PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Have been away for a while, not sure why, guess a mix of needing a break (read 'because the Capri's engine died after only a few miles') and work being like doing a full time big project car (replaced the hobby for a while). With the hillclimb Capri back together (fired it up for the first time last night, so far so good....), Lauren has sold her Mk2 Capri (and is now looking for a Bedford CF camper), and we've got rid the 2.8i (because I just wasn't feeling it and couldn't be bothered to actually get one with it for some reason), it's time for something new. The outcome of this is a some space in the workshop and the Zetec that was in my Mk1 Capri just sitting there gathering dust - yes I could sell it, but it's such a nice engine the answer is clearly to find something to put it into  - a plan was needed Since the Mk1 soaks up most of the money I have for toys (and then some) I decided it might be fun to try do a low cost/high value (bang for buck) project. Given it's getting rather difficult to build a retro, especially a quick one, on a budget and because people keep telling me it's not possible, I thought I'd see if I could do it. A challenge then, and a challenge needs rules: 1) The budget is £1000 (not including engine/gearbox, but if you want to include that lets say £2000) - this has to include the cost of buying the car. 2) The car must be tax free (pre 1977 currently) to help make it cheaper to own 3) It should be at least as capable/fun as a RWD Escort 4) It should be usable as a daily car, such that if needed it could be someone's only car 5) It has to be a little different 6) The Cheat - as with all the best TV builds the cost of tools/consumables/workshop/having a trailer & tow car/collection costs are not included (but I am going to try and do all this with what I have, which is basically a good tool box full of tools, a welder, a bench and a vice - i.e. if you have a garage at home and some tools, you could manage the same - the most critical tools are actually free - knowledge (the best thing about the interwebs is everything you need is already out there and avaialbel for free) and some tenacity) But what car to base the project on? Since the rules say it has to be tax free and as fun as an Escort the obvious answer was something 70's, RWD and small - £1k isn't much of a budget so it can't be a popular car so the obvious answers were; Chevette/Marina/Midget/Spitfire/Avenger Which lead to this - Plan A   Fits the rules and is Lime green! What's not to like? Cost was £845 - a bit high, but left just about enough to throw the zetec in, and since had a good 1500 engine there were parts to sell to offset some costs. However, it needed quite a lot of welding, nothing crazy and could be knocked up from off cuts, but even after giving it a good clean up I just didn't gel with it - which felt very odd, a few years back this was totally my sort of thing. Walking past it everyday, I don't know, I just didn't really get a vision for it. So back on devil-bay it went and I was fortunate to get my money back - not a given! Has gone into the Avenger club fold, so hopefully will see the road at some point, was certainly worth saving. But what did I want? Well a few more days of ebaying and I realised I actually wanted more of a 'sports' car - not many of these cheap enough for this challenge - the odd late gen Midget, some rusty Spitfires (questionable can match the rwd Escort capability rule), TR7's (though going up fast it seems) and Scimitars. I've found of late that the place to find cheap retros/classics is Facebook, so set up searches there, Gumtree and of course ebay. Quickly it became obvious what the answer was - a Scimitar GTE; plentiful, 4 linked rear end with watts linkage (just like a Group 4 Escort  ) and available in ok condition for not a lot of cash. Just got to find one without a completely dead chassis. Will the Zetec suit one, only one way to find out! Now just to find one - ebay threw up a few around the £500 mark, an SE5a was particually interesting but had been played with, and looked a bit like the kind of car that you might spend as much time undoing old mods as you did getting it on the road. Then something a bit different popped up on Facebook, on some random marketplace search, a basically complete 1969 SE5a (missing engine) with an ok chassis and reparable body. The best bit, I could have it for £260 - score! But it was just north of Glasgow. Cue a 4am start today and 14hrs on the road - but me and the £200 Terrano (nothing like a cheap daily) made it and I'm now the proud owner of this - Plan B, if you will    Never had a car so tough to load (thats what 4 flat tyres that won't hold air will do for you!) but dragged it on in the end. Not had a real close look around it yet but it seems surprisingly good, especially given the price. Tomorrow will try get it into the workshop and start having a damn good poke around, then we'll see how the zetec looks in place. |
