Jim Clark Rally

It’s been all go getting the car ready for the Jim Clark Rally. The engine came back out to cure an oil leak , the exhaust maniflod replace due to a crack. New vented discs on the front. New phosphor bronze bush in steering rack. The most time consuming job was converting the rear to discs. The assembly was straight forward but could not bleed the air out.

Rolling Road Day

Just back from Bogg Brothers where the carbs were set up by Dave ( the father ).He seemed to know his stuff and changed most of the jets , emulsion tubes and air correctors.The engine made 160bhp which is 15 up on the last time when it had a 244 cam instead of the present 254.
David also spoke to Aldon about modding the advance curve on the distributor giving more advance early on to pull the engine onto the cam earlier.Took it up the road and it went like a rocket ! Will give it a better go later , knackered after 6 hours trailering it there and back.

Running in

Had the dubious task of running in the new engine before it goes on the rolling road.This is normally a boring task but when the vehicle is geared for 6000 rpm at 70mph and does less than 10 mpg it becomes a real pain.Kept to country roads so I could at leat have a little bit of fun on the bends , however the car does not handle on part throttle you need to give it max attack before it will go around corners.Did most of the mileage on a nice sunny day and gave it a bit more welly towards the end , nowt below 4500 then it really lifts off , haven’t took it over 6000 yet , thought I heard the sound of detonation coming out of one hairpin so I settled down until the carbs and ignition are set up. Need to get it down to Bogg Brothers now.

Lack of oil pressure

Engine back in and having usual problem with dry sump system.Started by filling oil tank and jacking back of car up until oil appeared at engine end of pipe.Then connected it to oil pump and started cranking engine on starter motor ( no spark plugs ), two days later still no oil pressure , decided to leave back end of car overnight to see if gravity would help and got back to selling car number plates to finance all this

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New crank and rods arrive!

QED delivered the new EN40B steel crankshaft and Carillo type H beam rods. The rods are absolutely beautiful , far too pretty to go in oily engine! The crank is farndon and much lighter than the holbay one which it replaces.Got to get them fown to the engine builder now to have the engine assembled.

Other blogs

I also have a Historic Rallying Blog here

Piston Broke !

Whilst I had the engine out I happened to meet the guy who built it originally many many years ago and asked him if he would check over the head as i had detected some play in the valve guides. I took off the cylinder head and was horrified to see a small piece of piston missing on N02. These were Cosworth pistons and I thought they were indestructable.