Working Under the Bonnet

It's been a while since I've been able to do some work on the car, but I got to do a bit of stuff this weekend.
I started with an engine dress up kit - basically a bunch of bolts in plastic bags.  It's easy to do, its just a matter of removing the old bolt a putting a new one in it's place.  Here it is as I got started.

I replaced the bolts on the washer pump, the fuse box mount, and various other things.

The factory bolts have rubber grommets around them to reduce vibration.  The new bolts fit in them, but it was very easy to overtighten them.

New air box bolts

I really hate the way the factory paint flakes off...

The metal mount for the sensors is in bad shape - may need some paint touch-up!

New cam bearing cover bolts

new cam belt dust cover bolts

New overflow tank bolts (not very noticable....)

 While trying to remove the bolts on the top of the radiator, one of them broke off.  I pulled to clip out and with some vise-grips got the broken bolt out. 

 That's better!

 I replaced the thermostat housing bolts as well.  No leaks!

 Here is a before picture of the throttle cable bolts before replacement, followed by the after picture.  Not hugely dramatic differences, but noticeable.

The upshot is that now I know these bolts will be easy to remove in 10 years...

After this, I thought it was time to upgrade the air filter.  Here is the original air filter housing and MAF sensor.  You can see the plastic hose where the cold air comes in.  The inlet is found at the bottom of the picture.  The MAF sensor was repaired by the previous owner, and was gummed up with some gasket sealant.  It looks goofy, and one day I will fix it...

 Taking the filter and MAF sensor and air filter box was simple - only a few bolts.  There was a bracket mounted to the frame use to hold up one corner of the air filter box, which I removed.  There was only one electrical plug to undo.  Here it is with all the bit removed.

 I took the MAF sensor and cleaned it up.  It's unpolished aluminium, so I couldn't get it perfect with the tools I've got.  It cleaned up okay, but its not shiny.  Yet.  Here it is with the bracket that came with the air filter kit.

 After a trial fitting of the filter with the MAF sensor, I found the bits aren't physically supported; the bits just kind of hung there.  I was afraid that the filter might knock loose and sit against the exhaust heat shield - that would be bad, I don't fancy the smell of melting air filter.  After humming and hawing about it, I took the lower bracket that I had removed, and attached it to a higher - mounted bolt hole.  It didn't fit as the existing hole in the bracket was too small for the bolt.  I dremmel-tooled the hole large enough to slide the bolt through.  I realised I had new replacement bolts for this, so a shiny new bolt is in it's place.

 Now the air filter fits and doesn't wiggle around.  After I took the photo, I plugged in the electrical connection for the sensor, and this serves to hold it all in place as well.  I think it looks it cool, but I don't know how effective it really is.

 The box the filter came in says it's good for 5-10 HP, but I find that quite dubious.

 I replaced the high tension leads as well, with some Lucas branded leads.  I think the leads in place were original; they were in pretty rough shape.  There was some misfiring on cold starts.  The spark plugs looked not too bad, but there was some carbon build up.
Installing the plugs was a bit difficult - surprisingly so!  It was easy to get them out, but when the new ones went in I kept loosing the spark plug socket in the hole...
I think there was something wonky inside the spark plug hole, because it was difficult getting the lead to slip onto the plug itself.  Only after wiggling the spark plug around and pulling it out and reinstalling it a few times could I get the thing to fit.
I took the opportunity to scrub some of the crud off the valve cover.  There was some build up of oil in the center section which came off easy.  I used some metal polish and tidied it up a bit more.  It could still use some more polishing, its not anywhere near what I'd like it to be.

 Try to ignore the big blobs of polish all over the HT leads and just about everything else around it...

 I removed the exhaust heat shield to see how good it could scrub up.  It is heavily rusted on the top surface, and the lower edges closest to the flange.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that the 1.6l comes with a 'header' style exhaust manifold.  These breathe so much better than most manufacturer's original exhausts.  It looks like it could use some sanding down and polishing, eh?

 With the air intake so close to the hot exhaust, there is no point in running without the shield.

I used some 120 grit sandpaper, followed by some 80 grit.  The heat shield was quite heavily pitted with the rust, so even with a lot of elbow grease, it wasn't going to come up perfect.

I put it back on, and this is the end result.  This will help keep the really hot air from reaching the cold air intake, but it still going to bake in there.  I think some header tape will be in order.  But that's for another day.