Heads & Rust

......... Is what has been taking up the vast majority of our time just lately.

One 8v and three 16v integrale heads, one Peugeot/Citroen 8v 1.6, one Toyota 1.8 16v and a Toyota 2ltr 16v turbo have either gone or are in the process of being improved.

The Toyota 2ltr head is going on a very high powered (circa 900bhp) engine powering a road legal drag racing MR2. I've had this head in the shop before when it was used on a lower spec engine, it got high lift cams, under-bucket shims and only very light porting work. The head needs relieving around where the cam lobes spin as there isn't enough clearance for 11+mm lift and the OE top mounted shims are known for jumping out to say hello at high RPMs with equally high lift cams.
The head flows well (read: They are totally OTT and fecking huge*) from a max CFM perspective straight out of the box, hence it only needing light shaping of the ports. Infact you could (as I proved) fill back up a large amount of these inlets and re-do them picking up both velocity and CFM on the way, but as usual it's down to (lack of) budget to go down this route.
Last time out the engine saw a rather frightening (in a mid engined RWD car) 740bhp before the block cracked as they are well known for doing so at this power level.
*The reason for this is the factory fitted, but now redundant 'T-VIS' system which blocks off one of the 8 separate inlet manifold tracts.

Now you would of thought the owner Dougy would have been quite relieved for this monster to die (I think his wife was), but no, he's back for more with a stronger 2.2 block and crank! We've also found out that there are 2 different generations of this head and the port shape and angle changed quite a bit, some careful scrutinising and measuring has been going on to decide which way to go, early head has bigger taller ports, but more downdraft, later has smaller fatter D shaped ports, but less down draft.....
The suitable head will then receive larger valves with seat and throat work to suit.
When it's done I won't be going out for a drive in it.

One 16v Fiat/Lancia head went to Bastiaan in the Netherlands for his Punto 2ltr conversion, another is going to the U.S. for Jorge on the top of a 2.2ltr engine we are building for him and the final staying in the UK to replace one in an integrale badly damaged by cambelt failure/slippage. Remember to keep your eye on your belts fellas, genuine Sodium filled exhaust valves are now around £80 each. Times that by 8 and you've got what is only the start of some hefty repair bill.





Apart from the integrale heads my favourite from the above is the Saxo 8v VTR head, it responds so well when you re-shape it in all the right places that it is a joy to work on, check out the graph below, this little engine is going to fly, good in valve flow all the way up the scale from low lifts to high:






In these pics one port and one combustion chamber have been given the treatment in comparison to the one next to it, initially and visually the difference is minimal, as you can see no cowboy 'Opening out' 'hogging out' or stupid polishing of the ports has been going on, the outward differences are very subtle, but the figures aren't.





Up on the lift earlier in the year were too pretty rusty 16vs, obviously no rare sight, but both owners and us happy to see them given some more life. We don't plate over rust like many do:

It's cut out to as far back as discussed with the customer and replaced with new metal, fully welded, painted and wax injected from behind.

I've also been working with a local CNC router genius on the Stage 2 gearbox strengthening so we can offer that as a service too. What we are finding on strip down of the gearbox is that the holes which hold the bearings for the two shafts of gears have gone oval, not just a bit, but quite a lot. Under power these are pushed further apart until the mesh on the gears is reduced and teeth begin to ping off:

You can see below how both the gearbox and the spectacle plate we are making are mounted side by side so the machine cuts one after the other for a perfect fit.

1st example of a new design of ex-manifold:

Despite instructions that it be made from smooth flowing mandrel bends it came like that so I put some EGT sensors in it, had it ceramic coated and mounted it on Project Sausage, at least we can use it as a test piece as PS had practically blown my old Evocars manifold to bits.


And finally.......

To finish off this chapter is a nice way someone has found to get a car to pass an MOT test when it fails on lack of rear braking effort. Strip down the bias valve, linkage, free it off and re-assemble? Nah, just throw money at it.

And hope it sticks in the right place!

Paying by Paypal for free

At Deltaparts we don't mind taking Paypal payments as long as you can send them for free or you pay the fee, here is a guide on how to do it:

When you are in your account click on 'Send Money' at the top of the page, this opens another page.

Fill in our email address (the usual one)

Fill in the amount (if you want to give us a bit extra its ok)

This is the important bit:



Click on the box which reads 'Personal', then click 'Gift'.
After that click send and it is done.

Sometimes it asks if you want to pay the fee, please click this.

Thankyou.

