Build 26. Plumbing Part 2 - Water and Heater Loop

OK so the first part of this phase was to work out exactly what goes where, for each connection that is made the manual literally says "use hose" which doesn't really help too much. So the first thing I did, along with the manual and other blogs, was to get the laid out and marked as to what they were. Once I did this, all became clear! Note that the dry sump pipes are not here, as they are all labelled and it is quite obvious where they go.

Note that I've still got those two large right angled pieces marked as unknown, as you never know if they will be needed or not. Update: I have subsequently gone back and modified my radiator hose (see blog post 25, and it now utilises the large right angled piece, leaving only the smaller piece unknown)

Once that mess was sorted out, I tackled the water loop, which basically was a pipe that went from the water expansion tank to a T-piece, from this T-piece a small bit went into the engine, and then another long bit made it's way to the top heater pipe. I also needed to connect the heater up to the gold heater bracket.

If you look at the image above, for this 420R build, I have connected the T-piece to the heater pipe already. The left hand side of the T-piece is eventually connected to the pipe beneath it (labelled Exp to T-piece). The curved part of this piece will connect to the pipe on the lower section of the water expansion bracket, it will need to be cut down slightly to fit and will utilise some of the curved bit to perform a sharp turn from the expansion tank. Once this was done, I could then lay the pipe where it would travel and mark where it would be cut in order to join the T-piece outside of the engine block. It's really hard to explain but photos below might help and this 3D diagram on this blog thanks to Purple Meanie might help.

For me, the pipe from the T to the heater was not long enough and I needed to use the joining bracket which was in the unlabelled cooling bag to connect another piece of hose to it.

I then used only one of the "heater top/bottom" pipes to connect up the heater and the engine to the T piece. This meant I actually ended up with one of these pipes spare (but it may be used later so set it aside just in case)

I also took this time to then tighten up the expansion tank into the correct place before I tightened all the jubilee clips.

Like I said before, this is super hard to explain, but all quite logical once you get the right pipes, the secret is in knowing what you can and can't cut!

Earth

I also decided to install the engine earth wire at this point as access was clearly going to become tight when I instal the "sub" in the next plumbing part! You can just see my finger is pointing to it in the picture below, it is as simple as removing the top gearbox mount, attaching the earth cable, and then reattaching the gearbox mount. I didn't torque this back up fully as the earth bracket started to bend, I assumed that the other bolts would easily be capable of keeping the gearbox and engine together!

Timelapse