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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WOW you lucky curse word
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Plate type LSD vs ATB LSD PhoenixCapri
@phoenixescort
Club Retro Rides Member 91
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Nov 13, 2017 13:51:59 GMT
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Having a RWD car makes life easier ; you don't need a gearbox oil that will favour either the diff or the gearbox ; that's before I get to resetting the plates on some setups. That said, what are you using the car for? In a nutshell: - If the car is for mainly track/drifting work or you fancy willywaving get a plate diff
- If the car will be a daily and you fancy more refinement in addition to something more predictable get the ATB ; an ATB is a form of a helical diff, I believe it is based on a Torsen T2 or T3 design
PhoenixCapri has used both and put a few miles on them too, and is probably one of the better people to ask. In my experience ATB's are great for road use, and for track where you're either not gods gift to driving or don't know the track/conditions that well - I say this because they are very forgiving since they never fully lock, and will basically act like an open diff in very dynamic situations (like when you've gone beyond yourself/the car). They work via torque biasing, so you need to have something like 2.1:1 differencial across the wheels, for them to 'lock' (transfer torque to the other wheel with more grip), this makes them very good at avoiding the pushing on issue you can get with plate LSDs which are locked when maybe you might do better with it being open. But if you have a very dynamic load case, say one corner of the car suddenly unloading (like can happen on a live axle, especially on apex rumble strips..) which results in one wheel massively loosing traction, it'll just spin, since all the torque has gone to this wheel and you don't have anything to react again. Does this make it slower on exit - well yes, but the risk of it all going very wrong is much lower. But these days I run a plate LSD with 45/45 ramp angles. Why, well because I'm now doing hill climbing and the car never sees the road. I have no doubt the plate diff makes the car faster, as it's able to make use of all the torque it has, it's easier to get it off the line and you can drive it on the throttle much more because you have a constant, even, rear axle torque split. BUT, and this is a big but, it's a hell of a lot harder to drive and you have to be confident with it otherwise it'll bite you. This is somewhat down to the 45 deg ramp angle in decel (eventually I'll go to 60deg) but just in general you have to drive it, not let it drive you... As said, comes down to what you're using it for - mostly road with occasional track (not drifting) I'd go ATB. Mostly/all track (or drag racing, drifting etc.) find a plate LSD (bolt in a Ford 9" axle?) I'll leave you with one final note - in my old Mk2 Escort I ran an ATB for years, and had a couple of offs, but no matter how much I pushed it (how big an idiot I was) the accidents we're relatively small and the car survived. The first time I used the car in anger with the plate LSD I wrote it off... This was due to me not driving with confidence (or the ability it now needed!) and (I'd argue) because the plate diff highlighted the major dynamic failings of the car far more than the ATB did. |
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Motorworld, Stuttgart.PhoenixCapri
@phoenixescort
Club Retro Rides Member 91
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My old weekend haunt (used to live 15mins walk from it), had many a beer and wurst in the on site micro brewery. Nice to see there's still a fair range of stuff there to have nose around
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Jul 30, 2017 19:56:11 GMT
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Well, that was an crazy couple of weeks... Lets start with the high point, we made it https://www.instagram.com/p/BW3KqO4jpPI and one of it with it's 70's coupe brethren https://www.instagram.com/p/BW3dM-rn_IR So yes was a great weekend, not without issue, but more on that later. The rebuild took rather longer than hoped (what a surprise) with the exhaust taking about 5 days in total!. It drove under it's own steam for the first time with the new engine at 3:30am on the Friday morning. 