Happy New Year

Seasonal Greetings and Happy New Year to all our friends, suppliers and customers.


It's been another busy year here and I really do sincerely wish a huge thanks and all the best to everyone who has supported us, shown patience where needed, shared chat, ideas and pictures etc. Without you the integrale community wouldn't be what it is and we wouldn't be here helping it continue either.

Anyhow, that's enough End Of Year/Seasonal schmuck, let's get down to biz:


About a month ago now we took Project Sausage by the scruff of the neck and bolted on some hardcore goodies, as you may have read earlier the engine was built strongly, but whilst quick hasn't been taxed much really.

Until now....

Into the mix went a pair of full race cams, a GT3076R, 76mm downpipe to match up to the existing system, a new intake manifold/plenum, bigger injectors and an uprated clutch to hold the power. That makes it sound simple, but many long hours were worked to make everything fit; Gone is the ABS, the brake and power steering reservoirs have moved, pipes re-routed, new throttle and cable fitted, more bits of bodywork hacked off here and there. Off it went to Darren for mapping and it came back like a snarling beast. It was a fast road car, now it's come of age and is a track/race car, gone are any road manners, given over in exchange for outright power and it's very loud even with two silencers.
The front suspension arms had the old worn mushy rubber bushes burned out and I turned up some self-lubricating nylon ones with bronze bushes and pressed them in, zero movement now! I knocked up a simple brace and bolted it across the lower subframe to help with the extreme pressure it was about to be under, these are ok for the track, but no good for the road as they are too low and easily hit.

So it was off to a trackday at Donington with a few other Coupes, the morning was pretty dire as the track surface was very slippery due to it being cold, damp and fuel drop out from the very close landing aircraft and I had my Nangkang Ditchfinders fitted, but once a bit of breeze picked up, clouds cleared and the sun came out the track soon dried and we were going ok and soon putting in steady 1.58 lap times.
We were black flagged by Donington staff and congratulated by fellow Coupe owners several times for excessive noise (it does sound bloody good at full chat!), I think the limit was 97 and we were at 105Db, after Roger put in a few slow laps in order for it to pass I figured that something had to be done so Josh and Rogers lads got busy with an old paint can, tin snips and a large hose clip. They cut out a section of the tin, wrapped it around the tail pipe and held it on with the clip. It directed most* of the noise downwards and did the trick, we passed every sound detector at full throttle and were soon matching a Corvette which had a 430bhp V8 in it.

*Most, um well some escaped upwards and melted a hole in the bumper, but never mind eh.

I wasn't very happy with the power output, it was lacking a bit, especially at the bottom end and very peaky so when we got back I altered the cam timing, it's much better and we still need to get the map tweaked, then get a power figure. With the current damp and slippery Winter road conditions it spins the wheels when it hits peak torque in every gear apart from 5th so it's pretty useless. If anyone wants to buy it they are welcome to it, otherwise it will probably be put into the integrale track car where the 4wd will do it more justice.
I'm currently building something a bit different for it with some more ground breaking trick head mods, this time we'll concentrate on large amounts of torque and a very road driveable engine.


As the car is running a re-ground crank I thought it interesting to take an oil sample for testing by our suppliers Millers. They scientifically test the oil and check the metal content, here are the results below;

Everything looks ok so far (very low metal content) as the oil had done 4000 road miles and one trackday, plenty at 8500rpm and with lots of power, time will tell more, but it's also a testament to their oil as this was pronounced as fine and could have stayed in the engine even longer - a big thanks to them too for showing me around their lab.






These quite sad pics could be the start of a rather ambitious project for Irishman Andrew, it was caught up in a house fire. Rather you than me and the best of luck with that one Andrew!

Nowt as queer as folk

Is a Yorkshire term and there are certainly plenty of odd people around in salubrious downtown Batley who will brighten up your day with their antics. One particular local lowlife parked his car outside whilst visiting my neighbour before annoying me.
He then realised said neighbour had locked up and gone home with his car keys in his workshop. "Why don't we ring him and he will come back and get your keys for you?" Says I.
"No, i'll just hotwire it" he says...

So he borrows some tools and sets about his ignition barrel and steering column for half an hour before firing it up and realising that he can only go forwards and backwards due to the steering lock. As he can't break it on his own he asks me to come and help him, so he gets behind the wheel and I get hold of it from the passenger seat. We get hold and start to turn, as neither of us are lightweights it starts to revolve surprisingly easily.


