple to control. Just need to mount it.

More to come.

Adapting engine into the car

 Turned the car around in the garage. This car is so small I was able to fit it between the other two cars while turning it. No need to back any of them out. Now that it has the LH side out I can work on adapting the coolant system and oil system. Also found that the factory alternator from the donor car won't fit. So will do some adapting there. Decided it would be best to install the steering column to ensure there is adequate space around that. Took the column from one of the worst parts car so I don't have to worry so much about damaging it. On the plus side the steering fits no problem.

Not much to show at this point as most of the work has been in research and measuring. I've fabricated and bought a few parts but nothing has been fully assembled. The donor car radiator is slightly too big to fit. Think I'll fit a spitfire radiator as with the engine so far back there is no need to have the way far forward GT6 radiator.

Lots more to come.