Well done Graham, spoiler looks good too
Lets hope you can claw back a little bit of that power you lost too
Well done Graham, spoiler looks good too
Lets hope you can claw back a little bit of that power you lost too
Sierra cosworth turbo race car
QMN saloon car championship
RETRO Motorsport
Just read through this whole thread and there is so many similarities between your problems and the ones we encountered when I helped a friend turbo his BMW S14 engine.
He made a new water rail because the original got in the way of the manifold/turbo.
We warped the head as badly as you did whilst we were mapping it. The radiator sprung a leak and neither of us were paying attention to the temp whilst doing WOT mapping.
We hated taking the head off so many times. It’s a real pain in the arse with that separate cam carrier.
We couldn’t reach all the nuts to tighten the turbo onto its manifold flange. A special cut down spanner did the trick in the end.
Our manifold cracked. We solved it with a turbo support and it was fine afterwards.
It did however make great power. 330bhp at 12 psi. with a 9.6 CR. The heads are a great piece of work and I am sure that is why that make such good power.
My mate has recently rebuilt the engine using forged pistons and a much lower CR. He also has a GT30 turbo and plans to mount it all in an E21. He is expecting 450 bhp.
Which brings me onto my last point. He needs a new manifold as he sold the old turbo kit to some guy in Ireland.
I will probably get charged with fabricating this. I was planning on constructing it from 3mm wall schedule 10 stainless steel weld elbows which I will TIG up.
I just wondered if we should join forces on some development! I’m sure we can come up with something in thick wall stainless that won’t crack and will get you your 65bhp back!
very interesting,
you and me both with the cut down spanner, i have now worked out how to re tighten all the turbo mounting bolts as long as the engine is stone cold!!!!
i couldnt agree more on your remark on the heads being good hense big power on low boost, but clearly as i have found a nice tubular exhaust manifold helps too, my m10 turbo had a tubular manifold and that made good power and excellent torque again on quite low boost.
i've no doubt that your mate could achive 450bhp seeing as used to have 465bhp, 410lbft on a mere 13lb boost.
my origonal manifold was made from a cut down upside down Std s14 exhaust manifold, although that did crack, the main cracks appeared in the bits i fabricated that were welded to it, i believe that the crack that appeared in the orgoinal part of the manifold was due all the additional material welded to the manifold making it too rigid to allow any expansion, the cracks in the upper part i think were purely down to heat and expansion, im now thinking along the lines of mounting the turbo on a nice thick plate bolted to the cam cover so that the manifold doesnt take any of the weight of the turbo, and i wont have to resort to welding big lumps of material to the manifold to carry the weight of the turbo.
not sure were your going to mount the turbo with your manifold, but if its a case of up nice and high so i can still route the exhaust round the back of the head i would be very interested in a bit of colaboration
Last edited by Graham; 24-04-2007 at 17:04.
just realised i havnt posted any pics of the completed 2007 instalation
Graham,
Here is a picture of the install in martins car.
As you can see the turbo was mounted up high and this is prob where it will be in the new car. As the car was a left hooker we could run the turbo straight down by the chassis rail.
Here is a picture of the sort of turbo support i have run on alot of cars with good sucess.
a luxary i dont have! hense my down pipe going up and over and dropping out the engine bay where the servo and master cylinder used to live, made possible by having a mk2 escort bias pedal box fitted inside the car.As the car was a left hooker we could run the turbo straight down by the chassis rail.
but i think lhd or rhd you would have to mount the turbo up high to get a decent shape manifold in the engine bay as due to the angle of the engine and that the front section of chassis rail in an E30 is quite high up.
That car `Rockz
spent yesterday playing with the car on the rollers,
unfortuantly i left the camera at home
but the session went pretty well,
before touching it the engine had gained 10bhp over what was at the last session, obviously the lydden meeting had bedded the rings better or freed it up more.
making an alteration to the intake added a bit more power, a bit more boost followed, with some trick mapping with emeralds clever software, a tad more boost and we ran out of injector time we hit 100% duration- opps, and they are HUGE injectors in there already, so it was a case of cranking the fuel pressure up by a bar, and a fraction more boost and we have just enough fueling at the top end.
end result? its bad news in that i need bigger injectors to try and wring any more from the engine but its basically back to about what it was last year it might even be a bit up, but we were having trouble recording an accurate power figure, but i will say last years power/torque figs were 410lbt and 465bhp arnt far away from what we achived although im using more boost than i was then, which means IF i can come up with an exhaust manifold similar to last years with reliability then the magic 500bhp could be on the cards for 2008
i will post up a graph, but the top of it is missing, because we know its not right and i dont want the race paddock romour mill going into overdrive
Last edited by Graham; 02-05-2007 at 09:03.