4 hrs later it made it to the MOT garage and stalled on the way in, then was tight to turn over.... 2hrs later it turned over ok, ran and passed it's MOT - woop! Then drove home ok but clearly in need of a lot of fettling. Played about a bit, got it running much better and then loaded up to head to Shelsley. There was a bit of a light knock, but too late now, I was going whether it was going to die or not! Role on Saturday, and things started well. Handicap was 41.65s based on last years time with the Zetec - thing was this was a wet time, so not really representative! First practice run, taking it very very gently, was a 42s, and things felt ok. 2nd practice, tried to take it easy again and got a 40.5s, woops 1s under target time in practice! Role on target time being dropped to 39s - a very fair time for the car to be honest so couldn't complain. Car ran ok, but going a bit faster highlighted how far from a good setup the carbs were running. Post lunch and it was competitive run time. But the weather had other ideas, and it was now a bit damp. Over lunch I'd changed emulsion tubes and it was a bit better at the top end of the rev range, though still not right, and the 7 year old tyres were not confidence inspiring! Ended at a 41s, following a very messy entry into the esses and finding out the fun way that the new engine has a lot more torque and a boat ancquor at the front mean it likes to wag it's tail rather a lot now! Amazingly it was always planted with the zetec, so clearly a lot of retuning needed to get the chassis to suit the new engine. Run two, dry at the bottom of the hill, but with black clouds rolling in and spits of rain at the bottom, hmmmmm Up through crossing and it's going fairly well, but on the entrance to the esses it starts to rain, heavy, and the second half of the esses is done rather sideways! End of the run, 40.34 - so well off target time, but given how messy the run was I'll take it. Pull over at the top and the engine dies - this doesn't look good. Back in the paddock it's clear that it's not running on one bank correctly, and is breathing fairly heavy. At this point I'm pretty worn out so call it a day - will try fix it in the morning Sunday arrives and I set to work rebuilding the carb (for the 3rd time this week!) Give everything a good clean out and try again - well it's running on both banks, but it's got one hell of an air leak. Carb back off, rebuild intake manifold, and success. It's running better than yesterday, so I'll take that as a win. By this time first practice for my group is nearly over so I rush down the pits and make it just in time. Again not trying, as not sure it's going to make it up the hill, but it seems ok - 40.12. That'll do. At this point I decided to not do anything other than cross every digit and keep going. Though I'll just try get the top end running right - so sling in some smaller air correction jets. Practice two, steady but trying a bit, and quicker again. 39.56s - target time is pretty in reach then and the car is still going ok and running way better at high revs In the timed runs I gave it a bit more, actually reving it out a bit (still not right!) and get rewarded with a 38.08 on the final run - 0.92s under target and good enough for 2nd place on handicap! Awesome! and only 0.05s off winning the round. So great weekend, and so glad the car held together and didn't drive that bad. Get the engine running right, sort the chassis out to suit the new weight up front and get some decent tyres on, and I'd say that the car has to be capable of a 36s, maybe even get into the 35's if I can learn to drive it! But something about the way the car was running just didn't seem right still. Back in the workshop the next day I ran a compression test and my heart dropped, 5 good cylinders, one with half the compression of the rest - damn. Head off and the cause became obvious - a piston that'd got very very hot. Bore scored to heck and piston is scrap with rings seized in position and a semi seized pin - thankfully had converted these to fully floating so the rod to pin was still moving ok and rod appears to be ok by some miracle. This explains the breathing and I guess the light knock was piston slap. So now I have an engine in bits again and parts on the way from the US - feels very familiar. Plan is to get the damaged bore repaired (fit a liner) pop in a new piston, and try again. Why it failed I don't know, but given the failure I suspect it either ran very very lean due to a carb issue (though doesn't explain why the others cylinders were ok) or it got too hot on that first run to the MOT (it was the middle cylinder so likely to be hottest). Either way, hopefully it'll repair ok and I'll get back out later in the year. Sadly the car won't be making RRG this year though - c'est la vie |
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Jul 24, 2017 11:49:34 GMT
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You too mate, looking forward to another great Gathering! So we can assume... So, 4 days to go... wish me luck this happened! Ha yes, but the car was 'finished' 3:30am on Friday, then MOT'd, then trailed to the hill! Doing 30miles on a fresh engine then ragging it up a steep hill isn't exactly clever and lets just say I need a few good nights sleep now. Will do a proper update, but needless to say the car is still in one piece, the engine runs (but needs a few things looking at/tuning) and I made it up the hill every run, even if I did have to rebuild the carb/intake in the pits Sunday morning (made the first run with 2 mins to spare). Even got under my target time on Sunday so was well in the mix. Looking forward to getting it running right and learning how to drive it, it's a totally different beast now. |
