No need for that Bernard i will take your word for it i only checked it with textcheck which is a mobile based car data check system. text, supercheck then the reg to number 88600 and you get your result, it checks hpi, police computer and dvlc. (i have known it to be wrong sometimes so wouldnt worry about it)
[image]> http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v225/Mad20v/Tuner%20GP/Broken.jpg> [/image]
What happened here?
How come nobody is talking about this? (I’m sure if this was my engine many people would be jumping up and down slagging Simon)
I know you don’t like to visit SELOC Uldis, so here’s a cross-post of SteveB’s account of the day. Hope Steve doesn’t mind.
What can I say - I’ve got some [censored] amazing mates :up
Lend of an Engine - Dave (Skeggs)
Fetching of the manifold - Bri (Drought) and Dave
Removing and fitting - Jez Braker, Dave (Guglielmi MotorSport), Steve (Guglielmi) Bri, Dave…plus others I’m sure
Engine hoist - Karl (Paton) of Emerald
Fresh cam belt and some injectors, map checking - Dave (Andrews)
Loan of crank position Sensor - Niall (Feldman)
Genuis idea of replacing the broken crank position sensor with an indicator plug - George (Zaris)
Food - Jen from Guglielmi Motorsport
Car cleaning - Geoff (owner of the winning Audi Elise)
Postitive encouragement and support - everyone
Really hope I haven’t forgotten anyone there!
So, I arrived on Sat for the test day and SteveG went out for a first feel of the the car at about 2:30. On his third lap I watched with horror as he came through Russell on fire.
Fireman Scouse did a brilliant job and the car was saved but early indications were bad for the engine when someone picked a valve up off the undertray…
Some concellation was that Steve said the car was (and I quote) “[censored] quick”! Setup was excellent, but the brakes weren’t quite right. He thought it would be good for 1.17s, maybe 1.16s.
I’d joked with Dave Skeggs about him lending me his engine for the last Gurston Down hillclimb championship round on 10th Sept should anything happen to mine at the Tuner GP. I gave him a call once all the extinguisher foam has been cleaned off the car and he was a top man and said the lend was no problem.
Then about half an hour later he texted Bri and myslef to say that he and Jez were all set to bring the engine and do a late one to get it fitted!!!
After checking that everyone was up for it I called him at 4:30. And so it started!
Off I went to Halfords to buy what bits we’d need and to pick up an engine hoist, leaving Bri and Dave (Guglielmi Motorsport) to whip the clam off and get the engine ready for removal.
Out the engine came and what a mess! It looks like a rod let go on the small end. Hmm I thought, “Shame I never used steel rods…”.
At about 8:30 Skeggs and Jez arrived with the engine and as work progressed on swapping various parts over we noticed that my cam belt cover must have injested a stone at some point looking at the holes and marks in the belt, and similar had happened to Skeggs’ belt.
So we needed a fresh belt - fortunately Dave Andrews was arriving on Sunday at 8:30am and had one in stock!
Next problem was the manifold. At about 10pm someone noticed that the secondaries had been battered and holed. So a 4 hour drive (which actaully took far longer due to the illegal Rave that caused a big holdup on the M11) was needed to go and fetch Skeggs manifold
We worked until 12 getting my light clutch and flywheel fitted to Skeggs’ engine and the gearbox on.
Morning came and at 6am Skeggs and Bri set off to collect the manifold and Jez and I carried on getting the car and engine ready for DVA’s arrival. Belt was fitted and then the engine/box went in.
At about 11:30 I got a text from Skeggs to say that he and Brian would be leaving after they’d watched the Hollyoaks omnibus - how I laughed! He was joking They got back at about 12:30.
We were ready to start the engine not that long after they got back, but found that the loom hadn’t faired that well, but lots testing and rewiring, plus the clever suggestion from George on where to source a spare crank position sensor plug got the engine running.
But we still had a lot left to do.
