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

In my experience K series engines with close coupled radiators are less prone to the problems of mid engined installations like the Elise and MGF which have great volumes of coolant between radiator and block, hence the necessity for a remote thermostat is greatly reduced as thermal shock and thermal gradients are more acceptable.

There is an article on my website outlining what is required to go from carbs to injection it may offer a few pointers. It is available at http://www.dvapower.com/ems, there is some descriptive verbiage first, but there is link to the carbs/injection sub section. Oily

£12 plus some postage, sorry for the delay, locked out of the BBS.

In case you cant find one, I keep them in stock. Oily

I've run a number of carbed engines on mapped ignition and the change in drivability is very marked. Normally a throttle position sensor is used for load sensing, I've used Emerald ECUs but appreciate they are an overkill for ignition only setup. Mega jolt is a DIY/open source solution which is not expensive to implement, most systems can be triggered from a distributor or a crank sensor, if you are triggering from a distributor then you would need to lock the centrifugal advance. There is an article on my website that outlines what may be required it's linked from www.dvandrews.co.uk, follow the link to 'Engine management systems...' Oily

Just a quick note on the subject, several times I have seen distributor caps with the central carbon brush/pillar broken off when the cap has been removed past a dry sump tower, if this goes unnoticed it can cause misfires, so make sure the central brush is in good condition before refitting the cap. The brush can catch on the rotor arm as the cap is removed. There are two ways to go wasted spark, either with a coil pack bolted to the back of the head or by using an EU3 cam cover and coil packs. Depending on the ECU you have it will need an extra wire to fire the second coil and a change to the ECU config to support twin coil rather than single. Oily

As a general rule timing is set to MBT(minimum best timing), fuelling notwithstanding, timing is advanced until torque is maximised, then backed off until on the cusp of torque falling back. This usually offers a safety margin. Higher octane fuels generally have a marginally lower calorific value so all other things being equal, 95 octane has the potential to produce a smidgen more power than 99 octane. Where higher octane fuels do make a difference is with forced induction where higher boost can be used as the fuel is more resistant to detonation.

Potentially just about everything depending on how close the existing map is, cold start calibration is quite hard to adjust at a RR as the engine will only go through warm up once and that is when the map is not yet perfected. Since the cold start settings are percentage adjustments against the regular map it's a chicken/egg situation. If the cold start adjustment table is obvious nonsense then some sensible estimates based on experience will be used. Idle adjustment is critical for good running and starting, throttle body balance and setting correct air throughput makes a huge difference to idle, progression and drivability. Baro correction is pretty much a standard set of adjustments. Oily

Just for info, that is the main pressurised feed rather than the return so it needs to be resistant to the pressure (stock fuel pressure is 3 bar/44PSI). Oily

Just for info, that is the main pressurised feed rather than the return so it needs to be resistant to the pressure (stock fuel pressure is 3 bar/44PSI). Oily