Terrible news. Please get well soon.


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It is just a question of time(weather) Spencer, that's what you have to say yourself! Hang on! ;-)

Dude, what terrible news!

Let me be the first to volunteer for the Porscheaholics Global Task Force. A programme dedicated to assist a fellow Porsche mate in need. Mission objective to provide cheering up and to assist him with his project.....probably involves lots of beer 😉

Wishing you a speedy recovery mate 👍🏻

:D:D Like your style mate, and thank-you!

The inaugural "UK Engine-building-palooza" is definitely something with potential I reckon.... I need some folk to fly some of their good luck over!

Only a small update, but quite a significant one.

I was sitting down last weekend and doing some spreadsheet juggling of individual component weights, to get the optimum combination across rods, rod bolts, piston/rings and piston wrist pins.

There was some fettling work required with a spread of 2.5gms from heaviest to lightest. Before doing any alterations, I thought I'd just give the wrist pins a quick look/see on the rods, and then had a face-palm moment. I'd made the assumption that the previous pistons had used 23mm pins - they didn't, instead 5yrs ago the rods were re-bushed and sized for 22mm.

Not the end of the world by any means, a quick re-sizing and a hone out to 23mm and "job done". Of course, the rods would have to be removed but that in itself would allow me to get them end-to-end balanced, which I never did the first time around.

But why would I want to only spend a handful of ££'s when I can spend a couple of thousand? Lol.

A couple of calls with Chris, and I've decided to invest in a lovely new set of CP Carrillo steel rods. A set is in stock and should be available pretty quickly....the back-of-sofa fund hunting will commence tonight.

In the meantime, I'll be removing the existing rods with ARP bolts, and they're going to be up for sale...I can't keep storing the removed parts! If interested, shoot me a PM. The ARP bolts have only been tightened once, and this was done using a stretch gauge (as you can check in the earlier pages of this build thread). The small-ends were re-bushed for the rebuild, so as a 22mm size they've done no more than 400-500miles. Of course, if honing out to 23mm, then you're back to zero miles

Hello Spencer, ;-)
Satisfied for your future purchase! I was able to balance the same rooms(parts,plays) at my home(with me) by means of a balance of very precise weighing in 0.01g, I balanced everything in the same precision.

We have a saying over here in New Amsterdam. . . "lighten your wallet ease your mind."

We have a saying in this household..."lighten your mind, empty your wallet"!! :D

Evening folks,

Time for another update....Slightly out of order, but the most significant step forward is that my luuuverly new Carrillo rods arrived from some bloke called Chris in Arizona? Anyway, they look very nice indeed.....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_0895.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_0893.jpg

Last week, I delivered the new pistons, rods, flywheel, clutch assembly, front pulley and my custom cam phase pickup wheel over to Engine Balancing Services in Essex. This was my first decent length drive out since busting my arm....it felt very odd - not so much getting used to the warp factor pace of the car, but the coordination of stupid things like using sat-nav and driving down unfamiliar roads in darkness...sounds crazy, I know, but 7 weeks is the longest period I've not driven for since I was 17!

Anyway, onto Engine Balancing Services....this guys an interesting chap. Not only has he got a great home workshop setup (with motorbike engine dyno cell...) but he's also the mastermind behind an aspirational motorbike land speed record project. If that's your kind of thing (dumb question) then have a look on Facebook for "52Express". This bike is powered by a RR turbine engine and is being ridden by none other than James Toseland (2x World Superbike Champ, hence the #52); it's the competitor to the US built Triumph bike that Guy Martin is going to have another attempt with.

Needless to say, Alex @ EBS comes across as a very clever and meticulous, and has been recommended to me by a mate. I'm hoping to get all the parts back by the end of this week, so that I can then spend the following fortnight assembling the engine again. I have a fortnight booked as vacation, so apart from a few days where Lucy and I will be venturing over to Wales for a break (hoping to get up Mt. Snowdon, weather providing), it'll give me plenty of opportunity to get well underway with the rebuild.

The cylinder heads have all now been cleaned of the old sealing compound....time consuming but a few hours doing this out in the sunshine wasn't too much of a hassle!

Yesterday I went across to my wiring loom guy, to refresh our memories as to what mods we're going to make (more later), and where to breakout out these additional items. Well worth the trip over; the engine half of the loom is partially stripped...its a shame as the mods are quite disruptive but Simon knows what my expectations are in terms of doing a proper job, and not something that looks like a hack-job. Hoping to get the loom back in a few weeks time.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_0963.jpg

And finally, todays job was to remove the old rods from the crank, in readiness of receiving the new Carrillos back. All pretty straightforward, care being taken not to drop the shells, which inevitably come loose with the tapping needed to separate the bearing cap form the rod.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_0986.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_0985.jpg

Shoot me a PM if you need a very nice set of conrods ;) ...they're all ready to go!

More updates in a week or so, I guess.

