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Aug 10, 2021 21:40:43 GMT
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97hp doesn't sound much but when it weighs around 850kg, that's much the same as 160hp in a modern hatchback. To be fair Kevin, it does nip along with less horse power than your average shopping trolley has these days. It’s no race car but for what’s in the engine, I’m happy. (For now😁)
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Aug 10, 2021 21:38:12 GMT
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The question is ......with the lowish BHP figures and the purchase of the steel rocker assembly, will this lead to the acquisition of more steel components? I had planned on building a new engine for this and quite fancied the idea of an 1800cc kit from ike engineering. But I’ve decided to spend some time and money on the Escort as it needs a new cage, seats, belts and fire extinguishers as I plan to stage rally it. That means this engine will stay for now.
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Aug 10, 2021 17:49:50 GMT
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Up early this morning to get to the rolling road by 09:30. Straight on the rollers and the guy does some basic checks. Marks TDC, leak down, compression test and mentions it sounds rattly - yep I know. He looks in the carbs and one of the butterflies hasn’t been centralised when tightened so I’ll need to look at that. He changes the jets to something he says should work but it’s running rich. Changes them again and does another run and it’s looking better but still rich when cruising. He changes the idle jets again and it’s now a lot better. He then did a power run and reports it’s running nice and clean. No hesitations don’t no spitting back, which is good news. The power run shows it has a massive 80 bhp at the wheels! Ok maybe that’s not so good. It’s 96bhp at the flywheel when a standard motor is 87bhp. It is just a cobbled together bitsa engine with standard compression an A2 cam that’s not even timed in correctly and a big valve head with minimal porting. But figures isn’t what I came for. I just wanted what I had to run as good as it could, and that’s what he’s achieved. We took it off the dyno and I took it far a quick drive and it’s a totally different beast. No coughing, spluttering, spitting back. You just put your foot down and it goes. It even spun the wheels a couple of times. Oh and it made 102lbft of torque which isn’t to shabby. The Escort only has 125. And these have turned up so I made even gain a bit more! We’ll probably not, but at least it won’t sound like the castanet section of a Mariachi band any more.
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if you have a dial gauge you can set the tappets accurately even with the wear. I do have a gauge, but my thinking is that as they’ve already worn through the surface hardness then they’ll only get worse and the refaced ones have apparently (let’s hope) been rehardened. Edited to add - I did use the dial gauge to make sure I was adjusting with no lift but did not think to use it to set the gap.
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Last Edit: Aug 9, 2021 8:49:02 GMT by jonsey
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That is cruddy. It makes it look like the rockers have been sprayed with crinkle paint.
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Escort- So I took it for a longer drive so everything was warm, unlike the short drive last time. As the rear pads are standard they are good from cold. The front pads being full race take a while to warm up. To warm them up quicker I drive with the brakes on for a little bit. With everything nice and warm I’ve now backed off the rear brakes on the bias valve. It’s a lot more confidence inspiring now, but in the long term I think I’ll fit a bias pedal box, and keep the bias valve. When they run big brakes on the back of Escorts they tend to put a 0.65 master cylinder to the front and a 0.7 to the rear so they have less effect, but you still have the good hydraulic hand brake. Cortina- I can’t remember if I’ve already mentioned it, but on Tuesday I’m taking the Cortina to the rolling road to get the carbs set up correctly. So this morning I put it on the trailer ready so there’s no faffing on the day. I’ve changed the engine oil as it’s been in there 2 years and replaced the inlet manifold gasket as it was leaking coolant. The gasket I had originally fitted was a new one I had in stock but it had stuck to the cardboard packaging. I’d scraped it off with a razor blade but it obviously wasn’t right. It was only a small weep but I thought if it’s leaking coolant then it could also be letting in air to muck up the mixture. All sorted now. The rolling road guy asked if I had the vacuum advance connected to the inlet manifold. I’ve never run one on the race cars but as this is a road car I thought it might drive better with it. I needed to fit a take off for the manifold and happened to have one! But when I connected it up to try the engine was making a clacking noise. It sounded like a cam follower had broken up. I disconnected it and the noise stopped. I don’t know if it’s just the timing is not right for vac advance, or if it’s the distributor pulsing as the vac pipe is only connected to one cylinder? Anyway, I’ve disconnected it for now and blanked off the manifold. If the dyno guy wants to use it the facility is there. I also tried adjusting the tappets as they are quite tappety. After doing it, it sounded exactly the same. The rockers have worn so even though it’s right on the feeler gauge the gap is a lot more. I looked it a few spare sets I have knocking about and they are curse word too. As luck would have it there was a set of refaced rockers with steel shaft and steel rocker posts on ebay finishing the next day and I got them for £87. Bargain. They won’t be here before the rolling road session though so it will have to go sounding like a load of bolts being shaken in a baked bean tin. I have a spare set of Holby carbs that have the jets in them that were in the Cortina carbs when they were on the Astra I rebuilt (thread on here somewhere). I’m taking those with me as the dyno guy says all the Holby jets I’ve got in the Cortina now are pish. The emulsion tubes need to be F11 or F16 and that’s what the spares are, so using those will save me the best part of £80. I’ve also written down the Astra jets as that was set up on the same rolling road so I have them for reference. I’ll stick them on here if anyone needs to put a set of Weber 40s on a Vauxhall red top engine. A standard engine made 179bhp flywheel 137bhp wheels with this set up. I also had to do the yearly “pull all the lights apart on the trailer” exercise as everything corrodes. I keep meaning to swap them to an LED setup but the lights fit the recess on the trailer and have built in triangles. The rectangle LEDs look a bit clunky, but at least they would work. They all worked on the wife’s Rav4 but not on my Avensis so I put a new lighting hitch on that and all’s good.