Until it snaps clean off in his hands.
The shocked look on his face was somehow made even better by the fact that the airbag light on the now completely disconnected wheel is still flashing as if to say "Help me!".
Laugh? Well this guy's a hot headed Eastern European criminal, so I tried not to for three seconds, but still my bottom lip began to tremble and I just couldn't stop, before long I was rolling on the floor laughing with aching sides and tears rolling down my cheeks, I don't think I've laughed so much in ages.
I was still chuckling as he borrowed even more tools, sharpened the steering column like a pencil and bashed the wheel on tight with a lump hammer before attempting to weld it on and driving off.
If there is a lesson to be learned here it's that old Renault 19s aren't very easy to steal...

Stuff

The UK integrale community has taken a big hit in recent years due to the recession, sadly a lot of cars (mainly the Evo model) have gone back to Europe. Over 75% of our sales have been abroad and it's always great to chat with people around the globe. According to the statistics 116 different countries have visited the site and we have sent parts to many far away places such as Tahiti, Reunion Island, Cuba, Hong kong, Japan, Istanbul and even Wigan - amazing where integrales turn up!

Put yourself on the map here: http://mapservices.org/myguestmap/map/turbodelta
Thanks to Turbodelta (Sandro) for setting this up.

Vote here: http://motornaut.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/audi-quattro-vs-lancia-delta-integrale-vem-var-vast/


A few dramatic pics here sent by F16 pilot Niko, his family is originally from Greece, he lived in America, but is now residing with his highly modified 16v in Japan (which is more top secret and Highly Classified than these aircraft).

In an earlier chapter of the Blog I mentioned Eriks racing Evo after we sent him one of our uprated rear ARBs, he emailed recently to say the handling & grip was much improved, so much so he won all 4 of his recent races - well done to him! It's good to see an integrale still winning, other competitors included an Alfa GTV, BMW M3, 4 Ferrari 348 Challenge cars amongst many others, although the closest car to him was another Lampredi powered Lancia - a naturally aspirated Thema.







We recently had another Evo in for chassis strengthening, it had no less than 5 stress cracks within a 1m square area which was around the usual O/S door frame. You might want to know how we strengthen them without putting a cage in (you might not, but I'm gonna tell you anyway) - for ultimate strength you can't beat a cage, but in a road going car most people want something a bit more subtle so we weld in hidden strengthening plates. I worked out some while back how to test which one did which and by how much it affected the car. I loosened the door striker plate and shut the door, this allowed the door the freedom to move up and down as it wanted. I then put a strip of masking tape on either side of the front and rear door gap and drew a straight line across the two. Jacking the car up in certain places causes the door to move and this can now be measured, the worst cars can have 6mm of movement here.

Then the plates are welded in, every time a new one is fitted the same test is done and the result recorded, bit by bit the movement gets less and less - as you can see in the pic it goes from 5.5 to 4, then to 2. Small numbers, but consider that alone is nearly a 60% improvement from three plates and a bar. Some plates do more than others and in different areas, but combined they all make a big difference. This is only a very simple static test and the car is treated quite gently, can you imagine the amount of movement which goes on when you chuck the car into a corner or over some bumps? Quite frightening.

New in recently (and on a similar note) are these front strengthening bars:

The idea originates from Japan, but I wasn't happy with the design as owners of these had reported problems with them hitting 3" exhausts, also wherever there is a bend you are going to have flex, so I redesigned them to avoid both of these issues. These are a one-size-fits-all to send out, we have on occasion made and fitted bespoke ones to cars with modified suspension here in the workshop, you can them make the clearances much tighter especially the one between them and the road! I tested them similarly to the procedure mentioned earlier and they do help the door aperture movement, but moreover they stop the chassis rail flex which leads to this crack here:



How do they work? The engine which is quite far out front bounces up and down on the chassis, this is allowed to move because of the rubber bushes in the suspension, these compress and expand, the chassis rail flexes on its weakest point and eventually cracks. The extra width, weight and grip of an Evo just makes things worse.
If you wanted to add something to your car purely for comedy value then you could get one of these:



To hang your washing from whilst driving to work, or to keep that loose headlining from dropping on your head? Who knows, but what a quality item. Well that's all from me folks till Christmas I reckon, unless I get immobilised by something I don't think I'll find time to publish much till then, but the next issue will have pics of a new ready to fit chassis strengthening plate kit, more readers pics, restoration work and the latest on Project Sausage,
TTFN.

