oilyhands

Just my two-penneth, My experience of many, many engines has shown that engines with no Apollo tank and wet sump show distress on the big end bearings to a greater or lesser degree in around 80% of cases, those with factory fitted Apollo tanks rarely show any issues (less than 5% of cases) so the Apollo would seem a good halfway house towards the merits of a dry sump, mitigating against the effects of oil surge but nor eradicating the cause. I have seen 20+ engines seriously compromised by blocked pickups due to disintegrated sump foam. I have been advocating the removal of sump foam and drilling of the sump gasket since around 1999 and all the engines built or rebuilt here will have that modification undertaken. I would recommend that you ditch the foam, drill the gasket and if you can, fit an Apollo tank. Oily

Many many times, they do an excellent job, highly recommended, not cheap but very good. The sterling damper(or ‘rattler’) is a novel solution and replaces a dual mass front pulley

Some systems use citric acid as a cleanser, so its possible there is some acidic residue and magnetite.

Most of the weight saving is in the outer reaches of the flywheel (as the picture shows) so the rotating moment will be much lower. Oily

TTV make excellent flywheels, I have fitted 20 or more with zero issues. 3.2kg in weight. Oily

The gasket holes were originally suggested / implemented by yours truly, there is a picture in the archives somewhere showing where these are drilled, adjacent to the pickup0. If you have any difficulty sourcing sump gaskets, I stock them with the drain holes already made.

If the idle is soaring the I would reset the TPS (ignition on, 5 full depressions of the throttle, then start). I would also check the wiring to the throttle position sensor which is on the throttle body facing towards the engine, this can some times fail with internal fractures in the wire. Oily

Hydrocarbon test is first on the list. If it has failed it’s likely that the original root cause of HGF was not addressed and that a new gasket was fitted regardless. The gasket is rarely the problem, it is the environment in which the gasket finds itself, there are a number of issues that can cause failure i) low liner heights, these should be 0.1mm proud of the block surface at room temperature. 2) cylinder head annealed/soft, head surface on the exhaust side of the head should be > 95 brinell, factory hardness is 125 brinell, witnessed by indentation in the surface of the head where the fire ring sits, more prevalent on the exhaust side of the head. 3) casting faults under where the fire ring sits. These are evidenced by small pits around the gasket ring area. Once the root cause has been identified and corrected the gasket should be reliable.My preference is the Payen BW750 elastomer gasket, the MLS is less tolerant of uneven or low liner heights. There are fixes for 1 and 3, if 2.. the head requires replacement. If any or all of the the above 3 are present the HG will fail again in short order. Oily

I have heard in the past that the bolt seat holes in the rod caps require a slight chamfer to clear the under head radius on the ARP bolts, this may be bunkum, but it’s worth checking. Oily

The cap and rotor arm look fine, the first option on the leads is definitely OK. Oily

The cable is a cross over cable rather than straight through, that means that continuity pin for pin will not work, the wiring schematic in the manual will show you which pins are wired to which end to end.

Check the continuity of the serial cross over cable. Ive got a few spare cables here, but a bit north of Oxfordshire. Oily

And.. as points erode, the timing retards, this does not happen with a no contact system.. Oily

I’d say that if you are shooting for less than 8500 /220BHP then a steel crank would not be a necessity, the R400 had a standard 1800 crankshaft. You may also find that the K series Direct to Head throttle bodies are a better choice than SFs and will be easier to commission. TTV do indeed make excellent flywheels, I have used a number of them with zero issues. Oily

When I last used an Ignitor (admittedly some considerable time ago) it was just a trigger to replace the points/condensor rather than a programmable unit that controlled advance. It was a maintenance free unit which didn't suffer from all the inherent flaws of a points based system. Oily