Category Archives: Car

Exhausted 

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JP Exhausts have finally finished making up the manifold & exhaust! I hared over to see the car before it was collected by Stuart from Chariots (who left Clayhill at 0330 hours to get up to Macclesfield, poor chap!). The car was sitting in the workshop and to my surprise (& slight concern) the exhaust was laid out next to it. Yikes! Had it fallen off already?  Did something not fit? Fortunately it turned out to be a second system commissioned by Chariots for Jay’s Mantis… And my friends, it was a thing of beauty!

After a good peer at the unassembled system, it was time to have a look at one in-situ. Kyle kindly raised the car on the ramp to allow me a good look at his handiwork. Apparently getting the manifold around the steering column was a real bitch & took over a day and a half by itself. Very nice, thinks I.

Definitely a big bore system in my book! It looked stunning in virgin stainless steel, & amazingly Kyle had managed to keep it higher than the bottom of the engine, which means the Mustang engine/exhaust set up was lower. Well done that man! 😎.

Look at that manifold. Automotive art that is! 😉

Unfortunately the drooling had to come to an end as I needed to start work, which consisted of jumping in the Pug parked outside JP, cranking up my laptop & dialling into the first of several teleconferences. 90 minutes later I had a break between (but also hyperthermia!) which allowed me to pop back into JP’s office to pay up. In the meantime Stuart had turned up & pinched the car to head back down south. Oh well! Hopefully I will be able to pick it up in a fortnight. In the meantime I will send Jay some pictures of his new exhaust system… it would be cruel to make him wait another five hours for the flatbed to get back!

‘Snow joke

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I love the snow but did it have to arrive the one morning I needed to rush over to Macclesfield to drop off some old (Ford 4.6L) engine bits & the new Start button?! Trip postponed to tomorrow morning after overly-exciting 300 yard round trip in the Pug! Yikes.

Posted in Car

An exhausting wait

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So…  JP have only just started working on the Mantis exhaust which is pretty disappointing & puts things back at least two weeks.  I will now be lucky to get the car back in February. Inevitably it has been unseasonably dry & mild this week i.e. perfect driving weather. Oh well! In the meantime I have decided to go for an unbranded aftermarket button for the Engine Start. It’s quite low key (pardon the pun) & with a red LED; the black collar will be similar to the Smiths gauges. There were nicer buttons but they were stainless steel which doesn’t really match anything else on the facia, & a gorgeous black anodised billet aluminium one but… I need to import it from the States & it would have cost over £100. Yikes!

Looking on the bright side, travel for the Le Mans 24 Hour is now booked with the outward bound crossing courtesy of Eurotunnel & hopefully in convoy with another three or four Marcos, all in time to get to the gite for a good night’s sleep prior to the tour of the 1906 French Grand Prix circuit on Thursday morning. The return journey was harder to choose but eventually I went for the Dieppe-Newhaven ferry which should mean travelling with some of the Essex owners & also arriving back in the UK at a half decent hour to then slog our way back to Cheshire.

We also have a design for the Marcos LM24 decals which incorporates the Classic British Welcome logo. It took a few iterations but I think the final design is splendid – thank you Lou & Phil in Luxembourg!

 

A fleeting glimpse

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So the Mantis is at JP Exhausts in Macclesfield & today I had arranged to work from a colleague’s house in the town then walk up to JP & see the car for the first time since it was kidnapped at the end of November 2016. I was quite excited as I would finally get to see the new engine in place.

We found JP easily (thank you Google Maps!) & wandered in to immediately spot the Mantis on a ramp. It wasn’t being worked on, so I introduced myself to one of the staff, Kyle (who it turned out would be making up my exhaust) then went over to have a look. The car was a bit grubby from being transported up but after a quick study of the driver’s seat leather repair (a good colour match) I was pretty keen to get the bonnet up & check out the LS3 in-situ. It looked… big! I was surprised at how few wires, hoses & pipes there were but have since found out that Jay has not fitted most of them to maximise access for JP when fabricating & fitting the manifolds & exhaust. Clever chap!

             

I also had the chance to physically compare the Audi, Nissan & after-market (Pivot) Engine Start buttons side by side for the first time. The Audi button is not flat which is unfortunate as that was my first choice. Not massively enamoured with either of the others & so will find an alternative, but this time without any reference to ‘Stop’ as I’m not going to get this functionality from the button.

Kyle kindly raised the ramp so I had the opportunity to view the car from underneath as well… Always a voyage of discovery for me! I got a great look at the engine & transmission, as well as the propshaft & the cleaned up chassis. It all looks very low but Jay assures me it’s higher than the old Ford Mustang engine. (I will find out pretty quickly when I park at work & have to navigate the prominent sleeping policemen in the office car park). Time was short however as my colleague & I needed to get back to work, so after a few more minutes peering round the car followed by a quick ‘Hello’ to the manager at JP we had to head off. Well worth it to see the car, but also to remind myself that it’s a 20 year old vehicle in regular use & not some pristine concours Marcos where everything to do with the new engine needs to be perfect or top-of-the-range.

