Jeff Stevens' Noble M400 web site

All pictures are thumbnails.  Click on them for a larger version.


Get rid of ugly oil catch can

As I've said elsewhere on this site, a supercar should have a decent looking engine bay.  One of the first parts to go was the heavy and ugly oil catch can.  Noble plumbed the bottom of this can to the oil pan, so any water vapor it collects from the crankcase gets a chance to condense to liquid water and run down to the oil pan.  Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Polished Canton Catch can

This Canton part looks much better, is much lighter, and is not plumbed to the oil pan.  The only down side is that I must remember to periodically drain the condensation it collects.  The petcock makes that a 30 second task.  I like shiny things, so I polished the can.  Note that I moved the catch can from this location when I converted to air/water intercooling.

Get rid of ugly steering fluid reservoir

OK, you caught me.  This change has absolutely no functional value.  But I could not stand to look at this ugly reservoir one more day.  It looks like an afterthought that somebody picked up at the bone yard.

Polished Canton Steering fluid reservoir

Again, Canton came to the rescue with a baffled reservoir, and Craig Hill worked his TIG magic with added bungs and mounting tabs.  My contribution was polishing the tank and installed riv-nuts in the frame.  You can't tell from this pic, but the mounting tab has another leg at 90 degrees to the one shown.  The tank is high enough to provide gravity feed to the steering pump.

Get rid of ugly water pump and drive

This upgrade is covered on another page, but I'm including it here because part of the motivation was to make the engine bay look better.  The factory hardware is definitely not sexy.

New plumbing with electric water pump

Polished aluminum tubes and blue silicone hoses don't make the car work better, but they sure look better.  I don't have a pic of the ugly factory coolant reservoir, but trust me, this 4 inch diameter aluminum tube looks much better.  It is baffled and plumbed to replicate factory functions.

Touch up frame paint

Since the engine was out, I took the opportunity to clean and paint the frame.  The factory powder coat finish is quite sturdy, but years of messing with the car led to numerous scratches.  I found a paint that is a good color match to the factory finish.

Clean up engine wire harness

The Noble has an excellent chassis and suspension design, but many of the details are not done well.  My mission is to create a uniformly well-designed and well-executed car.  To that end, I redid the engine wire harness using appropriate wire lengths and then bundled the whole thing using several different diameters of TechFlex Flexo sheath.

Steering reservoir mounting detail

I like to use riv-nuts to attach non-structural brackets like these two for the steering fluid reservoir.

Getting there

The intake manifold and cam covers say "Ford" more than "Ferrari", but it's getting there.

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