Fair play to you Graham, keep at it
Hope you are back out there soon.
Fair play to you Graham, keep at it
Hope you are back out there soon.
Good solution that Graham! Just goes to show that the best things in life really are free!
How fooked were those valves?!
Good to see you've come up with a clever solution , will you still be missing snett or will you get in still?
Sierra cosworth turbo race car
QMN saloon car championship
RETRO Motorsport
Glad to see its coming together Graham, and that man who helped out, give him a pat on the back from me, just shows what a championship the DMN is ..
One thing though, thouroughly clean down the lathe after using a stone in there, its best to lift the tool trolley right off as you get bits of stone under there and it works like grinding paste on the bed.
We've got a lathe here that used to sit next to some blast cabinets, its a bit worn now ...
quick update, its back together and running, with a just a couple of hours to spare.
just got to see it it will hold together, as it went to beyone conrod snapping rpm one could let go the first time i rev it hard
Good luck for the weekend then Graham, well done for getting it fixed.
Lets hope everyones engines stay in one piece this weekend, always a bit worse with a straight like snett's pray:
Sierra cosworth turbo race car
QMN saloon car championship
RETRO Motorsport
Well I hope the photos for Ferriday helped Graham. I know the same feeling when somethign you need goes bandy and you just see £ signs... My camera went a few weeks back and I instantly new my pocket was going to be £700 lighter.
Great to know you've got it back out. Unfortunately I won't be at Snett as it's frankly a bloody long way! And I don't like getting wet.
JB
Best of luck Graham.
i made it to snett
prior to practise i softened off the front roll bar which cured the turn in oversteer i suffered at lydden and brands and had a stonkingly good practise session, which put me 5th on the grid and 1st in class by 1.5 sec, with more to come, the engine stayed in 1 piece, and was pulling a stonking 7,400rpm down revett straight which equates to 147mph, a few more laps and i dare say i would of gone over the magic 150mph, dunno why be the engine felt even stronger than before i bent the valves, its gave me a few brown trouser moments more than a few times just as it hit 6k in 3rd the backend broke loose, thats scarey at 90mph
come the race itself a got a decent start, dropping just one place to 6th being cautious on cold slicks ( i have way way more power than grip until they warm up and it will go sideways whatever gear your in)
as the race settled down and i was gaining on the man in 5th i suddenly found flames sprouting from under the bonnet just as i grabbed 5th up the norwich straight, yikes, safest option was to head for a marshalls post, which i did at the end of the straight, unfortunatly i was still carrying some serious speed when i left the circuit and found the grass still wet, hmm slicks and wet grass = big understeer and no braking, i cam to a halt close to the marshalls post, unfortunatly the last 20mph or so was lost by going into the tyre wall, so i now need yet another front spoiler and repair to the n/s/f wing.
as for what went up in flames, the only thing amiss in the engine bay was a breather hose off, nothings actually burnt and all the fuel lines etc are intact, so i can only assume it was breather fumes/oil mist
i would of made it out for race two except after that incident it wont start anymore, it appears that the ecu has an internal short, oh bugger
oh and the flaming turbo has worked loose on the manifold yet again
plus points of the weekend, well the engine held together and is very very stong as i said if anything its gained power since brands, and the turn in oversteer is gone and i'm quite happy knowing there were only two class A cars that i couldnt of beaten, the sierra thundersaloon greg rose was driving and rod birleys WRC escort,
i've just got a whole load more work to do now,
as arnie said
I'LL BE BACK.
Last edited by Graham; 31-05-2007 at 21:29.
well done grahamalthough i heard you did the stupid thing of driving into the tyre wallshame i missed this round but it sounded a bit wetglad to hear youre making progress with the car and more importantly the engine sounds strongim hoping it will prove to be a more reliable car this year.shame you didnt finish but thats racingare you doing combe?
tommy 2000
oh yes the engine is definatly strong, ray barrow who runs the ybt power red mk1 and works for julian godfrey asked what the power was so i told him 480bhp, is reply was "yeah and the rest! what does its really make its too quick for that power!"
combe is a possiblity, i entered yonks ago, just need to summon up the enthusiasm to mend it and rake up a few more ££,
havnt even going in the garage to look at the car since i got home from snet, but will do soon, i've been grouting the kitchen tiles instead, thankfully unlike car projects house ones i only ever do once
i've never posted and brake pics, but i took a couple at snett,
front discs are 300mm and 24mm thick on alloy bells, calipers are willwood superlites, all from rally design, as individule components, i had to make my own mounting brackets and machine the bells,
snett was starting to stretch there capabilities but they coped, the reason they are not bigger is that was the largest i could get inside 15 inch wheels, although i now use 17's i have to run 15's in the wet, unless someone wants to sponsor me via a second set of 17's and a new set of wets
Last edited by Graham; 01-06-2007 at 20:10.
i've tried studs and lock nuts, studs lock nuts lock washers and loctite, bloody high tensile bolts torqued up really tight with and without lock washers, all he same resilt the dammed thing works loose
What about if you weld a raised edge around the flange on the manifold to locate the turbo, so that there is no way for the turbo to twist, then it wont have a chance to move or work loose
Sierra cosworth turbo race car
QMN saloon car championship
RETRO Motorsport
OR how about drilling the nuts and studs and either lockwiring them or using split pins Or even castle nuts/split pins.
K nuts ?
thought about that too, but if you do a really good job of locking the nuts to the studs the studs unscrew out the manifold instead,
i shall have to just limp through this year some how,
manifold redesign is on way for 2008, although i've gained back most of the power lost with the swap to a YB manifold, with the other tweeks i've done and learnt if i can make a fabricated manifold last i should be able to have enough grunt to out gun mr birley as opposed to just make it hard for him to catch me
I didn't realise you were now putting pressure on Mr Birley.