Shortly after starting it I noticed that the clutch pedal was way too soft. Whilst we were half pissed and three qaurters asleep trying to line the clutch up by eye, we’d used a bar on the release arm to release the clutch to help get the gearbox dowels to line up with the block. This had bent the release arm. Some more bending and the use of an adjustable slave cylinder arm got the clutch working again.
Next issue was the alternator a) only working at high rpm and b) sparking badly. We decided to run with a big battery and took the alternator off.
After a quick test drive and after a leak check the clam and wing were fitted with about 20 mins left before the end of the afternoon session.
Almost exactly 24 hours after we decided to do the swap we sent Steve G out and on his first hot lap he claimed 5th, did one more and took a couple of tenths off then came in.
1:17.20 is a fairly respectable time for a 233bhp Elise running on 048Rs…estimated weight 640kg.
Skeggs went out in it next but the timing gadget had stopped working.
When he came back in Steve went back out with a fresh timing gadget, but with the undertray/diffuser fitted to see if we could get a few tenths with the reduced drag - the rear clam’s parachute effect can’t be good for lap times and appeared to be making the rear less stable compared to Saturday!
But with the undertray on some left over oil found its way to the exhaust manifold, smoking badly, so Steve took the very sensible choice of not trying and came back in.
We whipped the undertray off but by the time he went out again the chequered flag was being waved.
Skeggs’ engine was almost as powerful as mine and we fitted my light flywheel and 6 speed box to it. Its a shame the car never ran with the full areo pack - undertray, diffuser, roof and coupe panel. It might have made the few tenths difference needed to get 3rd.
But after all the hard work, just getting a time probably made me happier than Massa winning his first F1 race.
A big big thanks to everyone who helped and I can’t recommend Guglielmi Motorsport highly enough if you need work doing to your car!
Lessons learnt:
- Steel rods are good
- Fatigue life should be considered
- Rebuild interval on my spec of engine is just slightly less than the 9600 miles it had covered
- Stella doesn’t help when aligning a clutch by eye
How come nobody is talking about this? (I’m sure if this was my engine many people would be jumping up and down slagging Simon)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think any guarantees were given for Steves race engine.
What happened here?
How come nobody is talking about this? (I’m sure if this was my engine many people would be jumping up and down slagging Simon)
Nobody talking about it? eh? It was the highlight of the weekend.
Yes, if your engine had gone I’d have questioned Mr Erlands claim that it’ll never go wrong.
As it was, Steves engine was built by Steve, and as such carries no warranty and he made no claims about reliability other than the 9000 miles it had covered without any bore ovalisation/oil use.
In any case, it appears it was simple rod fatigue and he/we pushed the engine too far between rebuilds on the poor old VHPD rods (that had seen a LOT of use before this current engine)
Proof if ever it were needed that all engines can (and likely will, fail).
Bri
Well, first things first, nobody talked bout it other than the posts in this thread, the initial comment about “sorry for steveB” and the pic.
No, I don’t frequent SELOC. Made a point not to.
Second, and this is common to all of the Erland slaggers, his warranty covers HGF and some obvious rebuild mistake if there was any.
We all know that engines don’t last forever and I don’t expect them to.
Steve’s engine has been well used and it shone when it was alive.
Godspeed to the engine.
Although I know that Simon would have an opinion on how it could have been rebuilt, I don’t. In my eyes it has been the most powerful K that I’ve seen running and used hard, so it was just expected.
FWIW, I would expect the same from a Honda, i.e. not be surprised and take it as expected.
Lessons are only worth learning if you can correctly identify the issue.
I like that!
Only just found this thread.
Some points to make.
I know full well that Simon Erland has been digging around trying to find out if Dave Andrews has anything to do with the machine work on my rods. I’ll let the reader decide why he may wish to do that.
I can tell you that Dave didn’t do the work or arrange for it. The work was done at an engine builders local to me.
The rods were of unknown life before I started to use them and they had 10000 miles in my 215bhp/161lbft 1.8K and another 9600 in my 251bhp/170lbft 1.9K.
