Oil take off block

Started knocking something up this afternoon...Did it all on a Bridgeporth Mill...Very useful tool!

Need some more work to its shape.
Recessed bolt heads as there is only a few mm clearance.
Need to ponder the fittings I will use over the weekend but its basically done bar the oil holes which will run through the block and flow assisting recesses and porting on the gasket face...Easy work took me couple of hours including learning to use the machine and tools. I want a mill!

Cost me £5 for the alloy and £25 for the rental of the machine and tools.

Probably another 2hrs work in it...So about £80 with the take off fittings, gasket, bolts and whatever. I like to make my own stuff!

Get back Rumpith!!!!

Har Har Har...

More fiddling

Not too much progress, water system is laid out, pipes cut and complete.

Next job is a custom-made oil take off plate, as there is no opportunity/room to use the standard system. Need to pop down the engineering shop tomorrow and check I can make one on the mill there or Trackerjack will be called into action.

Need a piece of alloy 34mm thick x 55mm x 95 to drill some holes in and add some take offs to for pipes, also can add an oil pressure gauge take off to it. Then fit a remote filter on the passenger side shock tower. Thats basically all the ancillaries complete.

I will need to consider the place and wot not as I intend to fit a Caterham apollo tank at a later date, if needed, which will plumbed on the line back from the filter to the take off plate..This is a funny tank that fills with oil, 3litres of oil, it then feed the engine when surge happens, also means the engine has 7.5litres of oil...

Once all this lot is done I can pull the engine do the flywheel mods and clutch, then once the bulkhead is made its finally assembly.

New employee

I seem to have picked up a trainee. Its a boy, don't know his name, he came to see me in the garage the other day...I was impressed with his ability to buff wheels, sills and valances with his tail...So I have signed him up for more work.

Cheeky chappie, the fearless cat..
I moved him onto some more complex tasks today, here he is pondering the wiring of an MGF, I am sure given time he can whip this lot into shape?

Water works 2

I see a theme coming on, its a modern version of the last style of engine bay! Little brothers big brother.

Got some of the piping bent up and shaped. Just need some P clips and ponder/make a few more mounts...Couldn't think of the best solution for a couple of areas so will sleep on it. By far the nicest method of plumbing, alloy hardlines.
Swirl pot to header tank line follows an equal height from front to back. Just needs another P clip on the rocker box. I changed my plan to tig this small pipe onto the main one. Neat enough.
Small annoying issue with the alternator on the new exhaust, the main feed wire is about 5mm from the exhaust primary tube, will need to pickup a different version of this alternator with the terminals on the otherside, or modify it or do something...Yet to look at the thing.
Water pipe that sucks water from the header tank...Clips onto the back of the head with a P clip. I will make some mount thing that mounts the lower section of this small pipe to the mount plate on the main alloy water pipe...

Now I pondered this system for a while...If I need to remove the engine all I have to do in the engine bay is to undo the front section of pipe on the water pump, infront of the shock tower, which fits on the main alloy tube seen above...Pop off the smaller pipe by the EWP all the plumbing is joined to the engine mount/ block, so I can remove the engine without having to remove any ancillaries at all bar the wiring connections, fuel line, the small pipes from the header tank to the alloy tubes and the main water pipe on the other side (yet to be made) and whip the exhaust manifold off, plug leads.

I reckon its a 15minute job to uncouple the engine in the engine bay area :) I love simple things, always the best!

One area of concern is the standard K water inlet thing behind the water pump, its a plastic mess with a rubber seal and without the original water rail, which was mounted to the block I can see it popping off....

When the engine is out I will punch the plastic body(thermostat housing) out of the block and get an alloy tube welded into the block from the inside of the water pump area...I just can't afford any overheating or risk of overheating, water system problems etc..

I see this as thermostat thing as a weakness. I will probably add a water level sensor in the header tank and an alarm in the cockpit...Also I am interested in block pressure so will add a pressure sensor in the water system, again header tank, can use an old oil pressure gauge as a block pressure gauge...You then know if there's impending doom, ie if the block pressures falls to zero you best stop the engine...You cannot afford to run a K low on water, loosing water, no block pressure or busted head gasket...Look after their needs they are great, overheat them, drive with problems, they are pooped.

Power of bling

Popped out and got some tube for this evenings water system fiddling.

Didn't like the black the rocker cover and it had some lifted paint so I blasted it...

Bling is good! Couldn't resist some black alloy anodised bolts on some unimportant thing like the VVC mech cover.
Have to ditch the spark lead cover, which says Rover on it and make a new one from some stainless.
Shiney things are good. I hope for even more bling than my last setup !

