AR7E - Alcester Racing 7's Equipe
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The Newton Equipment Aero Filler unit is a replacement for the horrible black-plastic Rover item and was sourced through Think Automotive (L7CoGB members get a discount...)
<Click Image for Full Size> UPDATE 2003 Well, we've received a modified version from Newton to test - the flange has extra relief at the 12 o'clock position (see image below). This helped somewhat in getting the nozzle into the filler neck, but wasn't a complete success - so we've had to modify the filler neck after all - to remove the old Rover lock flange. We'll report back after a bit more testing... UPDATE FEB 2004 Well - what can we say. We haven't removed the offending flap in the filler neck - but we've found that some petrol filler guns are OK-ish - whereas others are impossible to use. So when the weather warms up a bit, we'll trash the flap and give it all another go. Disappointing... UPDATE MAR 2004Now we are fed up - but hopefully we've solved all of the issues and can just forget about how hard it has been to get to this point. First of all, we've had some problems with the locking (key) mechanism. It seems that some road-salt must have made it into the lock mechanism - some white, powdery corrosion was visible in the key hole. This cleaned up OK, however, but some weeks later, we found that the key wouldn't physically insert all of the way in to the barrel (approx. 1mm remained outside). No amount of 'persuasion' would convince the key to go fully home (and we did try both keys). We finally resorted to buying an expensive can of WD40 from the garage we were stranded at - and after judicious squirting into the barrel, the mechanism finally freed up. We'll just have to keep an eye on this from now on... SVA Flap RemovalNext up, in preparation for some forthcoming big-mileage trips into less densely populated regions, we thought it was time we sorted out that bl**dy SVA flap mechanism buried halfway down the filler neck (see picture at bottom of this page). The flap itself is attached to the pointy end of a truncated cone (i.e. a cone mercilessly butchered so as to lose its point...) The cone is spot-welded into the filler-neck in three places - so the obvious approach to this problem is to grind the three spot-welds off which should result in the entire cone/flap construction just dropping out. In reality, after removing the filler neck from the car, we couldn't get tools into the confined space in order to grind, baby, grind. Instead, we resorted to a large flat-bladed screwdriver and a wooden mallet to distress the cone and spot-welds to the point where something succumbed to metal fatigue (fortunately before the filler-neck itself disintegrated...) It was hard work, but the result is that we can now easily insert a pump-gun into the neck. Tests have shown that it is still ridiculously easy to trigger the pump cut-off and/or to splash fuel all over your feet - but this is preferable to being unable to get any fuel into the car in the first place... Heh-ho! The job's done, so let's just move on and forget about it... Historical ImagesThese images and information were primarily intended for the guys at Newton who were quite interested in our particular installation... To be fair, the problems were more to do with the filler neck than the alloy aero-filler itself - but the aero-filler had been sold on the basis that no modifications were required to the neck...
Above - the modified flange. Note that the 12 o'clock position now has extra relief - it was the same as the other three notches before...
<Click Images for Full Size> Note - the depth of penetration (nozzle tip to outer face of Aero neck) was measured at 102mm on the nozzle itself.
The image above (try doing all this with just two hands...) shows an approximate measurement of the distance between the fuel-flap and the outer face of the Aero orifice. It is in excess of 100mm (more accurate measurement to follow...)
The above two images show the installation from the inside. The black alloy spacer is fitted without the cork gasket between the spacer and the body panel. The spacer is flush with the neck rim and the body panel and no obvious deformation of the neck rim is visually evident.
This image shows the depth of the old lock-rim (for the Rover locking cap) measured from the rear-face of the lock-rim. The purpose of this measurement is just to help show that the neck, spacer, body panel and outer Aero unit are fitted snugly.
This final image is of the metal flap in the filler neck. It hinges from the top. You can also see from this image that the outer Aero unit is aligned to the 12,3,6 and 9 O'clock positions... |
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