Good News!

Well, this has been a good few days and a really bad one too today! I made lots of progress in the past week. Going from assembling the head to putting the engine back together, putting the transmission on, and getting it all back on the car!

The good news is that the manual conversion worked!! No manual harness needed, just a few wiring modifications to the starting circuit. Also, the shifter fork needs to be slightly modified somewhat so that the slave cylinder has got something on the end of the fork to push against (I welded a nut onto the end of the fork, cut the end bit of a stud off, and screwed the stud into the nut. The rod of the slave cylinder then pushes against the small bit of stud inside the nut. Works like a charm!

Anyway, on with the show!

These things are called shims. They are like upside down cups that fit over the valve / spring / retainer assembley. The cam lobes then push on the shims to open the valves. The problem is, all the shims are different thicknesses!!!!!! Absolute pain in the arse to get the clearance right. All exhaust side clearances need to be 0.25-0.35mm, and all intake side need to be 0.15-0.25mm.
So here is one of the shims. The are all 5.XXmm, so this particular one is 5.36mm thick.

Superfically, it looked like only the oil pan was damaged. So I went to Mr T, and got another one, and made the same oil return fitting for the turbo. No dramas! Well! Read on...
So I happily went about putting the transmission back on... fine... looked okay.
Got the engine back in the car... lining up the engine mounts was a ABSOLUTE bitch! Took almost 5 hours to get the first bolt in. Once it was in, I hooked up the accelerator cable... needed to adjust the length of it as can be seen here. Otherwise, the throttle will only open 40% when the accelerator is fully depressed.
Hooked up the shifter control cables... one of the cables proved to be TOO long... and as a result, the shifter ran out of room on the left to be able to shift into reverse... after fiddling around with the control cables for a long time, I realised that you just cant adjust the length of these things... so, I "shortened" it like so!

This is just a picture from underneath the car, showing the slave cylinder and the shifter fork.
Well, an EXCITING moment for me! The car stands on its own four wheels again!! Alas, when I tried to crank the engine up, it didnt want to! After much research, I found the wiring diagram for the starter circuit.
This is the starter circuit diagram. Because I am still using the SMT wiring loom, the ST relay was not getting any power when I turned the key. So what I did was I added two additional electrical connections. These are shown in red on the diagram.
This picture shows where the harness "IC1" is located. Connect the 7th pin with terminal 1 of the ST relay in the engine compartment fuse box.
The connect terminal 2 of the ST relay to the grounding spot shown here (near the ECUs).

Once these connections are made, the starter motor should start without any problems! Just remember to be on neutral when you start, as there are no fail safes here!

Well, I managed to get the car started and idling... but I noticed a rather rapid coolant leak, and it looked like it was dripping out of the oil pan... so I crawled underneath the car, but failed to see where the coolant was coming from.

What I did notice was consistent white smoke coming out of the exhuast, and also the coolant that had leaked to the ground appears to be somewhat oily!! Also, there were coolant dripping out of the exhuast pipe! All signs of a very unhealthy engine... looks like the engine "drop" will cost me more time and money after all!

However, lets look on the bright side, the SMT --> manual conversion worked!! I managed to roll the car fowards and backwards when the engine was running. It proved that the conversion did its job!