Like I said, don't have these dinky little blowers!

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- Bespoke rollcages/additions/adjustments. Half cages right up to complete custom spaceframes - MSA/FIA spec, CDS, ROPT, T45, etc - PM me
Email me!
Custom-made polybushes available - need an odd size or fitment? - anything from batch work to one-off pieces.

EFA

Does the fan cowling make a difference to the efficiency of the rad then? I've taken mine off and run a slimline fan and noticed the water temp does seem slightly higher (sits at 90 on track) although that is with the new engine which probably does run a bit hotter.

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Rallye Race Car

Time for a quick update. The car is now back on the road.

First off i decided to try and fix the two knackered superchargers.
So i took them apart and used a gear puller to remove the gears from the shafts.

IMG_6750 by Steve Count, on Flickr

It's only the inner race of this bearing and the gear being pressed on that secures the rotors laterally, which should stop the rotors from moving down and hitting the inlet end of the housing. (The thing i'm having problems with)

There is only around 6.5mm of the rotor shaft that lives in the inner race, and the interference fit with the bearing is much lighter than it is with the gear, which i guess is to be expected.

Anyway, i stuck the rotors in the lathe and cleaned up the end of the rotors, i took 0.2mm off each one. Not ideal in terms of supercharger efficiency, but hopefully enough to stop myself having any more incidents in the future.

IMG_6752 by Steve Count, on Flickr

Once the rotors had been cleaned up i removed the sharp edges with a file and made a start rebuilding the rotor pack.
Couple of sheets of paper between the rotors, with the shafts held together as tight as a zip tie would hold them before pressing the rotors into the bearings. This should hold the rotors an equal distance apart which is what is needed for timing them when i press the gears back on in a bit.

IMG_6760 by Steve Count, on Flickr

I then pressed the rotor shafts into the bearings, leaving around 0.25mm between the rotor face and the face of the rotor pack plate.
Next i placed both gears on the shafts, and pressed each gear on a little at a time then did a little on the next one, as pressing all the way on in one go would be too much and could throw the timing out (the teeth would come out of mesh).

IMG_6761 by Steve Count, on Flickr

I pressed the gears on so that they butted up against the inner race of the bearings, and made sure there was still 0.25mm of clearance for the rotors.

That's the rotor pack bit done.

Next up i had to sort out the inner face at the inlet end of the housing.
I filled the needle roller bearings with kitchen roll to try and stop any swarf or contaminants getting in, then devised a make-do tool for cleaning up the face.

~18mm thick MDF cut to size with a hole saw (Cant remember the diameter off hand)

IMG_6763 by Steve Count, on Flickr

Spray adhesived a bit of wet and dry to one side.

IMG_6764 by Steve Count, on Flickr

Used a capscrew into a bit of round bar that i'd drilled and tapped, and stuck it in the drill.

IMG_6768 by Steve Count, on Flickr

IMG_6769 by Steve Count, on Flickr

Before:

IMG_6767 by Steve Count, on Flickr

After:

IMG_6771 by Steve Count, on Flickr

It took several attempts with wet and dry, but eventually i removed all the high spots.

I did the above process on the first two superchargers. I also decided to have a go at porting one of them, trying to improve the outlet slightly.
Couple of pics of that:

IMG_6785 by Steve Count, on Flickr

IMG_6786 by Steve Count, on Flickr

IMG_6788 by Steve Count, on Flickr

IMG_6790 by Steve Count, on Flickr

I tried cleaning out the roller bearings in the ported housing as i suspected a little swarf may have got in somehow, i just filled them with white spirits several times to loosen the gease, then eventually when that was gone i swilled them out a few times with acetone, then replaced the grease with some molykote 44 (from memory). It's what i read should be used on various forums online.
I rebuilt that charger but it doesn't spin freely like the others, so i suspect the timing is either out, or the bearings still have some swarf in them.

Having done some research it seems that the bearings in the rotor pack are not supposed to be replaced (the rotor plate is formed round the bearings to hold them in place). I've thought of a way around this to hold new bearings in, but i'd need to get some plate laser cut for that so that's a job for another day rather than messing around with minimum order charges etc.
The needle roller bearings are debatable whether they're replaceable, some people have got them out without issues, whereas others said they deformed the housing getting them out. Plus these ones were custom sized by eaton and made by INA only, they are a bit tricky to get hold of without paying more than i'm willing to pay to say there's no guarantee they'll be replaceable easily.