Getafix

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I’m looking forward to seeing the car while it is up ‘visiting’ JP Exhausts in Macc for the manifold & exhaust system. In the meantime I am getting my Mantis fix any way I can & this has ticked the box this evening.

One month to go

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Staying in touch with Jay, who has uploaded a couple more photos. Here we can see the engine being dropped in to confirm engine mount placement.

The Nissan Engine Start/Stop button is HUGE at about 80mm across (!) so I am going with the Audi one, which will look even nicer with a small black surround.

It looks like the car won’t be ready until mid-February now as JP have decided they need the actual vehicle to fabricate the manifold & exhaust, so it will need to be trailered all the way up to Macclesfield (about 15 miles from me) then back down to Clayhill (about one million miles from me) to be finished off. My cunning plan is to sneak over to Macc when it’s there though, & have a look at the car. Sadly excited at this prospect!

All I want for Christmas

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It’s been just over two months without the Mantis, & with Christmas Day tomorrow I have to face up to the fact that Santa is going to struggle to fit it into my stocking! On the other hand Jay has been uploading a few photos of the engine & also the chassis (which will have to be tip top if it’s going to cope with all that power). I was relieved to hear it’s generally OK with only superficial rust in a few places – nothing some rust cure, Hammerite & Waxoyl won’t sort out.

Another New vs Old shot!

 

I’ve also been trawling the automotive world for a decent Engine Start button. Given it’s going to take up one of the holes from the Racelogic Traction Control on the dash, it will be highly visible & therefore needs to look right. I like the idea of something red, but also backlit so it can be seen at night. The aftermarket Engine Start buttons are either barnded, cheesy or both, so I’ve narrowed it down to the Audi S1 (below left) or the 370z Nissan OEM GT-R Push Start Switch combined with the 2015 Nismo Model Red Trim Cover Finisher (below right). I’m leaning towards the Nissan currently as I can’t get the surround for the Audi button plus there’s not much aluminium on the dash (other than the gear knob).

 

Then I’ve got to get the socket & loom which fits the button of course, and then there’s the small matter of how you wire up to achieve the ‘Stop’ function on the engine.

Cavalcade

Aside

Fantastic news yesterday – it looks like we are in the running for inclusion in the CBW (Classic British Welcome) Cavalcade between St Saturnin & Le Mans. Motorcycle outriders… Awesome!!!

I swapped the Mantis for a Peugeot 307SW

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No, I have not gone bonkers… the Pug is a loan car from Jay. (Getting the tram or bus into work while the Mantis is off the road is refreshingly different, but doesn’t help when I need to divert off to collect sproglets etc). Jay trailered it up from East Sussex where he is based. An hour later & after some impressive winching he disappeared off with the Mantis. Gulp! Actually it couldn’t be in better hands as Jay has his own Mantis & also knows mine is my baby!

I only ever see Jay at the odd Marcos rally or over at Le Mans so it was good to catch up with him before he left, & also ‘Talk Marcos’. Of course much of the discussion was around what was happening around the engine swap (which I continue to be very excited about!).

  • I am still minded to have an Engine Start button but have rejected the idea of going fully keyless due to all the bad press around security flaws such as radio jammers & code grabbers; so the conversation was around Engine Start vs Engine Start & Stop. Both are possible it seems, but I still haven’t decided! I quite like the Lexus one right now.
  • We also discussed how best to manage the solenoid lockout on the TR6060 transmission, which is required because 5th & reverse are located right next to each other, & ‘bad things’ would happen if you select reverse instead of 5th at 100mph! Having read up on this on a few US forums, one workaround is wire up the brake light so you can only get reverse while the brake pedal is depressed. Another alternative would be to put a momentary switch into the gearknob under the Marcos badge, but this would mean modifications to the gear shaft etc which seems to be asking for trouble. We’ll go with the brake option.
  • The new exhaust will be based on the one on Jay’s car which is racing spec & in all probability will be quieter than my current one. I’ll certainly miss the sound of the Ford V8 which had the most wonderful, wonderful lope… but my neighbours probably won’t! To be honest, it also killed off using the stereo & grated a bit on very long journeys like Le Mans where you’re driving for hours on end. A gorgeous noise though and… dare I say it… the nicest sounding Mantis out there (a few other Marcos owners have said the same thing though!).
  • Finally I have been looking at Cruise Control which (if you read far back enough in this blog) you will know I considered early on for the Mustang Cobra engine before opting for the Traction Control instead (subsequently uninstalled as it never worked properly). There are a few places in the US who have after-market CC for the LS series engines, & I like the look of the one at HotRodTherapy, however Jay has suggested he ask around more locally before I go ahead & purchase, so waiting to hear back on that one.

Jay texted me when they got back to East Sussex (what a nice chap) so now I just need to wait for the first photos to arrive. Am I nervous? Oh yes! (Especially if it tops 500BHP) But it’s still exciting stuff & fortune favours the brave etc etc!