Saturday 25 June 2011

June 2011

More flowbench stuff, K-Sport brakes, visiting customer cars, Coupe and other various ramblings



I don't know if there is much new or out of the ordinary to report just recently so here is a mix of old and new, many happy customers have come and gone.


Some days it is difficult to shut our small workshops door, on this particular evening Steves Evo which was in for its new engine fitted was inches from it and above it another local fella Anthonys pristine 16v. When I say pristine I really mean p r i s t i n e, on top, underneath, inside and out this is one of, if not the most superb unmolested examples in the country, not a restoration, but a superbly well looked after original car. It lives in the garage while the M5 and Bentley are outside in daily use as they are more disposable, I dunno what the fellow Brits or directors of the Bavarian Motor Works would say to that, but it made perfect sense to us when we were working on it as it was a joy, If you are looking for the best and this ever comes up for sale trust me it will be worth it - at any price.

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New products we are working on just recently are uprated rear anti-roll bars and rear lateral arms, I have run and tested these for some years on the 16v track car so it was time to make some for others to buy.











I've been working on four 16v heads, (albeit one was for myself!) two were for (shock) British race cars and one for a Swedish track car. All feature our trojan valve guides, nimonic valves, underbucket shims and the latest innovative port work which sees 170 BPF on the Inlet etc.

You might wonder how we get to know so much about these heads, well it's not from guessing. Below is a pic of three generations of Fiat/Lancia ports from 8v, through 16v to 20vt and in the background a slice of a 16v cylinder head, see how the downdraught angle of the multivalve heads is much greater than that of the early 8v and the skinny looking 20vt ports when compared to the 16v - understandably so as the same total literage (2ltrs) is had shared by more cylinders, velocity is all important and there is a threshold as to how far you can go before the low down performance becomes noticeably lazy.
The smaller the cross sectional area the higher the velocity will be.

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So much is learned from doing this it is well worth the effort, you notice a lot more when looking at the ports from a different perspective. Measurements and calculations all have their place, but for me you just can't beat taking a good old (gander)look at something to see how it works, there are those who need a rule book and those who just do it naturally.
The head we sliced open shows amongst many other things the proximity of the water cooling galleries so you don't go through when porting for some of the extreme high end stuff we do sometimes.

I don't do a lot of 8v heads and they are pretty unresponsive and flow much less in comparison to their 16v brothers, this is due to the short port (floor), less downdraught angle and awkward very late and abrupt short side radius, none of which you can do much about without major re-engineering of the head.
When I looked at one of the port moulds we did for this head it was interesting to note how the port was biased to promote swirl in the combustion chamber, this is where a two valve per piston head has some advantage over a multivalve head.

Also of some interest could be this:

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It is a clear copy and working model of a 16v head, it can be fitted with valves and put onto the flowbench with traces of string, smoke or even coloured dye drawn through it to examine exactly what does go on in there. It is 'Mk1' and we will create another with some better features and more clarity soon.

We have pulled smoke through 16v heads before and it is quite fascinating, you might note how we also use a solid radiused inlet piece for repeatable results as plasticene can be very unreliable - you can actually manipulate your figures with different shapes and sizes and it has been known to come loose at some of the higher test pressures we run at.

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We have always used the correct Lancia tool to press in valve guides, but on heads with very high lift cams we like to push them in just a little more to prevent interference with the valve stem oil seal. This meant making a new tool.




I knew that length of old Merc ARB would come in useful for something! Harder than Hells doorstep, the swarf came off in unbreakable helical strings of bright blue steel - worth the effort though as the tool works very well and there is no distortion on the new guides at all.



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The Coupe continues to prove itself quick and reliable, it is now fitted with a large front mounted intercooler and the huge rad which we had made. The rad has the oil cooler integrated into it, this means the oil is cooled in Summer, but warmed in Winter when it is difficult to get it up to operating temps.
The BC Racing suspension is proving to be excellent and was tested quite hard along some of North Yorkshires finest stretches of blacktop. The rear dampers have helped massively with the wheel spin problem and cut down on some of the torque steer, the FMIC painted black to protect it and add to the 'Stealth' look.

It is fitted with two accurate digital boost gauges, one at the turbo exit and one in the plenum, this is to monitor and record the amount of time it takes the air to make its way through the system and also shows how long the plenum is in a state of vacuum when the turbo is clearly making pressure.




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More North Yorkshire scenery:




The rock type in North Yorkshire is predominantly Limestone which while adding to the dramatic and beautiful scenery also helps to create other oddities such as these waterfalls which have been coated in a build up of the deposits of Calcium Carbonate from the Limestone, it creates a material called 'Tufa' and the on waterfall to the left it has created a full wall of the stuff and there is a cave now behind it.
At Mother Shiptons cave they hang everyday items from a waterfall where they slowly become coated and look like they are made from stone.








































Simons new K-Sport brakes fitted behind the standard wheels perfectly:












































New 8 weight crank for a customers engine build:


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Another local car which was formerly owned by the fella behind 'Betacar', hence the number plate, sadly not trading any more.



Really the plate should read 'Lucky' as the cam belt had slipped several teeth (so many that the owner couldn't start it), but the valves had not hit the pistons, so all in all a good result.

I recently went to see the film 'Senna', I say 'film', although really more of a documentary and whilst everyone knows the outcome it was still a good watch with some quite chilling footage, especially of Roland Ratzenberger coming to halt slumped dead in the cockpit of the remains of his car.
One of those films that when you get to the end and the lights are turned up no-one jumps up and makes for the door, but simply sits and watches the final snippets of footage and the end credits.














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Welcome to the Deltaparts Blog, here you will find, well, anything which is on my mind I guess, but mainly things to do with the Lancia Delta integrale and in particular anything to do with my business, Deltaparts. It will be a bit irregular as it's not every day (or even week) that something worth mentioning happens. I would like to try and make it interesting - at least to some people anyhow, but also hopefully accessible and readable for the average 'man on the street' so I won't bore you with loads of large words, bombastic overblown sentences or technical jargon. I will describe on here how lots of the parts that we sell came about as there isn't room on the website ( www.deltaparts.co.uk ) to explain. I hope you enjoy reading it as I do writing it, when something becomes a chore you know it's time to stop doing it....