Water works

Had a fiddle with a mind to getting the water works finally designed.

No room to fit the header tank anywhere bar the battery tray.

To save unslighty hose mess, such a feature of custom installs, the existing tank fits well, the pipes now poke through two new holes in the battery tray support...These means the pipes can neatly go around the back of the motor. It also is neat, as it keeps all the ancillaries in one area.
Had to knock up a new bracket for the base of the tank which will be welded on.
Some grommets support and protect the tubes from damage against the metal and will damp vibration. Few mm clearance on the top tube.
I will be replacing all the pipe hose (red marks) with hardlines that are mounted to the engine and main waterails.., the only blue hose will be about 6inches from the tank to the hardlines and same the other end. I have a local shop that sells alloy tube, it only needs to be 5mm i/d...I can bend it over my knee. I can get this welded to the yet to be made water rails on stilt brackets...All will be become clear.

Basically its a simple system...

1 pipe goes from the swirl pot in the top hose, to the top inlet on the header tank...This flows into the tank at the top, above the water level...This purges any air from the head and highest part of the water system into the tank via the swirl pot...

One of the lower pipes from the header tank goes to an pipe inlet before the water pump...This pipe flows water out of the head tank under suction from the water pump...This allows the headertank to be part of the flowing circulating system and air purging system etc.

The other lower pipe goes to a take off on the inlet manifold...This happens to be at the heightest part of the head, so will relieve air..Any outlets on the head are flowing out from the head as they are under pressure from the incoming water..So this pipe will flow into the header tank as well as the swirl pot pipe....

Naturally you never end up with excess water in the header tank or it filling up this way...It won't overfill anyway by the laws of liquid motion, its about getting a purging system setup and secondary water system using the header tank as a reserviour for water and air.

I am able to put another take off into the rear of the inlet manifold and possibly link the front and back manifold outlets together relieving water from the front and back of the exhaust side of the head...Which I may do.

Just need some alloy pipe to finish this off...Name of the game atm is sorting all the bits and bobs so its a just a job of wanging it all together once all the piece are done.

Some decent exhaust manifold fixings.

I also placed a grub screw in the VVC oil feed on the camshaft carrier rail to stop it pressuring the blanking plate...one less thing to leak.

I am close to there being some major progress.

I think I am just lacking a downpipe for the exhaust and a starter motor and airfilter system. £250 I guess.

Bloke will coming round to do some pukka welding on a few bits next week. Then its motor out and bottomend check, baffle sump, remake oil pump pick up pipe, big end bearings, clutch system...While its out bulkhead will be made, they its VERY close!

I can sniff victory. I have some free time from the jag over the next two weeks so its time for a push!

Sorting the Electric Water Pump Thermistor

EWP (electric water pump) Davis Craig jobbie..needs a thermister, temp probe placed in the head...

Thats something I pondered as I wanted a 1 piece water rail from the rear of the head to radiator, to get a probe in the right place, ie the outlet of the engine was gonna mean having some pipe near the head and exhaust manifold and like a kenlowe fan pickup having the wires tracing into the water hose...

Thats just crap. You always have to wind the clips up to the limit then they leak, the hose gets deformed, the wires on the temp probe in the hot water go floppy, expand you have a piece of wire to keep it in place, its just a pants idea.

I couldn't do anything about this issue until the head was off and I could check the water ways etc.

Anyway the ideal solution just came into my head...

The rear of the head has two bosses that are not drilled, so I drilled a 10mm hole through one into the water way, tapped a 7/16th thread. I found a 7/16th brake bleed nipple, cut the nipple off, drilled the centre out to 6.5mm, the diameter of the EWP probe.

Firstly I tested the probe with a multimeter and some hot water, testing that the very end of the probe picks up heat ok and that all the probe doesn't need to be heated etc, as in this setup, not all the probe can be in the head, it worked fine, so work commenced.

Couldnt find any 6.5mm compression fittings hense the use of a bleed nipple, so my favoured stuff was used to stick it together, good old epoxy..Never ever had any issue with this type of bondage (ohh-errr) good as gold smoothered at both ends and in the brake nipple...

You can see the untapped boss at the back...

The probe is about quite close to the chamber roof and exhaust port water jacket area, but not too close, good place for a reading, its on the exit from the head to...They advise fitting the probe in the thermostat location, but being as these funny engines have a thermostat on the inlet, it MUST go here...I need it close to something that heats to get a clean warm up and constant readings...My aim is to peg the temp of the engine at 80C at all times, none of the standard useless water systems spikes and horrible standard head gasket blowing mess.

