Some Stuff Of Interest,- Early Spitfire Engines

[GT]

I did some stuff late last year which would be of interest to early Spitfire owners.

 

No doubt it will offend quite a lot of people, but it's based on sound stuff, not fantasy.

 

How to get more from less.

[GT6 Nick]

That's a proper essay you've written there!

 

Now if someone put a supercharger on that head, they'd have real power. Hmmm...

[pomwah]

An essay indeed, I for one would love to hear the 1147+ pulling 8,000 rpm. Had a quick flip through some of your other pages. DIY sounds like the go, in 10 years, or so, I might have acquired half the skills and knowledge needed to attempt it. Might have saved enough pennies to get all the necessary machinery by then too.

 

Keep them coming GT, makes us all think a bit, me at least anyway.

 

Cheers, James

[GT]

Marcus from OZ, told me he did a similar thing to his early Spitfire.

 

Being as he's quite a well qualified chap, and ran it on his Heenan dyno cell, he confirmed today that he was able to squeeze 88bhp from his, with some similar things done, a rebore and some well tweaked larger HS4 SU carbs at no higher than 5600rpm.

 

The aim of the game was to get more TORQUE low down.

8000rpm doesn't interest me, as none of the Le Mans engines ever peaked beyond 7200-7400rpm despite being so small.

Even today, none of those engines to have the torque to pull the skin off custard.

 

Which just goes to show......what people believe happened and what actually happened are 2 totally different things.

 

So much for these 100bhp+ exotic 8 port engines with alloy heads.

They obviously never existed except in Robson's books & in urban legends to jack up the prices of old tat.

[CHRIS211083]

Chic Doig had a 1147cc bore and tweaked. it made 103bhp at the crank with webers. Don't know specifics but the engine and head were later split and sold separately 10 years ago.

 

Chris.

[GT]

it made 103bhp at the crank with webers.

Who said? He did? What credibility backs it up?

Where is the torque curves?

 

The advantage of people like the one I quoted above is he actually has a proper engine dyno facilty used for defining industrial standards.

 

With the measurements I made, the hindsight I have, & the stuff I've seen & tested to date, I don't think I even seen a third party 1300 making "103bhp at the crank with webers" never mind a 1200.

 

Did you read what I said about heads and cams?

 

I've actually RUN those works cams in engines, and they neither the heads nor the cams appear to make anything like the figures claimed. I mean, SAH claimed 90bhp for their engine.

In reality it was no more than about 81, which of course would be SAME HEAD as the one you just quoted power figures on.....

 

It reminds me of the story of the Cosworth BDR.

To sell it they announced it had "150bhp" ....in reality when they came to drop it in the ltd edition Caterham series it only had 135.

That's a proper 16V race developed engine.

 

When I measured it,- it had all in, no more than 130.

[GT]

Coming back to our nice little 1147cc engine stuff after a break of some weeks.....

 

This arrived yesterday.....looked superficially quite ok, especially being as it was according to the manufacturer "the last one left in the world".

Being as it must be the one, a certain Mr Field advertises for £200 (2008 price) it all adds up, as I paid 200USD for it in 2013.

There aren't any more, but that's never going to worry Triumph traders is it?

 

(I guess there can't be a gigantic demand for weber inlet manifolds for a 6 port 1200 Spitfire/Herald engine can there). so I got to work on it this evening.

 

It illustrates several very valid points all over again.

You will see at the end.

 

Here is how it appeared in its box from its long journey from America....sure was a long way to come to find its way to my workshop!

 

 

And the manifold-weber face:-

 

That's looking already a bit "iffy" without looking much further.

 

 

next start holding it all up to the fading remains of daylight:-

 

here goes:-

 

 

 

 

That's pretty darn rough if you ask me, so time to get out the carbide grinder and the WD40.

[GT]

I started by seeing how much space there was for the little inlet valve I was using to go down that manifold.

It just about fitted around the corner half way down the manifold.

 

Here it is at the weber end and the head end....so somewherez down there, some'at's not right...

 

 

 

Now we all know how awkward it is to straighten out stuff when it's half way down a piece of pipe, so I had to go in there with the long nasty carbide cutter, which has had so many "life crisis" that the thing has a shank some 3" shorter than the way it originally started. Perfect for some ports, but they had better not be too long any more...

 

After a lot of fooling around trying to get a decent radius half way down without a whopping great flat, here it is....

 

 

 

Understandably I was now quite pleased with myself, especially as now you could fit a TR6 valve around the radius rather than struggling to get a Herald through it, while it kept the original cross sectional area at both ends. (good test)

 

[GT]

Oddly enough I've seen some really nice gains in torque doing this kind of stuff,and it pays so much better per hr than doing heads, I wonder why I don't give up heads and just spend time modifying people's manifolds?

