Vintage speed.. Going nowhere slowly

[Anders]

Howdy,
Thought I'd start a separate thread on my upcoming engine builds so that I don't clutter up the 1776 one.
1st up is a rebuild of my old formula vee engine and the 2nd one will be a new cruise engine with an old school vibe.

After the rebuild the plan is to sell the formula engine to finance my next investment, a new gearbox for the 1776.
Most of the machining was done when I built the engine the first time around so this is more to document the state of things for whoever ends up with the engine.

Down to business...
As I used the crank and flywheel in the formula engine to build the 1776 I needed to get a hold of a new crank setup.
First order of business was to have an old flywheel lightened so Jee helped me out and as always provided excellent service.

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After the flywheel was done I gave the crank setup to Jørn who balanced it down to NASCAR spec.

Now that I have a good foundation for the engine I started the tedious task of cleaning the case, it turned out nice and next time I'm in the garage the assembly can start.

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The case has had some slight modification to help against oil starvation when cornering, note the missing pickup tube.

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I'm using steel backed silverline bearings in combination with old glyco cam bearings and 25 years old rod bearings bought from Richie.

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[Anders]

Had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours in the garage today so I had a go at assembling the crank.
Jørn,who balanced the crack, did a good job on polishing the bearing faces too. In addition the flywheel has been resurfaced and all is looking good..

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Got the distributor shaft in place with shims and cleaned up the distributor. This time around I'm using a really nice Bosch 383 with a nos cap.

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[Anders]

Couple of more pics from the crank assembly. The lightened stock rods is a nice piece from the racing days.

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[modnrod]

Good stuff Anders, I like your threads, cool pics!
Regards the crank, I had one many years ago that I would spin to just over 6 all the time, just driving to work, great fun.    All I had was 4 pins, but they were slightly oversize and made from a REALLY hard material, and a larger washer to cover them, everything balanced. Back then I knew nothing about cranks and flywheels, and so I didn't know it was bound to break.
I guess it must have happened some time after the 60000km that I had it I spose! 
Same sort of thing on this crankshaft?
(and yes, the re-worked stocker rods are cool).

[Anders]

Thanks, glad you like them
As for the crank I'll be using a new scat 1 1/2" gland nut torqued to about 500NM, don't know if you just ran a bigger washer.
The dowels are stock.

8 dowels would be better for sure, but for this engine with around 100hp and a mild clutch, it's not absolutely necessary.
From driving it on the strip I remember the valves started to float at about 6500k, so revving it above that point is not really going to happen.
 
I guess we have to wait about 60000km and see if it holds up or not.

[Anders]

Last Tuesday I had the chance to spend some time in the garage.
The day started of with parts inspection and cleaning.

For this engine I'm using a custom grind JPM raptor cam designed for the heads and intake. I'll post a pic of the cam card later as soon as I find it.
The cam has been used for about 500km and looks brand new, same with the lifters.

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I'm also trying out some assembly grease from Joe Gibbs, first impression is that it's better than the normal motor oil I've used previously.
Mainly because the rods will stay upright when joining the case halves.

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[Anders]

Before joining the halves i lubed everything up and aligned the distributor drive shaft @TDC.
Case then got a thin layer of Curil K2 before everything was torqued down.

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Crank spins freely and next time I hope to get the long block finished.

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[Anders]

G'day!
Today I spent some time in the garage and got the long block 90% finished up.
Started the day with cleaning and inspecting parts as usual.

In addition to the crank assembly the pistons is also weight adjusted and should all be fairly close to each other (~1g).

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The heads on this engine is made by, or at least prepped, by JPM. The work is top notch as always.
Specs are as follow:

40mm SS intake valves
35.5mm SS exhaust valves
Combustion chamber ~33ccm
OTEVA 75 springs
Titanium retainers
welded and threaded for 12mm spark plugs

With a deck height of 1.1mm the static compression is around 11:1.

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[Anders]

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Fruits of today's labor:
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[Zach Gomulka]

Whoa. That's a hell of a 40 horse!

Big bore as well? Interesting to see how this one will run.

[Anders]

Thanks Zach,
I hope to have it ready and fired up before the end of march.
Will post a video of course

It's not the traditional 83mm big bore kit, but yes it has a bigger bore.
Now sporting 85,5mm B&P's making 1585cc.

HP once done will be ~100.

[speedwell]

 

[modnrod]

It's not the traditional 83mm big bore kit, but yes it has a bigger bore.
Now sporting 85,5mm B&P's making 1585cc.

HUH! Well, there you go!
I have an old SP engine on my stand from the early 70s that has the same thing, 85.5 B&P into a machined 1200 case.

I like the heads JP has done, nice valve height in the chamber. He's an artist.
 

[Anders]

Johannes certainly knows his stuff!

Thanks for the picture fabs. That's how the engine looked before I stripped it for parts.
Going for a different finish on the cooling tin this round.

[Anders]

So.. more work done yesterday and the long block is now finished.

As I've mentioned earlier the oil system has some slight modification to prevent starvation.
This humongous 0.25l sump is fitted with a fitting that is plugged in the end and has small holes drilled to the underside for sucking up oil.

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The pump cover has one inlet and one outlet for fullflow, the pump is plugged both ways.
When mounted it all looks something (or in reality - exactly) like this:

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Using original alu pushrods and SCAT 1.25 rockers and I'm setting the lash to 'loose zero'.
Marking the rods when disassembling makes it easy to drop them into their respective holes.

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[Anders]

...and the finished product

[Anders]

Spent some time in the garage Tuesday and finished up most of the cooling tin.

Next on the list was the end play, but as it turned out the clearance was only .45mm with the flywheel mounted without shims.
As the thinnest shim out there is .24mm it made it hard to get the desired clearance of .10-.15mm when using 3 shims.

