1995 Ginetta G27 4.5 V8

Shocks have arrived and I can now measure the mounting eyes and get on with the CAD work for the brackets.





Quite happy with the quality but the proof or the pudding is in the eating and it will be a good while before any tasting gets done - each pair comes with a dyno sheet - used AVO Spax and Protech in the past and never had any issues with them apart from corrosion on the steel bodied ones but that's just housekeeping.

V8 - this could well get me in trouble if playing in my head on a summer evening in the G27 - One of those tunes that would have me melting the rubber from the tyres.

So with teaboy dusting his 911 thread off and showing that he's been looking at shiny engine parts I was spurred into redoubling my efforts this weekend to make progress on my projects and specifically the G27 engine.

The RV8 has been just sitting there for far too long waiting for me to sort out the windage tray so after a few little G32 and G15 jobs this morning I took the top end off the engine, spun it over on the engine stand and removed the sump to get access to the windage tray.

Old picture which is basically as far as I got. Then



The problem with this is that the steel is quite thin, 1mm probably, and it's only supported by 4 bolts - I will extend this by an extra 3 so 7 bolts in all. A while back I bought some 4mm square mild steel to use a stiffening ribs to tie the whole assembly together and prevent fatigue cracking due to vibration. Mentioned before that the windage tray runs very close to the crank - it needs to be to be effective - so with all that steel whipping around so close it needs to be pretty rigid. If any of it came loose the result would be quite noisy.

Today when the sump was taken off



So I cut and bent some of the 4mm








And got welding - a great deal of welding as it happens - far more than I was expecting. The job also used up every piece of the 4mm steel that I ordered, granted I did not order a huge amount but I figured I had more than enough to have spare lengths left over.

Ends first





And then it just snowballed.






























Made sure that the oil pick-up and the dip stick cleared everything. A little clearancing was required on the pick-up but the dip stick had no issues and the high level mark corresponds perfectly with the bottom of the windage tray.

Just the tabs to add for the extra fixing points and I can start to close it all up.

As it only bolts in with 1/4 UNC its probably not capable of adding that much. Block is about as stiff as it gets being one of the rarer cross-bolt small journal types so more material in the block than the cross-bolt large journal blocks. The sump has a fair bit of extra steel for baffles and trap doors etc. that's also a bit stiffer than normal. I suppose it all adds up and as I am going to be spinning this one a bit higher than usual it needs all the help it can get.

The usual RV8 folded types are better than the stock SD1 tray type but do not offer a whole lot as they do not run close enough to the crank for long enough - about 10 degrees if that. This type runs close to the crank for at least 180 degrees and is reported to help gain a few extra horses at the top end.

Mentioned above - Sump is baffled and has trap doors.

Covered that bit of work over in the Strato's thread before I split the threads up - forum.retro-rides.org/post/2334336



It worked well enough before but I have a couple more mods that I want to do to it.

Oh curse word - July 2017 !!!!

Thanks John - your comments are appreciated and I'm pleased to read that you enjoy the posts. Just had a flick back through myself, as its not that bad only being 9 pages at present, to remind myself just how little I did on this car due to all the G15 and G21 stuff last year.

It is a very small car, all the cars I have are pretty small even the 6 foot wide Stratos!

Tyres arrived - I have gone for Toyo TR1's for the time being - well away from actually taking any of the tread off but need them for the set-up of the car.

Fronts 195/50/15's - really quite cheap - offset by the 225/50/15 rears that are not near as cheap.



The calculations of the speeds with these slightly oversize tyres makes for an interesting read. - Well it does if you are me.



Better make sure that the brakes are up to the task.

Cheers, feedback is always appreciated - The time question gets asked quite a lot - simply. I enjoy it and find it pretty therapeutic so whatever time I can find and spare it's what I will do.

Wheels and tyres are now together and will be going off to be fitted on Saturday with a bit of luck which also means they will then take up a lot less space.