zoltan

I already have a nice 3.5 EFi which is reserved for my project. That was in a RR which I drove and it was quite a sweet engine. Since the project isn't going anywhere in a hurry I might as well rob that for the 110. It is currently on an ZF autobox, I have just been out and taken off the torque converter, I assume other than needing a spigot bearing a manual flywheel will go on? Hopefully they didn't produce two different cranks? I'd rather keep the manual box in the 110 and use the auto for the project The more I think over it £1500 is a lot of cheap engines as much as I'd like the peace of mind of checking the internals over.

My 110 V8 has a rather tired 3.5 lump which is probably managing about 75 bhp at best. Compressions are good except cyl one which is not drastic but is about 25 psi down on the rest. Av is about 160psi throttle open. That cylinder also has a rusty plug so there is a water issue. In short it needs replacing. Its running mostly on LPG too. Now the $64,000 question. I have a 3.5 in bits which needs a crank grind, boring, certainly three or four guides are too sloppy, the rockers are shot etc etc. I will clean and polish the ports very lightly just to clean the casting marks. Ive priced up the bits and in round terms to put the whole shooting match together properly with reasonable quality bits is looking about £1500 plus vat. That gives me 9.75:1 compression, up on my palty 8.13. Block bored and honed, crank ground and balanced with flywheel, valve guides bronze sleeved, exhaust valve seats fitted with LPG inserts. New cam, followers rockers, pushrods and timing chain/sprockets. That is everything done. I've also splashed out on Megasquirt ECU and plenum so it will be pepped up from its current Strombergs. I'll build the engine myself so no cost other than the bits. Do I spend this for a known engine or take a huge chance, albeit a cheap chance and put an unknown 3.5 EFi in at about £250? I've considered upping the capacity and for whatever reason probably will stick at 3.5/3.9, I just plod about in it so I haven't got any great hankering for power over economy. The 110 is definitely a keeper. Absolutely split on whether to chance the unknown or spend the dollar ??

Which exhausts have you gone for? Its something I'll be looking at treating mine with sooner or later

What are you using for speed controllers?

When wheel motors come of age the off road market could be a big beneficiary with no axles to worry about and with adaptive suspension geometry, traction in all conditions. A small turbo diesel running at its peak torque connected to a generator..... Imagine how light that could be built

that'll teach me to read the rest of the thread

Lancia tackled this in the days of Group B rallying by equipping the S4 Delta with both a supercharger for low down grunt and a turbo higher up the rev range. Very clever plumbers

You should have been wearing some of her underwear and she'd have have been alright!

I'd expect to receive it dripping in oil and certainly reasonably well protected in transit. That has the look of a breakers yard special that has been in the parts washer, lain on the shelf for a while then gone in the box. That light dusty rusty looks just like it has been parts washed, dried and then absorbed every bit of atmospheric moisture on each machined face

My local paint factors will make up aerosols of what every colour you want. Not especially cheap but also not excessively expensive. Around £14 plus vat I think

Getting a belt of your desired length will be your biggest headache. The square tooth L series belt tooth profile (Ford Pinto or BDA cam belt) in a 3/8" pitch is available in a number of widths and a wide number of tooth counts. Most drive specialist suppliers will be able to supply pulleys with pilot bores that you can machine to your shafts. These people http://www.hpc-companies.com/ do a useful catalogue with a gazillion gears, pulleys, belts sprockets and everything else in. Much of it is off the shelf. Quality is OK and prices fair, the nice thing is if you are creating something you can buy one offs or each thing. They will also put keyways and splines etc in at additional cost but that saves hunting around to find someone to do it

This is the trade off though with something that doesn't evaporate out of the tank versus something that will dry more or less immediately, or with a a little help from an airline

Wash off the crud in the parts washer tank then give it a blast over with brake cleaner if you want a grease free finish for paint

Bleed the master cylinder first, i.e. crack the pipe fitting off a little at the master cylinder and get the fluid flowing through there first before trying to purge the lines. Although this can be a bit messy at least you are not then trying to dislodge a monster air bubble in the master cylinder itself. Another thing to be aware of which might be an issue with new but old stock master cylinders is if this was originally built up on red rubber grease (girling cylinders often contain this), this may have dried and or hardened up in the critical areas of the tiny drilling that the cup seal moves past as you press the pedal. This would prevent the free flow of fluid from the reservoir into the cylinder. An easy bleed maybe the only thing that will push this nuisance plug of crud out and get the cylinder functioning properly Oh, and if you get an easy bleed, knock a load of pressure out of the tyre you use to run it as 40psi and brake fluid make a pretty impressive mess of paintwork. 10 psi is more than enough

Just in case you are still hunting around there is another auction with plenty of BT40 tooling coming up next week http://www.apexauctions.com/auction/lotsForAuction.htm?page=1&auctionId=391&lot_search_page=true Me? I'd love a 5 axis DMG CNC mill

JB Weld won't hold back 1000psi terribly well. Where in Kent are you? I have a flaring kit and plenty of 3/16 kunifer or bundy as you prefer

A perfumed parafin is pretty much what is in a Safety Kleen™ tank

Sounds like a lot of methane in his system

Cleaner and cheaper. Ticks all the boxes for me

Cleaner and cheaper. Ticks all the boxes for me

Having pressed out the shaft, impeller and bearing out of a Mini water pump two days ago I wouldn't mind betting the dimensions are similar enough that something couldn't be cooked up. Might be necessary to bore the cover or sleeve the bearing. What diameter is the TDi bearing?

Tesco do them in 1 litre, 2 litre and 4 litre sizes with green or blue lids. Come with free milk. Or Rally Design, fabricated alloy items of about a litre capacity http://www.rallydesign.co.uk/

Thanks, I have dutifully been reading this thread and have reached page 13, or was it 16? Sounds as if a ready built but custom spec MS is my best option. I've no burning desire to drip solder over myself and I have got my work cut out on the rest of my project so ready built with the table switching would be my choice. Let me know if you want to make that 51 kits!

Have you guys running Megasquirt built your ECU's from scratch or gone readybuilt? I know the Omex 600/700 series inside out but for a personal project it is double plus the cost and limited to one map. Its advantage is not learning curve although a familiarity with EMS scores for the megasquirt too I'm sure. I want to run two ignition maps, one for petrol and one for LPG. I have emulators for the injectors with the LPG kit but is there any way to switch between ignition maps without flashing a new map to the ECU? My other option is run Mega jolt for the LPG and keep the megasquirt intact for petrol. Two independent systems has a certain appeal, I just wondered how fiddly/intricate soldering the boards is. I'm tempted to get the mega jolt kit and have a try first

I like the below cubby box location, they are happy mounted in a more exposed location subject to a certain amount of road crud then? Does it need to be boxed in as such under the floor?