The Rally Maestro project

[E_T_V]

Some more pics:

The Africa-rallycar project is shaping up, bonnet being masked up for two white stripes,Mini Cooper fashion…box for spares goes into the back next to the Mini Van tank…the car will be at the Gaydon heritage museum (just off the M40 near Warwick) all day on Saturday, so two days left to finish it and get it running again. Then its back to the workshop for brakes, clutch and detail stuff…

[countrydude]

The only shame for me is it's a metal bumper version which I always thing is less refined looks wise than the plastic bumper versions. The finish on this car is superb though.

[E_T_V]

It was plastic bumpered, but it was swapped to metal bumpers at the front for robustness. Nothing that couldn't be unbolted though!

[Guest]

Yes, a plastic bumper wouldn't survive a nerf with a donkey, goat, bike, ox-cart etc.

Fired it up today, oil shooting out down the side of the engine, needing another rocker gasket. Panic over, it settles down to running on tickover in the workshop. Gets a bit hot around the inlet manifold (you cant touch it), and as it sits directly over the exhaust manifold, this is going to be a bit of a problem with fuel vaporisation in traffic conditions in the heat of Africa, like going round Nairobi.

Not sure what to do - it needs a heat shield between the two manifolds, not keen on lagging anything with asbestos tape, as the heat has to go somewhere (on exhaust manifolds that causes holes to occur). If we can cool the inlet manifold it will help, surely, as the fuel is going to get too hot. We have lagged the petrol pipe with asbestos tape though - I will file some photos off to ETV later. Tony Fowkes is going out for a test run tonight, in the colder night air though things wont show up.

Its off to Gaydon early tomorrow, up the M40 (south of Birmingham) and will be on display all day (Saturday).

[E_T_V]

Standard carb had an asbestos heatshield from memory, so you'll need to replicate something in that area. The turbo engines actually had a fan to blow air over the carb when stood after the engine had stopped to prevent the fuel boiling in the carb.

Hot restarting was an issue on some of the webber equipped cars as again these sat ontop of the exhaust and they got a bit hot!

I'd suggest making some sort of metal sheet metal heatshield then covering this with the exhaust wrap stuff. I've never tried wrapping a cast iron manifold but they can sometimes crack I believe so probably not first on the list to try.

[E_T_V]

Comments from Philip.

White roof all done, almost ready for its first test-drive to Gaydon…


Exhaust downpipe mod…note the new Y piece, less crimped than the original, from Jetex exhausts, which exits with a two inch bore (also available in standard size), into a flexi section. Two-door coupe look really suits the lines of the car well…why didn’t they ever go for this?

[guussi]

i'd have the air intake inside the cockpit to prevent fine dust blocking up filters and also help with internal air movement for cooling sweat of your skin [cooling effect] theres a shed lot of fines flying about!
nail varnish remover for keeping injectors clean
a laptop with power inverter / firefox loaded with translate plugin to communicate lol
items to bribe customs or local bandits
voodoo handbook to scare local bandits
hi spec water filter if you get stuck and need such / plastic sheet-hole in ground pebble in middle cup under
dont run over snakes as they leap up and bite you thro the open window

[guussi]

Shortened gaff

I'd suggest making some sort of metal sheet metal heatshield then covering this with the exhaust wrap stuff. I've never tried wrapping a cast iron manifold but they can sometimes crack I believe so probably not first on the list to try.

id suggest the heat wrap then protect with pliable sheet metal protect over personally

[G Force]

Hi Philip.

To help with the fuel vapourisation you could try using this to shield the carb.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MINI-HIF44...item256601e635

It could be bent to fit & then further modified by wrapping in tape or sticking on glass fibre heat shield. There are lots of heat shield materials on ebay.

You could use the reflective fibre, the type used to protect turbo oil lines etc. to sleeve around the main jet & jet tube.

I think the inlet manifold would run cooler without the coolant running through it, It would be easy enough to do with & without comparisons on dyno day. You could also leave the manifold heater disconnected, as you won't be needing this warm up device in africa.

On a funnier note a top performance tip on your car would be to sort out that slack throttle cable as it can't be getting full throtte.

[E_T_V]

i'd have the air intake inside the cockpit to prevent fine dust blocking up filters and also help with internal air movement for cooling sweat of your skin [cooling effect] theres a shed lot of fines flying about!
nail varnish remover for keeping injectors clean
a laptop with power inverter / firefox loaded with translate plugin to communicate lol
items to bribe customs or local bandits
voodoo handbook to scare local bandits
hi spec water filter if you get stuck and need such / plastic sheet-hole in ground pebble in middle cup under
dont run over snakes as they leap up and bite you thro the open window

hahaha. You've got to give him points for trying... very trying....

[Guest]

Ran up to Gaydon and back ok today, but its clearly a bit of an issue, it was a nice hot day today and the carb area is getting very hot indeed, the HS6 old-style carb with side-mounted float-chamber has the bottom of the float-chamber about one-eighth of an inch above the top of the inlet manifold, which is too hot to touch. Will try various heat shields, we have some of the furry-lagging that Car Builders Sollutions do for turbo pipes (fibreglass, from the catalogue on www.nfauto.co.uk ).

What does running coollant through the inlet manifold achieve?

We need a bigger radiator, for sure.

Once we have licked this issue, it will go off to the rolling road.

[E_T_V]

Coolant flowing through the manifold helps keep the fuel atomised on a cold start. This isn't going to be an issue in africa so you could bypass it.

The radiator should be ok, but the EFi one is full width and would give extra capacity desired.

[E_T_V]

Meet the Maestro for Cape Town crew: Driver is Jane Edgington, a former Police driving-instructor, who has competed on over 300 rallies. Jane, 42, is now preparing for her longest-ever rally. She will be partnered by co-driver Gill Cotton, who won outright the London-Athens World Cup Rally in 2002.



Their rivals for the Ladies Prize will be MG ZR crew Rachel Vestey, from Suffolk, and Suzy Harvey, who won the Ladies prize on the Peking to Paris last year.

[Guest]

If we go for a two-litre radiator, (the full-width will give welcome extra capacity), how do find the pipes to plumb it ?

[E_T_V]

The bottom one will just need splicing in an extra piece of hose (or more practical a length of metal pipe)

Top one I can't remember the layout on the 1.6.

You can make up suitable hoses from solicone bits and joiners etc, or cut and join old hoses to fit. Its one of those where you just have to see what is in the back of the garage that fits!



I had to do this on my diesel and the above is one of the pics of the fabricated bits.