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Jul 16, 2017 17:22:10 GMT
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I thought i recognized the Reg number,i owned it between 92-95,great to see it sill exists,and wow,what a resto. Amazing to get some info and amazing photos of the car in it's former life - thanks again so much for making the effort to find me! It really did have a lot of work to done to it originally    Well I've been away for a very long time, life only seems to get busier. The engine work has ended up taking a very very long time, for various reasons. But a deadline is now approaching, MOT this Friday, first event with the new engine at Shelsley next Saturday - www.shelsleywalsh.com/event/classic-nostalgia/ I have no idea if I can make it, but lets see! So a little catch-up: The initial plan was to run triple carbs from the get go, but sadly the 'Alpha' manifold did not quite go to plan - lets just say getting clean nice aluminium pipework to join to nasty old alloy castings is not exactly easy! So plan B will involve making either a custom alloy base plate and building the manifold from that, or designing something to 3D print - but that will have to wait for another day. Since that failure I've modified another standard part to take a weber carb (single 40 IDF)  Hopefully this should be good enough to get me up and running for now As for the engine, well after a lot of messing around with various parts the bottom end finally came together  Pistons are quite a lot larger, imported from the US and then modified for floating pins. Compression height was a lot lower so had to deck the block 1.3mm to compensate. Rods are forged and the crank has been heavily lightened to compensate for the much lower inertia of the rods/pistons, and everything balanced. Timing wise I've gone for an alloy cam drive, so will be noisy but should be strong (I hope!) From there, heads on and engine in!  Next step, make some exhaust manifolds - it's a pain but have decided to make some equal length ones, of a length that should give me some tuned pulses around peak engine speed. LHS is done  RHS is about 30% there, but has to take a pretty difficult route to get the runner length, plus as the heads aren't symmetrical in terms of port location the manifolds are very different! So, 4 days to go... wish me luck |
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Top work RR organising team, this is excellent news! Just have to buy a 2018 calendar to put it in now
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Apparently the scimitar had the integral bellhousing version of the box - Type F? And not the Type 5 with separate bellhousing as fitted to Capri's and Granadas.
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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May 31, 2017 20:28:35 GMT
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Hi
Trying to get hold of a bellhousing for a 4 speed, type 5 gearbox to 2.8 Cologne V6. Would be interested on full gearbox if you don't want to just sell the bellhousing
Cheers
Andy
07860 274834
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Roof chopPhoenixCapri
@phoenixescort
Club Retro Rides Member 91
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May 17, 2017 20:37:46 GMT
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Anyone ever roof chopped a GT6? could work if subtle. That could look amazing! No IVA either as it's a separate chassis. I was always of the opinion that roofchops only work on rounded shaped cars, but some of the photos posted above tell me otherwise. Personally I think subtlety is key for making them work! One of these days I'll have an idea that someone else hasn't already started on! Interested to see how this turns out - www.facebook.com/KDTClassicAndCustom/ |
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Roof chopPhoenixCapri
@phoenixescort
Club Retro Rides Member 91
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May 17, 2017 11:27:59 GMT
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Would love to see this finished :  Yeh that works really well, gives it a bit of an early TVR look. Anyone ever roof chopped a GT6? could work if subtle. |
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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May 16, 2017 20:00:11 GMT
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Agree with 500-1500, but it's a very good point that that's only affordable because it takes account of being able to do repairs for not a lot.
Though I'd also spend twice that on making a car exactly what I want. No idea why but I always buy 'cheap' cars and then make them what I want. By then end of this they're maybe not really affordable anymore.
Would find a series of articles/pieces on sub £1500 retro builds, quite fancy doing one myself.
