Deltaparts Developement car

Currently reckoned to be the quickest 16v in the country is our long suffering developement car. It was never intended to be much special, bought as an abandoned project a few years ago when nothing more than stock apart from a partly fitted cage. Every panel on it is a different shade of Rosso 155, but it's relatively rust free and just refuses to die despite us never re-building the engine and it running well over 360bhp on standard internals - a testomony to strength of the Fiat/Lancia Twin cam.








It's been quite enjoyable just to buy someone elses quality part or design and build your own, bolt them on and measure the results, it has got a bit out of hand though and I think a new engine will be completed and fitted sometime this year, more power will be easy - just bolt on a bigger turbo, although if we have time it would be better to do some accompanying mods too. The old 16v has proved a few theorists wrong. Theories smashed were that you won't get stock rods and pistons to cope with over 300bhp, large intercoolers cause lag and that there is no way you will get that amount of power from the stock sized Garret T3 (this output I believe is a world first).

After studying and modifying naturally aspirated engines I applied the same techniques to the turbocharged Lampredi Twin-cam, the basic school of thought here is just as simple: Make the passages which carry air able to carry more, then match it with the equivalent increase in fuel. If you never lose sight of this simple rule you won't fail and if you want maximum efficiency then examine every single restriction and improve it. It really isn't difficult. So how did I go about this?
Well, going backwards from the 3" exhaust, through the equal length ceramic coated tubular manifold into the cylinder head which was gasflowed in house, controlled with bespoke high lift cams we move on to a matched and blended intake manifold with bigger injectors, ported throttle body, 3" intake pipework to the specially designed non restrictive downflow intercooler. Before that comes the stock sized T3 turbo (apart from 360' bearing, staggered oil seal and re-shaped/blended housings) and finally drawn through a rather large and properly sized K&N air filter.
Everything is controlled by a Motec ECU and the engine cooled by an aluminium radiator which incorporates the oil cooler in the same unit.
Ok, there is the occasional slight trade secret here and there in that mix, but there are the basics of it, sound simple? Pretty much so I think, just good old fashioned tuning theory, nothing more. The secret to keeping an engine in one piece is no restrictions, a cool intake charge and a damn good map.

Sadly when the car was mapped we didn't realise we had a small hole in a boost hose, this prevented the engine from receiving the full amount of pressure so we never knew what its genuine output was, you can see the torque and the boost drop off on the graph below. The rolling road we were on had just been recalibrated following it being flooded out in a storm!









Would I recommend anyone push stock engine internals to these limits? Certainly not, this is just an old engine which we bolted some goodies onto to see what they would do, we had to do it this way to prove they worked. If we started from scratch with a whole host of new bits and pieces how would we know what was working well and what wasn't? By building it up this way we know and if the old engine blew it wouldn't be any problem, it owes us nothing.




The suspension is quite special, it features the first of a new generation of Intrax inverted coilovers all round which were built by Intrax and then dialled in specifically on the car by company owner and long time successful circuit racer Hank Thuis, I took it over there for them to work on it and they did a great job.

The front ARB has been shortened to increase its strength, drop links added which connect it to the strengthened suspension arms. A castor kit was also made and fitted. At the rear it features GrpA style transverse suspension arms, diff cradle, lower brace and a 19mm anti-roll bar, I would like to make some forward facing diagonal braces to the front (from the diff cradle to the cills) to finish of the rear and eradicate any movement.

The handling and grip need to be felt to be believed, front to rear traction 'slippage' is controlled by a viscous coupler which we had replenished with new fluid of a higher torque rating, the way it sticks to the tarmac is amazing, understeer is practically non-existant. There are still the Polybushes to get rid of as they are now the weak link, a sensitive driver (not me!) can feel the movement and there are witness marks at the rear where you can see it, some solid bearings will be fitted here this year. What is also helping the car handle is the Sparco cage, it stiffens the shell massively, this along with lightweight composite wings, bootlid and bonnet ensures the suspension does its work properly.
Currently being tested on the car is an aerodynamic front undertray, with more products being designed and made right now.

Engine from Hell, balancer shafts and other bits and pieces.....

The car came in just needing 'A few bits of finishing off' following an engine rebuild by some expert (Note: Not Lancia specialist). On a brief road test it didn't drive too well and when on the lift in the workshop an anonymous knocking started.... After draining off the nice glittery metallic oil, the first thing to come off was the sump pan to reveal lots of tiny pieces of metal which weren't attached to anything, I noted that the sump pan had a dent in it with a nice imprint of the oil pick up gauze on the inside.



Possible cause of oil starvation? Yes I think so.


On removing the bearing caps all the shell bearings were completely shot. After conferring with the owner It was agreed that I remove and strip down the engine to assess it and more delights were revealed: Scored bores, pistons, crank journals and oil pump, various bits missing from the external of the engine such as strengthening plates, spacer bobbins, bolt heads snapped off: Silicone sealer oozing out from the mating surfaces of various components, second hand gaskets, cambelt practically hanging off:



Some old piece of water pipe from another car with the wrong angle on it was hardly going to let the cooling water flow very well.



