Customers cars and other pics

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Well it's been a busy time at DP, pretty much ordinary day to day stuff and sadly too busy to be able to keep up with the blog, but here is a bit of a snap shot in pics.


Frankie Chow from Hong Kong in a great twilight shot with his immaculate 16v:
























Geir Slåstad's stepson slides his Evo around a snowy Norwegian track:

















Chilean Felipes beautiful clean Fiat 125, currently on 8v power, but soon to be upgraded to 16v with a few choice bits and pieces we sent over to help:








Pauls Mk1 Punto gets a 16vt engine:




We supplied the parts and he did the building with a few tips over the phone now and again, lovely clean and neat job - this should be one of the quickest Puntos in the country.........





........... He's going to need it if his Mrs finds out how much he spent on it and sets off after him....


























Frenchman, friend and customer Sebastien Perraud gets down to some serious drifting!



















Having a play around with different exhaust manifold designs with our modelling kit:


















This is what happens to OE cast pistons when they are getting a bit old and overstressed - they start to break down due to fatigue. A good advertisement for forged pistons in a modified engine if ever there was one - it would have made a real mess if it had let go completely, only the crown was holding it together, the crack was very similar around the other side too.



The engine was still running, although down on power due to broken rings, the intake charge was pressurising the crank case and blowing oil out all over the place. Another piston would have given it a further 'budget' lease of life as the bores were unmarked, but not much point really, it will be getting the full treatment and some pretty special components.





A couple of great shots of Australian Tino Lionettis 8v in amongst the other lancias










Time for a break:

















Creme Brulee Sir?

Yeah, even the hallowed Jaffa cake gets put to one side for something a bit more upmarket sometimes. :-)




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Erhards 8v

We have been supplying a few parts for Austrian Erhard Sammers 8v for a few months now, I was quite interested to learn about its history when Erhard mentioned it to me so I asked for more information. It has recently been featured in Autorevue magazine and the pictures (apart from the group shot above which is from Steyr-Daimler-Puch) are property of Ace photographer Andreas Riedmann.
A big thanks to Andreas for letting me post up examples of his excellent photography and to Erhard for writing the following story, It is so well written I have simply re-printed it word for word:




Some interesting facts about my Delta Integrale 8V (1988):

The car was imported from Italy in April 1988 by Steyr-Daimler-Puch-Fahrzeugtechnik. This company, which is situated in the city of Graz in Austria and today is a part of Magna International Inc., developed the 4-wheel-drive-system for the integrale. (On some Rally cars you can still see the small supplier-sponsor-sticker with the logo of the company). There it was part of the test-fleet and used for testing a very sophisticated torque-vectoring-4wd-system. Therefore the car was equipped with a Matter-rollcage and loads of sensors and other testing equipment.




Because in 1988 only cars with a catalytic converter could be registered (Austria and Switzerland, you know...) a special permission had to be given by the governor of the county Styria to register the car. No private person would have been able to get that permission, but for Steyr-Daimler-Fahrzeugtechnik it was a case of 'Higher interest for the country'. And so for sure my car is one of very, very few non-cat-Integrales in Austria.

After the car served its duty at Steyr-Fahrzeugtechnik the car was brought back to road-standard in 1995 and sold to someone, who had absolutely no idea how to treat an integrale and ruined the crankshaft bearings. Which was, from todays point of view, some big luck, because the car could not be destroyed by some 'enthusiast'. The next few years the car spent in a barn in the countryside, after it was bought back by a employee of Steyr-Daimler-Puch-Fahrzeugtechnik, who felt sorry for the car and wanted to bring it back to the road. Well, a little later he started building a house..... and ran out of money for the Integrale-project (but he has a very nice house right now).




At that time I first heard about the car and used the opportunity to buy it. Of course the engine was still broken and many parts of the Integrale where stored in boxes, which stood in and around the car in the barn. Well, then my restoration-project started: The engine and the rebuilding of the car was done by a rally-mechanic and Integrale-Specialist, who also worked for Franz Wittmann, a well known rally-driver in Austria. (He won the World-Championship-Rally in New Zealand in 1987 with a Delta HF 4WD). Everything took longer than I thought, but finally the engine and the car where finished and the car celebrated its comeback on the Austrian roads.