Luckily Erik was up bright and early on Wednesday and we had the flywheel machined to the right spec in no time.

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Left before I fire it up is mounting the cooling tin, generator, new plugs and - again - setting the end play.
Should be able to get most of it done next time.

[Anders]

Hi guys,
Spent most of the weekend in the garage working on getting the engine done.
After machining the flywheel everything was ready and lined up for setting the end play.
With 2 .24mm and 1 .26mm shim the end play was clocked in at .12mm.

Installed the flywheel seal (elring) and tightened the scat bolt to about 500nm.

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Moved on to the cooling tin and got most of it fitted including generator, linkage ++ and
installed another great piece from the formula days too. A really cool looking homemade filter holder.

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Built a nice little thingy for starting up engines a couple of years back and now was the time to put it to good use.
Tossed the engine in, topped it with oil and cranked the engine and hoped it would build oil pressure.. and after force feeding the pump a bit, it did with ease.

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After some more fiddling with mounting of the exhaust and changing spark plugs (using d6ea btw) time had come to fire it up.
I took some time, mainly because I forgot the wire between the capacitor and coil  , but once attached it fired up instantly.

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Ran pretty smooth at times, but the right carb was acting up so cylinder 1 and 2 wasn't getting the appropriate amount of fuel.
Will have to look into that soon and post a video of the 'beast'! 

[Anders]

and some more:

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[modnrod]

I just finished rebuilding my old 34PICT3 in the shed the other day, and while whistling away the late afternoon before dinner started to remove a few small old fuel stains on the outer body with some stainless steel wool, so I purely by accident re-discovered and remembered the "hand-burnished" look to alloys.
I thought I'd mention it, because although my carb is now stripped again, and halfway hand-burnished everywhere inside and out , all that really nice curved alloy manifolding, and the very cool copper tubing balance pipe reminded me of it again! 

Oh yeah, SU's get really good throttle response, and are really easy to tune, if you just use the needle dipped in auto trans fluid every service rather than the "correct" oil amount in the pots.
And a trick to get the oil pressure up in a motor in no time at all (dunno if you meant this on your oil pressure reference or not), is to fill the pump gears full of Vaseline (petroleum jelly) before you crank it over.

Great pics mate, good stuff!

[Stevo_L]

super nice old speed motor, like it! 
also nice details 

[Anders]

Thanks guys!

Modnrod: Applied a fair amount of grease to the pump gears before attaching the cover, but it wasn't enough.
Had to pour oil down the hose to the pump outlet to keep it from sucking air. No drama really, had pressure built up within 5 minutes of fiddling.

If anyone is interested - this engine is for sale, as was the original intention.
Contact me for more details... shipping can be arranged worldwide

Might add that I'm not giving it away, so don't hurt my feelings with outrageously low bidding.

[Anders]

Well hello again!

Thought I'd update this thread seeing as the complete engine newer sold and I instead ended up buying a new car to have somewhere to put it.
Back during winter 14/15 a friend of my dad sold his house and had to empty out his garage. In this garage his brother had been storing a beetle since 1987,
and now that the garage was being sold he had nowhere to store it. Since I had an extra engine, and no car to put it in, the timing seemed perfect.



The car looked rather sorry when we picked it up, sporting original wheels and 27 years worth of dust and mold, but generally it was in good condition and had very little rust.
Even had some period mods to it with awesome looking mirrors and a cool antenna mounted on the fender.
Adds to the look and history of the car imho and makes it a nice 'survivor looker' (if that's a term one can use).

Gave the car some needed TLC and added some cal-look parts. New brakes, drop spindles, Ansen wheels, berg shifter, line lock etc.
Happy with how the car turned out.

[Anders]

Anyways, back to the engine.

Sold the stromberg carburators off the engine and replaced them with a couple of kadrons. Since the intake ports had grown to about 38 mm I had to fab ut a pair of manifolds to match the heads.
Started of with 38 mm mild steel tubing, a couple of steel plates, a hole saw and took it from there.



After some cutting, welding and painting the end result turned out quite nice.

[Anders]

The motor has performed very well the past season, giving me about 4000 trouble free kilometers so far (knock on wood).
Pulls pretty strong from about 2000rpm up to 6000rpm, making it very plesant to drive in combination with the 1200 transmission and big mickey thompson tires.



Did a couple of passes at last years SCC and clocked in at 15.3 @ 137kph. Which is OK although I was hoping for very high 14's.



You even had the chance to dyno your car at last years event, which I of cource took advantage of!
Results where a decent 116HP @ 5900rpm with 158Nm @ 4900rpm (corrected flywheel hp/nm).  

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/jEuCCblQ_gM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/jEuCCblQ_gM</a>



Really quite happy with the car and engine!
It's in very nice usable condition, not spotless to the point that you need to worry about where you park it and the engine gives enough power to have some fun.

Cheers!

[Felix/DFL]

Very nice car and a strong little engine.
The ansen fit it perfect, have fun.
Greetz, felix

[JeeWee]

really cool car and engine, I like the look of it. Good results as well for the engine... but you got nice heads on that motor!
Enjoy it as much as you can!

[Stevo_L]

very cool car and engine. 
your compression ratio is about 11:1 do you have any problems with knocking? 

[Anders]

Thanks for the comments guys!! 
Hoping for a nice summer with plenty of cruising this year!

Haven't had any problems with knocking Stevo. The ignition is set at 32* and is actually quite stable.
I always fill it up with shell v-power 98, never tried running it on fuels with lower octane rating. Plugs are NGK d6ea.

[alex d]

cool! do you know the specs of that camshaft?