Hello Spencer,
Quite slowly but surely, I hope that you get better! ;-)

Hey Pat,

Yeah it has been "steady progress" so far, but I have the next 2 weeks off of work to get a lot of engine building done (and to spend 4 days in the fantastic Snowdonia region in her half-term school holiday)....so....lots of progress to come!!

Time for another quick update - there's going to (hopefully) be quite a few more update bulletins this next week or so.

Yesterday was just a bloody great day spent with Lucy, doing a whole load of great Father/Daughter stuff, including a visit back up to Essex to collect the parts that Alex Macfadzean has finished fine-tuning for me.

In summary, the parts being balanced were:

• Rods
• Pistons + gudgeon pins
• Single mass flywheel
• Sachs Racing 997 GT2RS clutch housing
• Front belt pulley
• Cam position pickup

The rods needed adjustment, which I'm naively surprised by; I kind of thought that aftermarket rods like these would come from Carrillo balanced to within a gnats-cock, with the balancing feedback being "they were pretty much spot on, Spencer"...but it turns out the small-ends needed work. I do openly admit that my assumptions may be woefully wide of the expectation-mark! I also appreciate that there are schools-of-thought that say that with oil retention and splashing that of course happens, getting to within this level of accuracy could be unnecessary. (Personally I don't subscribe to that, that level of uncertainty goes against my OCD tendancies, lol)

Pistons and pins are also now balanced, with any adjustment being made by small tweaks to the edges of the pin inside diameters, rather than the pistons which have been coated (I don't want this to be compromised by material removal).

The flywheel (genuine OE) needed about 4g removing; there were already weight removal drillings on the OD of the F/W, but I guess the starter motor ring has thrown this off a little.

Apparently the clutch housing was very close, only a minor amount of mass removed.

The clutch housing has been index marked to the flywheel; the starter motor ring has also been index pinned onto the flywheel.

The front pulley needed a minor tweak as well, directly opposite the 2x welded on weights that the factory have tagged on.

The cam position pickup is something that I took up to Alex for his thoughts; the unit I made has 6 x tapped holes on the circumference for positioning the pickup in a variety of places, to time it differently from the crank pickup signal. All I need to do is remove that pickup to weigh, then place an equal mass counterweight in the opposite hole.

The cost of Alex's balancing work itself was very reasonable - but the cost for an external machine shop to make 2x mandrels to mount the flywheel and front pulley was "reassuringly" expensive. Kind of wish I'd split open the crankcase and taken the crank up there now....but I also know that splitting a (non leaking) case sealed with Threebond would be a shame, not to mention a complete b*****d of a job.

So, that's the engine stuff...

But while we were up there (at his business premises this time) we got to see the "52Express" streamliner. Wow.

In one workshop sits the vehicle itself, currently the middle third(ish), housing the cockpit and the mock-up engine. The front section with the steering wasn't on there, neither was the rear section for the swingarm. Lucy got to sit where James Toseland will hopefully one day be sitting to break the wheel-driven 400mph 2-wheeled record....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...Render%202.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...SizeRender.jpg

In another building is an amazing engine dyno cell, with one of the real RR Gnome engines hooked up to a Schenker dyno, testing oil tanks (versus engine temps)....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1027.jpg

Interesting to discuss this unit, and see some of the closeup detail. This won't come as any surprise to somebody with any aviation experience, but to me (who doesn't) seeing things like every single fixing being a 12-pt piece was amazing. Then to get an overview of how these engines work (constant speed?) and realising that such a compact unit delivers north of 1,200hp....needless to say it raised my eyebrows.

Short article in MCN about it >> 52Express MCN Article

We had a very nice couple of hours up there, chatting with Alex about his previous projects. Turns out he was very good friends with Brian Hart (as in F1 Hart engines), having worked for him and remained close friends until Brians passing a few years ago. I believe Gerry Anderson's also a friend with many F1 stories being recounted. He designed and built the Penetrator2 wheel-driven bike to go in excess of 200mph, powered by a turbo Norton rotary engine in 1991. Unfortunately this was on loan and lost in the tragic fire that destroyed a lot of the National Motorcycle Museum in 2003.

More recently, he's been involved with Don Vesco's Turbinator project ....so....he likes his high speed stuff then!

Hello Spencer,

Brilliant, everything goes well, in that I can read you are lucky enough(have the opportunity) to have in your circle of acquaintances of the very competent people in their job(business), your project can well only succeed. :)

Thanks Pat! I hope so!

Some quick shots of the rods, post balancing....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1070.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1066.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1087.jpg

This weeks progress has been of the slow-but-careful type. Checking the rod clearances on the crank journals, full and thorough clean and then a build of #1 cylinder to check volume for CR calculations. There's been a bit of a hiccup as well, but that's now been overcome and we're good-to-go.

A thorough cleaning of the rods following the grinding work needed to balance them; of course I can't risk there being any grinding remnants in there. Somehow the tube of lube that came with the rods has gone AWOL (possibly sitting in Alex's workshop somewhere) but per Carrillos guidance on their install sheets, I'll mix some engine oil with some moly base grease to coat the threads and the undersides of the heads.