But that wasn’t the end of the - already very long - restoration-story. The car was running very well and I enjoyed it very much, when I discovered some small rust-stains on the back side of the roof, just over the hatch. I showed them to an expert – and could not believe, what he told me: The whole roof had to be replaced, because there was so much rust there (covered with some kind of filler and paint, of course) that it could not be repaired. I wasn’t too happy about that. But the funny thing was, that when I called Lancia Austria, they told me, that they have a Delta-roof in stock! After all those years and for a car, which had not been sold very often in Austria. Hmmm, maybe some other owners needed that spare part, too...

To make a long story short the new roof was put on the car and the whole body was redone by a specialist. He put so much effort in the body-repair and painting, that the car now is in a better shape than when it left the factory – as a friend told me, who knows a lot about italian cars ... and the build-quality there.

Otherwise I left the car in original-state, which I prefer. I just applied some rust-protection (Mike Sander’s) and put some Martini Racing-badges and a Martini-Steering wheel on. But in spring the best part will follow: the stainless-steel-waterpipe from deltaparts.co.uk!

Best Greetings!
Erhard









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Intrax suspension systems, camber and castor angles

When we wanted to use and sell the best suspension systems you can buy we went to Intrax, they didn't have a system so I offered to lend them the 16v to help them develope some.

I took the integrale with me, hopped on a North Sea ferry and met up with fellow Lancisti Michel Van Aggelen. Why? Because he's Dutch and I was in The Netherlands, he knows his country, integrales, suspension and is a friendly helpful kind of fella so was the best man for the job.



We made our way swiftly across the country, stopping briefly for a bite to eat and for Michel to take some pics of windmills.

We got to Intrax at about lunchtime, met up with 'Mr Intrax': Henk Thuis, discussed what we needed and what they could provide.



Henk has been racing some serious cars since 1993, Donkervoort, Alfa, BMW and currently a Porsche 996 which he won with in 2008, came runner up in 2009 and is currently doing well with in 2010.




After a quick tour of their premises which had some interesting Automotive machinery lurking in every corner (and large trophy cabinet)



I left the 'grale with them and it was back across the country in Michels 8v (well, you can't have everything) to a bar for a few beers before getting back onto the Ferry.

A few weeks later I was back to pick the car up, the guys there explained what they had done and Henk took me out for a drive, the car felt really tight and quick as he threw it around a local industrial estate.

The set up looks great, really well made and thought out:





We had some lunch and met up with another local Deltisti Bas Van Elten, I've been in contact with these guys for years via email so it was great to meet them in the flesh and have a good chat before heading off back to the ferry.

Back home and on track the grip is amazing, I met up with two customers, both 'grale drivers who could not get over how easy it was to corner at such high speeds, also with the addition of the thicker adjustable rear ARB set to 'dry' it changes direction through the tight left right flicks such as chicanes with superb composure.

A big thanks to Intrax and Michel, a big thumbs down to tightwads North Sea Ferries, Hull: If you want to go with a car and come back on foot they charge a very large premium, so I booked for a car both ways. On coming back with no car on the Dutch side it was no problem, I just showed my ticket, passport and walked on.
Trying to do the same on the UK side had me being pulled up at the check in desk and forced to pay a stupid amount of money to get on as a foot passenger.

Yes, you read that right, if you want to go on as a foot passenger and not take your car you are charged more!


Castor and camber




The Intrax strut top is available in different colours and is adjustable for camber and castor.

It's very difficult to find anything written about castor angles, I have several books on suspension and I think only one mentions why it can be important, advantageous and linked to camber.