Sadly, rod replacement was planned for the rebuild at the end of the season.
The engine was stripped this afternoon and the three good bores of the Scholar 1.9k block had no evidence of blow by - so not out of tollerance. And once the engine was run in and mapped, in 9300 miles it used 5L of oil, hardly bad consumption for what can be classed as a race engine that is given a hard time on track and in competition.
Reference the laptime the car managed, as it happens the loan engine was only making 196bhp - the cam timing was foudn to be 185/45 (should have been 125/105) and the fuelign was too lean. That’s what comes of not remembering what fule pressure the loan engine was using and also doing a cam belt swap in limited time and deciding not to re-check the cam timing. If we had have done we wouldn’t have made it out on track.
So to be 4 tenths off the 360bhp Honda Exige, without my roof or undertray fitted, after just two laps, with zero setup time just goes to show that the car would have been in 3rd place for sure given a bit more setup time!
…in 9300 miles it used 5L of oil…
What oil do you use Steve?
Cheers, Ian
Yep and my car could have had first place if it had decent brakes and suspension but its all talk now after the event !! you were fifth and we were third accept it (theres always next year)
I ran it in on some shite mineral oil, then switched to 5W40 Silkolene ProS.
Expensive but well worth it. All the bearings were in excellent condition, as were the bores (apart from the damaged one ).
Say what you like, but I know for a fact that you IM’d persons on this forum digging for information regarding my rods.
Do I need to ask for them to post your messages to get you to admit you’re at fault again?
I can’t see how you can profess to know anything about good engine building given you’ve produced so few - and one of those seized on Emerald’s rollewrs to such an extent that it nearly threw the car off the rollers despite it being strapped down…yet you explain that away as a bolt in the cam cover.
Whatever the fault, it was till a fault with your build and for one who likes to be so condecending I suggest you get your own house in order first before slagging others.
Yep and my car could have had first place if it had decent brakes and suspension but its all talk now after the event !! you were fifth and we were third accept it (theres always next year)
And just to back up further what I have said, here is a post Randy (your car’s Tuner GP driver) made on SELOC:
"Steve B’s car would have kicked my arse if it was running as it should have done, no two ways about it. I still have no fingernails to prove how concerned I was when it finally hit the track, I couldn’t even bring myself to watch! What people need to realise (and probably never will) is that a fast car is about the complete package, not just a mega engine. Steve’s car is light, powerful, low CofG and has had the handling developed over several years of successful competition. The winning car is of a similar breeding and testament to Mssr Guglielmi’s talents, both as an engineer and as a driver. 1:14.4 on road tyres is simply awesome .
My steed was a standard road car with a bigger engine. Thats it. And I think its very fair to compare the time I did in that with Mid-engined as it would have happily met the power to weight regs .
Would be interested to see what could have been done with Christians car (the one I used last year) which I have subsequently done some setup work on and has the most powerful engine of any of the Elises I’ve driven and it’s soooo tractable. "
Steve i think you may be taking it a bit too seriously, i only entered the tuner gp for a laugh with no preparation whatsoever on the car, unlike yourself and the other teams who did lots of prep before the event and even built cars specifically to win it.
We didnt even turn up for the practice session the day before !!!
Chill out and show us how good it is next year
I only entered the tuner gp for a laugh with no preparation whatsoever on the car
Chris, slight drift, but I hear you declined a recent invitation by Maddog to go out as a passenger in your own car with him driving.
Sage wisdom methinks (from past experience)
Did you go out with Randy? He can pedal a car a bit (lot) too!
I did go for a couple of laps with maddog in his own car that was enough for me
Didnt get chance to go out with Randy either but yes he can drive a car
I did go for a couple of laps with maddog in his own car that was enough for me
LOL. I did two trackdays with Dave in my car. They are still trying to get the stains out of my race suit. Actually it was hugely helpful to my driving after I saw what could be done. One of my friends has recently accused me of having had my fear glands removed. He should pop out with Dave! Everything I do is in slow motion by comparison.