I then finished off rebuilding the superchargers, and put 110ml of fresh oil in them all.

IMG_6794 by Steve Count, on Flickr

The latest one didn't show any signs of damage/wear and the clearance measured fine with feeler gauges, so that was reassembled as-is and just had fresh oil put in.
Another gripe is how overpriced supercharger oil seems to be, it's around £20 for ~150ml.
I spoke to opie oils and they said they know of a few people using 5W40 engine oil without issues in superchargers, so i bought a 1 litre bottle of Fuchs Pro S for this job. It seems to be working alright so far.

Whilst i was messing around porting, i decided to spend a bit more time cleaning up my inlet manifold for the 'charger. Made it much smoother now so it should flow a little better.

IMG_6793 by Steve Count, on Flickr

IMG_6795 by Steve Count, on Flickr

Next job was to sort the auto tensioner. They aren't made to suit an 8 rib belt, so once again i had to get the files out and spend ages slowly removing aluminium.

IMG_6775 by Steve Count, on Flickr

That's now fitted and seems to work fine.

Next job was to make an expansion bottle, as my header tank would lose coolant when it expanded, then obviously it would lower the level when the engine cooled back down.
For this, i'd pretty much ran out of money so went to the supermarket in search of a bottle i could adapt. The result:

IMG_6783 by Steve Count, on Flickr



Another thing on my list of things to improve was the oil temperature. It was reaching 135c+ at blyton last year, far from ideal!
To resolve this i bought a 30 row oil-air cooler and some extra fittings and braided line.
The only place i found where i could mount such a big cooler was infront of the front offside wheel, and even then it has to be at an angle to clear the tyre and bumper.

I also made a shroud for this which basically stops air being able to go underneath the car once it has passed through the grille and foglight opening, the shroud also blocks air being able to go into the engine compartment or above the oil cooler. I didn't get pictures of the shroud as it was always dark by the time i finished working on the car.

The oil now leaves the block and goes straight into the oil-air cooler, then up into the laminova, then to the remote filter then back into the block. The oil and coolant temps seem to be fine with normal driving on the road, although they were the same before i fitted the new cooler. The real test will be next month at Cadwell park, hopefully the oil won't get above 90c with any luck!

One other job i've done is fit a boost gauge. Straight outta max power

IMG_6798 by Steve Count, on Flickr

I wanted it to see whether boost spikes when lifting off the throttle at high speeds, or whether the boost stays higher than normal when ive closed the throttle at high speed, which would mean the dump valve isn't clearing the boost quick enough. I suspect its one of these issues that is causing me to destroy the superchargers and i was hoping this gauge would give me an indication which one is the issue.
Unfortunately, like most bargains i come across on ebay, this doesn't seem to work at all. £7 well spent there then
The gauge works a bit when i suck/blow on the hose, so i suspect that its just the vacuum hose is nipped up where i shoved it though the grommet in the bulkhead, as i tried squeezing it through with the wiring loom.

Finally I put everything back together, taxed it and got it out for a drive.

IMG_6801 by Steve Count, on Flickr

I'm using one of the superchargers that has had 0.2mm removed from the rotors, and i suspect that it's not creating as much boost as it used to do, which is understandable, its still much quicker than it was n/a and the afr's don't seem too far out so i can live with it for now.

I checked the tracking, it's at 10 minutes toe-in, and also rotated the steering wheel one spline so its a little more like centred when driving in a straight line.

There's one other little update to add, but i'm still waiting on some parts for that, and its non-essential so it can wait a week or two. Hopefully this will now be at the pscuk sprint day at Curborough next monday.

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Goldie the track car.

Love your updates & it's great to see someone thinking outside of the box ....good old Fashioned mending & Modifing

Keep the updates coming

Took the car to the PSCUK sprint day at Curborough today, had a good day out and met a few members from here.

I was messing about with my GoPro last night trying to sort out the wifi and get the app on my phone working, in the end i gave up and it somehow changed the default settings to just take pictures every few seconds rather than record video. Unfortunately when i'm strapped in i cant see whats on the screen of the camera so i had no idea, and now i've basically got hundreds of pictures instead of a few videos.

On one of my last laps i noticed my school boy error so i only managed 1 video on that, and a video that my cousin recorded on his phone in the passenger seat, plus a couple of drive by videos.

Video clicky

Time for a few photos from the day, i found these on facebook, i'm guessing they were taken by Martin Walker so credit to him for them, hopefully he won't mind me pinching a few to stick on here.