 

So far I have yet to see an aftermarket Triumph manifold that was really any good, bit like aftermarket EFI really.

 

This one it turned out was no exception, cos I ASSUMED they must have at least made it right? NO/YES?Maybe?

 

WRONG

 

This was the moment we all hate.

 

manifold looked fine now, except for the moment of truth when you ACTUALLY put the studs in and the stoopid little (45DCOE!) gaskets they supplied with it.

 

one last look, before.....

 

(looks super doesn't it.)

 

 

 

 

BUMMER!

 

So who's idea was this??

 

 

Whoever made that manifold KNEW perfectly well the casting was defective, but carried on regardless.

 

What they set up on their jig was to drill the 4 mounting lug holes for the Weber with regard to the RH choke, but who gives a damn where the left hand one goes....??!!

This always ends in tears, and why it is physically and mentally impossible to get the kind of horsepower so many people claim.

 

We had the same story with the manifolds from Bastuck.

Nothing ever lined up.

 

There is only ONE solution each and every time for this.

Send it all off once again to be TIG welded.

 

Put loads and loads of TIG weld down the hole where the Weber sits, and then hand fettle the whole thing back again to match the weber properly.

Forget the silly 45DCOE style gaskets, and put proper 40DCOE O rings into machined grooves in the face or the cheap n cheerful ones you can buy with a O-ring-gasket affair all in one.

 

So now what do I tell the customer in Paris, as I hoped I would send it in the post on monday?

 

"MADE IN THE USA" yea....made in the £&!*HJ"^!G)(!*&£*"!$^$! USA!!!

 

Congratulations USA.

[pomwah]

Bummer hardly seems to cover it.

 

I'm waiting for reasonably priced 3D aluminium and titanium printer

 

or maybe even a heat resistant plastics model: http://bilbycnc.com.au/Machines/MakerbotReplicator2X.asp

 

Cheers, James

[GT]

The shocking part about this.

The inevitable conclusion that every single conversion using that manifold for the last x years must have been done with the same scant attention to detail typical of anything done on a Triumph, and no doubt "popped and banged" through some nasty Spanish Weber constantly as a result,-

 

So it's going to Tallinn-Sergei tomorrow morning, for a session under his expert (massive soviet era) Tig welding station.

 

I'll see if I can post a photo with a big lump of TIG inside it, then what it's like when it's all been profiled back and nicely radiused again, with the LH choke hole in the right place.

 

I wonder what 3hrs of mine, & 1hr of his time should be costing?

 

In the meantime Moscow-Sergei, dug up this really interesting gem, the DHLB Dellorto fitted aftermarket to Lancia Fulvia to remove the slightly less reliable Solex.

 

If the job were (ever) done properly, there would be no neccessity anyhow for making a manifold with such snaking pipes, as it's a classic problem on such small engines.

 

How about 2 Tillotsen carbs?

(apparently, produces a more finely atomised mixture than a Webber or Del'orto,- so more power from less).

http://www.tillotson.ie/tillotson-racing.php

 

Here is a cool set up from the 1970s. (early Honda Civic engine with special Yoshimura stuff, NICE eh?)

 

A single DHLB carb would be the "proper" way to do it with a nice straight manifold, which no doubt you could do nowadays on a 3D printer with CAD/CAM..

 

The size of a 35DHLB is spot on too.

Pity they're so rare=expensive!

 

[pomwah]

Adapting a pair of Tillotsen carbies might be an interesting project for someone. You could dine out on the story, "how I ran a Triumph engine with two chainsaw/kart/snowmobile carburettors".

 

Cheers, James

[CHRIS211083]

What is your thoughts on carbs like the PRI kits??? They have straight manifolds and come in varied size. They are very good on motorbikes and many have given good reports about the kits. Even if it takes forever to get them to your door???

 

Chris.

[JohnD]

I'm waiting for reasonably priced 3D aluminium and titanium printer

or maybe even a heat resistant plastics model: http://bilbycnc.com....eplicator2X.asp

Cheers, James

Complete side issue, but a model of a Theo Jansen Straandbeest, can now be made entirely in a 3D printer.

Did not even need assembly! This video shows the leg mechanisn emerging from the nylon powder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZr-zyHRBn4&feature=youtu.be

 

A later version merely needs a 3d printed propellor and gears to be added by hand and the machine will walk!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAQrzgHW-xw

 

John

Edited April 29, 2013 by JohnD

[GT]

Yea right,-

My task next week is to try to convince a guy in Finland I supplied a brand new modified engine to,(gonna be started up, May 8/9), to throw away all that awful cr..p he has been supplied by Cancelli of Pri, and go back to a decent pair of Italian 40DCOE webers with a decent "shorty" inlet manifold.

