8 replies to this topic

[basinhead]

Hey Guys,
Thought I'd post about an engine I'm building after watching the Bill Sollis 1380 engine build DVD.

I phoned round a few breakers yards and Common Road breakers(Evesham) said they had a 1275 A+ engine. I watched them drag it out of a massive pile of engines with a chain attached to a forklift. Amazingly it was still intact!
It turns out the engine was off a Maestro or something with a massive gearbox attached but I had a spare Mini gearbox from when I put an MG Metro engine in the Mini and I've seen the weird block used by Brian Calver so I think it should be fine except for a bit of machining on the block.


I had to bin the crank as it wouldn’t take the Mini clutch and I bought a good crank from Min Its for £75.
I hosed the engine down and scrubbed all the parts with Gunk.
The Mini gearbox needed fixing so I took it apart after watching the Bill Sollis vid about 5 more times and replaced the 2nd gear which had a missing tooth and put a hardened diff pin and center point pick up pipe.
I also added Silicon Nitride balls in that big double bearing in the gearbox. They’re 1/3 the weight of steel, 5 times stronger than steel and much harder. I made a few gearbox parts in grade 5 titanium on my lathe but I think I only saved about 30grammes maximum considering the amount of time it took to make them. They also needed to be accurate to .02mm!!!!


I’m fitting some 73mm Evolution pistons from Minispares giving a 1362cc displacement, because I didn’t really want to go right up to 1380cc after reading about smokey engines and oval bores.
SW5 07 cam with lightweight cam followers with holes in to stop oil collecting in them.
Metro turbo oil pump
MED alloy vernier duplex timing kit.


MED S pulley, which I hoped would be alloy but is steel, so I’ll cover it in Vaseline or grease to stop it rusting.
Stainless steel exhaust manifold from Specialist Components….. NICE!
Swiftune back plate and when I’ve got a spare £300 I’ll get the featherweight Swiftune flywheel made from EN24 steel (CroMo) I checked the metal spec and it’s stronger than grade 5 titanium!

I tried polishing up the bores of the inlet manifold with a bendy drill extension and a ball shaped grinder. It may have worked but probably wasn’t worth an hour of grinding.


When I finally buy all the parts I'm going to get Rob Walker engineering to do all the machine work before painting the block and using titanium nuts, bolts, studs and clevis pins all over the engine and car. It's taken forever to make them all on the lathe but it'll be worth it to stop rust.



I'm hoping for 100hp like the Bill Sollis engine. I thought of turbo but didn't want to cut a big hole in the bulkhead and all the hassle that goes with turbo.

I really didn't think it would end up as expensive as its turned out. I've not bought the head and drop gears yet.

Cheers,

rich

[benpopham]

Hey...

Brilliant build.. love all the titanium, Iv brought lots of it over ebay from you

Ben

[Paul Wiginton]

What have you done in titanium?

[basinhead]

Hey...

Brilliant build.. love all the titanium, Iv brought lots of it over ebay from you

Ben

Hi Ben,
Small world.
Glad you like the build. It seems a big expensive jigsaw puzzle at the moment, but I reckon in 2 years it's going to be something special.
In a strange way I'd like to keep it mounted on an engine stand like a big ornament when it's finished.

[basinhead]

What have you done in titanium?

I've done quite a lot of the Mini now. Almost all the bolts on the engine.
I did do the bolts on the crown wheel but I may take those back off as I'm a bit nervous in case one snaps. I used a coventry die head to cut the threads but I think for such a critical part I should've used a thread rolling head (creates stronger bolts) I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem as grade 5 Ti is so strong. It's just those stories you hear about lightened flywheels breaking and metal flying everywhere that scare me.

All the studs. I've made titanium head studs which were quite easy to make but I've obviously not tested them yet. I read that Ti doesn't stretch very much (low modulus of elesticity) so they may be perfect. Or they may stretch and spray water everywhere. I've made some for my motorbike and they work fine.

The rear subframe is new and I made a pair of support pins in Ti. They took a weekend to make each! All the nuts and bolts and big washers on it are Ti.
I just want the car to be as rust free as possible, so when I'm old it's still in perfect condition. That and not getting overtaken by a Citroen Saxo VTR on the Kidderminster ringroad.

[Paul Wiginton]

Im interested by the silicone nitride balls for the bearings, where did they come from?

Paul

[basinhead]

Im interested by the silicone nitride balls for the bearings, where did they come from?

Paul

Hi Paul,
The company is called Precision Ball and Guage co. in Worthing West Sussex.

http://www.precisionball.co.uk/

They can make balls to any size you want but obviously the more you have made to one size the cheaper it is per ball. I think the balls I ordered were a size they had in stock and were slightly smaller from the balls in the standard Mini bearing but the difference was something like less than 0.05mm so I thought I'd take the chance on them.

I was going to buy more balls for the other big gearbox bearings and driveshafts but they didn't have anything close in stock. I think they had a minimum order price to get balls made.
It was about a year ago so I've forgotten a lot of the process I went through now. He was knowledgable enough on the phone.

If I was to change all the balls in that big double bearing again I'd take a video of how I took it appart, because putting it back together again was a pain.

I also want to stress, I've not tested these balls on my engine yet so if you've got doubts about them I'd steer clear of them. I'm not that bothered about blowing up my gearbox as it was only a cheapo spare, repaired one.

Cheers,

Rich

[Paul Wiginton]

Cheers Rich

[Ethel]

That website is a load of balls!

looks like you'll have to make a custom alternator bracket for that block