IMG_6837 by Steve Count, on Flickr

IMG_6838 by Steve Count, on Flickr

IMG_6839 by Steve Count, on Flickr

IMG_6840 by Steve Count, on Flickr

The rebuilt 'charger held out all day too, over 200 miles done with this one now without any issues.

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Goldie the track car.

Went very indeed from a spectators perspective

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Nothing to see here

Going very well indeed & full marks for it holding up

I also decided to have a play and see how much i'm suffering with bump steer as i seem to turn in to a corner, then when the outer side of the car lowers it seems to turn in even more, which is annoying to say the least!

To do this i did a bit of research on the net, you can buy expensive tools to measure it but being from yorkshire i'm not a fan of that!
It seems that you can measure it quite easily and cheaply with easy to get hold of stuff.

First off i measured the height from the floor to the sill jacking point when the car was under its own weight. This is roughly 140mm. I also measured the distance from the centre of the driveshaft to a marked point on the wing, i just stuck some masking tape on and marked an X, this X is vertical to the centre of the wishbone (I just used a spirit level for this).

Next i jacked the car up on the nearside, removed the wheel, studs and calliper with the steering wheel pointed straight ahead. With these removed i lowered the car back down and rested the sill jacking point on a couple of bricks and a rubber mat which were conveniently 140mm so the front end of the car was now at its normal ride height.
Next job was to remove the springs from the damper.

IMG_6881 by Steve Count, on Flickr

Then mounted the damper back in the top mount at the same setting it now lives at to simulate how the upright assembly will actually move when compressed etc.

IMG_6883 by Steve Count, on Flickr

The offside wheel was lowered so that the tyre made contact with the floor, which means that the rack can't move at all when moving the nearside up/down, that side of the car was also sat on a couple of bricks and rubber mat so both sides of the car were the same height.

With a jack under the wishbone to hold everything at a desired height i raised the assembly so that the centre of the driveshaft was the correct distance to the X marked on the wing where it would normally be under the weight of the car. To make life quicker i then stuck a bit of tape to the floor vertically below the centre of the driveshaft, marked another X then measured the distance between the floor X and the bottom of the brake rotor.

IMG_6884 by Steve Count, on Flickr

Next up i fixed a mirror to the brake rotor, i just put a couple of pieces of wood between the rotor and mirror each side and used a couple of clamps to hold the mirror in place.

IMG_6892 by Steve Count, on Flickr

Now i taped some A4 lined paper to a piece of wood, i taped the paper so the lines were vertical using a spirit level once again, and used the laser pointer that came with my track ace that i use for setting the tracking. A laser pen will do this job perfectly fine.
I did a quick search online and found that the diameter of a 195/50/15 tyre should be 576mm, so this means the radius should be 288mm.
To exaggerate my results i decided that the length the laser should travel between the pointer and the paper should be 10 times the tyre radius, which is 2880mm, since i'm using a mirror to reflect the beam the pointer and paper should be 1440mm (1.44m) away from the mirror. I set these square to the mirror.

Making sure the distance from the floor X to the bottom of the rotor was the same as it would be when at normal ride height i turned the laser on and marked the paper with a black dot. I will now use this as the reference point.

Next, without ever moving the laser or paper from now on i raised the upright assembly using the jack in 20mm increments to +60mm, and lowered in 20mm increments to -40mm. This is pretty much the damper at full droop and +60mm was almost touching the bump stop so this simulates the amount the damper is likely to move when driving.
I used black dots on the paper marking where the laser was at each increment.

The bump steer spacers i made when i changed the front end were 35mm from the bottom of the wishbone to where they touched the top of the rose joint on the track rod.
After i had marked the paper with black dots and labelled a few of the dots with what height the upright was at i saw that there was a significant amount of bump steer.

Next up i decided to simulate the spacer being 55mm long (extra 20mm). To do this i took the current bump steer spacer out and turned it upside down in the rose joint (as that has a 14mm bore, and my spacer is turned down to 14mm where it sits in the rose joint with a 10mm hole through to suit an m10 capscrew, if i had a bit of 14mm od tube and a 10mm bore i'd have used this but i didn't have anything like this to hand), i clamped this into the rose joint with a couple of nuts and some m10 studding, then i put another nut on the stud further up, placed a 16mm sleeve over the stud with a 10mm bore to hold the stud concentric to the upright, pushed the stud through the upright hole so the sleeve held it concentric to the hole and clamped it up with an m10 nut.
Now i put the upright assembly back to the normal ride height, turned the laser on and tweaked it so that it was on the black datum mark on the paper.

