Rolling up at Sheepo's house was quite a bizarre experience, being the first time i'd seen the car in 6 months. As I approached it it all looked very familiar and I was soon back in my element whipping the bonnet off to take a look at the good stuff. Everything looked right, just as it had 6 months ago, so I stepped inside to see if I could remember how to start it. Fuel pumps on, a few pumps of the throttle pedal and the engine roared into life instantly.....obviously nothing wrong there. Blipping the throttle to clear its throat reminded me very quickly what the words 'throttle response' really mean.
Next job was to see if it still drove OK so I suggested we go for a short blast. Understandably Gaz was worried about insurance but I reassured him that as I hadn't ever bothered to cancel the insurance policy I was still legally able to drive the car (does that tell you something?) so off we went. I gingerely pulled off the drive as its been a while since i've driven a car with a paddle clutch and titanium flywheel, but it soon came flooding back. Everything still worked as sweet as a nut, clutchless gearchanges were made as smooth as ever and the engine was happy to sing right round to 8k in an instant.
That was all I needed to know.
So as I sit here now I'm thinking I will go to the bank tomorrow and withdraw a rather large sum of cash and make my way over to collect my car back so that work can begin
I finished the car in July of 2004. Since then I have changed 3 gearboxes but not once did I do any work to the engine. The head has not been off the block in that time nor have the rings been replaced. Now, its not that usual for this type of engine to go so long on the same set of rings and never have the valves lapped in.....so I feel its about time it was freshened up a little......which got me thinking.
Power. You can never have enough......so I think some more is definitely on the cards. Currently the engine has L14 cams in it, these cams are 280° in duration which is by no means a full race cam. As you can see there is plenty of scope for more power there. When I built the engine I knew that more power was only ever a cam change away, and thats why I built it to the spec it is. I could have probably gotten away with cheaper internals, but I would have been pushing my luck to expect it to last the way it has. As it is I'll be happy to change the cams safe in the knowledge that all the right bits are there.
It gets better though.
To time a KAD engine in is very simple, none of this messing around with a protractor measuring all sorts of things before and after TDC. No, you simply wind No 1 piston to TDC and then with a dial gauge on the cam follower, you dial on the required amount of lift for the particular cams you're running. In my case 0.120" lift at TDC for both inlet and exhaust. All nice and simple i'm sure you'll agree. I certainly thought so, and the fact that my engine has pulled like a train for nearly 3 years would prove that.
But no, I realised a little while before I sold the car that my dial gauge reads in millimetres and not inches. Therefore at TDC my valve is open 1.2mm and not 120 thou as it should be...or in real terms, about half of what it should be. Fantastic I thought, theres some free power to be had there and after speaking to the very knowledgable chaps at KAD, quite a considerable amount!
So I got the top off the engine, got the dial gauge out and tried to wind on the extra lift I needed. As I started to wind the lift on, an extra 1.8mm to be precise, something dissapointing happened. The valve hit the piston before I could wind all of the lift on. At TDC you require 60thou of clearance between valve and piston, thats 1.5mm, so I had to wind all of the lift off again and leave it where it had been for the last 2 years. No harm done, but the fact there is free power in the engine was a little frustrating to say the least.
There is only one way to solve this, the pistons need the little pockets for the valves machining out further. Initially my plans were to get this done whilst keeping the same cams to see what the difference would be. That was before I sold the car. Now i'm thinking 'bugger it' i'll go the whole hog and change the cams whilst i'm at it.
So there it is. As soon as the car comes home i'll be removing the engine and tearing it down so that I can send the pistons to KAD for machining. Once thats done it'll be a rebuild with fresh rings, bearings, headgasket (cometic steel jobbie, no problems in 3 years of hammering the car) etc etc.
As for the car itself, I will be spending a bit of time on that too as to be fair its starting to look a bit tired. My plan before the sale was to prepare a new shell ready to accept all of the bits from the current car. Unfortunately I sold that shell after I sold the car so I'm now considering the best course of action.....although another shell really appeals as I have a lot of ideas since I built it the first time.
All I can say for now is watch this space!