One of the blanking bungs for the gearbox was badly mangled and rolling up and down the dashboard, why this had been removed we'll never be entirely sure, to fill the gearbox with oil maybe? Either way it never made it back to where it previously lived as a bit of rag had been stuffed in there instead.

Best of all, one lobe from each of the cams partially missing. Only just worn like this? Nope, the corresponding shim was about as thick as my house doorstep so the builder must or should have known. Apart from having a few stripped threads the head looked ok, although some muppet had replaced the Sodium filled valves with Stainless steel ones more suited to a naturally aspirated engine. Apart from the basic block and head the engine had been reduced to scrap.
The block had been painted quite nicely though.

After much more conferring, a spec was agreed on and the task of rebuilding it properly began. Basically it was to be running stock power for now, but with uprated components built into the block so it could be safely modified by 'bolt ons' at a later date when funds allowed.

New steel rods and forged pistons were specced, a checked good used crank had its journals polished, core plugs knocked out and was left in the dip & strip tank for a few hours before being high pressure washed and dried off. It was mated to a new steel flywheel, paddle clutch with high pressure plate and sent off for balancing along with the pistons and rods. I have found the OE cranks to be quite well balanced from the factory and only needing a bit of a tickle here and there on the counterweights to make them perfect, they do however need all the other components bolting to them and balancing properly by someone who has the right equipment and knows how to use it. The steel flywheels we sell are already balanced, but clutch pressure plates rarely are and need a fair amount of attention. Whilst that was being done the block was being decked, bored and honed. I specify that the boring and honing is done with a deck plate, main bearing caps in place and torqued down to the correct settings. For the little extra time and effort involved you might aswell try and get things as perfect as possible. When all the components were back with us and thoroughly cleaned a dry build was done and all clearances set and checked. It is folly to simply assume that everything has been done properly, isn't worn or will be ok. This calls for a good collection of tools such as bore clock, micrometers, dial gauge, feeler gauges and Plastigauge. Pistons are hand finished by us, ARP bolts used on the new rods. The block also had the balancer shafts removed and all associated oilways etc blocked off with our own kit, much has been discussed about this modification, my thoughts are this:

Balancer shafts

People talk about "2nd order alternating inertial forces" quoting it from the Lancia manual or some online text without knowing exactly what it means, the best explanation I have ever come across is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_shaft

To simplify what they are saying is that in a four cylinder engine the pistons aren't in exactly the opposite places at the same time in the four stroke cycle so can't cancel out the forces caused by each other. There will always be some vibration, but the engine is mounted on floppy rubber bushes so will you feel it? Not really.
As outlined in the aforementioned article, the two litre capacity is borderline size for needing balancer shafts. So the advantage of BS on an otherwise unmodified engine is just singularly to reduce some vibration of a not completely properly balanced production engine and no more.

What about the advantages of removal? Well the centre bearing shells are no longer available and when worn will leak oil reducing the overall oil pressure, removing, blocking these and the other associated oilways off will see a big improvement in oil pressure and reliability.
There is an increase in engine power and response. Servicing is easy and cheaper due to less belts and bearings. Reliability goes up due to increased oil pressure and less moving parts to fail.

Interestingly the balancer shafts changed weight over the years, the last ones used in the Fiat Coupe were different compared to of the early ones in the 8v, this was done by machining more or less out of shaft along its length which must have altered its balance too, I do wonder why...

Knocking out old bearing shells: Pulling in new bungs with appropriate tool: The block was completed with a new oil and water pump The head was stripped, inspected and cleaned as per the block, valves lapped and re-shimmed with some good used cams. There wasn't any point in going overboard with the head as it was going to be replaced with something a bit more fruity in the future. Pretty soon it was finished and ready to go in: Once in, fitted and turned over until we had some oil pressure showing it fired up first time. More 1970s garden-shed tuning then came to light, It was running really rich, the fuel pressure regulator had been tampered with and the pressure was sky high, the boost gauge was also showing 1.2 bar when it should be 1 bar on overboost with the stock chip it had in it, once sorted it ran like a dream, lovely and smooth - vibration? Forget it, do the job properly and you can sling your balancer shafts in the bin.

The guys smile when they came to pick it up made it worthwhile, they plan on running it in then just getting some use out of it on the road and doing some sprints. More modification will follow when needed, but just for now they were happy to get the car back with a good reliable strong bottom end.

Happy New Year.....

......... To all readers.

"The best that can be said for 2009 is that it could have been worse"
Joseph Stiglitz


Indeed, let's hope for a better year in 2010, it's my opinion that the economy has bottomed out and this year will see some slow recovery.
On some other more positive notes after finding time to do some more 'Blogging' this last week I am getting better at loading pics and presenting this Blog in a much more readable manner.
We have some more great products on the way this year so keep following here as they will be introduced with an explanation of all the whys, wheres and whatfors.