ChrisG

You will likely get the answers either "don't bother - get the missus to push" or "electric" 😬. A good mechanical reverse box seems to be a tricky beast to manufacture, many have tried and failed to get them reliable. I think the Quaife ones now are probably OK (you'd hope so considering their overall experience) and possibly one or two other designs, although not many seem to buy reverse boxes now because of all the problems with them over the years, so either go electric or don't bother. Edited by - ChrisG on 4 May 2005 17:27:02

Sounds like a job for a megasquirt setup (google it). There's a chap on the WSCC site called Bill Shurvington who can supply kits and seems to be very clue'd up on it all, so he might be worth emailing Edited by - ChrisG on 4 May 2005 16:50:38

Agree on the bike pump thing too, bike pumps self regulate the pressure needed for the carbs whereas a solid state pump needs a regulator. These have been known to strangle the flow rate at the low pressures needed by bike carbs, thereby causing the engine to lean out at the top end. There's usually several going on ebay for £20-30, as long as it comes from a carb bike with similar capacity it should be fine (a lot of bikes use the same Mitsubishi one anyway) Chris

I'd agree, the blackbird has proven itself on more than a few occasions to self destruct on track without a dry sump, although its not true of many bike engines which can run wet sumped without issue.

Yep, wet sump on a blade or R1 is fine with a baffle plate, on the Busa its more marginal and considering the extra cost of an engine compared to the others, dry sumping would be the sensible option. Having said that, Duncan Cowper runs a Turbo Busa Dax on sprints with a wet sump and that seems OK, but Im not sure how standard the sump is or whether he uses an accusump or similar.

The Kit Car Workshop sell them, sourced from the same guy Chet Galek I think, so they might be worth a call. Ive not heard of anyone using them in anger, personally if I were spending £2-3k on a busa engine I'd spend another £1k on dry sumping it, but thats not to say that these don't work.

Digidash

Richard Miles's R1 Striker came in under 400kgs quite comfortably, he did build it to be light but didnt spend excessively on it, no carbon panels etc. My live axle Locost which had a blade in it at the time of weighing was 425kgs and thats with 10L fuel, a steel floor, standard Cortina hubs / uprights and not particularly light bodywork. Ive been putting in a 2003 R1 engine over the winter which is around the same weight as the blade, added some Tillets and a few other weight saving bits which should take me up near 400bhp/ton. A new R1 (2004/2005) engine would be a good place to start if you want maximum performance as they kick out about 175bhp stock (at nearly 14k RPM!), and only weigh about 60kgs whereas a busa or ZX12 weigh nearer 90kgs, the only slight downside is they kick out less power than the 2003 engine up to about 8k so not quite as tractable. Another engine to look to look at would be the new ZX10 which seems to be even more powerful than the new R1 and slightly smaller still, but neither are proven in BEC circles because they are so new. Edited to say - Oops, missed Dan's bit already mentioning Rich's Striker :) Chris Edited by - ChrisG on 12 Apr 2005 10:24:10

BTW, if you think its screaming now, you should try going to Le Mans with a 3.89 diff and 185/60 13" tyres, which I had to do (cos my 3.54 broke up the day before we left) - thats proper screaming 😬

Drop me an email and I'll send you across a spreadsheet that works it all out for you with various tyre sizes etc, according to that 6k in top with your diff / tyre combo should be 65mph, 7k should be 76mph so sounds like your speedo is about right and you must have had a long ratio set in there. Also if your engine isnt standard then I guess it would pull a bit better at those higher speeds anyway, although the difference between 5th and 6th in top is not a lot, only 10mph at the red line. Chris Edited by - ChrisG on 11 Apr 2005 19:55:53

I read somewhere that the Suzuki British Superbike engines are supposedly doing a similar thing, but to reduce the stress on the stock based internals, they fire one piston first, then two, then one again, almost like a triple with one big piston. A conventional big bang two by two would blow it to bits in a matter of minutes evidently.

What size tyres do you have? My old RRX engine with 205/60-13" wheels and a 3.54 diff topped out at about 125mph, so just over 10mph/1000rpm (ie 70mph = just under 7000rpm) - seemed about spot on for fast road / track work. I dont think you'd want gearing as high as 6200rpm@80mph as that would gear you for about 155mph in top at the limiter which is way more than the blade is capable of pulling in a Caterfield, the only benefit would be cruising revs for motorways etc. Chris

I don't think it necessarily causes damage, but MOT stations arent meant to test an LSD equipped car on the rollers, see here

A friend of mine has a Westfield 4-2-1 manifold for sale if you're interested and its not too late (I think he wants less than £200 for it). He's just converting to turbo so needs a slightly different one 😬

Ive run 6/21 and 7/22 on 6" rims, the 6/21 wouldnt want anything wider than a 6" rim IMHO, they certainly don't look like they are falling off the side of the rim. The 7/22 could probably do with a 7" rim but worked fine on my 6's, didnt roll off the edge of the rim or anything, even with hard track use. I would say your wheels are ideal for a 6/21 and 7/22 combo Edited by - ChrisG on 4 Apr 2005 13:49:12