Race 1584cc with 48IDA's engine build up aka (Titanium Valves search)

[Jim Ratto]

Applause

[Greg Ward]

Ok, so after a lot of fiddling around, I'm back at this thing again.

The pistons are done, they ended up a little shorter and had to have the circlip grooves machined too, as they are normally a press fit into the rod in their intended application, but I think they came out pretty good...

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[Greg Ward]

The rods I will be using are from a China supplier, I was sceptical to begin with, but they sent me a To#¤ta 2JZ rod for me to inspect, and on looking at that I bought a VW set, they rate them all for 600+HP so I figured they'd be no drama for this build.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that each one was exactly the same weight end for end, and they had been finished honed while torqued to spec, which was to me an amazing 55ft/lbs, on undoing one they had also been coated with moly on the threads before being torqued.

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[Greg Ward]

They are also lighter than stock rods.


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[Greg Ward]

Cam checks out ok in the case.

Case is a barely used AS21 Industrial engine case.

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[Greg Ward]

Barrels done up and checked for deck height.



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[Greg Ward]

Barrels need to be shortened a little bit 


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[Greg Ward]

Rotating assembly is at the balancers and barrels are being shortened....

Hopefully back onto building this next week..

[Greg Ward]

All back from the balancers and my new machinists..

From CB (thanks Marieanne)..

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[Greg Ward]

Looking at Cam with gear attached.

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Looking ok..

[Greg Ward]

Crank on this "Proof of concept Engine" is a genuine German, welded counterweights, but this time knife edged to relieve almost 0.8kg from rotating mass...not using the special DPR one till next incarnation of this engine...


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[Greg Ward]

Base of cylinders clear beautifully in the case, and I have to give props to the guys that machined the bases of the cylinders, each one 0.350" less than what they were...

One was 0.009" shorter regardless, that would have made for a mismatched engine, I will check every cylinder from now on, each and every way!!

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[Greg Ward]

Shout out to Roy from Mofoco for the flywheel...
apart from the fact that it should have been deburred in all the holes, this genuine German again part is the bomb...

Looks Chrome in this pic....

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Onto assembly next, need to do a lot more math on this engine, there will need to be cutouts for the valves in the pistons, I'll mark them at the correct positions and then machine accordingly, heading for 0.060" clearance for inlet and 0.080" clearance for exhaust....

[Martin S.]

Onto assembly next, need to do a lot more math on this engine, there will need to be cutouts for the valves in the pistons, I'll mark them at the correct positions and then machine accordingly, heading for 0.060" clearance for inlet and 0.080" clearance for exhaust....

What deck height are you expecting after the valve notching?

[Greg Ward]

Hi Martin,

Deck height already set at 0.050", notches will just add 3-4cc so heads when finished will be around 24cc in the chamber..

Shooting for approx 12.5:1 CR....

[alex d]

This is going to be a stout little engine! Are you running the JPM camshaft in the end?

[Catbox]

I love the attention to detail.

Keep the photos coming!

[Greg Ward]

Okay,
I've been pretty busy since I last updated, you wanted plenty of pics with an explanation of what I was doing, so here we go!

For Alex, I decided to use the JPM cam in the next version of this engine, so for this one I'm using:

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Since this engine is a proof of concept, I decided to change up some of the reasonably expensive parts for pieces I'm less concerned about...

For Martin, deck height is as measured and the machine shop that shortened the barrels for me was absolutely spot on accurate.

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[Greg Ward]

Seeing if I can get a basic check on the flywheel endplay before actually assembling the engine, as I like to put the rear main seal in as I put the case halves together.

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[Greg Ward]

Assembling the crank.

I'll mention here that I was extremely surprised that the brand new rod bearings (Silverline bought about 4yrs ago) didn't fit.

#1 Rod bearings which I was testing the deck height with was perfect, had 0.002" clearance, spun on the crank no problems, #2, 3 and 4 all hung on the crank.

Moving them from rod to rod and rod to different journal made no difference, so I measured these 6 halves and found all of them were about 0.010" thicker than the 2 halves that worked on the number one rod initially. So I ordered a new full set, this set worked straight away as you'd expect, and looking at the underside of all these bearings the steel was brown, funnily enough looking at the 2 halves that fit from the other set the steel back was brown too, the 6 halves that didn't fit the steel back was blue.

The packs were both marked 0.010" or 0.25mm and so were the backs of the bearings...

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[Greg Ward]

Before dialling in the cam, time to check that the Top dead center mark on this crank pulley actually is TDC.

Using the little screw on the deck height plate and screwing it down so the piston will hit it before its full travel, and I get 8deg BTDC, go backwards all the way around till it stops again and I get 8deg ATDC, so pulley TDC is correct.

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Made up a small alloy marker so pulley can be read a little more accurately.

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[Greg Ward]

Dialling in the cam.

Getting it in the case with the crank and lining up the dots, a white marker on the dots helps me see it a little easier  

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Figuring out the best way to make this as accurate as possible, leaving the deck height plate attached to hold the barrel down securely, I've got a surplus flat steel oil pump cover that I can then bolt to the deck height plate.

