Sport 250 - Build Manual - Tooling questions

[BugMan]

6 hours ago, Monty said:

Thought I'd add in another thing here - I'd recommend buying a reel of brake line (car builder solutions sell it). I redid my brake lines as I wasn't happy with them, and having spare material to mock up the bends and then just copy that onto the flared pipes was much, much easier.

That seems like a good idea, as I like the idea of routing in the tunnel, as opposed to across the flat of the floor

[Alan Cutler (Adge) - Dorset AO]

Another random tooling thought after playing with wiring my dash yesterday, couple of other tools that are useful:-

- Multimeter

- Wire strippers

- Crimper for conventional connectors

- Crimper for Ecoseal connectors - recommend to me on here by experts, they were right!!

[BugMan]

Ecoseal connectors, ok bud, adding to the list, I assume this is something FORD specific, rest of the stuff I have as am Ex Electrical engineer.

 

Keep it coming, all info very welcome

[Alan Cutler (Adge) - Dorset AO]

Ecoseal are a type of sealed connector used on the Westfield loom, to connect lights etc. 

Also used to connect Can signal to Aim dash.

If you Google Ecoseal you can see the connectors. After recommendations on here, I bought some spare pins and seals from EBay to practice with, well worthwhile for a mechanical engineer I can assure you!!

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

You might need to Google Econoseal,  forgive Alan, it's just the ECOboost taking over

As he said though, they're not Ford specific, just a generic and quite common sealed connector able to carry reasonable loads in automotive use. They're used for headlights, indicators, tail lights etc. The contacts are so much more easily crimped with a crisper using Econoseal dies. Plus importantly, it doesn't flatten and distort the body of the crimped contact - something regular crimpers tend to do. This can make them not only tricky to indpsert into the plastic shell of the connector, but make the retaining mechanism very weak, and even in extreme cases, foul the little yellow anti-back out inserts. The end result if not careful, tends to be loose connectors that push out, when plugging the plugs together.

[BugMan]

That's cool Dave, nice to have a pic, so in my mind I know what I'm looking for.

Perhaps this is an idea for a single document/thread of the "best tools" to have for general kit's, maybe as a downloadable PDF or something.

We could then have things like "Drills from X" or from "Y" that people have used, along with contact details like Amazon or eBay for example.  I'm sure I'm going to be putting one of these together for myself as I have been reading build threads on items like "Dinitrol" products for painting etc and picked up odd things like heat shielding from Steve and AdgeC's build threads that i'm compiling.  I'm sure others would have better content than me, as I'm still a relative noob on this front, but willing to help if I can?

 

BugMan