For those of you following my previous long winded diatribe, here is the final chapter of this year long saga..

Previous blog here: Link

Having previously consigned myself to the fact the Titan Roller barrels leaked and ticked over too high, I decided to contact Titan anyway to see if there was anything they could do. Turns out they could, and duly collected mine and sent a new replacement set the following day. Not bad considering I purched them back in October! Thanks Brian!
In the interim Jason at Hellier had been busy starting to put together the bottom end. Things immediately came to a hault after disassembling and cleaning the donor block I'd purchased. Too much corrosion meant that the liner heights would be compromised, and in fact the whole block was rendered useless. Not wishing to take any further risks I decided to buy a brand new block from Rimmer Bros. £247 plus vat. Thanks very much. Shame I didn't do that in the first place. Lesson 1, don't trust buying second hand, even if you are told its fine when you point out it looks like its been stored outside for 20 years, covered in salt and rain.

New parts ready to go together

For those interested here is the list of kit I'd acquired over the past 8 months:

1. Brand new block (£247 plus vat)
2. Brand new crank (off eBay, £75! Winner)
3. Omega Pistons
4. Westwood cylinder liners
5. Max Speeding Steel Rods (I know what you're thinking and I'll come to these later. £199)
6. Mahle Tri metal race bearings
7. TTV Racing flywheel (Looks just like the Titan R500 ultralite flywheel, but is 100g lighter, and has integral ring gear. Bonus! And it only costs £270 inc vat and delivery, another Bonus)
8. Sabre Head 33.3 / 27.5
9. Piper 1444 cams
10. Turbo Sport hard anodised verniers (£120)
11. New water and oil pumps
12. VVC mkI block mounted coil pack
13. Magnecor 8.5mm race leads
14. Caterham cam cover and gold insert
15. Uprated AP Clutch (Bought from Burton, saving £80!)

Jason started the build by balancing all the components. He has his own top end digital balancing machine.

Crank to start... (see what I did there?)


plus flywheel

And all together

After finishing, the balancing machine was reading 0.0 on the most sensitive setting. Vibration Free then? ;)
The Max Speeding rods were surprising well balanced out of the box with only minor adjustment needed. These were then balanced end to end too. Jason was very impressed with the quality of the rods. Previous versions he had seen hadn't been that good, but these are the lattest DVA spec rods and were pretty much perfect. No maching to fit needed, and were dimensionally perfect. Jason uses them on his Mitsubishi and Subaru engines without issue and I think for the money they are terrific value. Now so long as they don't break, why bothter spending £1,000 on branded rods or scouring the ads for the very old single tang Rover rods? Lots of guys on Seloc use them without issue. Time will tell.


Engine coming together nicely

Shiny...

And finally

One complete K-Series monster!

I think Jason has done a fab job. I picked the engine up, which included a 5 page build sheet plus all my receipts etc to go in my folder. The engine had the timing marks setup for me, plus the clutch cover marked up, all ready for install.

So, two weeks later I managed to con Andy, John (Bio) and our friend Steve to come over and help me put the new lump in. And when I say help, I mean do all the work, whilst I point a lot, criticise and make tea. Now I did make a bit of a mistake. I went to a drinks thing at some friends the night before and not satisfied with drinking at least a bottle of wine, we thought it would be a good idea to do Crystal Skull vodka shots in the kitchen before we left. Knowing that I'd be fitting the engine the next day, this was definitely not a good idea. I felt pretty rough in the moring and didn't expect things to go well.

To be honest I was expecting to be typing about all the dramas we'd had, parts not fitting, things breaking, bits and pieces I had forgotten to order etc, but somewhat surprisingly the engine went in ever so smoothly which left us all scrathing our heads! This can't be normal? By the time we had got everyting back on, exhaust, fuel rail, plumbing etc it was 7pm. Since we'd all been at it from about 10am, we decided to leave firing it up until the morning.

The following morning Andy converted my loom to accept the JP Mini Timer plugs needed for the Mk1 VVC coil. (It had coil on plug previously) Again, I was expecting this to be a nightmare but actually only took about 30 minutes. We put the ECU in test fire mode to confirm it was firing correctly. My car has an EU3 loom, but I wanted to use the old style cam cover, but have it distributorless with wasted spark. This was the best solution I could come up with. And I must say I am rather pleased with the result.

We filled it with Millers Classic running-in oil, filled the cooling system, took the plugs out and then turned it over. Jason had already primed the oil pump and said that the engine would change note just before we got pressure. After about 30 seconds of cranking it went high pitched, and sure enough the pressure came up. Now, I had the bright idea of downloading the Emerald ECU software, and an SLR500 map from their website and using the numbers as a basis for the new map for my car. After all, they are quite similarly specced. Turned out to be a completely naff idea! The SLR500 map was miles away. Had a huge fuel spike (probably compensating for some issue) and barely got the engine started. Whilst holding it at 2000 revs to ensure the cams bed in, Andy got to work. We only let it run for a minute or two as we wanted to get it under load straight away. A quick check for leaks, and we were off.

With my left foot on the brake, and a decent amount of load we set off for the A41 again. (Sorry to all those who encountered me and thought I was driving like a nob. I wasn't actually racing you up the inside lane as you went passed, but doing some controlled runs to get the map right, and also bed the rings in!) Honest!

First impressions? Well, the first thing I noticed was the lightweight flywheel. The engine spins up (and down) so fast, its ridiculous. Next thing was the noise. It sounds totally different. Much more throaty and definitely more "racey" for want of a better word? (eager, revvy, rortier, you get the picture)

The new Titan RB's worked a treat, and it now ticks over at 1100 rpm smoothly. Hurrah. Jason pointed out to me that when you fit the RB's you need a special dowled stud for the head. Titan sell these but didn't tell me or supply them in the kit. Why not just charge the extra £16 and include them? Duh!

John was following behind whilst we were mapping in case we had any dramas, and reported after our first run that there were no signs of oil burning or anything untoward. Result. After a few more miles I'll be doing a leak down test to see where we are. (As recommended by Millers). We only mapped it up to 6500 revs, as I am not sure the oil can tolerate 8000. I'll put in some semi synthetic at about 750 miles, and complete the mapping, and then put in the highly rated Fuchs Titan Pro R 15/50.

I've now covered about 320 miles, and I have to say its getting better each time I go out in it. You can really feel the cam start to pull at about 5,000. It's got loads more torque than it had before. To sum it up in just one word, I'd have to say "Mental". Even limiting the revs to 6500 it trounces the XPower 140 unit. You barely have to make any effort at all to be going quick. I can't wait to get it run in fully and mapped.

I'll be R500 baiting on a country road neart you soon. Watch this space

So what have I learned on this Odyssey?

1. Tuning is really REALLY expensive. Much more than I planned. (It helps if you don't ignore what you're spending because you know its too much. This just makes it worse)
2. Max Speeding rods are great. (I hope I don't need to update this point in the future)
3. Titan Roller Barrels don't have any drivability issues if they don't leak. They're awesome.
4. Piper 1444 cams are perfectly drivable on the road if you're not planning on towing caravans
5. Don't buy anything from Caterham. They're criminally overpriced!
6. Listen to your engine builder implicitly
7. Don't skimp on anything if possible. It will cost you later.
8. Use proper running in oil or risk glazing your bores.

Thanks for reading :)

Massive thanks to:

Roger Fabry at Sabre heads (I'll miss our long chats)
Jason Langan at Hellier Performance (Fantastic work, and top bloke)
Brian at Titan Motorsport
Andy Hammond, John Salmon and Steve Littler whose help and patience were extraordinary.

Piers