 

The bends in manifolds are not bad "per se" it's just when they insist on varying the cross sectional area, making the bad mismatches, then fitting Spanish webers with the wrong progression hole numbers/locations, that life get's tiresome.

 

Problem is:-

 

1/ I buy a Moss inlet manifold,- Get it here first as they may say they have stock but not have any.

I'll have to start all over again with the grinder, cleaning them up and matching them, fool around for hrs making it fit again.

 

2/ Twisting the arm of a French customer, who has rescued and fully overhauled a really good pair of Renault alpine webers.....

making sure they are close to the right emulsions, mains, chokes+get them here....

 

3/ Making/using a linkage system that doesn't bend, twist or fall apart, and has decent return springs that are not unbearably stiff or soggy.

 

4/ Getting K & N / Green whatever to supply filters where the backplates have something resembling the right size holes in roughly the right places, so as I don't have to spend ages with the grinder again, trying to get the right rampipes to sit in there without shaking around because the lugs are wrong and everything is the wrong thickness, getting gaskets that are the right thickness, and sealing it all to the above inlet manifold....

 

5/ Get it all in a bag under my arm, jump on a bus 80 miles, then jump on a 3hr ferry to deliver it all.

 

This is all "plain sailing" compared with anything from the USA, never mind PRI and his outfit.

[GT]

Back to work again.

There's nothing quite like a bank holiday for getting things done, so it was off on a 4hr bus trip to get this thing sorted.

 

Try doing anything in the rest of Europe especially the UK or France on the 1st may. Forget it.

 

Price of the bus for 165 miles round trip - 13 quid? Forget it.

 

Price of the TIG welding 20 quid, done while you wait? FORGET IT.

(Come back in a month to find it still not done would be the likely result, as it took 3 months of waiting just to mill out 5mm or so from the inside of 4 wheels in Gloucestershite).

 

Welding inside an alloy manifold entails using a miniaturised "side saddle" TIG electrode.

 

Luckily Sergei had one, so here's an American crap inlet manifold welded properly by a Russian with what looks like a TIG to weld submarine hulls.

 

 

 

 

 

And finally:-

 

 

Then back on the bus after getting an E string (I broke on Saturday).

Why I'm here?

 

You bet.

Next post may look a little off topic, so here's why.

 

This is how the soviet union looks today, outside the "picture postcard" city centre.

Broken, ugly and a lot of it derelict.

 

"This is the darkness that surrounds me"

 

 

While going out to look for aurora borealis at 2am...

 

[GT]

I'm fascinated where stuff is/was made.

 

After reading the nauseating love fest, and eulogies to Margaret Thatcher over the last 3 weeks, here's a different take on it.

She actually succeeded in doing to British industry what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to Russia.

 

That may sound a tad extreme, but let's face it.

The Soviet union built the most staggering industrial power on the back of stealing vast swathes of German technology in 1945, as well as sending upwards of 10 million people to die in Gulags that did anything from mining Nickel to Uranium.

 

The British did it by having an empire, paying zilch for most of the slave trade based in Bristol, having kids working the mines, going to America, kicking out the French, and getting a running start in the industrial revolution, thanks to getting rid of a king in the 1640s rather than in 1918.

 

The Russians are the only people able to put astronauts in space today, and they still make planes, trains, cars, lorries, ships, nuclear power stations and even nuclear weapons.

 

Here's a few telling photos of what the USSR was making as the British were making the Austin Marina.

 

I was towed across Russia by this:-

 

I was fascinated by the Logo.

What did it mean?

 

 

It was on the side of this:-

 

 

here's your answer:-

 

 

translated MADE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA by SKODA

max speed 100mph, 5.1Mw (ie 6800bhp!) weight 126T

 

It's the same USSR that Stalin used to make buildings like this, lots of them made by German prisoners they picked up on the way to Berlin.

 

 

Tallinn trams made by UKD in Prague.

 

 

The only thing made in Sergei's workshop from Europe (SWISS precision obviously).

 

 

Some other stuff:-

 

The huge head grinder.

 

 

Ukrainian SSR Lvov region 1972.

 

 

Big milling machine 1986.

They're known for being particularly high quality.

 

 

The lathe again from 1972.

This time from Russia Lipetsk region.

 

It took me a while to find that, but comes from the vast "machine tools and engineering belt" that extends right across from the major armaments cities like Tula, through Voronezh, down into Kharkiv Ukraine which to this day makes parts for aircraft and nuclear industry and power stations.

