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A Westfield Conversion Story


Plucky

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Thought i'd start a thread so I have somewhere to track progess etc

Basically me and my dad bought a '93 SEIW back in December. We didnt view the car as it was 400ish miles away but it was cheap and looked decent enough. Anyway we were planning on changing alot of components from the car. We paid £4k for the car,

We werent dissapointed, my dad and his friend set off with a trailer and returned 14 hours later! the car came with a shedload of paperwork and loadsa spares.

A pic of the car as it was when we bought it

originalcar.jpg

Used the car a few times for 3 weeks and then out with the crossflow and that was sold

westfieldxflow.jpg

Then we realised we needed somewhere to store the car so this came up

westfieldempyhome.jpg

westfieldhome.jpg

Ideal for storing and working on the car etc and ideal for transporting it to track days etc etc

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Next the donor engine. Coming out of my dads old outlaw hotrod. A C20XE running MBE 967i on twin Weber 48's. Should be running somewhere in the region of 230bhp

donorengine.jpg

The engine was removed from this and the old car sold as a rolling chassis

engine-1.jpg

After alot of umming and erring about what gearbx to go for (we were thinking elit sequential,2nd had quaife, SPC and BGH) But due to the time restraints and cost of the above options we decided to go for a Tran-X straight cut box with Alloymain case and lid. Running a 2.39 1st gear

gearbox.jpg

This was mated to the engine via Yukpeed bellhousing and installed in the car using heavy duty engine mounts

engineincar.jpg

The rocker cover also had a birthday. SBD denso alternator and multi-vee pulley. Second hand manifold bought from someone on here. The idea is to get the car running and sorted and then look a bonnet exit system from someone like Simpsons when saved up some more £££

We have done more bits to the car rebuilding front end etc but will come back to that when I have pics

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Hey plucky, what happened withthe shocks and thasoft top.....

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I see the vultures have arrived... :d

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As they say in France "Bon Courage"

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Some more pics

JK composites seats arrived end of last week

JK.jpg

Carbon headrests

headrest.jpg

A pic of the dash I have made a start on, one of those time consuming jobs! Made from ABS carbon effect sheet and heated and rolled to get the radius bend on the bottom. Lots of cutting, filing, and more filing is going to be required getting all the swiches in etc. The digidash is angled towards driver and going to be touch to finsh the edge off nice but we will manage somehow!

dash.jpg

Yukspeed XE heavy duty mount kit. Make this up yourself to suit, Keeo engine nice and stiff

yukspeedmounts.jpg

And finally front end. Weve gone with rally design widetrack kit. Protech shocks all round that have been dynoed and set up at procomp. Ally hubs & uprights along with Wilwood powerlite 4pots. Going to re-use existing master cylinder at the moment and see how it feels. Any input on this?

widetrack.jpg

Also got the 2.4 quick rack in there.

With regards to fitting the stays for the cycle wings they wont fit with these calipers and uprights as they bolted through one of the caliper bolts on the old set up and the calipers mount differently here. Im assuming were not the only ones to have this fault. Was thinking of fabricating a bracket to get over this somehow and reuse existing stays but wondered what others have done?

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  • 1 month later...

Been ages since an update and alot has happened but here goes...

Cycle wing stays didn't fit the new uprights so a bit of fabrication and a spot of welding and it's all sorted. Took ages to get both sides the same though.

We got delivery of a full cage from playskool and hit a few issues when fitting it. The main one being that the diagonal bar which comes down over the arches and then turn into the side protection bars were fouling the arches before they were bolted down home. We bolted them down and dented both arches!!! They popped out OK. Only solution we could find was to put some spacers in between the cage and the chassis where it bolts on to the points behind the seats with the three bolts. Around 15mm spacer plates made from alloy. Anyone else has this problem? Did speak to Luke at playskool and he said tub might be attatched too high but this certainly isn't the case and I can't see what else can be done.

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Had alot of fun and games with the engine and gearbox... Not!

First off gearbox, went to fill this up with oil and managed to unwind the wrong bolt on the side. Pulled the bolt out and soon realised we had cocked up something. A few calls to tran x and road and race transmissions and we decides it had to come out to be looked at properly. The bolt had originally had a circlip on the other end to secure it to the reverse selector arm. So off to road and race it went. Had a call later that day from Phil with some bad news. The condition of the box was poor. Worn syncros, dodgy seals, circlip missing off the layshaft on 5th and a load of swarf and crap in the bottom of the box. Not what you expect when you pay £2400 for a brand new box. Tran x ceasing business soon makes me wonder if they are throwing the products out the door. Anyway Phil got it sorted and I need to take it up with tran x next week.

Also dropped off a quaife ATB to Phil to go in one of the two diffs we had. Both were 3.6 diffs and we thought one of them was a 3.92. The 3.6 is no good as the car will be over geared so trying to source a 3.9 soon which think we have done thanks to a member on here.

Engine... Fires the engine up for te first time and no oil pressure... Balls. Inspected the oil pressure relief and all seemed fine but changed it for a nylon version we had. Still no improvement. The sender is brand new and the digidash was unlikely to be at fault. After alot of messing about managed to locate the correct fitting needed to install our mechanical gauge off the old engine. Fires up today and oil pressure straight away. Around 70-75psi cold. Couldn't test hot and under load as coolant system not quite done however I am sure it will be fine.

Ditched the old manifold system we had because one and up for sale from Kelvin jouhar on here so we picked that up and it looks the business. Except... It's not quite the fit we were after. It fouled the diagonal of the chassis in a big way so that will have to be fabricated differently. Also on full lock the wheel catches the manifold. So probably going to have to fit some form of lock stop to prevent this happening. I guess kelvins engine must be mounted a few inches back from ours. Also had to cut a new hole in the tub which was next to the old hole so have ended up with a massie hole in the tub. Got some 1mm stainless steel cut to suit to cover the lot and make it look nice again.

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So what else is left to be done...

Car is off to be resprayed next week. A home made colour comprising of white paint and a bit of orange. The result a nice creamy old English white. When we get that back its a case of refitting all the lights, trim seats and dash etc.

Posting off my phone so can't get any pics in here but will be sure to soon. Probably when it comes back from the body shop.

Hopefully have the car on the road in the next three weeks which will be nice seeing as we bought in early December!

Oh forgot to add its been rewired as well. Ditching all the redundant cables and gauges. It's surprising how much all that stuff weighs when you put it all together. The MBE system was wires in and digidash sorted too. Going to keep the mechanical oil pressure gauge now though!

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sounds like you are having fun - would be good to see some piccies when you can

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Had same problem with the cage the reason is the early cars (or it is on my v8) the rear arches have a larger

Radius I moved the cage forward by 10mm and redrilled behind thr seats.

The rear stayes had to be flexed to be bolted upu but is easy to do with the rest of the cage bolted down.

Just then trimmed off excess metal and all done.

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