That is some progress there Graham from when I saw you racing last year (or the one before )
Either way, I am impressed.
not so much pressure yet dave, but he has been commenting that im getting hard to catch, well in a straight line at any rate
it sure did
ok not posted much on the car lately, its given me grief, as per usual goes like the clappers for a while then breaks
development over that last couple of winters has made the car a lot faster
i know on a good day when its going there has been nothing in my class which can touch it, and quite a lot of the class A cars cant live with it either, but thats not enough, i want an average day to be like that and a good day to be one where i am pushing mr Birley all the way
so im canning the rest of the season, saving the money and time i would spent on racing and ploughing it into the car instead and also gaining lots of time to get the car hopefully right and reliable,
i still dont have enough speed to run at the very front, ok i have near birley straight line speed (unless he turns the wick right up i suspect), but without 4wd or the handling of the WRC escort i'm never going to beat it so the plan is,
a total strip and rebuild,
redesign the exhaust manifold again (the current one lost me power over the previous), i already have some 1000cc per min injectors on order, i'm hoping to up the power a little i think i can get to a bit over 500bhp without silly boost or a bigger turbo,
the brakes are going to need some more uprating, snett was stretching them a bit,
the car needs to go on a diet, its currently about 950kg i recon i can loose about 75-100kg if i try hard enough, that will make the back end quite light so the engines going back a little and i might have to look into using a rear spoiler which actually does something besides act as ballast as well as some bigger rear wheels and tyres.
im hoping that with similar power to mr Birley, but in a much lighter car i can counter his 4wd and probably better handling advantages
Last edited by Graham; 17-07-2007 at 19:54.
Wow lots of cool plans there graham. Sorry you wont be competing this year though, but as you say the time and money saved can be ploughed into the developement.
I'm sure you'll sort the turbo problems with a decent manifold and damper, and a proper wing and brakes can't be a bad thing
How far can you move the engine then? and are you fitting bigger arches??
Keep us updated, and I trust we'll still see you at a few races popcorn:
Sierra cosworth turbo race car
QMN saloon car championship
RETRO Motorsport
i cant move the engine far, the regs allow 2 inch from memory, but i suspect i can only get an inch without having to dry sump which im not going to do, that said i think moving the best part of 200kg rearwards an inch is worthwhile and gary seems to agree,
yes i will need bigger arches on the rear for sure, rear wheels will be going from 9.5x17 to 10x18,
the cars not overly lacking in brakes but at snet the pedal was starting to get a bit long, so if i add more power and take away some weight i'll be braking from over 150mph and you really dont want brake fade at those speeds
yes loosing weight will give the brakes less to stop, but as your be stopping from a higher speed to one is likely to cancel out the other, eitherway i was getting a bit nervous at snet on that front and im more concerned with stopping than a little extra weight in the front brakes, by most standards my front discs arent that big, 300mm although thick at 30mm, although i may uprate the front by changing calipers to get more pad area as thats generally a more effective way of increasing braking than fitting bigger discs
even if i do fit bigger front discs the unsprung weight on the front might go up slightly but not much because they are race discs on alloy bells which was a considerabe weight saving over the earlier 1 piece disc setup, although on the rear it would go down because at the moment the rear dics a are 1 piece cast items with cast iron calipers, they would go the same alloy bell seperate disc alloy caliper route as the front
my AA shifts have kept me out of the garage, but i've dne a bit on the car, i've started to modify the rear arches to cover the 10x18 wheels im going to run next year
i havnt yet got the bigger wheels or tyres, partly because i dont havnt ordered them as i dont want to buy new slicks then have them sitting around for 9 months, so the arches will probably end up bigger than they need be to make sure i have clearance
looking in my car from the passenger side the other day i wondered why i hadnt mounted my seat further back, looking at the seat from the other side i soon realised, its hard against the door bars and wont go further down or back, and the mounting brackets wouldnt allow me to move it over.
i then realise if i reversed the mounts i could move the seat over and back, it also allowed me to to alter the additional support welded to the floor to support the rear of the seat and i saved over half a kilo in weight
the seat is now several inches furher back and about 1.5 lower.
incase your wondering why all the effort to move the seat back, its because most of the weight saving meassures i have in mind will take weight of the part of teh car where i really want it at the back, so anything i can do to try and shift weight rearwards is a good thing
Last edited by Graham; 03-08-2007 at 10:32.
heres the new light weight floor mount for the back of the seat
all this seat movement has caused another problem though,
i now cannot reach ANY of the driving controls everything is too far away, so all teh switch gear will need relocating, the steering wheel needs to come down and back which i will attend to at the same time i move the steering rack back later on, the gear lever is too far way but that should come into reach when the engine and box get moved back, finally the pedals (mk2 escort bias box), which werent actually quite right anyway in this car as they were altered to suit the bmw 2002 with its sloping bulkhead, this car has a vertical bulkhead, so i will just reverse an earlier mod, with involves cutting and bending the pedals and rewelding them.
i thought long and hard about the throttle pedal, and realised a simple wedge shaped extension would by far be simplest and best
i've already altered the pedals, which has proved as i thought the angle/length of them wasnt right in the first place as i'm now pushing them with a different part of my foot which means i now have more leverage and it shows as the clutch needs a fair bit less effort to depress
Nice work Graham, will you be attending the next DMN meeting? Wasn't the same without you
Sierra cosworth turbo race car
QMN saloon car championship
RETRO Motorsport
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