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Thanks Rod. That will do nicely 👍
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Thanks both, so it should work? I’ll check out the link.
While I’m here, is it possible to get a wifi network in my garage? As I’ve got the LAN cable out there so can I get a “box” that I can plug into the LAN line and produce a wifi signal out there? I know you can get wifi boosters but my garage is too far away from the house to do this.
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I live out one the sticks and a few months ago I was lucky enough to get fibre broadband fitted. My 16 year old wanted a LAN cable to his bedroom for his computer and Xbox. The Openreach guy who fitted it gave me some advice on how to do it. He said use cable and these little boxes and then just use a small pre made cable from the modem and PC to connect up. So last week I ran the cable and while I was doing that I ran one to the TV for Prime etc, one to the youngest’s bedroom for when he wants this stuff and one to the garage down a pipe that I had fitted when the drains were done a few years ago. I’ve included a couple of photos so you know what I’m talking about because I don’t. I also bought a couple of these so that the boy could split the LAN cable in his room. One for PC, one for Xbox and a spare for if his mates bring stuff over. We have tried all the LAN cables and all is working well, which was a surprise, except when the eldest has tried the splitter and plugs in a second device, the first device disconnects. I’m sure the Openreach guy said I should be able to do this but I’m starting to doubt my memory now. Am I wrong, or are the cheap EBay spitter boxes at fault? If you know the answer and care to reply I’d be very grateful but please don’t use technical words and please type slow so I can keep up. Cheers Phil
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Make sure you start a build thread on it 👍
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RSR build space frame mk1s and also do a composite body to suit
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I’d say anyone can weld. If you try it and your no good, it’s because something is wrong- setting/ techniques. Some people will be fantastic welders but there generally doing it day in day out. The rest of us get by with adequate welds. Let’s face it, you’ll grind most of it off anyway.
I used an 150 Clarke for years and was brilliant on thick stuff but on body work where you just wanted to spot here and there to avoid distortion it either didn’t penetrate well or was too fierce. I bought an rtec about 4 years ago and it really does flatter my ability on the thin stuff.
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Cool pics. I bet that NA Cosworth mk1 a blast to drive. I’ve seen the dark green mk2 GT in the flesh and it’s absolutely stunning.
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Jul 30, 2021 14:19:46 GMT
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It would be nice to meet you too, but the Cortina’s in no state to travel that distance with the carbs in the state of tune they are sadly.
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Jul 29, 2021 21:33:41 GMT
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I’ve gone to the last 4 or 5 but will be giving it a miss this year. Hope you enjoy and grab a bargain or two.
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Jul 29, 2021 17:36:09 GMT
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I’ve spoken to my brother and this is what he said. Some HAs came with discs as standard. You can fit the hubs/discs from a HB but there are 2 sizes of disc- 12”and 13” wheel variants. He thinks HC disc set up fits also.
To fit Chevette set up you have to fit a Chevette bottom ball joint into the HA bottom arm. A bit of relieving of the hole is required to let it fit. You need to make an adapter from the Chevette metric TRE to fit the imperial drumstick on the HA rack. You end up with a bit of positive camber but you can get this back by shimming out the top of control arm in towards the centre of the car. If you are fitting discs you need to add a remote servo as the pedal will be like a brick.
Hope this helps
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I’ll ask my brother about the brakes on the saloon. I know on his van he fitted Chevette front swivels and discs but the geometry was not right.
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Jul 28, 2021 21:14:36 GMT
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Jul 28, 2021 21:12:25 GMT
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My Cortina tank was rusty in side so I got what I could out then put it on a cement mixer for a while after filling it with clean chippings. I then filled it with a mixture of white vinegar, bicarbonate of soda and I think some water and left it for a few days. It worked a treat. Cool van by the way. My younger brother had one when he passed his test back in the 90’s. It had a Chevette engine with a 40DCOE and he regularly blew the gearbox up. That's good to hear I might have to give that a go! hopefully it might fix the problems I'm having I like hearing stories like that, bet it was good fun, although a 40 dcoe sounds massive on one of those engines, bet it sounded amazing though! Cheers Blydenstein tuned the 1256 engine back in the 70’s. They did a combined rocker cover / inlet manifold for a Weber. My brother’s had a couple of those. He built one for my nephews HA saloon that he raced as a junior. It had a 1500cc steel crank with Lotus TC pistons. I’ve got some photos somewhere. He even had a straight cut gearbox for one back in the 90’s.
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Jul 28, 2021 19:34:48 GMT
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My Cortina tank was rusty in side so I got what I could out then put it on a cement mixer for a while after filling it with clean chippings. I then filled it with a mixture of white vinegar, bicarbonate of soda and I think some water and left it for a few days. It worked a treat.
Cool van by the way. My younger brother had one when he passed his test back in the 90’s. It had a Chevette engine with a 40DCOE and he regularly blew the gearbox up.
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