Major Porting!

Terrible manifold! Designed for a non VVC head, non VVC has smaller ports, valves, crappy port shape, rough casting and full ported spec 1800 head still only flows as much gas as a stock VVC.

Even on the stock 1.8 head it would have needed a load of work! Junk.

Decent Burr helped.
WD40 cap was just slightly smaller than the port opening. First job was to open the openings to match the head. Which was time consuming fitting and removing the manifold a million times.

Above shows how much material needed removing after the openings had been adjusted! LOADS! No chance the WD40 cap will pass down this, even with a hammer. 2nd task was to make the WD40 cap slide through, then and use it to check the port is tappered and even increasing in size from the gasket face. Above shows it going through but still shed loads of material to come out.
Finished porting, you can't see the sides of the manifold tapper in the shot now! Good tapper.

Job done, all ports match the head perfectly and tapper down equally to the gasket face and also the tapper matches the tapper in the port too! It was quite a job...Around 7hrs!
I will spiraband the ports and manifold with them bolted together to clean it up even more...Once the head is off that is, off to swap to a new spec gasket and steel dowels...I will probably polish the ports too and address the valve seat area as even on the VHPD spec engines they are poorly finished with a ridge where the seat is inserted...I read its an instant 10HP from the seat area alone the rest of the port is fine. Don't want to get into flowing it as the stock pistons fall apart over 190HP/8000rpm anyway.

I will lap the valves again with diamond paste and polish the edges a bit.

Another days work there sometime. Then the motor will be ready for 285M Piper cams and wotnot.

Bit of spitty work

Spent the evening adjusting this horrible manifold I got on ebay. Its nicely made, just badly finished and the holes were too small/off centre...

I will need to port the other end too the holes are not round, a little small, not too bad, just there is a some material to remove they need opening out behind the gasket face slightly on the lower portion...Quick job, alloy is horrid to work with, bits foul up constantly.

Here are the carbs, bit pissed off actually. Cause the guy robbed some parts from them, levers, fuel unions, I brought them from an image and they arrive missing some pieces shown in images, so I am awaiting his reply and how he intends to resolve it.

If he fails me I will claim by money back from paypal/credit card and repay him the amount minus the cost of the missing parts. Also they are not a truely matched set, they are perfectly matched in respect of progression hole location and production and anything important, but one has powerjets and one doesn't. No biggy wasn't expecting powerjets anyway? You simply fit blanking screws in the powerjet model remove the meter tubes and run them as normal carb...I see no reason they won't work perfectly well together having measured them up.

No bother to me anyway if there is any issue with low end running I'll flog them as singles for Turbo Mini's etc etc.

I will use alloy Lotus Spec Anti Reversion mount plates with individual rubber o-rings, this enabled me to port the mount plates and manifold rather than messing the manifold alone. Also I seem to have about 50 O-rings for these so why not.
The Lotus plates have a funny lip on the back that runs inside the opening on the manifold to stop stand off and reverse pulses, not interested in that function so I ground them flat, the reversion bit didn't fit in this manifold anyway. Now the carbs, plates and manifold blend perfectly into eachother. Shame I didn't take a pic before I did it, horrible!

Of course, each plate is now numbered with a centrepunch and marks made on the manifold too :) As each plate is related only to the bore is was cut for.Above is a classic misab plate which is a 45mm version, fit is horrible huh? The rubber ring I/D is all over the place. This shows why I used the lotus plates and they taper into the manifold port opening so I could leave the taper in some areas and remove it in others to a decent circle and get the I/D of the Lotus plates and carb and manifold to match, taper into eachother.
Job done. Once I quickly fettle the other end I can bolt it all together and stick the induction system to one side, nice to detail things properly first, as you're always inclined to throw it all together when in a rush at a later stage!

Bits and bobs.

Found some spangly new DHLA45M's for my K-Series...Ultimate carbs, Turbo spec too, not that I intend to Turbo the car.

Finished off Andy's carbs, bench calibrated and ready for hand delivery tomorrow on my way to pickup some other stuff.

Interestingly I bench tested the old ones. As such I am confident once we have a quick tinker and find the right jetting (should be within 5points anyway) he will be ALOT faster this year! Oh boy were the old ones out of wack!

Actually looking forward to Mallory as I sure he's in for a bit of suprise, thats all I am gonna say!

Throw yourself into the road scrubber.

Well still nowt done on the Spit.

Spent today scrubbing up a new set of carbs for Andy Vowell.

His old set below was ok bar the venturi's were all loose and had munched the vents and cases. Uneconomical repair, so wrote them off. They were pretty foul, not Vowell anyway, pump rod was busted and bodged, few worn parts, gritty bearings, etc.

Being as he said the car bogged on full throttle, the jetting was really bizarre (maybe due to the leaking and loose vents) and the pump system was non function, the needle valves were shot I hope he goes atleast 2seconds per lap now :) I will probably go Mallory and have poke with his car, as he was so kind to save me from a bum day at Combe its the least I can do.

Old ones above thats after a degrease and inspection!
Lucky I have about 25sets of ones the same. So he gets some pearly body ones in replacement. Here they are awaiting some OE Dellorto rebuild kits and viton valves. This after they had been degreased, sonic washed, oven dried, WD40'ed and there isn't piece of dirt left anywhere. Only muppets bead blast, acid dip or abuse carbs. I used my tried and tested chemical wash technique on each part. 1 process for alloy, 1 process for brass, 1 process for steel with CAD plating. Using only mild chemicals there is ZERO erosion of the parts, damage etc. Its the only way to sort carbs...Bead blasting, acid dipping is plain lame and lazy and bums all carbs.

I got both my Micron pipes but sadly one is stainless and seamed and one is alloy tube, so I will hunt for another case in stainless to suit the complete silencer, nowt stopping my using the complete stainless one...

Few interesting K parts on ebay, which I need, hopefully I can grab those and save a packet.

Time Consumption!

Gonna be a few late nights soon.

Need to get the black thing away in the next 6-8weeks really?! I guess 300 and a bit hours left in it plus any revisions, its had 48hrs in the last 5days.. Should be a 24/7 push to the end.

Its spring, time to head into overdrive and place foot firmly on the floor. I need to hit the turbo soon and get do both Jag and Spit at once. Another year of half missed summer spitty fun?!

Interior is trimmed in grey leather and will be fitted last after its all working, headlining also leather.

Coming together been giving the wiring a good work over last two days and fitting the bulkhead gear. Car was good mechanically but it was a USA car, then RHD when it came back to UK with its owner, now its going back to LHD and down to Italy.

So you can imagine during the previous 50years its recieved it fair share of odd mods, bodges, dodges and most stuff was pretty crap and looked a mess so I am starting from stratch and undoing years of abuse!

Its a long job rerouting everything, plumbing, piping, sorting out LHD drive parts, wiring is interesting not bad enough to reloom but needs work.

Shiney!
Most parts in place, need to rig up a pukka throttle linkage as it looks like the parts are lost, or some off. Its alot nicer to build than take apart.
Shiney!
The red wire is a nasty extension lark, this all has to come out and plenty of soldering and shink wrapping to do on the other side...Yes the prat snipped the wires about 3inches behind the clocks added extensions between pieces of the old loom rather than just extending the cables across by simply adding spade connectors than slide into the spades already there...So it'll take me a while. If he just fed the wires 1 by one with extensions without cutting the ends off it would be easily converted back?

Just a few pics below of how nasty is was! Yuck! I must have swept up a big liner full of dust rusty cack taking it apart.

Be nice to do a Triumph soon :) davidpowell@clara.co.uk For someone who appreciates top class work!