1993 Litton Corse I - Strato's Replica

The real ones had the apostrophe on the door script.

I will do a separate thread on the Ginetta's at some point as there would be too much to cover within this thread. The G32 is a great little car very underrated as they as just so rare.





As teaboy correctly points out - Strato's is the correct Lancia/Bertone spelling - Sometimes I forget the ' - I have not heard of any copyright issues with the Strato's bearing in mind that replicas have been in production since 1985

It's a mad thing the Strato's - everytime I uncover it to work on it it makes me smile it's just so utterly bonkers and original.

It's certainly an unusual use of an apostrophe.

nalesutol - although not taking things to the sort of levels/extremes you do with regard to "simplicating and adding lightness" I do follow the mantra that anything that gets taken off gets lightened before it goes back on again so with that in mind and the day being a bit damp at times I decided to remove a bit more ugly.



You can make out in this photo the gearlever - not a pretty sight and one which does not sit well with me at all so I decided to remove all of the standard bits of surplus Rover surrounding the ball joint.

So here we have the offending item - please note the "bush" in the rear bushing.





Yep that's a wheel nut with the centre drilled out!



When I have finished this car the cockpit will be, to most, a pretty uncomfortable place to be - it will be very comfortable to sit in for the purpose of driving the car, as I cannot abide the seating position, pedals, steering to be compromised because for me cars like this are for driving - but it will be noisy, hot and claustrophobic so I have no need to have the gearstick mounted between two huge rubber isolators. I want the feel to be positive not remote.

Chop chop










The bits to be kept.



The ball joint and the joint to the lower bush were not hollow - that's my bit of making things a little lighter - The lower bush is also rather OTT as the sleeve is between thin nylon bushes and the sleeve is insulated by having 4 o-ring grooves and o-rings !
The ball is also insulated from the housing by the assembly being held in two large o-rings. They will be more than enough of a nod to comfort for me.

Put them away in a box for the assembly work.

I love it when people post up pictures of the beautifully engineered and fabricated bits that are going to be buried in the bowels of their car and never ever seen. Quality engineering...
Cheers
Duncan

spanner in the works moment, its not all about flow, but what the air does, plus pulse tuning, cam timing, exhaust primary vs secondary lengths vs inlet pulses....

i know a very successful engine builder and mapper who doesn't use flow benches at all.

Plenty don't use benches - but everyone who takes the job seriously does - and throw as many spanners as you like - power is all about flow - more flow is more power - less flow is less power. Feel free to start a tread elsewhere to argue that one but this is my thread diversion about a bench build.

Please don't be offended if I don't respond further on the subject.

Whilst I fail to find the bench pictures that I want I may as well run through the specifications on this thing.

The PTS bench is an orifice bench and a ratiometric device which basically means that it measures flow across a calibrated sharp edge orifice and that as the air through the head is at the same temperature as the air through the orifice it is self compensating so all you need to do is allow for the atomospheric temperature in your calculations. Other types of bench need a bit more effort in the calculations. I am being brief as everything you would need to know is out there to find.

I liked this bench design as it also has the facility to flow the exhaust ports in the direction of flow of the gas in the engine by reversing the bench flow. Typically you would just take the exhaust flow in the same manner as the inlet port but with this you can check the measurements you have and see if any anomalies crop up.

I built the bench to the full specifications of 8 vacuum motors - each is about 1300 watts so flat out its drawing a fair bit of power - single phase 10.4kW or 13HP or about 42 Amps (again a simplistic calc) so a bit of a draw on the garage socket


At 8 motors the bench can pull over 40" inches of water vacuum at a flow rate of 450CFM - you will have to take my word for it that its moving quite a lot of air and that's quite a pressure drop. The Rover heads I was playing with have a maximum flow potential of at the very best 200CFM at the standard 28" pressure differential so with that I blocked off 4 motors before I had to find a way of putting the smoke back in the house ring main. Getting it back into Heated rear window circuits in old Fords is hard enough.


Wonky picture showing the orifice plate in the settling chamber that sits under the port any fixture sit on. The studs hold a baffle and the chamber is there to slow the air once its been rattled past a valve and give it time to sort itself out so it can pass nice and orderly through the orifice - chambers and baffles are mirrored because of the ability to reverse the flow.



There are access ports to the side are so that the plates can be changed for different sized orifice diameters and that it can also be turned over if you wished to reverse flow throw the same side of orifice - more on that later.

This is the main motor board - I manged to find 4 quite powerful 2 stage motors which are the ones that I use in the main now that the other fours have been blanked off. They can flow a fair bit on their own and will easily take a well ported Rover V8 to the limit of the 36" sensor.





In the the main fan chamber the amount of vacuum being created means that some reinforcement is required. The angles were later fitted with studs and a neoprene sealing strip to seal the fan box access panel to the bench.



Every surface of the box must be painted to seal the surfaces to make sure that no air can be drawn through the material and give false readings.



In the above photo you can also see the reversing slide valve that changes the direction of flow through the box.

Another showing the detail of the settling chambers the access ports - (bulkhead seals for boats) and the electrical area of the cabinet.




For a bit of a diversion

Competition as to what car this chassis is from - and double points for the power of the engine it held developed.