Well done Graham, don't worry though, news of your new 600bhp set up will soon get around the paddock on Sunday
Sierra cosworth turbo race car
QMN saloon car championship
RETRO Motorsport
Graham,
What size injectors are you currently running?
I have a contact in canada who i can get large siemens injectors from for about £140 for four including taxes. Have had three sets off them so far with no probs.
If you do not want to spend extra cash go down the breakers and grab a set of vaux xe injectors or something. They are good for nearly 200bhp. Then run them as part of an 8 injector setup in the back of the plenum. Your emerald ECU has a very good/easy function for doing this.
You may also gain some power through the cooling effect on the air charge and better atomisation of the fuel being injected further up the inlet track.
The injector bungs are easy to make and you should be able use another stock fuel rail or braze/tig a new one up.
The problem with raising your static fuel pressure is that now you have 4bar of static under full boost your pump will be forced to deliver 6 bar of fuel pressure which is pushing it to the limit and it may burn out. Also check the wiring to your fuel pump as it will be drawing alot of current
If you have to make a new plenum give me a shout. I'm alright with a TIG welder and could knock you something up. We could call it sponsorship!
Doug.
cheers, thanks for the offers i will bear them in mind
the current the injectors are bloody enormous cant remember for sure what size they are 750cc per min rings a bell, they were quite a lot bigger than the grey YB ones i used previously, emerald got them cheap from the states for me the other year.
re double injecting, i used to have my atmo engine double injected but due to championship regs i cant do it on the turbo as it will force me to run in anything goes class A. and i like beating class A cars with my class B car
eventually i can see myself running in class A anyway, but not before i've moved the engine back a couple of foot
Last edited by Graham; 02-05-2007 at 13:51.
So class B cars can only have one injector per cylinder??
How do they deal with rotary engines??
You could just tell them that they are cold start injectors like you would find on bosch mechanical injection. lol
You could always put another 4 in the underside of the inlet manifold where they cannot see them!
so i take it you are out on sunday graham?
tommy 2000
yepSo class B cars can only have one injector per cylinder??
class A only, but then how many rotary saloons are there?How do they deal with rotary engines??
but then i'd have to shop myself to the organising committee- opps i'm part of thatYou could just tell them that they are cold start injectors like you would find on bosch mechanical injection. lol
same again, might just be simpler and easier to get some bigger ones, anyway there wont be any more development this season, just need to hope it stays in 1 piece teh whole season!You could always put another 4 in the underside of the inlet manifold where they cannot see them!
see you there then.i will be wondering about helping whoever cos alex aint doing it.
tommy 2000
when im not supporting alex ive gotta support the TS members aint i.gotta have good results either way.come on the TS racers
tommy 2000
What happened today Graham ? Drove up to BH to watch,wandered around the paddock and your car was loaded up on the trailer
its called bent valves nick going from 4th to 3rd instead of 5th is not a good idea.thats wot graham told me anyways
tommy 2000
yep half way doen the straight i clipped the rev limiter in 4th and hit 3rd instead of 5th!
i havnt had it to bits yet, but its got no compression and the tell tale is showing over 9K not good on a top end which is only safe to 7.5
so the only good bit of the day for me was when a certain driver of a black escort told me he was having trouble catching me in a straight line
Car looked very quick from the pit wall Graham, as quick as anyone on the straight
Hope its fixable and your not out for too long pray:
Sierra cosworth turbo race car
QMN saloon car championship
RETRO Motorsport
I'll agree there Graham, you was flying down the straight... hope its a cheap fix, but from the paddock rumours its gonna cost a packet just for the Gaskets.
So if anyones reading this and can help in anyway please do, Grahams too proud to ask for help, but this could put him out for a lot of the season, so any companies out there with a little cash they need to get rid of, please contact Graham . You don't have to be in the motortrade, sponsors come from all areas as this car is seen by so many people from all walks of life, not only on this Forum but others too and the national newspaper The Motoring News.
Graham builds,maintains and runs this car at the track on his own, which is no mean feat when your in a class as modified as this, but at the same time he is prepping his car he his only to ready to help his fellow competitors, be that almost all morning at Lydden tracing the starting fault on an Alfa or many of the other last minute dramas that inflict themselves on the other competitors, Graham is there... helping.
Hope your back up and running soon Graham.
cheers gary,
done a quick valve clearance check this morning, inlet clearances are ok, exhausts are all huge, so it looks like 8 bent exhaust valves, which makes sense, your more likely to bent the exhaust valves on an over rev
i dunno if the fact its the exhaust valves is a good or bad thing, the inlets are std bmw and thus reasonably easy to obtain even if horribily expensive new or even s/h, the exhaust ones are oversize race valves, made in small batches especially for my supplier who doesnt think he has any more, which could mean a very very long wait for more.
i havnt got one but i suppose one way out of it could be to put a std head back on the engine, anyone got an m3 head they are willing to donate to a good cause?