Anyway more happy with the probe here, its a neat solution, wiring it short, its all hidden and conforms to my simplification tendencies.

Also did a final CR check and chamber CC measurement, I estimate compression at 10.25:1 stock is 10.5:1 the chamber 1.8CC larger than normal after mods and 0.012" skim...

I not willing to skim more off the head, I want to leave enough beef for forged pistons and future skims and whatever as the head is modified and was alot of work!! Forgeries are 1mm taller and give 1 point CR raise..So then 11.25:1...Which is good..Mild comphremises at this early stage, getting it all in fettle is the aim of the game....

I don't want to return to any of the fundemental work, its final.

Trial fitting

Just a trial fit of the VVC blanking kit and cams. Which was worthwhile as the inlet cam was a touch tight due to some small burrs in the carrier, the VVC solid conversion cam seems to use a different centralisation method. Can now scrub it all and cling film it awaiting final assembly.

Gave the head a good powerwasher earlier today, plenty of grit and swarf removed!

New alloy brake drums

Never one to turn down a bargain, £67 on ebay :)

I will be retaining the standard spitfire brake drums I was using with the GT6 front brakes for this year. I ran them with smaller bore cylinders to make them operate more. So these are ideal, I can fit some uprated shoes and they should outperform the GT6 rear brakes most folks fit when using GT6 front brake system...Brakes were well balanced before.

Forgot I had bid on them :)

Few final valve tweaks

Just about done, final 0.010" skim has been made. Edge of chambers deburred and smoothed.

Below you can see a quality cut back and very thin seat on the valve, exactly the width of the valve seat in the head. I was pleased to see my valve bloke Alan inspecting each valve with a high powered eye glass and backing each one off exactly to the imprint from the lapping in 0.010-0.014" thou deep at 60degrees. Basically the back of the valve is 3 angle, but the angles are so fine its basically a smooth radius.
Nice one.
The edge of the valve has been rounded from seat to back face. Angle grinder running in the vice, valve in a drill spun on the grinder disk then polished on some 120 grit sand paper strips. This is important on an exhaust valve as firstly the gas needs to be able to flow around the valve edge in a smooth way on its exit and 2nd it created less disruption / swirl / vortex as its opening and is alot smoother pushing into the hot expanded gases...Like an aerodynamic car versus an Austin Allergo.

Finished off the matching of the inlet manifold to the ports too.

Just gotta smooth off the edges of the inlet valves, lap them in, then wash all the grit out the head and its complete ready for reassembly, atleast once I get a head gasket set and some new valve guide stem seals.

Finalising exhaust valves and seats.

I mentioned valve mods before, this old technique used on most properly done heads.

Below you can see a valve, with two lines of blue on the seat.

Simply finish the porting and seat fettling/reduction as shown in the bottom image, then degrease the valve, paint the face in blue, or a marker pen. Lap valve into the seat. You then take the valves down the engineering shop and tell them to back off the backs with a 60deg cut removing the blue area and going right up to the face. This gives another angle between the seat and face and makes a massive difference to off seat flow, torque.
I will round off the sharp edge on both sides of the head too removing the tiny trace of blue on the other side to the main trace and rounding off the head edge.

Angle grinder mounted in a vice (running) and the valve in a drill (running) is the best tool for this work then spin the valve in the drill against some sand paper to finish off.

Here you can see the seat is totally free to flow from microscopic lift without any resistance or shrouding...Basically a 3 angle job, but without the work being done on a machine, the machine used is me with my trusty dremel.

Same deal for the exhausts. Hopefully get the valves down the engineering shop tomorrow £15 for the backing off. Then a skim of the head, then deburring the edge of the chambers where they meet the new skimmed face with some 800 grade wet and dry and we are done. You must just rub a bit of wet and dry on the edge of the chamber after a skim to avoid sharp bits and related detonation issues.

Chambers finished on the home stretch now

Almost done! Probably another 5hrs fiddling about.

Chambers are nice and shiney.
All been buffed with felt wheels and soap. Very smooth!

Happy bunny.

Chamber reshaping work, major session!

Possibly the most effective giver of ecomony, torque, low speed torque/power, driveability. However this is not easy work! VERY delicate.

It took me 10hrs to "de-pocket" all the valves, roughly shape the chambers on each cylinder and finish one chamber completely! Tomorrow probably another 4hrs to finish the buffing and cleaning up the other chambers.

