With the clutch sorted almost sorted, and waiting again on more Russell fittings, it was time to turn my attention to getting the engine ready to drop back into the car. The intake manifolds are back from K-roc heads, having been ported and matched to my heads, so the throttle bodies could be mounted up, and the fuel lines and electrical staged on the car. The rear line, rail-to-rail seemed like the easiest place to start.
Of course, it wasn't until I was finished with setting up the fuel rails, fittings and the first line that I realized I have a problem. The fittings coming off the 1/2 carb would clear a normal firewall, and my firewall is set 3" back so it should have even more clearance...except, I have one of my breathers right near where the fitting will end up. I did some quick measurements, and realized that I was going to have a conflict. So, take it all apart and try again.
The second option is much better, and as with a lot of things I do it seems to take one or two tries before I come upon the solution that I'm really happy with. It's hard to see in the second photo, but the 1/2 side is quite a bit closer to the throttle bodies. It will be clear in some of the photos further down.
For the feed and return lines, things are going to be pretty tight. I wanted them to be clean, not running across the engine, or wrapping around the throttle bodies. Russells 180 tight radius fittings will
just work, but I'm not sure how I'll get the line in and secure. There is a good chance I may have to remove the air-filter bases every time I need to pull the throttle bodies out of the car. Annoying, but better than running the lines around the bodies.
Mounting the throttle bodies also highlighted another problem I didn't anticipate. In order to fit the fuel rails and injectors inside a beetle engine bay, CB Performance essentially flips the intakes L/R. With their preferred bar-linkage for the throttle, this isn't a big issue. With
my preference for centre-mount pushrod linkage (Vintage Speed), it causes a problem. See, I need to PUSH the throttle bodies open, and with the throttle bodies flipped they want to be pulled open. No worries, you say, simply flip the ball-pivots to the top? Well, I thought it was as simple as that too. A quick bend to the 1/2 bar to clear the alternator, and I was set...or was I? Turns out the first problem is the 1/2 carb won't open all the way...the bend means on the second half of the throttle travel, the ratio changes and 1/2 opens slower than 3/4. It took quite a bit of playing with bends to get the left and right sorted to be equal. I'm probably going to need to buy a new set of bars so I can bend them once and take the waves out :P
Next, was sorting out this mess...
I thought long and hard about how I was going to get the harness from the engine bay into the interior of the car. I was pretty much decided on doing a firewall bulkhead connector, which is basically a weather-sealed multi-pin connector you plug the harness into after installing the engine. On a modern car, when done right, you can pull the motor without disconnecting each electrical connector. After putting some thought into it though, I realized that if I have to pull the Throttle bodies (to clear the body), I'm disconnecting 80% of the connections anyhow...so it's probably better to save the $130 it would cost me to put that trick into the car. Running the wires up over the fender (with the factory harness), isn't an option. I have too many wires in there already, and having removed the passenger side foam on one car...I really didn't want to do it on this one! So, off to the bin of old Audi Harnesses from a previous car life of mine. I found a grommet that looked like it would work, and relieved it from the harness. The CB harness was going to be too long if I'm just dropping it through the firewall, so I cut it and prepped the engine side.
I then prepared my workstation for sitting in the engine bay to join the two halves, now shortened, back together.
And the harness finished. The parcel shelf area of my car is getting a little bit busy these days!
-Dave