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Hillman Avenger or Mk1 Capri?  Pre facelift has small ones, with a separate indicator next to them (might be same part as hillman)  Face lift had wider ones  |
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Have started getting on with the milling of the manifold
Slow going but its coming along well
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Mar 13, 2017 15:57:20 GMT
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Niiice Didn't even know 6 port heads were a thing for these but then I'm not a Ford guy. Are these lumps fairly well supported as far as performance mods go? I've always seen them (again as a non-ford type) as fairly unloved. I wouldn't say they're well supported, but there are upgrade bits for most parts, especially if you have a Euro version (e.g. there is a triple carb manifold for a euro head, but not a US one). But there's often only one option for each of the bits, and second hand parts are fairly rare, so not easy to build one cheaply - I'm importing a fair bit for this reason. There are also a couple of specialists who can build you crazy version, be it long stroke, or alloy headed race engines, but then you start measuring the cost in tens of thousands! I do enjoy a challenge (once it's over...) |
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,685
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Mar 12, 2017 18:05:37 GMT
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The Eaglets have landed!    So after a very (very) long wait the heads are back and they look pretty good. The ports have been opened out a good amount, especially around the valve stem which was really restrictive. Sadly there is a water way in the heads that means you can't open them up enough to get a perfect line of sight to the valve head, but this is about as far as we'd dare go without having some spare heads should we break through. The valves have also been increased in size significantly, +2mm on the inlet and +4mm on the exhaust! Yet this only brings them in line with stock European 2.8i valve sizes. The US heads use smaller valves as part of their strategy for lower emissions/'smog control'. Springs a Kent Cams uprated ones, designed to deal with the much more aggressive cam I'm going to be using. Another feature of these heads is a inlet plenum heating port - this basically is a secondary port off the middle cylinder exhaust port that feeds into the underside of the inlet chamber, heating the plenum and promoting greater atomisation of the fuel thus a cleaner burn. But it also completely messes up the exhaust port flow from the mid cylinders, and they even connect, meaning there is a chance of charge contamination, especially at high revs. This can lead to knock, meaning lower ignition advance must be used, further reducing power. So I've blocked them off completely Finally they've been skimmed quite a lot, 20 thou, which should bring the compression ratio up to about 10.5:1. So I now have a pair fairly simple 6 port V6 heads. Nothing extreme, but they should be able to flow enough air to make 200bhp. Still a couple of bits to do, like cleaning the spark plug threads, fitting some new core plugs, painting them and blocking off the EGR feeds (yes they used all the 70's tricks to control the emissions on the US heads!), but they're basically ready to fit. There is more that can be done to them, but this build of the engine isn't pushing the absolute limits of what could be done as I want to make sure it's reasonably reliable. If I want more in the future I should be able to go another 2mm bigger on the inlet valves and take a bit more off the heads to up the compression ratio a bit more. But we'll see how this setup goes first! Now the heads are back I've settled on a bore size, so pistons are on their way and the block and crank are going off for machining. This leaves me to build an inlet - probably the toughest bit of the build. So far I have a stock US inlet manifold and some laser cut carb mounting plates  The plan is to mill off the top of the existing plenum and runners and then fit 6 tubes in to connect each manifold port to one of the individual carb ports. Sadly the odd port spacing means things are not exactly simple, but a semi drunken chat with a friend last night about CAN-AM inlets lead to a nice solution. Basically I'm going to allow the runners to be different lengths up to the carb plate, and then correct the difference by using different length trumpets - the middle carb will end up having about 2 inch shorter trumpets than the front and rear ones, similar in idea to the setup on a Rover V8 efi engine. The only spanner in the works here is that the runners will be a different length up to the throttle plate, so while I'll have equal lengths on full throttle, things are arguably different with low throttle angles, this might cause some issues but since I don't have time to build a full CAE model of the thing, I'm just going to wing it and cross my fingers! In the worst case I'll just have to use full or no throttle - what could possibly go wrong with that driving style?! |
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- a plan was needed
) and available in ok condition for not a lot of cash. Just got to find one without a completely dead chassis. Will the Zetec suit one, only one way to find out!