 

So, if some IDIOT starts telling you Russia or this part of Eastern Europe makes crap, and has only low tech rubbish (very popular myths just now) then points to the post industrial UK as an example to follow...

 

Just bear in mind we have here in the region, the most important titanium machining company in Europe, employing 400 people and with a CNC machine tool inventory of approaching 40 million euro.

All brand new.

 

There are people who work bank holiday mondays, don't charge you through the nose to wait for months to be bothered to lift their finger, telling you they can do a line boring, or a head flow job, screw it all up and still insist on charging you 100s and 1000s for it.

[GT]

Last one in the saga.

It's never ceased to amaze me, how it costs as much in hrs and materials to put an aftermarket manifold right, as it does to buy the thing in the first place.

This was about 150 euro worth, which is what it cost to buy.

 

Weld?

 

What weld?

 

Now off in the post to Paris.

 

C'est fini - termine!

 

 

[spitNL]

Hope they at least got the studs in the right place.

I assume you tried bolting on a carb?

 

Awesome work, can't see anything in the second to last pic.

[GP2.5]

GT,

Now I understand what you meant by â€just across the water†your home base is Russia! Is it not a paradox that such a free and intellectual spirit lives in the former Soviet Union, my old father used to say â€this world is run by paradoxesâ€

Interesting reading your observations, I fully agree on the part describing the industrial and intellectual capabilities of Russia. In the west, and very much so in the US, the firm belief has been that Russians are stupid idiots with steel teeth

that are capable of nothing. In Sweden at least some of us know that the Russians has resources and means that can scare anybody. From time to time

they arrogantly display their abilities. It is very dangerous to under estimate your closest big neighbour. Good work by the sumarine hull velder and you of course

[GT]

FYI:-

I have to give you a strong warning GP2.5, and it's a friendly one.

 

Some of us have international families with massive bureaucratic headaches.

I'm not so naive.

 

I don't release any info about who I am, where I am, and how to talk to me any more.

I don't do sh..t like social networks, facebook, linkedin, you name it...NOTHING.

 

Don't assume anything about me.

OK

 

There are people who are reading these forums, going around deliberately data mining & collecting information from places like this.

They even sign on to this forum, in order to do that.

 

They do this deliberately in order to harm the families and interests of people like myself in every possible way they can imagine.

It's got nothing whatsoever to do with free & "fair business".

 

It's deliberate evil, malevolent vandalism &,- people as bad as that big well respected pig Savile.

There are people in (another Triumph club) who actively sanction this sort of sick behaviour..

 

They then use any sort of info to write disgusting e-mails* to my customers, & distribute all kinds of smears & slander all over the internet, usually behind my back, & without my knowledge (until it comes to light).

 

(If you don't believe me, look how the British conservative party recently data mined the entire social network accounts of the UKIP, to smear them, as recently as last week).

 

This is why I have been forced to become extremely protective of 3 small girls, one of whom was 5 years old last month.

 

2 weeks after she was born, the person who did that, with several others are still at large doing the same stuff today, and everyone goes around proclaiming this person is a gentleman!

 

Don't ask or push me about what "across the water" means.

 

I just do a job, and asked to be left alone.

Unlike you in comfortable, social security assured Europe,we don't have any luxury safety net.

 

When people do what I described above*, the family DOESN'T EAT and much much worse.

Understand?

[GP2.5]

Well GT I hope Sweden stays as it is, your environment seams really hostile.

[GT]

Well GT I hope Sweden stays as it is, your environment seems really hostile.

 

Don't count on it.

Sweden which claims to have the most liberal personal lifestyle choices, is the one currently trying to extradite someone from the UK.

Apparently even "casual sex" can have an internet blurting "spy in a bed", in Sweden to make sure someone is coerced into getting a judge to invent extraditable charges.

 

He's right here.......

 

"the dark steed on which we are “galloping into a new transnational dystopia†is nothing less than our favorite toy, tool, and distraction. “The internet,†Assange states .... in the introduction, (it) “is a threat to human civilization.â€

 

According to Assange, the “Information Superhighway†that Gore championed throughout the 1980s and 1990s ought now be renamed the Highway to Hell.

Or at least — to borrow Assange’s terms — the Highway to “Postmodern Surveillance Dystopia.â€

 

Assange’s pessimistic outlook derives from his very personal confrontation with “the enemy,†which is his unsubtle shorthand for the hybrid entity he sees taking shape as the internet continues to “merge†with governments increasingly controlled by multinational corporate interests.