Last edited by Graham; 08-05-2007 at 10:10.
Did you see the 3 M3 E30's racing at Brands Graham (red one with us and 2 white ones on Saturday)?
Maybe they would know where to get hold of a head or even the valves, if you don't know the guys their names will be in the finals for the race weekend.
Also is there no way of getting the 8 valve head back on there, or would that be major hassle? Just thinking it might get you back out racing until the valves or a 16v head show up
Sierra cosworth turbo race car
QMN saloon car championship
RETRO Motorsport
8v head isnt an option unfortunatly, i dont have any of the 8v bits anymore and its fundamentally a totally different instalation
it would be less work to and probably cheaper to fit a YB!
i've not given up, but on a budget of zero there arent many options open!
Sierra cosworth turbo race car
QMN saloon car championship
RETRO Motorsport
Might be worth putting a wanted ad on http://www.e30zone.net/
She's built like a Steakhouse, but handles like a Bistro
Surely not quite zero? How would you pay for entries/fuel etc?
Perhaps we could set up a fund on here where members could volunteer to pay into it in return for all the advise you give and have given to us.COME ON PEOPLE IT'S TIME TO GIVE SOMETHING BACK!!
Can't you use valves from a different engine and machine them to the correct dimensions?? As long as the stem diameter's the same you can use valves from anything
Even a YB. Must be worth looking into . Let me know what you need and I'll have a scout around to see what I can find
Last edited by Pushrod King; 09-05-2007 at 09:37.
its been a really tight period for me money wise lately, entries and fuel i can just about cover if i stay busy with overtime from the AA and private work, so when i say zero budget i'm really mean zero repair budget.
I know what you mean What valves do you use?
they are modified oversize group A race valves, not quite one offs but nearly, so even if i can get some in time at an affordable price they wont just drop straight it.
as i said ealier i might just drop a std head back on it for now, i've found a complete one which should be good with just a precautionary valve lap and reface with an asking price of £500 which isnt that bad a price, but that would give me a total repair bill of about £900, all in with gaskets bolts skim etc
£500 for a standard head how much are the valves?? Can't you can use some from something else or even use standard inlet valves machined to fit ? I know a man that can do anything machining wise so it's got to be worth looking into
Last edited by Pushrod King; 09-05-2007 at 18:49.
£500 sounds a lot for a head in a world awash with pinto's and Yb's, but dont forget 4 cyl M3 engines are rare and its not often that you will find a complete ( with cam carrier, cams, buckets, shims etc) good head which isnt still attached to the rest of an engine with a £1500 plus price tag, bare heads will make over £200,
you cant get pattern valves they are listed but not avaliable, from bmw the valves are £73 each! but the head uses oversize valves so they are not suitable anyway, i could use a valve from a 3.8 m5 engine which would fit straight in, last time i checked they were £172 each!!!!!!
its as much about time and machining costs as anything, finding suitable valves isnt easy, they have small stems, are very long and have unusually large heads for a 16v motor leaving very few options, i will look into other valves though, but it might just make more sense to put the current head to one side and wait for the right valves to become avaliable again ( which are sensably priced when my supplier gets batches made), and for now put it back together with another head
Last edited by Graham; 09-05-2007 at 19:46.
Any developements Graham??
head off and the exhaust valves are very bent!
Last edited by Graham; 03-08-2007 at 02:00.
i've sourced another head, with a view to fitting that to get me back on track, although in the end i've just nicked the exhaust valves from it, as they will just seat on my origonal head, the reason for swapping valves rather than whole heads being that it saves swapping the manifold adapters over, needing to get a head refaced, and it haved the amount of work as i wont have to reshim the inlet valves, fitting the new would of probably dropped the power unless i sent a couple of days porting it to match the old head, the inlets in the new head being considerably smaller
after lapping in the exhaust valves to the head i realised i would have a problem with them being too long due to the head having been skimmed on both sides and the valve seats recut several times, which i recond would leave the valves at least 20 thou too long or in other words give me no tappet clearance at all, and i dont have shims going thin enough to get it either, they need shortening, unfortunatly you cant shorten valves on my valve refacing machine, so that usually means at least a couple of journys to a local engine reconditioner timming bits off and rechecking the lengths before trimming more off, a pain and time consuming and not something i can do over the weekend, after a couple of hours of thinking off and on i had the answer, the lathe, mounting a grinding stone in the chuck and a valve guide in the tool post i found i could accuratly shorten valves, and for free!
Last edited by Graham; 20-05-2007 at 00:07.
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