I don't have access to an accurate dial bore gauge to measure the ID of the rod BE's with the shells installed (nor do I have a 2"-3" digital micrometer to set up such a gauge...it's on the shopping list). But I do have plenty of Plastigauge. I consistently measured a fatter "spread" than the 0.050mm indication on each rod journal - not as large a clearance as the 0.038 patch, so I would guess that each rod is around the 0.045 mark. The Porsche spec is 0.030 - 0.088mm clearance, so I'm comfortably within the parameters - in fact, looking back at my build sheet from the first assembly, I'm running tighter clearances this time; the range of clearances on Build #1 were 0.059 - 0.066mm as measured on a dial bore gauge.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1080.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1084.jpg

Todays job was to work out the compression ratio options. If you remember back, the cylinders were damaged en-route to LN Engineering by the couriers. Certainly nothing disastrous, it required a 0.1mm skim of the head mating surfaces to remove some marring. However, this in turn affected the channel depth for the fire-rings, which then affects the rings themselves.

So, the channels were re-cut by Chris's trusted machining shop once the repair work had been done by LN Engineering (they're all nice and round again!). At the same time, they made me a new set of fire rings, each one being custom to accommodate the ever-so-slight variation in the corresponding channels in the heads (...that were machined by the clown who screwed me over some years ago). The new rings are a little taller as well, and now made of a known grade material, so I feel a lot more comfortable that somebody who knows what they're doing, has now supplied the parts.

Back to volume checking....because of the mating surface skim, we now need to recover that deck height using the copper base gaskets. Chris supplied a number of different options in one of the shipments a few months ago, including some trick Viton coated pieces, at 0.30mm versus the stock 0.25mm.

After getting the engine stand wedged level and tilted slightly to get the intake pocket of the piston at the highest point, this morning was spent rigging up the burette. The piston needed dropping by 5mm so it sat below the deck. I had a cunning idea this time; I gave the underside of my perspex sheet a coating of Autoglym Silicon Resin polish, to try and lessen any surface tension of the liquid...and it worked really well!

TDC measurements....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1125.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1132.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1133.jpg

BDC measurements...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1135.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1136.jpg


So, after an hour of back-and-forth topping up of the 50cc burette (12 fills required!), I had some numbers. This is with a 0.5mm base gasket installed >>>

Cylinder Head = 87.70cc
Cylinder Vol @ TDC-5mm = 29.00cc
5mm Drop = 37.72cc
Corrected Cylinder Vol @TDC = -8.72cc

Cylinder Vol @ BDC = 563.80cc

Plugging those numbers into a spreadsheet....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...2022.39.03.png

To try and reduce the CR, I can stack the 0.5mm with one of the other thickness gaskets....some calculated rather than measured musings...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...2022.44.32.png

If I'm honest, I'm not sure about stacking gaskets. If we end up reducing the CR to the lowest calculation of <8.0:1, then I may see if my local waterjet cutting company would be able to cut some out of stock 1mm copper sheet.

That's where I'm at, at the moment. Hoping to chat through with Chris later on, then getting on with the assembly itself.....ie., the bit that actually looks as though you've accomplished something! (contrary to the present situation...apart from turning the workshop on its head...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/IMG_1134.jpg

Slow but meaningful progress....and plenty of cups of tea...

Good evening.

Quite a few bumps in the road. I am sorry to read all this.

Very nice pictures from the shop. It reminds of my time in Cali, when my youngest and I visited a shop exclusively working on vintage F1's. have a picture of the kid in a vintage McLaten F1.

Your Porsche will end up as quite a beast for sure. I hope to see it some day.

Cheers

Hello mate!!

Yeah, it's not been the smoothest project, but anything worthwhile never comes easy, eh?

Were you at Le Mans again this year? Still getting wrecked with the mad Weejies? I'll have the car down there for next years event...for sure...this time...honest...no really, I will...

What deck height do you have? If you have a 1 mm deck I get a CR of 8.1 with your numbers. This is how PMNA calculates it:

1) Figure area of bore and divide by 1000
2) Measure volume of cylinder head. This is "Head CC" (A)
3) Write down final deck height
4) Drop piston enough to get dome below top of cylinder and write down the distance
5) Add item 3 to item 4
6) CC the cylinder and write down this number
7) Multiply item 5 by item 1
8) Subract item 6 from item 7. This is "Dome CC" (B)
9) Multiply item 1 by the crank stroke. This is "Swept CC" (C)
10) Multiply item 1 by item 3. This is the "Deck CC" (D)
11) Compression Ratio:

C + A + D - B divided by A + D - B

Spencer -- this will be a helluva lot simpler if I pull the spec page on the pistons and tell you the exact piston dome volume, eh?

Then you only need cylinder head volume and piston deck height.

Talk tomorrow.

[double-thumbs-up] Top man, thanks Chris ;) Yup chat later if you get a spare moment, we'll be in deepest darkest Wales this evening, contemplating our walking of Snowdon in the morning!

Cheers
S