Castor angle is the angle of the strut as viewed from the side:



Most people refer to it in connection with the directional stability of a car because this is its primary function, when you have more positive castor (viewed from the side, the top of the strut is further towards the back of the car) the steering self centres easier and the car is more stable in a straight line at high speed, the steering also becomes more heavy the more positive castor is applied.

This is Camber:



If the wheel leans in towards the car at the top then this is 'Negative camber'.

Basically, in order for the tyre to grip when cornering hard it needs to present itself flat to the tarmac so all of the surface of the tyre is working, camber gives us this. This is called 'Static camber' and whilst it comes into its own when cornering, it can be a compromise when braking or accelerating in a straight line when the tyre is at an angle to the road or track, both for traction and for tyre wear.

This is where positive castor angle (PCA) comes in and here is how it works:
The pencil is the strut with zero castor angle, the wheel (roll of tape) has zero camber angle, when we turn the 'wheel' it keeps the same angle, i.e, the tyre to road angle doesn't alter.













Now let's dial in some PCA:







The axis of the turned wheel has now altered and you see how it has affected the camber angle:








This is quite an exaggerated example, but it shows what is happening - the more you turn the wheel, the more camber is introduced.

Flowbench testing

Just a bit of a write up this week on some parts brought in by Andrew Grogan for testing.
Andrew looked high and a low for a really good Evo 1 to do a restoration project on, but sadly settled for a Winner red.

He then proceeded to pull it to bits and is reconditioning everything which could be and replacing everything which couldn't, we are talking about a full-on nut and bolt restoration here, every step and every part has been methodically logged, pictured and written about and lot of people eagerly await the results of his years of hard work.

All results below were taken at 10" of depression.

First up on the flowbench was a mildly reprofiled throttle body, it looked really nice and I would have put money on it giving 2 or 3cfm extra, result? Zero improvement over standard.

Well it could only get better and next up was a bit more interesting: An OE intercooler with the end tanks removed and a new more modern core welded inbetween them. The exit/entry pipes had been mildly re-profiled and polished, the quality of welding was superb and we counted less tubes than the OE 'cooler meaning it had larger section ones fitted. Looking into the core you could see it was a more aerodynamically friendly affair, but still tube and fin construction (see earlier intercooler article).




On the bench the OE intercooler flowed 153cfm.
The re-cored one flowed 165cfm.

So not a bad result for a simple core change and a bit of cleaning up, I think they could have got more by changing to a bar & plate type, or at least, it would have been interesting to test one anyhow. As outlined before if you want more power then get more airflow by trading up to larger section core, but if you want to keep your integrale looking standard whilst gaining a bit and lightly modernising it then it's not a bad mod.


Andrew then brought in a head he had done by someone without a flowbench so had no figures for it. It had been very tidily done, no major changes to the port geometry or valve and seat angles, just some rounding off of the short-side-radius and knife edging on the port splitter.



A stock head flows 137cfm
And his was up to 155cfm




So again a good modest improvement, high CFM figures aren't everything and I didn't have the time to do any valve-in tests.

We tested an OE cast iron log manifold on an umodified head V Andrews tubular item:






As you can see, nothing really unexpected, but interesting to see nonetheless. Looking closer at the figures, at least the tubulars best and worst flowing headers are within 10cfm of each other whilst the OE log has a much larger 18cfm difference.

This was supposed to be just a factual post on what we found out from the items tested, but lets wander off for a moment and look a bit closer at the usual manifold debate questions.

Are you going to see a non flow loss ex'manifold on an integrale which keeps the turbo in its original position? Well I think you're going to struggle! I'm saying this not only from what we have found here, but also because we have a life size model along with modelling kit in the workshop which we are making our own on so I know how difficult (impossible?) it is to create the perfect manifold.

Do you really need equal length tubes? Yes. Look at the tubular one on test, the shortest pipe has the worst CFM figure, it has this because of the number of bends and restrictions in it, so what if we build a manifold purely based on equal flow rates for all four pipes?
What is the point in an equal length manifold if the flow figures are all over the place?
Food for thought and open to discussion, but the answer for me would be equal length and equal flow.