Problem is shown above the valves need to be open 2.5mm before they flow from the entire seat area, as 1/3rd of the valve is pocketed by the poor head shape. Also ALL the seats are poorly recessed/deeply recessed into the chamber, this absolutely slaughters low valve low flow, the closed to 2.5mm area, even at full life the awful recesses cause turbulence and cain flow potential. Ideally the valve seat inserts could do with being 1mm higher in the chamber...this is a fault on all K heads.
Even at 3mm lift the valve is only just starting to get past the pocket seen above on the right side, even then its still totally bad for flow as gas cannot leave the valve and throat cleanly...This pocket follows the valve movement with a 0.75mm gap till its 2.5-3mm open...1/4 of overall lift!...

Key to my work is opening out this area and all round the valve, removing the recess seat by polishing out the chamber.
To do this work I need some blank valves that sit very low down in the seat, waffer thin tops so they just cover the seat but don't protude from it, this allows me to grind directly over the seat and axe the recesses. I made some blanks from some old valves from my triumph head, just stuck them in a drill and worked them against a running bench grinder, this made the stems 6mm and axed the heads down. After about 30mins I had suitable items to begin the work.

First stage shown above is de-pocketing the areas I mentioned on inlet and exhaust valves...Exhausts just as important! and grinding out the majority of the recessed seats/chamber in this areas, leaving about 0.35mm left in chamber floor over the recesses, this thickness is for the final polishing.

This shows a finished chamber with the pocket area totally removed, the seats are flush with the head, as flush as poss anyway without deshaping the exits, there is NO restriction to flow even at 0.25mm valve lift. You can see the area in the bottom of the (chamber)image also now follows the contour of the valve, where before is was a straight line.

Where before you needed about 1mm to get anything happening...You can easily get over 1/3rd (funny thats the shrouded area) extra flow at these small lifts now, that makes for stronger torque, economy, efficiency, higher gas speed potential as gas gets flower stronger, earlier in the lift phase and doesn't get jammed up in the inlet.

The area between the valves also has been contoured to follow the valves seat area/angle...So mirroring the valve shape to control turbulance or so is the ideal.

I could have ground this area flat as seen on some other K heads, but I don't want to skim too much off the head to get the compression back, atm, 0.010" should do it, that leaves me with another 0.020" for future skims + can use a 0.010" shim to save the head, so hopefully many years of use! The exhaust valves don't fall apart or so I read...They bend in the case of piston contact.

Anyway!

Doesn't get much better than this surely? I am very happy with this work, I am sure a "pro" wouldn't be able to do any better. Most people wouldn't even come near to this. You are probably only going to get work like this at old guys in greasey sheds, certainly not off the shelf, or sold by farmers who never lift a finger.
Exhausts have been fully decked and blended into the chamber where ever possible, not totally possible to deck everywhere without cutting the chamber out more to get the right angle on the pocket areas... The remaining recesses are under 0.3mm..

The inlets have a more contoured meeting with the chamber, hense there is still some tiny rings of black round the inserts, these are only about 0.3mm deep and to remove them, would in my eyes, make the area where the valve seat cut meets the chamber not optimal and too angular. You can see this below.

All nicely contoured and blended.
Exhaust valve, these inserts are decked flush. I will be rounding off the sharp edges on the exhaust valve heads too to a nice round radius, as atm that angle is a bit tubulance maker!

Hope you have enjoyed a look at my chambers...

So just the other chambers to do, may polish them with soap to stop carbon build up...Then lap in the inlets, knife edge the seats, cut back exhaust valves and radius edges, cut back inlet valves...Thats it! Thank god.

This kind of thing is what I'd expect from any stage 2-3-4 head...Except no less.

Maybe I should start porting Triumph heads, proper heads, no "stage 2-3-4" junk, whatever a "stage" means, just an excuse to sell rubbish in a scale from "really crap/moderately crap/average", a good head is a good head right? no need for staging, its all out or nothing right?

Heads are all about details?

Obviously porting improves top end power at high valve lift / max lift.

However simply porting a head does nothing for the low lift flow which gets the the gas moving early in the lift phase.

On my old triumph head I spend ages fettling the seat area. I have seen all manner of Triumph heads, so called stage 3-4 heads great the ports are ported but the seat area is just 3 angle cut with little attention to the area just before the seat itself, sharp angles, ridges, off centre cuts, crap.

I spent this afternoon finishing off the end of the throats on my exhaust ports...As they are now complete bar a final buff the time had come to sort the seat area.

The standard seats are VERY wide, and the valves are poorly shaped. Killing low lift flow.


Above you can see the standard seats single cut angle, very wide..about 2.5mm...
After some very delicate work they are now 1.7mm and instead of getting a 3 angle seat job, which still has ridges between the angles, I have done some very neat work with sanding bands. The sharp edge that was on the edge of the seat where it heads into the throat is now very fine radius- blending with no ridge at all in a perfect convex radius into the throat.