IMG_6889 by Steve Count, on Flickr

Once again i moved the upright assembly up and down in 20mm increments marking the paper where the laser pointed to, this time i used a green pen. This has made the bump steer much worse!

Next up i changed the spacing so there was 15mm (-20mm to my normal spacer) and did the same procedure as above. This time using a red pen to mark where the laser ended up.
It's clear that the bump steer is greatly improved as the marks on the paper are now grouped much closer.

IMG_6890 by Steve Count, on Flickr

The final check i did was just having a couple of washers between the rose joint and wishbone, these were 4mm thick in total. I did the above procedure but this time used a blue pen to mark the steering changes.

The below photo shows the result of what i have mentioned above.

IMG_6893 by Steve Count, on Flickr

In an ideal world i would raise the rose joint up even further but it's not really feasible at the moment, and the grouping is tight enough to live with if i make a new 4mm spacer, remembering that the above image exaggerates everything 10X, so a 4mm spacer will do for now.
That's a job for this week if i get chance, i wouldn't mind getting the new spacers made and testing them out at cadwell on friday.

With just 4mm spacing between the rose joint and wishbone i raised the upright to the bump stop and lowered it to maximum droop to make sure the rose joint wouldn't hit the wishbone and clearance seems fine, so i'll crack on and make the spacers.

IMG_6894 by Steve Count, on Flickr

Finally, whilst i was messing about with the springs off i decided to see how much the camber changed at each position in 20mm increments, below are the results.

Wheel position Camber value
60mm compression = ~-2.25
40mm compression = ~-2.3
20mm compression = ~2.25
00mm compression = ~-2.15 (Normal ride height)
20mm droop = -2
40mm droop = -1.75

The above figures aren't as bad as i was expecting to be honest, the wishbones appear almost horizontal when the wheels are fitted and it's sat at normal ride height, so i was expecting to see less negative camber under compression (opposite of what i want).
I can live with the above, in the future i might look into making a new subframe with higher wishbone mounting points to help correct the roll centre, and hopefully cause more negative camber under compression, so i can have less negative when at normal ride height meaning more tyre contact patch, meaning more grip in a straight line so braking should be improved.

IMG_6886 by Steve Count, on Flickr

After all the messing about above i refitted the springs, replaced all nylocs that had been disturbed, loctited anything else and torqued everything back up, gave the car a wash and filled it up with V-power. I also sorted the boost gauge out, it was my fault, i'd shoved the vacuum hose over the mounting thread rather than the nipple for the hose
In my defence, it's bloody awkward trying to see what you're doing behind the dash, especially in the dark.
When i took the car out the boost seems to go up to about 6psi when boosting at around 4k rpm, which would ring true with what was showing on the boost gauge at the mappers.
When i let off the throttle the boost spikes up to about 10-12psi for a split second before the dump valve releases all the pressure, so i don't think that's too excessive, i didn't take it up to 7k rpm and see what happens to the boost when letting off, to see if there's too much flow causing a prolonged boost spike, which could be what upset the last 'charger, i'll just have to try and capture the gauge on the go pro at cadwell and see if that tells me anything.

________________________________________

Goldie the track car.

Thanks Damien, i've sorted my go pro out now so hopefully i'll get some decent footage.

Today's job is done, new bump steer spacers made

IMG_6898 by Steve Count, on Flickr

Just waiting for delivery of the capscrews before i can fit them and set the tracking.

________________________________________

Goldie the track car.

Ingenious!

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R H Davey Welding Supplies. I sell new and used welding equipment in the Hampshire area. I take on welding jobs in the evenings, ally casting repairs are one of my specialities but I can weld pretty much anything. PM me with your requirements.

Some of my services: (See my for sale threads)
Engine mount/chassis repair
Solid Beam Mounts BACK IN PRODUCTION
Harness bars

Yeah, in my setup it's not far at all from where the standard track rod end would be positioned, if anything it's slightly closer to the wishbone. I initially thought it would be further away hence the 35mm spacer.

________________________________________

Goldie the track car.

What size crank and charger pulleys you running? What sort of post is it producing too? Been looking at maybe fitting an M45 on the van but can't find much info on pulley sizes ect...

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