Recession bites deep

So there I was doing the shopping at Tescos when I noticed large amounts of Sunflower oil on special offer at £1 per litre.

Cheaper than diesel.....

And the Deltaparts van has seen better days, but still plods along so I bought a trolley full of the stuff and tipped it into the fuel tank. Apart from it now smelling like the chimney round the back of the local takeaway it goes great!
High in Polyunsaturated fats you know, very healthy....

July Snapshot

To start with I would like to say thankyou to the people who tell me they enjoy reading this blog, i'm glad I'm not talking to myself. :-)
Apologies too to all who don't get mentioned here, sometimes we get snowed under and I quite often don't get chance to photograph and write up everything.
Also it's good to see more customers from the South of England this year, I know the time spent and the cost of petrol is a killer, but we aren't far from the M1 and have always got a good stock of Jaffa cakes.


Secondly I have some bad news and it's about our Fiat Coupe.

We lent it to a customer


and he decided to clean and polish it.


This kind of behaviour will not be tolerated, I mean, we were supposed to be going for the street-sleeper Rat-look! All those years of muck and er, patina gone down the drain. Dammit, now I'm sorely tempted to bring it in the workshop and do some cutting out of rust and bodywork (now I can see it), I've already got some better rear light cups sprayed up and a carbon fibre bonnet made for it....





This maybe of interest to someone, probably of no use whatsoever, but nonetheless interesting.....






It is a four cylinder, Lampredi based, block with piston oil squirters, no balancer shafts, and a total CC of 1700. The crank seems to be cast and is 5kg lighter than an integrale item which fits too. The bore and stroke are both smaller, although the bore could be machined out to make a square engine if needed (although down on torque, it would rev very well), a 16v head fits and it is already bored & tapped for M12 bolts/studs.
Piston height, rod length and gudgeon pin are different to integrale and as I mentioned earlier probably of no use, the only possible one I could think of is if you race in a series where a turbocharged 1700 - 1800 cc is the maximum allowed. If you want it it's yours for what I paid for it - with my inquisitive nature I just couldn't resist opening it up it to find out what it was all about!






No Sooner had we got Steve's engine built, fitted and fired up, but Gabriel brought his 8v in for a thorough suspension overhaul and some other jobs. Nice timing! I really enjoy building engines and it is even better when on occasion we get to fit them and get them mapped too, to follow the job through from start to finish is most satisfying and ensures 100% customer satisfaction.

Gabriel took the Coupe and treated his wife to a weekend touring the Yorkshire Dales while we treated his car to a full set of coilovers, Poly bushes, complete oil changes and a few other bits and pieces.

The uprated rear anti-roll bars were back from heat treatment and powder coating, one immediately went to Erik in Norway for his track and competition Evo:














Also now in stock are the rear lateral suspension arms, I decided to go for bright Zinc plate for a finish as they are very exposed on the car and pick up stone chips quite easily - you (or we) can then paint or powder coat them any colour you wish.

A couple of pics of Steves Evo1, they didn't make many in 'Giallo Ferrari', it is a very slightly lighter shade of yellow compared to the Evo2 'Ginestra' which I must say I do prefer as it looks less sickly golden. It has just had a full engine build, massive brakes and coilover suspension fitted, he is now running it in.







The sharp eyed Brits reading this will have noted the 'N' plate, it's a strange one this as it is older than an Evo 2, but the plate suggests it is newer - this causes some discussion and raised eyebrows at MOT time as the cut off point for CAT equipped cars is before this registration pre-fix here in the UK (it doesn't and shouldn't have a Cat) - it was originally imported from Italy where it had work done on it by an outfit called 'Carboni Tuning' and did have originally a strange looking aftermarket 'Home-made' ECU and other various bits of odd wiring, hidden switches, relays, fuses and something weird bolted to the fuel filter. Sadly Carboni didn't seem interested in any communication so most of it was taken off many years ago by someone else who couldn't work it out when it started to malfunction.





This is one of the many things which makes these cars interesting to work on, the aformentioned 8v of Gabriels had been factory fitted with a full pleated(?) grey leather interior and small bucket style seats bearing what looked like the Maserati crown on them, all this (and more) was specced by the original first owner, it would be great to reunite original owners with their cars, I bet there would be some smiles and great tales to tell.


Recommended listening here:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfeyUGZt8nk

Bonkers, but Swede Mason has got some talent. ;-)

If you think that is bad don't try Cyriaks 'Cows, cows, cows'.....






Free counters

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.















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.



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:




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.



















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.




















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.






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:





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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