Another widely debated topic is whether the integrale 16v inlet manifold is better than that of the Fiat Coupe, many people claim it is so we did a back to back test and found no difference between the two at all. Both showed a 36cfm loss when bolted to a head flowing 168cfm on cylinder No.1.

Flowbench and cylinderheads

Some people don't realise we have a flowbench at Deltaparts.

Many people have no idea what one is so let me explain.



Ok, as previously discussed in an earlier post airflow is probably the most important thing to consider when trying to increase the power of your engine, if you can get more in and match it with more fuel you are going to get more power, simple.

How do you know if your modifications to the airways have done any good without checking the output of the engine? You don't unless you have a flowbench to give you a good idea of what is going on. You see, sometimes you can make things worse or spend a lot of time on something which gives little or no improvement.

Don't buy a reworked head from someone who cannot prove what they have done.

(Very!) basically a flowbench has a few electric fans inside it which draw a vacuum through the test hole, they can be reversed to blow and can also be controlled to give a certain airflow at which you take your readings at, the basic Superflow 110/120 is what many people have, it is rated at testing up to 100bhp per cylinder and maxes out at 185cfm (cubic feet per minute)

Ours is a bit bigger, it runs 6 motors and will pull your arm in if you get too close! It pulls over 28" and 250cfm quite easily. 28" is called test depression, it is read from a manometer which is T'd off from one of the chambers within the bench. The more vac and CFM you can pull the closer and more accurate to a real life situation you will get. Air is much heavier than you would think and (just like a car going round a bend) the faster it goes, the less chance it has of actually getting round smoothly so the more air your bench flows, the more accurate and closer to real life your results will be.

Whilst it has to be said that your own flowbench is better used with your own before & after figures it's sometimes good to compare with others, so the ability to be able to check at 10 or 28" is useful as not everyone uses the same test depression.

The Superflow has liquid filled manometers to take the readings which you manually log, we have digital ones on ours which are displayed on the laptop screen and can be logged into the laptop if needed. This makes the job much easier and quicker and photographing your good work a bit easier too as you will see.

With a fair bit of work we can get an integrale 16v bare inlet port up to 170cfm, it isn't just the high cfm numbers which you are chasing, you need good air speed throughout the port, no good if the air speed is too slow or too high even. We read airspeed in FPS (feet per second) with a probe which we can push into any part of the port to check for high, low or dead areas where nothing much is happening and shape the port to suit.
There isn't much point in beyond 170cfm BPF either if you are still using the OE sized valve or untouched inlet manifold as it will pull those figures back down once it is fitted.


Below is a graph of results from a head I did last week compared to standard. It shows the flow of the port with the valves fitted and at different lifts in increments of 1mm. Stock head versus modified which has a 3 angle valve seat too. It also shows a comparison at BPF (bare port flow) no valves fitted.



As you can see, it flows more air from the start, but really comes into its own at the higher lifts from about 7mm onwards.
What is interesting to note is that with the standard ports the CFM with the valve in at full lift matches the BPF. With the modified port and valve in test it never matches the BPF (well it might do if you lifted it higher), this indicates that we could fit slightly larger valves and maybe make some small gains.

Why do you need a gasflowed or ported head on your engine?

Many people modify their cars without doing much to the head, I don't know why this is, maybe because they don't understand how important it is or because it's not a bolt on shiny part which you can admire and show people....

About 75% of the power in your engine is made in the cylinder head so it makes sense to start here. Many modifications which you do to an engine have a downside to them, the cylinder head is not one of them. When you fit a properly modified head you gain in power, driveability and economy - it's a win-win situation.
As outlined in the engine related articles it is important to start an engine modification project by getting the basic core of the engine right before going any further. Any clod can bolt on a huge turbo and ram the air in to get a bigger power figure, not of much use if the car is horrible to drive though.......


