Gratuitous engine porn!

[EXCEL V8]

Thought I'd show off a photo of my nearly-finished engine ready to go into the car before it goes to the restoration show at the weekend:

 

 

Still lots of work to do!  Next up is to build the engine wiring harness.  Probably going with an Emerald ECU but final decision not made yet.

Any one coming to the restoration show over the weekend?

Pete 

[EXCEL V8]

And here it is fitting very snugly in the engine bay.  Tight fit!  

 

Pete

[drdoom]

Outstanding!

[Excel SA]

Hi Pete - I think you need to explain exactly what you've done to your engine!

 

Neil.

[Escape]

That's just lovely! I'm impressed you went from V-belts to poly and made it all look so clean! Almost better than factory. 🙂

[drdoom]

Accessories tensioned by shifting the A/C compressor?

[snowrx]

Must have more porn....

[Escape]

4 hours ago, drdoom said:

Accessories tensioned by shifting the A/C compressor?

I think the pulley between the A/C and crankshaft is the tensioner, you can see the slotted hole.

[drdoom]

Of course, the slotted hole, a sound solution. Must up my game after weeks away on holiday.

[EXCEL V8]

On 21/03/2024 at 17:10, Excel SA said:

Hi Pete - I think you need to explain exactly what you've done to your engine!

 

Neil.

Thanks very much guys - appreciate it 🙂.

The engine is a long-stoke 912 - 2.5 litre.  It has an Eaton M62 supercharger with chargecooling.  I've chosen "mild" cams - factory 107s - both timed at 110° MOP to minimise overlap - no point forcing the petrol out of the exhaust port!  Static compression ratio is 9:1 - I'll be using knock sensing so that should be fine with good fuel.  There's a cam position sensor on the rear end of the inlet cam now to let me run sequential fuel/ignition.

I made the crank and water pump pulleys on my only-just-man-enough Harrison lathe - still got some chattering just cutting one poly-v groove at a time.

There are also some "not-really-necessary" bits too! 😁:

Because I don't like the factory 907 cam housings (who could?!) I've made some changes to them by way of an experiment.  This is a casting I had made to permanently (hopefully - that's the experiment!) bond to the original cam housings.  

Before I've machined them:

 

 

And this is one machined and on the engine - glued to the 907 cam housing:

 

 

 

I also don't like the oil pressure relief valve in the original pump.  The early Jensen Healey version worked quite well but the later ones with the steel sleeve don't seem as good - lots of oil bypasses well before it should.  So I've made my own pump:

 

 

This allows me to run an external adjustable prv.  It also means that if I want to increase the capacity of the pump I just make the aluminium bit deeper and get some new internals cut.

I've also built an electric steering column to let me put an alternator where the power steering pump would be!

If Emerald have implemented knock sensing as they said they would when I spoke to them last summer I'll be using an Emerald ECU - if not I'll have to look at others.

Pete

[snowrx]

Wow, very nice.  I was also thinking of a deeper pump housing, and dropping the PRV makes it look much simpler for those of us without distributers or charge cooler pumps. If you happen upon a deeper rotor/annulus set that fits the aux shaft let us all know.

 

Is there a build thread for this project somewhere?

[EXCEL V8]

Hi Thomas.  Yes - my build thread is over on The Lotus Grand Tourers forum.  It's entitled "Elite Restoration Begins" and started 6 years ago 😲.  I know of a company that will make new rotors and annuli to pretty much any thickness, and the CNC program for the aluminium bit wouldn't take much to modify it.  I was thinking that a thicker rotor could be held onto the aux shaft with the original circlip having counter-bored the annulus to make room for it - otherwise you need a longer shaft.

I'm using a Peterson Fluid Systems remote prv - https://www.petersonfluidsys.com/pump_remotereg.html.

It will be interesting to see if it was worth it!  It will be great to have a degree of control though.

Pete

[snowrx]

Thanks for taking the time to post over here!

[drdoom]

Pete, did you dowel the accessory mounting plate to the machined face of the block? Did you incorporate the crank seal into your creation?

Cheers

[EXCEL V8]

Hi Steve.  No - I did neither, but if I made another casting I would definitley incorporate the crank seal as part of it - mainly for the extra fasteners that would give to the whole thing.  It does incorporate the boss for the timing belt adjusing pulley.  I never thought about dowels! 🙄.  I could fairly easily add tubular dowels to a couple of the fasteners - I'll put it on the "to do" list for next time it comes off - thanks Steve.

Pete

[drdoom]

You may find it better to add stand-alone dowels due to the limited thread length for fasteners in the block casting as produced.

Cheers

[rogbmw]

That's too pretty to put in the car....