Thats even better than a Serdi 3 angle job...Its called a proper job! I was reluctant to thin the seats any more as there is a comphremise between longevity and power here. I will reduce the inlets even more maybe 1.25mm.

Now all the exhaust valves seat areas will be degreased (they have been test lapped already to impression the seats before thinning), the valves seat area will be painted in engineers blue and lightly lapped for a few strokes...This will leave a shiney band on the exhaust valves and an area still coated in blue, all bespoke for each valve and cylinder.

Then the valves will have an extra cut made at 60degrees on the back reducing the width of the seat to only the area that is shiney and making contact with the seat in the head. This will probably double the flow just off seat...

This is the stuff that makes power and torque, no flap wheel porting bollocks...

I've got far into this head! Its now all out. I guess I can find some VVC valves, skim the heads down, insert them into the head and use then to protect the valve seats and polish and de-pocket the head too...

Blooming heck I reckon there will be 40hrs in the head when its done...Full monty.

Also ported the water ways :)



Bit scabby as supplied.
Bit larger now.

Yet more portage. Exhausts almost complete.

Hmm, well another 7hrs.

Exhaust ports are done bar lapping the valves in tomorrow night, then reducing the seat width down a bit then I can finish the valve ends of the ports...The throats and main entry, burifications are done.

Early in the porting stage. This time I did all 4 ports at once :) Bit by bit.

There were some horrible ridges in the bottom of the ports, so after knife edging the splitters this was the next job. Followed by removing about 1.5mm from the sides of the main exit, as there was a bulge just inside.

Same thing going on here...I removed the guide bosses first and ground the guide tips flat, this also involved burring out about 2mm of material from the area blow the valve seats giving a nicer smoother exit for gas.

You have to be VERY careful in the exhaust ports, the splitter has a water way inside believe it or not! Also you can't remove the lumps from the throat entries as a waterway is close underneath. However, the ports are now about 2mm bigger than before and cleaned up well..I didn't hear any ringing so should be plenty of material before the waterway still...Best play safe....ish..

Roughly finished port exit and throat. Looks just like the ones I have seen.

After final roughing down with some mild sanding bands, technique for even finish seems to be madly waggling the band around as fast as possible.

Will finish up tomorrow and over the weekend.

Look it was a working car once!!! With skud launcher exhaust! Bastard thing. After all that work last year you evil car! Here I am again working my arse off trying to get you to work... You better be a good boy this year, I better really pull my finger out cause the blooming sun is a shining. Hopefully be pushing 290, maybe 300HP per tonne with ported head and a bit more lightening...Gulp...

Inlets finished - Major porting!

You might see my blog has gone from Club Triumph, will be back, forgot to renew my membership! opps.



Well thank the lord, 12hrs work and my inlets are complete. Just have to fit manifold tomorrow and check its still good on the head.



Porting is extremely boring I think, specially when there are 16 throats! Fun for the first 4 maybe.




The image above is a DVApower VVC fully ported head prolly for 220HP. This was my "what to aim for".. I didn't want the main part of the throat quite as shiney on the carbs but the rest is the good for copying.
The end result, all the throats are the same and same areas fettled and opened out. Gone are the guide bosses. The sidewalls of the throats are now 1.5-2mm larger in places and any high spots removed. The port spilter is now knife edged which was alot of work with a mini burr.

Must say all the work is delicate, one slip and your screwed, managed not to put a mark on the valve seats.


Above shows walls closest to the camera are still roughish where as anything from the spilter onwards has been polished to a mirror finish with felt wheels and soap.
Above is the same DVAhead with modified chamber, I'd like to do, but...I lack the tools. You can see the throats and compare them to mine below.

The area below the seat has been opened out quite a bit. This was pre-soap buffing.

Quite happy with the end result. I think the job is a gooden eh?

I can port ok. I just don't enjoy it really.

Bloody exhaust ports to do now!


Not quite as bad as they are smaller and shorter and the guide boss for the guides is alot smaller. I said I wasn't gonna do anything to the head! the valves are a bit "pocketed" on the chamber but I'd need to make some dummy valves to protect the seats and its difficult work to sort that out. I'd rather not perfect my technique on this head!

One more picture of what it was like before!

YUCK! Look at the size of the bosses and buldges before the bosses, maybe the first bulges are there to deflect air over and around the bosses , so its less of a hit and swirl or dead stop!? No bosses now, no need for bulges!

That lot combined with the same treatment for the exhausts must be worth a number of HP and some torque eh.

Anyways it'll be getting light soon :) Best get to bed...12hrs of solid concentration is good for no man!