 

Assange describes the emergence of this “invasive parasite†as one predicated on mutual interest in surveillance and control. He believes that, if it remains unopposed, the resulting supranational “surveillance state†will “merge global humanity into one giant grid of mass surveillance and mass control.â€

 

“We know the new surveillance state,†Assange says of himself and his coauthors, “because we have plumbed its depths.†They have also met its wrath.

 

WikiLeaks has been the subject of an ongoing Department of Justice investigation ever since the organization rose to prominence in 2010 with the release of video footage of an American helicopter attack on unarmed journalists......"

 

Didn't you notice how the UK was saved from YET ANOTHER LAW as recently as last week.....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9179087/Internet-activity-to-be-monitored-under-new-laws.html

 

..to permit surveillance of all mail, phone calls, when the UK has the highest number of CCTV cameras per head of the entire "free" world?

 

I was in China recently.

Within 48hrs it had come to recognise my use of TOR encrypted browser to evade the "great wall" of China and locked me down.

Strangely Russian google remained unaffected by the censorship.

This is where we are heading.

Russia recently voted an arbitrary censorship law.

Quite apart from the surveillance state advancing there, NGOs were all visited in the last 3 weeks, and Ireland was blackmailed as recently as yesterday over another whistle blower (who died in mysterious circumstance in prison).

 

Censorship is as good as practiced already in the UK by the BBC & the Murdoch press.

 

You see the amazing spectacle of them paying £600 000 to lawyers to muzzle freedom of information from a harmless OAP,

requesting to reveal what "experts" were present at a meeting in 2006 to change the "global warming" agenda from "independent discussion" to blatent bias in favour of Gore's vast CO2 scam.

 

The same bloke who was pushing it all in the UK government is now in prison for a a banal speeding charge.

Why should we be paying to feed a millionaire in prison?

 

The BBC failed, HERE . The UK is only saved from becoming an authoritarian state by the sheer woeful incompetence and inefficiency of its public bodies, and crankiness of a divorcee prepared to go to prison for a technicality.

Propaganda like saying "Jimmy Savile is a gentleman" now he's dead, is just more of the same, while paying public officials huge severance for failure.

 

I know this is all OT, and a bit OTT.

There are sick people everywhere.

There are even some sick people who lurk on this forum (no names).

Their "stock in trade" is to try to muzzle people doing a good job, telling it like it is & by simple smears & hearsay.

 

To come back to the subject of the work done on the inlet manifold, I DID send this mail to the manufacturer yesterday with all the photos.

 

"Hi,

I'm sure you will be interested to know I was very impressed with the

quality of your manfold which you supplied to my contact........

 

...This is what we ended up doing to it (photos) finally to make it meet the kind of

quality control standards I expect....

 

.......On this particular job the amount of money spent in time and trouble sorting

this out, was the same as the price of the manifold,

 

...which as far as I am

concerned is absolutely typical of the after market British sports car

component industry.

 

Thanking you........"

[GT]

My figure above was factually incorrect.

 

Direct legal cost was £22,746 for 1 1/2 days work, paid for by the TV licence....but it normally should have lasted ONE MONTH,and would have, had the judge presiding, not been known to side with the BBC and have some conflict of interests in this area.

 

A private individual or company is entitled to resist a FOI request, as well as diffusion of private information in the media.

 

The BBC which is a public body feels entitled for journalistic privileges to be treated as a private body....

 

I can't even get the DVLA (another public body) to reveal the identity of a missing (stolen) car of mine to me, when the thief applied for an export certificate. They are protecting him!

They are however happy to reveal any detail they like to some anonymous body (eg motorway parking scammers) I don't know on payment of a fee that I can never be party to...

 

Go figure!

 

Here is what The Register found & printed:-

 

"In response to two further FOI requests, the Corporation has now disclosed that the cost of hiring external help for the one-and-a-half day Information Tribunal hearing last October came to £22,746 including VAT. This breaks down to Kate Gallafent, of Blackstone Chambers who cost £13,875 (plus VAT) and Jonathan Scherbel-Ball, of One Brick Court who cost a paltry £4,780 (plus VAT).

 

However, it's merely the tip of the iceberg.

 

The BBC says "the majority of Freedom of Information work is carried out in-house within the BBC" and "it does not hold information relating to the cost of in-house work".

 

Four BBC legal staff were present at the Tribunal alongside Gallafent and Scherbel-Ball, in order to fight off a blogger who was representing himself."

 

That no doubt puts the issues to rest,-

 

In short:-

Private individuals are entitled to privacy, but don't get it, or any protection from smears or slander.

You can expect public bodies to do the same, foist a cover ups, and why the state will always protect the wrong doer/thief/abuser against the interests of the innocent.