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The standard holes in it happen to be able to align perfectly with the lifter hole, and I can slip an 8mm stud nicely through it so the dial indicator can read the lift accurately.

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[Greg Ward]

After checking the intake centerline as per the cam card and picking the correct washers, I just loctite the cam bolts and torque to 18ft/lbs.

Now can start assembling the engine and button it up for good. Installing an old distributor at this stage makes sure that the distributor drive is in the correct orientation and eliminates the possibility of dropping the two shims into an already assembled case.

Windage tray took hours of fiddling (back in the checking stage) to actually make it fit, but I believe in them, works in my other engine to past 9000rpm so I think it is a good addition to this one and keep me from not frothing up the oil too much when spinning this thing right up.

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Line up the dots again.

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Always satisfying to get to this point and even better when you can spin the engine with your fingertips without even a crank pulley on...

[Greg Ward]

Adding the oil cooler.

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Loosen off 3 small case nuts and install the oil pump, filled with a dollop of moly in it to help it prime before starting.

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Oil pump cover on and stock strainer and sump plate goes on.

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[Greg Ward]

These new oil coolers come with quite a rubbish seal to the fanshroud, so I add two rows of a nice self sticking door sealer cut to size.

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I've replaced the build up distributor with my old barely used Mallory, I bought this back in 2000, it has a curve that comes in quite early, so may help this small engine in the lower rev range.

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And the shortblock is pretty much finished!

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[Greg Ward]

I just wanted to roughly check what the advertised lift with 1.4 rockers looks like with this cam.

These checking springs make it easy to do by hand.

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What the lift is supposedly according to the cam card.

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[Greg Ward]

So on to what rockers to choose to run in this engine before I can work out what length the pushrods should end up at.

I have a selection between either the Chinese made 1.4 set that are bronze bushed and appear to be made well, (I've used these before and they've worked well in the 1.25 version up to 7500rpm) or the CB Performance made 1.4 set...

Chinese made 1.4's

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CB Performance made 1.4's

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You can probably already see why I chose to use the CB product.

On taking the adjusting nuts off I really didn't like how close the Chinese set were drilled to the edge of the side of the rocker arm.

Also if you look closely at the Chinese picture you can see the marks I could make with a file, I know it's not the tip and that was better, but doing the same thing to the CB's I couldn't make any marks.
Lastly trying the Chinese ones on the actual cylinder head, it wouldn't fit down onto the rocker pads with either the supplied studs or even the CB studs.

So CB's it is.

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[Greg Ward]

So with the rockers chosen, on to find out the correct pushrod length.

I've set this up with the lash caps installed and the lash set to 0.010" where it will probably end up running hot, they will be set to 0.006" when cold as per the cam card.

Checked all through the range, and I should have got a picture from the side to show it at half lift, but it is exactly  straight through the pushrod adjusting cup at half lift.


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In the above picture the top pushrod is stock length.

The middle pushrod is the adjustable one set for the correct length for this engine (the engine is that short that I had to remake my adjustable rod shorter).

The bottom pushrod is the test one for my other engine I showed you last year.

[Greg Ward]

So the next step was to check the valve to piston clearance.

This was going to end up even more critical and a little bit worrying (in my mind at first) because when checking everything after the final pushrod length was determined, the actual total lift of the valve ended up being 0.610" !!

Whoops, it wasn't meant to be that high, but it works out that the CB rockers actually spec out in my application at a 1.51 ratio.

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I thought I'd throw some modelling clay on top of the piston to see exactly where the valves would hit.

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I was sure that the engine would just lock solid as soon as the valves hit the piston, however the valves are nowhere near the piston!!

The piston definitely chases the valve as the valve closes, but at TDC I actually have 0.320" valve to piston clearance, so I guess the best part of this is I now have no need to notch the pistons, and consequently I won't lose compression because there are no notches.

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[Greg Ward]

So I said before that there were certain parts in this proof of concept engine that I didn't want to use until the next version of it.

And with that I decided to do another set of heads.

2 reasons for this, I actually couldn't quite get the compression I wanted with the other heads, I would have had to flycut deep enough that I would almost hit the sparkplug hole, and the only solution to this would be to weld the combustion chamber and reshape them.

So rather than ruin that set of heads if this all doesn't work as it should, so I got another set of heads I had lying around that were basically junk, ported them the same as the other heads I'd done, and match ported another set of IDA manifolds just the same as you saw before.

A friend TIG welded up the chambers and then I reshaped them all into a decent shape reminiscent of Johannes little 1603cc heads.

I was rather surprised that all this work only got rid of 7cc, so I had to flycut the chamber 0.200" (5mm) to get down to 29cc in the chamber, limited again by the fact that too much deeper and we're getting too close to the spark plug hole.

All that gave a pretty healthy 11.9:1 CR anyway and since this will run on pump gas, better to give up at that anyway.

Checked the mill was all absolutely level in all directions and then off we go.

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Since the chambers were cut down 0.200" the barrels now no longer seated on the chamber surface, so the top of the head had to be cut down so the barrels seat properly.

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