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Valve train upgrades

Small, but important and impossible to find off-the-shelf ones of the correct dimensions. That is the conclusion I came to after reconditioning a few cylinder heads - we just couldn't find any which were of the correct OD and ID so had a batch made for ours and your use which fit easily and don't give that 'But the valve still flops around like the guide is 100,000 miles old' feeling like most do.




Made from Aluminium-bronze these fit just great and will outlast the originals easily. If you want them fitting then send your head up to us and we'll do them for you, we have the correct tools and equipment to do the job properly and with the miniumum of fuss.

If you've managed to make a mess of removing the old ones and require an oversized OD then contact us, we can order in some for you.

Also available are Nimonic exhaust valves, nice, light and swirl polished on the back of the heads on the standard size and they can be made in bigger diameters if you need a big valve head for quicker turbo spool up time. The last set went out to a customer as quickly as they came in so we only had time to get these shots!






To finish things off with the ultimate in valve reaction time and lightness are these new tappet buckets with tiny shims which go underneath and sit on top of the valve stem. Buckets are anti-friction coated and the weight saving is well worth having.




Prices will be uploaded on the website.

Intercooler theory and practice Part 1

This is a reprint of a small three part series I wrote on intercoolers so some may have read it before.

Abbreviations:

IC = Intercooler

Ambient = The temp of the air outside the car

Charge air = the air coming from the turbo to the engine

Tubes = These are the passageways that the charge air goes through within the intercooler.

AKA = As commonly known as...

CFM = Cubic feet per Minute (A measure of airflow)



I don't like imperial measurements, we (in the UK) have been Metric since 1971. BUT for the sake of simplicity here I am going to write in inches (") because it makes the numbers easier to digest for you.


Ok, let's start with the basics, the turbo on an engine compresses the air so more of it can be forced into the engine: More air (and petrol to match) = more power.

The main trade off is that compressing air also makes it hot, this is where the intercooler comes in - to cool the charge air. Cool air = more power AND reliability - hot air causes uncontrolled detonation within the combustion chamber which in turn leads to major engine damage and failure. Colder air is more dense (It contains more oxygen) so it gives more power.

The intercooler must meet two criteria, the first we just covered, the second is where a lot of people mess up: *It must be able to flow enough air for the engine to breathe properly*, get it too small and you will strangle the engine and throw away potential power.

Here is how you label the dimensions of an intercooler:











Let's look at a 'cooler in detail, there are two types of core: Bar & plate and tube & fin, it refers to the way they are manufactured and the shape of the tubes, B&P is more desireable as it flows better.

Bar and plate detail:



Tube and fin detail (an integrale IC):







Take a look at the zig-zag fins, these are known as 'Turbulators' or just fins, this is because they cause turbulance in the air. Basically the hot air hits and bounces over the turbulators as it goes through the tubes, when it does this it loses its heat to them, the fins then pass this heat (by convection) to the outside of the cooler, a similar process then happens - cooler ambient air passes through the external fins and cools them.

It is all down to heat transfer, basically an intercooler is a large heat sink, it takes the heat from the air within it then holds it until it is cooled by the air outside. The next facts are very important:

Turbulators slow the air to take the heat from them, the longer the tubes, the more you slow down the air, (velocity) do we want the air to slow right down? Of course not!! Slow lazy air = bad throttle response, AKA: Turbolag. Loss of power, response, economy etc.

FACT:
In a good efficient core the majority of air cooling is done in the first few inches of tube.

The rest is mainly waste, yes it drops the temp a little bit more, but nothing worth shouting about and is more than offset by the fact that that the air has practically gone to sleep....

What is a good figure here? About 7 to 8 inches, 12 - 16 as a max.

7 - 8"? Really?

Yep.

So why do aftermarket manufacturers make 'double pass' intercoolers which make the air go through 48" of tube and a U bend?



To make money out of people who don't know anything about ICs. Take a look here:





Will there be any flow figures (CFM)? Pressure drop? MPG? Power? Nope.
If you see a double pass intercooler for sale then just leave it on the shelf please, hopefully someone will melt it down and make something useful from it.


Please go to Part 2.

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