My 170S Build

A newbie tries his hand at building a car

Day Twelve – engine plumbing

Time spent: 6h
Cumulative time: 56h
Main activities:  Engine air, water, fuel and hydraulic plumbing, turbo solenoid

Whilst relatively easy on paper, these did take me a while to finish.  In summary

  • Radiator bottom hose – doddle
  • Radiator top hose – also easy
  • Return hose to expansion bottle –  It’s the hose that is labelled as a fuel hose.  Easy enough once you have cut it to the right length (had way more than needed).  A bit of silicone spray to help it get fixed. Will tidy up fixing it in place later
  • Intercooler – couldn’t finish as I have been given the wrong mounting bobbins
These were the wrong bobbins but the right ones got sent pretty quickly
  • Purge valve hose – not sure about this one.  Seem to be missing this unless I use the offcuts from the return hose. [a check with Caterham confirmed I use the return hose offcuts]
  • Heater valve lower hose –  Not so difficult once you locate where it goes. Uses the hockey-stick bit of pipe from before (offcuts had been used to connect the heater valve to the heater unit behind the dash)
Goes from the lower heater valve to the centre of the engine block in front of the expansion bottle
This is the hockey stick piece of tubing
  • Heater valve upper hose –  bit of a bugger.  I had to rotate the expansion bottle to get it to fit and also trim a bit off the hose at the heater valve end.
  • Airbox hose – doddle.  Surprising that a cable tie is sufficient to fix it on to the top of the engine block, although I guess this is holding very lower pressure air (probably negative pressure) so is unlikely to pop off.
Air hose fixed to airbox. Note that the expansion bottle needs to twist to connect to the other hose which comes in at an angle
Cable tie used to restrain pipe onto engine block
  • Solenoid valve – didn’t get far, just labelled the pipes.  Missing the P Clip (got some on Amazon which will come tomorrow) so no way to fix it at the moment
  • Clutch hose.  Bit of a fiddle but got it in without too much difficulty.  Seemed easiest to assemble the upper bits first on the hose and then attach that to the clutch cylinder.  There was a loose rubber washer in the pack so I put it where it seemed sensible to go on the bottom connector which is held in place with a small clip .
I attached the O Ring to the end of this connector
A U-shaped clip holds this in place
  • Fuel hose – simple – was expecting something a lot of complex for the a pipe carrying very flammable fuel. The hose on my car was tied to the other side of the chassis so I had to cut off the cable tie and move it around to where it was needed on the drivers side of the car. Its a simple push-fit
Simple fix to connect the fuel line to the engine
This was where the fuel line was (on the passenger side)
  • I also removed the engine lifting eye as I don’t think that will be needed again. I kept it just in case of course.

[I later had a big tidy-up with cable ties going in everywhere to securely fix everything at regular intervals. Part of the IVA requirements].

[also note that it would have been better to install the main earth onto the engine at this point]

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