It might have been one of the typical race understatements like “oil leaving the engine by an unintended route” used by McLaren to explain a retirement caused by a rod through the side of the block.
LOL
Wasnt it Hopkirk or one of the Mini’s that retired “Due to electrical failure” … a rod through the alternator
Simon
I hear what you are saying about the importance of good balancing, couldn’t agree more. Steve Butts engine is a joy to drive with it’s heavy metalled crank. As was my K after the Vibration Free treatment. It’s just the rest of the engine that bothers me 
.
Are you saying that the engine never came out of the car except on these 3 occasions ?
Bernard
Simon - apparently the TPS failure on Reids car at Oulton caused a large oil spill. Why was that?
Oi Simon, I’ll make it easy for you, here is the thread we were talking about.
Update on my progress, check out the pics here
Now I just have to check the cam timing, fill it up with oil and coolant and start it.
Hopefully today
Looking good.
Will you be at Oulton on the 17th??
Nope, mapping session is now on the 22nd…
(last time I change it, I promise)
You must be getting seriously frustrated by now .
Can you run it with a generic VHPD Emerald map or is the engine too far removed?
In fact, I will run in the engine with the map that I have, should be more or less ok, but it will be rough, especially because it was mapped with the fuel pressure regilator connected (as originally intended) to the vaccum line.
Fuel pressure was variable.
Now it’s not, so there will be a change (rich)
Besides, the cams are different, so they will not perform as they should until mapped.
Not frustrated, it’s just that I’m learning the car.
But I have the best attention to detail, so everything I touch I know it’s Ok.
I was going to start the engine tonight but for ex, Geary’s remote thermosat gave me more problems than anticipated.
Apart from the fact that it’s designed really for an Elise (and I had to make a bespoke coil bracket in order to fit it), when pressurizing the cooling system, it leaked, and not from any of the connections, but from the body of the remote thermostat itself!
Spoke to them and they’re sending another thermostat tomorrow, so it’s just a delay. Will need to buy lots of more coolant though.
Anyway, soon I will hear the engine.
Uldis
It’s looking excellent - i’m amazed you remember where all the bits go
I know!
Me too!
Uldis, It looks like you are making a very nice job of the rebuild. Thanks for the pictures.
what cams do you have in the engine? Where did you source the engine mount? have you made any other changes to the engine mounts?
Pete
Cams are Piper 1444 (new) and the engine mount is a prototype by MutsNuts.
Seems to be a bit too rigid (Stu Pollock tried it before passing it on) so good only for track and not so much for road. But there is a new design coming which promises to be smaller and a bit more flexible (vertical axis vibrations)
The lower engine mount is an EliseParts adjustable one (as my manifold is rigid) and the gearbox mount has been bushed (thicker bush inside the stock mount to get rid of the tiny bit of play)
Cams are Piper 1444 (new) and the engine mount is a prototype by MutsNuts.
Seems to be a bit too rigid (Stu Pollock tried it before passing it on) so good only for track and not so much for road. But there is a new design coming which promises to be smaller and a bit more flexible (vertical axis vibrations)The lower engine mount is an EliseParts adjustable one (as my manifold is rigid) and the gearbox mount has been bushed (thicker bush inside the stock mount to get rid of the tiny bit of play)
Those 1444 cams aren’t so new - I’ve been running them for almost 5 months
I’m interested in your engine mount - have you got any pictures and details of the hardness of the bush material used and the bush dimensions?
SteveB
Those 1444 cams aren’t so new - I’ve been running them for almost 5 months
I guess I meant they’re one of the new bits in my engine…
And the engine mount, the pics I have are on the bookatrack gallery link (as posted above). Haven’t measured it, but I know the bushes are 95A, just because the 70A were too soft to machine at the time (need to be frozen to machine).
Very, very hard. So I anticipate it will not be bearable.
Still, Stu will send them in 70A and let’s see if that works better. Should be ok (I guess)
That engine mount looks like a clone of Geary’s. SteveB was the first guinea pig for that if I recall. Initially it was so stiff that you couldn’t see where you where going because your eyeballs went into sympathetic resonance !!
Bernard
Yep, I have to agree that they’re very similar, that one must have been his inspiration. But there are some differences.
But same veredict: too hard.
That’s why he’s working on another design.
Yep as Bernard says if its a clone of Geary’s then its going to be pretty much unuseable on the road.
It gave a good 2.5kg weight saving, but spoilt the car so I removed it in the end.
I tried three different shaw (sp?) hardnesses of bush material, and one where the physical size of the bush was increased. IIRC the softest I tried was 60. And this was sort of acceptable for a car just used to drive to and from competition events, but still too harsh for road use.
The harshest made my chest resonate at 3200rpm to the point that it was uncomfortable to drive at that speed constantly - a bit of an issue on the road, being about 60mph in 6th!
Other than the weight reduction, the mount gives a benefit of preventing lateral movement of the engine and gearbox, and this was noticeable when competing, but didn’t actually make me any faster by itself - so don’t beleive the hype regarding it improving lap times!
Another very important consideration with the mount is its own resonant frequency. All components that are bolted to an engine go through NVH testing and optimisation to ensure their resonant frequency is above a certain level (I can’t remember the exact level but its was something like 200Hz or 400Hz). A third party mount could actually cause problems if it’s reasonant frequency doesn’t suit that to which its bolted. I doubt the Muts mount has had this sort of testing - but the production mount will have.
How do I know the above - one of my best friends is a Principle Noise Vibration and Harshness Engineer/Consultant at our favourite Norfolk based Sports car manufacturer/engineering consultancy
He drove the car with the stiff mount fitted and described it as “not being a road car”
SteveB
Uldis/Steve,
I looked at www.pipercams.co.uk but did not find a 1444 cam is it one of these:
ARKBP285M, 2800-7800, 276 deg, 276 deg, 11.18mm, 11.13mm, 108 deg, 110 deg
ARKBP300M, 3200-8000, 280 deg, 280 deg, 11.23mm, 11.18mm, 106 deg, 110 deg
ARKBP320M, 4500-8500, 290 deg, 280 deg, 11.68mm, 11.18mm, 101 deg, 108 deg
ARKBP330M, 5000-9000, 288 deg, 284 deg, 12.32mm, 11.81mm, 101 deg, 108 deg