Joe- I'll spare you the long version, but it's quite accidental really. Cars have been a life long obsession and despite my parents' best efforts to steer me into something more glamorous (I studied yacht design), I've always built and modified my own cars as a hobby. Through that I met John Read (JRE racing engines), Mark Shillaber (SRD) and Colin Satchell. I became friends with them and John and Mark nurtured my mapping skills to the point where they offered to employ me to do it and make looms for them; so I left my "proper" job and went full time on this (2006). That work remains my main work, Colin and I are close friends and he's given me alot of machining and engineering skills; which I've honed through working with Pete Willis (PWE), who's renowned for his high precision and also ports heads for several well known engine builders! Pete has an engine building history to be envied, going back to Brian Hart, when they were building the works Escort engines (BD series). Building engines to a decent standard is a very tough way to make money and if anything goes wrong, you're pretty much instantly going into loss; so I limit the number I do, to ensure I can keep doing it well and the mapping/loom work I do for others is really what puts bread on the table. The engines I build now are almost exclusively for competition; but the occasional interesting road/track engine is nice to do if it's going to be a well thought out project.
Tom- Grease on oil pump chain is Graphogen. It's pretty horrible stuff, which gives black globs in the oil for a couple of changes after the build, but it hangs on really well to ensure good lubrication on first start up. If an engine is going straight on the dyno, I use less of that and more oil, but I knew this one would be stood around for a week or two and oil will then drain away.
Don't really want to give away how I get the tract finish TBH, but flash photography always makes porting look rougher than it is, so a bit of a distraction!
Plastigauge being used in imperial. I use thou on smaller tolerances and mm on bigger measurements! I have to be bi-focal on this, Some of the machines I use are imperial and some are metric; hopefully keeps my brain alive.
Moving on a bit... Come the end of July, I was closing in on my much anticipated week off at the start of August and Josh's target date for going to the ring was looming. It was starting to look a bit too optimistic for him to make that, but I kept trying anyway. I don't like sending engines, because of the risks involved (I've known friend's engines get damaged or go missing all together in transit!) So I was relieved that Josh came to collect it. I normally engine dyno all my engines now (mainly to ensure they run ok and run them in before fitting), but that would have meant a couple extra days and this spec is so well practiced and the package so developed, that any data is likely to be repeated. You can see I run a nose mounted crank trigger on this spec, combined with our own steel flywheel. Colin prepares me a special version of his crank pulley kit for that purpose.
Josh had modified the bulkhead for a bit more induction room without the engine. We have to dress the scuttle back or cut it away to get sufficient clearance for the layout I use, so I supplied him with as much information as I could on what was needed. It did fit, which is a credit to the mods, but only just and might well be a bit restrictive as it is!
It was fine though and after a bit of an epic sorting out all the issues around the 7.25" race clutch, Josh had it ready in the car once I was back from holiday. Early on it didn't go well, there were a few issues with the interior loom that had been modified, some of which we had to solve there and then, some of which I had to work around. A faulty oil pressure switch also caused some concern until we found out what was wrong!! I have already put alot of time to refining the ignition map for this spec on previous race engines and once the lead angle was calibrated (a very important mapping basic that's often not corrected!!) it was quickly running smoothly and I started to put some miles on it to let it settle down.
The rollers I'm using here are a good old fashioned set of Sun RAM XII, the mainstay of the industry for many years and a perfect donkey machine for the sort of setting up I do. More modern equipment can produce nice looking graphs and give a convincing impression of accuracy in many cases, but all I'm interested in here is to run it in, making sure it drives correctly and has clean fueling and ignition properties throughout the range. Running in can be a laborious process for some engines, but the precision, machining methods and materials I use mean that within a few hours, it'll be pretty much as good as it'll ever be and should give long service with minimal attention.
Once I started to drive through the outer areas of the range, it became clear that there was some sort of fueling issue. No matter how much injector duration or pump enrichment I added, it couldn't quite keep pace and went lean. Beyond 7000rpm it was really getting iffy and I deduced the most likely cause to be the fuel pump. My race engines are usually in cars with custom tanks and pumps, so I've never had this problem before. Once the map was essentially sound, bar the upper extremes, I set a lower rev limit (8000rpm) and advised Josh that it would be ok to drive home to fix the problem, but care should be taken!
Once Josh was ready to go, I asked him to brim the tank up the road, then again when he got home (250 odd miles) and report the miles and litres, to give me an idea on economy. He did and I was surprised but pleased to see 37.9mpg!
In the interim, Josh sourced an uprated pump and although driving carefully, sent me regular reports about the performance! He took it to a local rolling road shoot out as it was and although it was clearly not running correctly, it still showed 211bhp and 149lbft.
Once the pump was fitted, he drove back down to me so I could properly finish the map with a decent fuel supply. It was transformed, it was only now I could see how bad the fuel supply was before and it felt and sounded stronger everywhere. I raised the rev limit to 8800rpm, it's safe to go higher, but my engines don't generally need to be revved high to perform, due to the low down power and flexibility; so it's preferred to keep the limit sensible.
Once the map was perfected in the rollers, I wanted to see what the fueling was like on the road, as with the changes in air delivery at speed, it often differs. With Josh driving I watched how it went. 1st-2nd-3rd were really an assault on the transmission and tyres and it became clear that it needed more fuel over the top (7k+) than in the rollers, by up to 7%. I regularly see this with testing on rally cars etc and makes me wonder how many purely rolling roaded cars are seeing ideal AFR out in use. I've corrected cars this way in the past and when one was taken to a well known rolling road for a magazine article, they reported it was rich over the top; well if they'd have tested it as thoroughly as I did... they'd know why!
On his way back home again, I asked Josh to do the brim thing again, once home he left it overnight and cold started before re-filling, with the improvements it now gave a simply astonishing 43.5mpg! Some of my race customers have reported improvements from about 1.1 down to 0.7 litres per lap with my engine over their previous ones; so I knew I was getting good efficiency, but bloody hell!
Josh was able to pop back to the same rollers and drop it in again. As mentioned above, it's probably a bit rich over the top now and a slight wobble in the curve would suggest that, but nevertheless, 221bhp at 8750rpm and 151lbft at 6850rpm are in the right area, about 5% less power/torque than the best I've seen from this spec on the engine dyno, but could be partly down to the engine bay and rolling road variation. But the curve is plain to see. It's almost standard for other engine builders to question my engine dyno figures, in particular the curves my engines generate. Well, say what you like about the figures (race results kinda back them up), but i don't think you can argue with the curve!
Thanks to Josh for his faith throughout the project and all the fine souls that continue to help and support me
